Case Study - Protecting your rights and earnings

1. Why do you think music artists and other people working in the media are concerned about the digital reproduction of their work?
   When a music artist produces a new song they need to ensure that it is copywrited straight away.  The reason material like this has to be copywrited is so their work cannot get stolen used or copied by anyone else. Copywrite procedures are also in place so that if anything related or to do with their work comes up then they are informed about it.
   Most artists have a cause for concern about their work being downloaded by consumers. The reason artists have these concerns are because a lot of music is downloaded and streamed illegally by consumers  for free, if this way of getting music continues that means the artists are going to be paid less for their music as most consumers are receiving it for free. Even some music download company’s like Spotify don’t pay the artists providing the music very much money. This worry’s the majority of artists because they want their music to be heard but are not being paid fair money from company’s who are streaming their material. For example a band called ECM told Spotify they were not allowed to use their music as they felt Spotify did not pay them enough money.
   If Spotify decided to raise the fee that customers have to pay, this would mean they would have more money to pay artists a fair wage. It will also mean that more artists/bands will want their material on Spotify as they are being paid a good amount of money.  It is likely that consumers will be willing to pay more money to have more choice of music.
   This is the Spotify logo that represents Spotify

1. Why is a website such as this a help to organisations like the PRS?
   The website fairplayforcreators is linked with PRS; PRS have designed this website to help keep consumers informed of recent news on the issues of artists not receiving enough royalties. Fairplayforcreators informs and educates its readers on what PRS is and gives its audience a good understanding of what PRS are trying to achieve.
   The website states what their targets and aims are, they want all music to be free for consumers to enjoy and they believe artists should be given a fair amount of money.
   The reason the concerns over music not being free and available to customers arose in the first place is because google removed an artist/band from YouTube and no longer made it available to consumers for free. PRS believe google should pay the artists a fair wage to keep them on YouTube.
2. What might happen if sites like YouTube are forced to pay too much money to show digital media content on their website?
   If YouTube where to ever be in this situation then they may start charging people to use   YouTube. This means YouTube might set out a monthly fee that has to be paid and all people paying must be a member of YouTube. This could either make a lot of money for them which then allows them to pay the artists showing their content a fair wage, however, this may lose YouTube loads of customers due to the new fee that has been put in place.
    Above is the YouTube logo which is recognised by millions. If YouTube make the decision to add a fee which all consumers have to pay then this will affect their logo. The reason the logo may be affected is because if YouTube makes customers pay and then it doesn’t go right and they lose all their customers they are going to have to rebrand and design a new logo so consumers don’t see the logo and think that this site charges a fee.