I can do a deal with you that if you sell my car for me I’ll let you have a 10% commission. That is not a royalty. It doesn’t involve a royal prerogative. No-one’s liberty needs to be suspended. It’s an agreement, a contract that we must both agree.

I can also say that if I sell my car I’ll pay you 10% toward a commission for your next performance. However, that’s not a contract (doesn’t involve your agreement), but a promise or pledge – and so if I sell my car and don’t pay you 10% you have no legal recourse (nor should you).

Copyright is not an agreement, but a privilege that suspends the individual’s natural liberty and right to copy covered works. That’s why it’s call copyright. The right is legally suspended and granted as a privilege of the holder.

If copyright was an agreement I’d be able to say “I don’t agree” and enjoy my liberty to copy my CD collection, but as you should know, it is not an agreement (unless you mean the ‘agreement’ of the Stationer’s Guild and Queen Anne in 1709 to enact it – much like ACTA is an ‘agreement’ today).

So, without copyright there are no royalties. However, composers, singers, and songwriters can still do deals to split the revenue their combined work sells for in a free market, in whatever percentages they fancy. Moreover, I propose to you that it is better splitting 100% of revenue direct from fans than the 1% that remains after the label and the rest of the value chain have taken 99%. So, choose between 100% of copyleft revenue vs 1% of copyright revenue, and don’t forget the latter involves suing or taxing your fans.

There is a huge difference between copyright and contract law. Copyright is a federal mandate, granted automatically. You have to specifically declare you work is NOT under copyright for it not to apply. A contract is a voluntary agreement between two or more parties , it is NOT federally mandated and NOT granted automatically.

In terms of the free market exchange of art the two parties who place value on it are the artists who expend work in producing it and those (fans) who want it and will exchange their money (obtained from their work) for it.

So, we may have an artist who reckons their latest work has a market value of $11,000 and a thousand of their fans who reckon their value of its production and publication at $9 – constituting a market value of $9,000.

Here are three things that can happen for an exchange to occur:
1) The artist and/or fans haggle (adjusting their offers) until equity is agreed, e.g. $10,000 and $10 each.
2) Both sides further promote the artist and their work, causing an increase in fans.
3) Either party becomes impatient and concedes to accept the other’s offer.

This of course assumes the fans all pay an equal share of the price they agreed with the artist. Some fans could offer a sweetener on top of an equal share, but we might as well keep things simple for now.

Anyway, at some point, in a free market, the amount of money offered by fans for an artist’s work is agreed by the artist as equal to the amount they are prepared to accept in exchange for publishing it. In other words both artist and fans agree the monetary value of the work.

The artist’s delivery of their art and the fan’s delivery of their money in exchange need not all occur in perfect synchrony. All that has to be sorted out at some point is the exchange agreement, or contract if you prefer.

On the subject of contracts it is important to recognise that they are agreements to exchange what can be exchanged (and the agreement may stipulate conditions). A contract cannot alienate a person from their natural rights (a priori inalienable). So a person cannot sell their liver just as they cannot sell themselves into forced labour, just as they cannot sell their right to free speech.

A contract cannot involve a person surrendering their liberty to make copies (even today). Only the (unnatural) privilege of copyright can attempt to do this (unethically) because it is legislated and enforced by the power of the state. As we see today, millions of people are ignoring copyright’s suspension of their natural liberty and right to copy each other’s published works. So it must be borne in mind that contract is not able to do what copyright cannot. Even if a thousand fans contract to exchange $10,000 for the artist’s work they still cannot as a part of the contract surrender their liberty to copy it (nor anyone else’s). Such liberty is only suspended by copyright – and not very effectively. It would be like specifying that the artist could only spend the money they’d received from the fans on carbon neutral products and services.

Therefore contracts concerning the exchange of art cannot specify royalties on sale of copies – without the existence and enforcement of copyright.

This is because people are naturally at liberty to copy what they can access (without violating anyone’s privacy). Even so, there’s nothing to stop a songwriter and singer forming a company and agreeing shares in proportion to the mutually agreed estimations of the contribution the writer’s song and the singer’s performance will make when it comes to the company selling the recording of the song to the fans of both. However, once the recording has been sold neither company, songwriter nor singer can prosecute or charge anyone who receives it for playing it, covering it, or copying it (whether they are paid to do so or not). Such unnatural power is only pretended by copyright.

The better the songs, the better the singing, the more fans are attracted, the more money is made on subsequent sales of new songs and/or new recordings. Individuals can agree percentage shares of sales, but only copyright has the power to command royalties on use. That said, there’s nothing stopping the owner of a diner rewarding the artists of tracks played on a jukebox in proportion to the number of plays – by way of incentivising artists to write more popular tracks. The diner and its clientele is interested in popular music, and has plenty of motive to commission artists to produce popular music.

The difference between a commission and a royalty is that a commission is voluntary whereas a royalty is enforced by law (the king).

Commission: “We will pay you $ each time we play your music, though we don’t have to”
Royalty: “If you copy/play my music you must pay me $ or I prosecute”

And of course, if a singer/songwriter duo have agreed a 40:60 split in shares, then when the diner owner disburses the accumulated takings from the jukebox to the artists’ company, they receive their dues in proportion. But, again, the company represents an agreed partnership for a joint venture, not a set of manacles that each can coerce the other with.

When you go about doing business with people who want to do business with you (your fans, or your favourite artist) then you don’t treat them as people to be coerced, threatened, or have money forcibly extracted. It’s all about having the liberty to make an agreement as to what is an equitable exchange, and then to make that exchange of one’s own volition.

If no-one wants to exchange their money for your music you either need to improve your product or your marketing. Suspending people’s liberty to make copies or taxing them if they do may appeal to the unscrupulous, but it does not appeal to you.

It all comes down to what Crosbie said initially…

You ask yourself how much you want, or can reasonable expect from your creation, put a price tag on it, and release it when you accumulate that price, either from a “one-off” purchase (which would be just wonderful if/when it can happen) or from a “collective” purchase where multiple contributors each pitch in a fraction.

There can still be other “expectations” placed on the use of the creation, that would be included in the purchase agreement. What those are would be a matter of the creators’ preference.

No copyright needed. No new laws. No changes to existing laws. No need to interfere with the Internet.

All that’s needed is to determine where your market actually exists, and direct your efforts toward it. This part, I’ll admit, would seem to be the most intimidating, but I strongly believe once that hump is conquered, you have something.

I think that the last sentence is more likely true than not.

No one is saying a songwriter can’t do a % based deal with a band, I don’t think even Crosbie said that can’t be done. As I pointed out, and you seem to agree with in your last post is that this can be handled under contract law, copyright isn’t necessary. I think a lot of bands may even prefer that deal, as you mentioned they may not be able to afford 10k or whatever, but can afford a % deal. Perhaps, at least on this topic there is less disagreement than people think?

The problem with songs is that nobody knows what the ‘value’ is.

That makes no sense.

Songwriters always have been and always will be the ones who can determine the value of their creations, and put the price on them, along with whatever licensing/royalty demands and stipulations they want, before releasing anything.

If “spec” isn’t doing it for them, I would have to ask why they even go that way.

Value is only an unknown when you’re depending on someone else to assess it. (Appears to be another residual effect of the old model. Some pre-arranged contractual obligation, maybe?)