Copyright, royalties and industrial decline

This chapter addresses the recording industry’s power as a manufacturing industry, arguing that it is from this basis that it has gained its power as a copyright industry. It first explores the making available right, an exclusive right that was developed in the 1990s, and which has enabled the recording industry to treat on-demand streaming and downloading revenues similarly to the revenues from physical sales: they are exempt from equitable remuneration and collective management organization administration. The chapter then explores the limits of this exercise. The recording industry has not been able to ignore the fact that streaming and downloading are different in nature to the manufacture and sale of physical products. Consequently, its practices have been questioned and to a certain extent transformed. The business activities of recording artists have simultaneously expanded, putting some of them in a position of greater power vis-a-vis record companies.