You can only become a voting member of GEMA if you earn a certain amount of money through music. There’s only about 3,000 of them and only they decided on this [policy]. And guess who gets 65 percent of the new money that GEMA is taking in? The voting members. So this money is going to people who already make money off of music, and not to the underground, not to the majority of musicians. That’s the fucked up part.
The Times Labs blog takes a hard look at the data on music sales and live performances and concludes that while the labels' profits might be falling, artists are taking in more money, thanks to the booming growth of live shows.
