• ISOmorph@feddit.de
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    10 months ago

    Jesus Christ. They’re literally sending spies now. To a funeral no less. What a bunch of fucking ghouls. I’m just pirating shit out of principle now…

    • trollercoaster@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      The copyright industry is pretty much a legal protection racket. Nothing is sacred to them. In Germany they have been suing Kindergartens over singing old childrens’ songs with the children.

    • Feydaikin@beehaw.org
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      10 months ago

      A business is a business. And as long as funeral homes charge money for their services, they don’t get exemption from anything.

  • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    The irony of claiming the funeral industry are the victims of money grabbing.

  • kilgore@feddit.de
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    10 months ago

    It works the same way in Germany. If you’re playing music in essentially any venue, even just on the radio, you pay a royalties fee. For places that do it everyday there is usually a flat yearly fee. At least here, a good chunk of that money does indeed fund other cultural endeavors.

    • trollercoaster@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      At least here, a good chunk of that money does indeed fund other cultural endeavors.

      Cultural endeavors is a very polite way to put it. A large chunk of it goes to only a handful of big performers in the music industry, the small ones who would actually need money get very little.

      • kilgore@feddit.de
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        10 months ago

        Actually GEMA takes a percentage from the big pop musicians to help fund the contemporary/avantgarde composers who would otherwise earn a lot less. There are plenty of things to complain about with GEMA but I think for the most part they do a lot to support smaller, more obscure genres. (I ran a publishing company for contemporary music in Germany for ten years, so I had a lot to do with GEMA)

        • Zacryon@feddit.de
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          10 months ago

          Good for you. Doesn’t hold true for the others. Besides the problem that it’s too less what they pay out.

          • kilgore@feddit.de
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            10 months ago

            It depended on many factors like the size of the venue, length and instrumentation of the piece, also the genre. I can’t give you an amount in € off the top of my head how much I earned lol.

            • AlexS@feddit.de
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              10 months ago

              If you don’t know how much GEMA gave you, it can’t be noteworthy.

              Better scrape it. But wait, you can’t leave. Any resemblance to mafia?

              • kilgore@feddit.de
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                10 months ago

                Why would I memorize financial information from a company I left years ago just to share it with random strangers on the internet?

    • Zacryon@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      You also pay fees to GEMA if you buy a writable CD or USB or other forms of data storage, because you could potentially use it to store music on it. It’s included in the price. This also affects devices with which you could transfer the data on the storage medium.

      Don’t believe me?

      https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauschalabgabe

    • skoell13@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      Not if it’s a closed party for invited guests only such as a wedding.

  • Zacryon@feddit.de
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    10 months ago

    How about the music industry pays those royalties to their musicians then?

    • baltakatei@sopuli.xyz
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      10 months ago

      The artists could have chosen not to sign their long-term rights away for short-term discounts on recording studio costs.

  • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
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    10 months ago

    Makes sense. It’s not like funeral home offer their work for free, why should musicians?