Music companys to pay up

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/music/newsid_2066000/2066858.
stm

More than 150 veteran music stars and their heirs will share a $4.75m
(�3.1m) payout after a judge ruled that a deal on decades of unpaid
royalties was fair.

The campaign to be paid by music giant Universal had been led by jazz
legend Peggy Lee, who died in January ...

The 161 stars and their heirs alleged they were owed millions of dollars
after the record company under-reported sales figures and over-charged
them for services such as album packaging.

snip

The deal was a watershed for the music industry because it showed that
even retired or deceased artists could not be ignored by record labels, Mr
Godfrey said.

snip

Many of the artists signed contract amendments in the 1980s for the sale
of CDs as the format took off, but the court papers said Universal did not
keep to the terms of those agreements.

My Comment-

looks like the music companies have a terrible record of paying what they
owe -and this case showed they cooked the books, overcharging for
"packaging" of albums, under counting of fees owed performers
/undereporting sales. Is this the industry that claims everyone else is
cheating them??? Just exactly who does congress think it is dealing with
anyway? Why did congress believe the claims of an industry that behaves
like it claims its customers behave? Chuck