EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

HELP@... wrote:

> No offense to EP, but I was surprised
> that Spectrasonics asks for a credit on a CD.

This does strike me as a little bit odd as well. They get no additional money from having their name/products credited on recordings. But they get free publicity for their products, especially if the recordings they are used on are popular.

So in addition to asking us to pay for their products with money, they are asking us to advertise them as well for them for free. It's as if advertising their products for them on their behalf is part of the payment due. Yes I know this is part of what we agree to under the license agreement, but it still strikes me as a little bit onesided.

Consider this: Crediting them on recordings is basically one of the methods of "payment" they receive; it's just that it's in the form of advertising services instead of money. Not everyone who buys their products will use it on a commercial release. Therefore there is a two tiered system. The customers who end up using their products on commercial releases are in fact "paying more" than those who don't. It's just that the additional payment isn't in dollars (or euros), it's in providing advertisement for their products for them with no renumeration.

So we are basically being asked to work for free for them, in a manner of speaking (by doing part of their advertising for them), after paying them money for their products. So we're tied to paying them for as long as we use their products as well as at the purchase point. It's worse than slavery. Slaves at least don't have to pay for the privelage of becoming slaves originally.

I realize I'm off on a tangent; it just stirs up strong feelings in me. It reminds me of when my band was just starting up. An agent negotiated exclusive rights to book us for five years. And then on top of it, he expected us to give out his cards on jobs as a means of advertising _his_ business. Instead of allowing us to promote  our own name which would have resulted in absoloutely no loss to him since he was booking us exclusively, independant of how the jobs originated during those five years and would make the same money from them.

I realise this isn't the exact same thing; it just triggers some of those old messy feelings for me.


--
Eli Krantzberg
Nightshift Orchestra / Almat Productions
http://www.nightshiftorchestra.com