Royalties will keep the boat afloat
I think this article puts forward a very convincing point. It’s becoming increasingly clear that artists serve to help themselves most by holding on to their mechanical copyrights if they are songwriters. As music becomes more ubiquitous and experiential it seems as though the one possession a musician can keep that will be respected and monetized is a mechanical copyright. I’m not entirely sure that sound recording copyrights are going to prove to be a stable moneymaker in the future with sampling issues being debated and the copyright versus free expression battle raging on. However, the mechanical copyright royalty train seems to be on a steady and more importantly - diverse - course into the future of digital music.
