A Royalty Pain

Robert Hilburn completely missed the point in “Time Is Not on the Side of Long Albums” (May 21). Artists release 70-plus-minute CDs with 15-plus tracks for more than just their creative ego. Like most music business decisions, this one involves money: lots of it.

Publishing royalties--”mechanical” royalties, also called the “ASCAP” or “BMI,” which is in addition to the typical $1 per CD “artist” royalty--are 6.95 cents per song. (Songs longer than five minutes earn more, but for argument’s sake, 7 cents is a useful figure.) Record companies do limit mechanical payments to newer bands to 10 tracks per disc (i.e., a 15-track CD by an emerging artist would generate the same mechanicals as a 10-track CD). But yes, “if everyone else’s CD is 70 minutes, so will mine,” the argument goes. And once a band enjoys some big sales, mechanical royalty limits are likely to be among the first things to disappear from a renegotiated contract.

As for those artists who hit big and still claim they haven’t “sold out,” check out the bloating on their more recent CDs. Maybe their music is just as good; their business, evidently, has improved substantially.

DAVID HORNE

Los Angeles