In their self view they ensure that artists earn money for their living, thus allow artists to survive. And there is some truth to it. Finding the right balance is hard ... but in my view they "rights holder industry" is too strong indeed.
I think its probably similar to medicine in that there is a gigantic industry of middlemen that suck money out of the system and make far more than the actual service providers
"The Value of Everything" by Mariana Mazzucato. Great book. Central thesis: there are value creators and value extractors. Value creation is very connected with most people's idea of "progress". But value extraction is parasitic, and dominates more and more of contemporary economies.
I'd agree. If copyright wasn't valid after death + 70 years
Of course they don't do only that, they also have to spend their time crafting abusive contracts and extensions in detriment of artists and in favour of big recording companies.
I'd be interested in seeing how much money from their suits gets to the artists, or even to distributors - or what effect on revenue their deterrence causes.
Right, these lawyers are parasites sucking blood not just from society in general, but also blood from most of the artists ostensibly represented by the RIAA. If any artists come out ahead from anything the RIAA's lawyers do, it's only the elite already-wealthy ones.
They made 820 million € in revenue, 128M€ are their "costs", 692M€ of that 15% are their fees, remainingnis split between labels and artists and artists got 316.5M€, thus a quite low fraction ... and in German law the creator is theoretically stronger positioned than in US copyright.
(Now this isn't 100% fair as analysis, as some of the payments to labels go to artits, as well and labels also do some marketing etc benefiting the artist ... and then there is this weird distribution mechanism where a successful artist gets over proportionally more ... but in the end: "small" artists only get a very tiny part of the cake)
To clarify: GP asked about "how much money [recovered from the lawsuits] gets to the artists". The revenue you're quoting is mostly not from lawsuits, it's regular license fees paid by broadcasters and event organizers.
It's not really a secret. The music industry has always been about concerts: radio play (or streaming, which uses the same revenue model) doesn't pay anything and artists get pennies on the dollar for record sales. The RIAA represents record labels more than artists.
