The Register has a great op-ed piece by Steve Gordon on what, if anything, artists can expect to see in their pockets as a result of Microsoft's payment of $1 per Zune as a sort of piracy tax to Universal Records and its evil henchman CEO Doug Morris. It's one thing when the non-music business public is up in arms about some boneheaded move by the record labels, it's quite another when that voice comes from an entertainment lawyer, author of The Future of The Music Business and the former Director of Business Affairs at Sony TV and Video.

Gordon is skeptical that musicians will ever see a dime of money from Microsoft's "royalty" payment. He writes, "Although this pattern of not paying artists for digital music sales is dreadful, the chances of artists seeing anything from the royalty placed on Zune is even worse. There is nothing in the standard recording agreement that says the labels must share income derived from licensing digital devices. Labels are only responsible for paying for exploitation of music, not licensing electronic devices. So why would the labels share anything with the artists when they already disregard clauses in the recording agreements that would benefit the artists?"

His op-ed also complains of and informs about things I've ranted about before, such as how artists are almost always in a perpetual state of "recoupment" with the label, how labels cheat artists by charing them for packaging costs on digital downloads (which, last I checked didn't come in a jewel case) and how artist contracts just arent' very fair to artists in general.