found this article on business week, makes for an interesting read

Andersen got the piracy case against her dropped; now she’s going after the RIAA for conspiracy
by Heather Green

When Tanya Andersen opens the door to her modest apartment in suburban Portland, Ore., her Maltese-terrier mix, Tazz, runs over and wags his tail in a friendly hello. The 45-year-old…

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The financial and legal requirements within the music industry go hand in hand with each other – one cannot function without the other.
Every professional agreement you make within a creative industry must be bound legally by a contract, this should spell out 5 things :

1) ownership of rights - who owns what
2) royalty payments - who gets paid / benefits
3) time - how long is the contract
4) who is responsible…

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there are a few things that need to happen if you are gonna make a record, and get it out there; this is how a traditional record company does it :

1) Legal department: preparation of contracts ; lawyers construct and sign your contract; also make sure you stick to your contract; they also sue you if you break your contract.

2) Accounts department: make sure you get paid (after everyone else…

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http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/04/myspace-partner.html

It seems that myspace are going to start paying the majors for their music on its site (or a spinoff site) through subscriptions (which wont work - the argument being ‘why should i pay for something i can download for free, even if you are telling me its illegal, its still free’)
what might be a better thing to do is to share some of the 20 million (ish) USD PER…

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Most of us think the music industry is only made up of bands, record companies and venues, however each area of the business is represented and governed by specific organisations that all link together, most of these are royalty collection agencies.

There are two kinds of royalties – mechanical (records pressed or sold) and performance (radio, TV, live, film soundtrack, etc)

a wee bit about the music industry, from a college essay i wrote

Record company – record companies sign artists and then finance them to make sound recordings of intellectual properties they have written. The record company then seeks to exsanguinate these recordings by duplicating and manufacturing delivery mechanisms (cd’s, downloads, vinyl, etc ) and distributing