http://www.myspace.com/featuredartistscoalition
Performers such as Franz Ferdinand, Robbie Williams and Coldplay have joined the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), a lobbying group proposing that artists keep the rights to the music they create, have a greater say in how their songs are sold and take a larger chunk of the earnings.
At the moment artists' recording rights are largely owned by the music labels. But a new lobbying group, the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), which has 700 members, proposes that artists should own these rights and lease them back to the music labels or other business partners.
Members including Annie Lennox, Franz Ferdinand, Klaxons, Kaiser Chiefs and Jools Holland plan to hold attend an inaugural meeting this month. They will lobby the government to collect and distribute revenues for artists.
The meeting comes as the big music labels, suffering from falling CD sales and increasing numbers of illegal music downloads, hope to persuade artists to let them exploit lucrative revenue streams such as sponsorship and live appearances.
But artists say they are being shortchanged by the record labels who are making money from deals with mobile phone companies like Nokia.
Brian Message, co-manager of Radiohead, Faithless and pop act Kate Nash, said management and artists now work together to build a fan base without the backing of a traditional record label.
The Radiohead campaign for "In Rainbows," beginning with the pay-what-you-want business model for the album release, was about "artist empowerment" following the band's departure from EMI, he said.
The business model has also been transformed for new artists. "It has been a quite dramatic period of change," he said. "Our business models have migrated from easy 20 per cent commissions and having to put up no investment, to having to put up quite a lot of investment. It definitely makes the pips squeak a little bit in terms of taking that risk," he told an audience at Midem, an annual music industry conference last month.
On the FAC Myspace site, the group say: "The digital revolution is a fantastic opportunity for music. It has changed everything, liberating the relationship between artists and fans. As this revolution gathers pace, we, Featured Artists, must seize the initiative and put ourselves at the heart of our industry.
"Run by featured artists, for featured artists, the Featured Artists Coalition is leading a rights revolution.
"The FAC will campaign for effective laws and regulations, transparent and equitable business practices and ensure artists' interests are asserted and safeguarded.
"The FAC will not merely promote our rights, but will collect and distribute revenue that many of these rights generate.
"By strengthening featured artists' rights, asserting our interests and fighting for what's fair, the future can be ours."
Ed O'Brien, Radiohead's guitarist and FAC board member, said: "The music companies had us by the short and curlies. This isn't about revenge but now we have to take responsibility for ourselves.
"There are new digital rights and revenue streams which have to be carved up and we have to get together and do it ourselves. Nobody is going to do it for us."
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