The lawsuit seems to be about the Great 78 project.
From 1909 to 1975, copyright in the US had a term of 28 years, renewable for another 28.
An artist (perhaps Tony Bennett, who performed with Lady Gaga in 2021 at the age of 95) who recorded one of the last 78s in the archive's collection would have done so in 1954, expecting the copyright to expire no later than 2010.
I remember reading an article by jerry pournelle, and I swear I read that the publisher would (could?) assign the copyright back to the writer for the second 28 years.
That's a fantasy constructed by people who want to keep idolizing their favorite musicians. Labels do exactly what the musicians signed with them want them to do. Heck the vast majority of record labels are owned by musicians.
By number sure but by volume no, UMG/Sony/WMG etc are not owned by Musicians.
Indie labels and the occasional hit independent label like Def Row/TDE are small in comparison and usually only include the owning musicians established music, not their beginnings. Bands often have to fight to buy back rights for that kinda stuff.
Interscope, Reprise, etc are all owned by the big three. Interscope wasn't even founded by artists.
Also labels (like Def Row and Reprise) often sell out to the big three, so even if you sign to one of them when they're independent, that won't mean it'll last forever and you as an artist won't get veto over that.
The record labels fight tech, which as an industry is substantially more abusive to musicians than the labels.
The Archive provides a valuable service, but if they're gonna die on this hill I'm going to fight them alongside my allies of convenience the record labels.
For discussion here, the number of labels is irrelevant: only their market share.
UMG alone has 38% of the entire record label market share. Its annual revenue is more than the entire revenue of all independent record labels combined.
AFAIK the lion's share of the market is held by the top ten labels, none of whom have the musician's best interest at heart. So yes, it's reasonable to say that labels generally don't represent musicians.
This is a tech forum. If you find musicians here, they will be downvoted into oblivion because their positions are unpopular and the HN rules encourage downvoting for disagreement.
Indie musicians love tech. "Sound cloud rapper" was a whole genre. Bandcamp brought so many indie artists into the mainstream who never would have been found without it.
Historically, musicians made most of their money off of concerts and merch (especially merch at concerts). Established musicians definitely rallies against streaming/digital downloads when it first came out, but some newer artists have embraced it given it cuts out the middle man and you don't necessarily need to suck up to labels to get any "airtime" and thus reach.
I guess they are not "real musicians" because the internet doesn't agree with them?