Knitting Factory Settles With Musicians

[7/4]

December 16, 2004

Knitting Factory Settles With Musicians

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 10:03 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- The owner of the renowned avant-garde music club the Knitting Factory reached an agreement with artists on its record label to pay damages for underreporting royalties, disposing of unsold CDs and not allowing artists to retain the rights to their work.

Knitmedia Inc., which runs the Knitting Factory clubs in New York and Los Angeles and Knitting Factory Records, agreed to pay $1,250 in back royalties to each musician who signed on to the settlement, said David Lennon, president of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. The company also agreed to return to the approximately 80 artists all rights to their work and the master recordings.

Existing inventories will be sold back to the musicians for $2 a piece rather than the standard $5, Lennon said.

Jared Hoffman, who took over Knitmedia in mid-2002, said many of the issues in the dispute arose before he became head of the company and he was pleased to see them resolved.

``We are extremely happy that the situation has been resolved amicably and that we are finally able to put this distant past behind us,'' he said.

The agreement was reached after several of the musicians who had formed a coalition called Take it to the Bridge in their fight against the company rallied outside the New York club Wednesday night, prompting a sit-down, Lennon said.

Knitmedia also has agreed to enter into arbitration with those artists who were not party to the agreement over mechanical royalties dating to Jan. 1, 2000, and to return to them the rights to master recordings.

The label has produced work by a wide variety of artists including Arto Lindsay, Charles Gayle and Gary Lucas.

Marc Ribot, a New York musician who has played regularly at the club but was not involved in the settlement, said the situation underscores a lot of the difficulties independent artists face.

``There's a myth that its the little artist-friendly indie David against the corporate label giant. But artists get ripped off by both all the time,'' he said. ``What's unique here is that the artists organized to do something about it, and it was also one of the first times that a major union was supporting them.''

[Jim Alfredson]

[7/4]

The first time I played the Knit, in '99 they wanted me to sign a release for a video recording for possible release on some video comp. I'm sure they did this with every one who played there.

I didn't do it because I was making a DAT recording for later release and I didn't want any conflict of rights to my music. They seemed shocked.

Later Zorn found out they had their web cam on 24-7 without any permission in the main space. He wasn't too happy about this.