I feel much better when my money goes to an artist vs when I pay for a song knowing that the people getting the money did not actually write or perform the song.
It’s a collection of feelings and reasons: I’m giving back to the same person that produced what I just enjoyed, I might be making it more likely that they will work more on that direction… or even just the fact that I can picture where the money is going to.
Is this an issue for anybody else on Resonate? Does it make sense for Resonate to partly address this?
It’s an issue I’ve had for a long while which also relates to my profound distaste of what copyrights law have become / have (kinda) always been (thank you Disney etc.), sadly I’m not certain it’s an issue that is easily adressable for the time being.
I know you don’t like when I talk too long so I’ll keep it short but there are various types of reasons why Resonate might shoot itself in the foot by trying to tackle an issue that’s outside its scope (because really it’s a copyright law issue not a “payment system” issue).
So the thing is, you can bet major labels won’t be on Resonate anytime soon, and they’re the right holders of most “dead people” work at the current time (you have no idea how far that reach extend), especially famous dead people with right holders that make substential money of off their work, but also a lot of smaller dead people, sometimes to the point its unclear who owns what after many buy outs have muddied the water.
Opposite to that, Resonate, since it’s based on ownership and capping revenues for songs, already limits how much “dead musicians” could make anyway (unlike Spotify where it’s basically an infinite copyright machine).
Finally, there are quite a few indie / underground label re-releasing forgotten artists and fighting the good fight of the copyright system by trying to shine a light on forgotten artists who never were well compensated throughout their life, so that either their families or some community that they’ve been a part of can get some recognition and some money out the work. These labels do work that I find quite fundamental to right some wrongs and they would most likely be the ones penalized should Resonate impose restriction on dead artists.
This being said I don’t even think it’s an actual question we can ask because I don’t think it’s legally possible for Resonate to circumvent copyright laws. But I’m most certain you won’t see a lot of profitable dead artists with vampirizing right holders for a long while on Resonate.
I still agree it’s good to consider the issue though, copyright laws suck.
If this was the consensus around here, just expressing it openly is a way I would consider of addressing the issue.
Have to agree with @LLK that its a copyright, not payments issue. The topic is messy. For instance, what happens to the heirs/owners of an artists’ catalog that has massive debt attached to it? There are definitely some cases where a label or family member might depend on streaming income long after the artist passed away. Quite a few shades of grey in this, but likely not something we would have a voice in, unless we were engaged on the larger copyright topic as well. Could happen down the road, so not a bad thing to bring it up. 
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(emphasis mine) thanks for this great point! Also appreciate the sentiment in the original post about feeling better when the money goes where you want it. That’s what drew me to Resonate for sure
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