There’s a post on a tech blog from 2009 following The Pirate Bay guilty verdict titled “Paul McCartney’s Confused About The Pirate Bay” that truly illustrates how many internet consultants and tech blogger’s appear feel about musicians. The  comments responding to Sir Paul McCartney speaking about the Pirate Bay verdict show just how much these people don’t seem to understand musicians.

In this one post we see all of the major anti-artists talking points that Silicon Valley interests still use against creators in a disinformation campaign that is over a decade long:

– artists are easily confused about the internet and technology
– artists don’t know what’s best for them (let the “consultant”  help you!)
– artists can get paid, but as long as its not via a “government mandated tax” ie, copyright (!?)
– artists shouldn’t be able to live off of one song (royalties)…

In case you haven’t noticed, Google has been conducting an all out assault on powerful positions in the U.S. Government.  Note that I say “the U.S. Government” and not “the Obama Administration” for a reason–it just happens, it is merely coincidental that President Obama is the occupant of the White House during Google’s rise to power.  Focusing on the political party of the White House misses the point–David Duke could get elected president and Google would still be playing the same game.  And it’s a game as old as mankind.  Using money to gain influence and using influence to gain power.

Because, as Erik Telford writes in Townhall, “Google [is] the Halliburton of the Obama Administration.”  Even Politico’s Google booster Tony Romm said “The Obama Administration recently plundered the search giant’s ranks.”  Andrew Orlowski wrote four years ago in the Register, “Google is Obama’s Halliburton: So Who’s…

On October 14, Blake Morgan and a great line up of performers hosted a sold out standing room only live show for the #irespectmusic AND I VOTE! campaign at the legendary Bitter End in Greenwich Village.  In addition to stellar performances by City of the Sun, Jus Post Bellum, Coyle Girelli and Janita as well as a rousing speech supporting artist rights by Congressman Jerry Nadler that brought the house down, Blake told the story of the #irespectmusic activism and the voter registration campaign.  (See event review here at Doo Bee Doo Bee Doo.)

I highly recommend watching this video of Blake’s inspiring short speech about the evolution of his activism, the voter registration drive and the Congressional Creative Rights Caucus.

Tell your friends, sign the petition and VOTE on November 4!

As we noted in a prior post, Billboard reported on what might be called the “chart value” of streams compared to downloads.  To the extent that streams are counted in both the Billboard charts and the UK’s Official Charts, streams are valued at 100 streams to one permanent download.  This ratio was touted by Spotify at the recent artist meetings hosted by the Featured Artist Coalition in New York.

When you consider the royalty value of that ratio, however, those 100 streams are rewarded at a much, much lower penny rate than a download, even if you compare 100 streams to the $0.70 price of the lowest iTunes wholesale price of downloads.  As we noted previously, the 100:1 ratio implies a per-stream royalty of $0.007.

What About the Royalty Value?

Experience suggests that this seems high.  Quite high.  So just to confirm what Spotify representatives actually said at the…

The erudite Harley Brown reported in Billboard about Spotify’s artist relations charm offensive in New York that:

[Blake Morgan’s] main complaints were manifold, but two were based on the meeting’s central tenets: that the per-stream rate is never going to go up (70 percent of revenue goes to royalties) and 100 song streams equals a sale on the Billboard charts and the U.K.’s Official Charts Company. With regard to the former, both [Mark] Williamson [of Spotify] and [Paul] Pacifico [of the Featured Artist Coalition] stress that Morgan (and a few other malcontents) didn’t pipe down long enough to let Spotify help the uninitiated artists in the room understand their position.

“What I was trying to explain,” Williamson says, exasperation emanating from his voice over the phone, “Is that we’re a revenue share model. How do we increase the amount of revenue — the pot of royalties — which increases the amount we…