When he’s not on the road touring, Lowery is teaching students at the University of Georgia about the business of the music industry.
He is a vocal critic of that industry, and particularly how technology – from illegal downloading to new streaming services – has made it harder for artists to keep control of their work and to earn a living from it.
WATCH THE FULL STORY ON BBC VIDEO:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25771368
We’ve just gotten word that Musician/Producer Michael Beinhorn has been added to the NAMM 2014 Artists Rights & Internet Panel.
Michael brings a unique perspective as a musician and producer whose work spans from such classic and ground breaking albums as Herbie Hancock’s “Future Shock” which featured “Rockit” to seminal rock albums for Red Hot Chili Peppers, Marylin Manson, Hole, Soundgarden and to many more to mention.
NAMM 2014 – Copyright, The Internet and You
http://www.namm.org/thenammshow/2014/hot-zone/copyright-internet-and-you-panel
Day: Thursday, Jan 23
Start Time: 3:00 pm (One Hour)
Room: The Forum (203 A-B)
Presenter / Moderator: Gregory Butler
Why are content creators seeing less money than ever while their art is being used so widely? Join our panel of experts as they look at the challenges of navigating the new music industry, piracy and intellectual property.
Panelists:
* Lucy Miyaki of Tashaki Miyaki
* Manda Mosher of Calico
* Reinhold Heil, Film & TV Composer
* John Cate, fmr Tunecore CFO
* Tom Biery, Artist Management
* Brian McNelis, Music Supervisor / Soundtrack Album Producer
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Never wanting to lose an opportunity to be bizarrely two-faced, Google is sending around a little graphic today to all you GMail users implying that stopping SOPA in January of 2012 actually enabled creativity to continue to thrive on the Web. Never mind that nothing in SOPA could have stopped you or me or any other would-be creator from uploading our works, ideas, or captured events to the Web; that’s just pesky reality.
But Google isn’t satisfied just to effect public policy in its own interests, it also wants to behave like the abusive and negligent father, who creepily shows up with a smile and a hug when his kid wins an award or becomes famous.
After all, this week isn’t just the anniversary of SOPA Blackout Day, it’s also the week Google received its 100 millionth takedown notice from recording artists who would rather not have their works exploited without permission or compensation. So, the whole, “we protected creativity together” message just kinda makes the skin crawl. Y’know?
READ THE FULL POST AT THE ILLUSION OF MORE:
http://illusionofmore.com/google-bite-me/
In a setback to its music licensing plans, Pandora has received word from the FCC that for the time being it is no longer processing its application to transfer ownership of the broadcasting license for KXMZ, the Rapid City, South Dakota radio station it acquired last June. Pandora had hoped to take advantage of the lower rates that internet streaming services owned by terrestrial radio stations enjoy.
READ THE FULL STORY AT BILLBOARD:
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/legal-and-management/5869791/fcc-shelves-pandoras-bid-for-south-dakota-radio
We’ve written here before how so called “Artists Rights” or “Artists & Copyright” panels at conventions such as CES and SXSW seem to be lacking any artists who are actually interested in protecting their rights and copyrights. So we’re pleased to see that NAMM has gotten it right and we encourage those going to the convention to drop in on the panel.
NAMM 2014 – Copyright, The Internet and You
http://www.namm.org/thenammshow/2014/hot-zone/copyright-internet-and-you-panel
Day: Thursday, Jan 23
Start Time: 3:00 pm (One Hour)
Room: The Forum (203 A-B)
Presenter / Moderator: Gregory Butler
Why are content creators seeing less money than ever while their art is being used so widely? Join our panel of experts as they look at the challenges of navigating the new music industry, piracy and intellectual property.
Panelists:
* Lucy Miyaki of Tashaki Miyaki
* Manda Mosher of Calico
* Reinhold Heil, Film & TV Composer
* John Cate, fmr Tunecore CFO
* Tom Biery, Artist Management
* Brian McNelis, Music Supervisor / Soundtrack Album Producer
by Chris Castle
Rap Genius topped any Google results for practically any lyric search string, so the site was very well-known to music fans. That enviable ranking doesn’t seem dissimilar from search results for Isohunt, the Pirate Bay or Kickass Torrents.
So what was the cardinal sin justifying Google in disappearing Rap Genius? Operating without licenses? No, certainly not that. Openly challenging the music industry? No, not that either.
It would appear Rap Genius did the one thing Google doesn’t permit — it spoke openly about beating Google at its own game. Rap Genius evidently tricked Google’s search algorithm into ranking it higher than the site should have been absent the manipulation. And for this cheeky violation of Google’s rules — not a law — the search giant demonstrated two points in one flex of its dominant muscle.
READ THE FULL STORY AT BILLBOARD:
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/5869795/the-hubris-behind-googles-demotion-of-rap-genius-guest
“After 100 million piracy notices, it’s time for Google to take meaningful action to help curb online copyright infringement.
Google, with its market capitalisation of more than US$370 billion, is directing internet users to illegal sources of music.
This is not only harming a recording industry whose revenues have fallen by 40 percent in the last decade to US$16.5 billion, but it is also harming the more than 500 licensed digital music services worldwide that offer up to 30 million tracks to internet users.”
READ THE FULL STORY AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/01/14/googlereceives
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There’s a recent report from the Wall Street Journal that is being grossly misinterpreted from this line,
“Data reviewed by The Wall Street Journal showed that one major record company makes more per year, on average, from paying customers of streaming services like Spotify or Rdio than it does from the average customer who buys downloads, CDs or both.”
This does NOT mean that streaming will be more profitable than transaction sales anytime soon. It seems to suggest that streaming could possibly, possibly become more profitable than transactional sales, but that is seemingly unlikely due to simple math which will review below.
What that sentence says is that a premium paid subscriber spends approximately $120 per year on music purchasing, whereas an average music consumer spends less in total over the course of a year. This does not take into account the non-average music consumer who spends much more than $120 a year, nor does it take into account that the number of “average music consumers” is hundreds if not thousands of times larger than the number of premium paid subscribers.
What would be truly interesting and important to the conversation is to see how much total revenue is being generated by streaming in the aggregate against transactional sales. As we’ve reported before, using a simple spreadsheet, streaming services would need at least 90 million subscribers to be competitive as a viable option to replace transactional sales.
By most estimates there are few people who think Spotify can scale up to and maintain 30 Million paid subscribers in the US. So this begs the question…
If streaming is the future how does $2.5b in revenue from a massively successful Spotify replace the loss of $8.3b in annual earnings?
Complicating discussions around the streaming revenue issues are also the risks of cannibalization. As the early year end numbers come in for 2013 we’re already seeing transactional download numbers starting to flatten and decline.
As Music Downloads Decline, Expect More Anti-Spotify Anxiety | FastCoLabs
It’s official: We’re buying less digital music. Just like vinyl, cassettes, and CDs before it, the digital download may have reached it peak, with total sales dropping 4% from last year. The culprit? It’s complicated, but expect the already-raging debate over Spotify, streaming, and the future of music distribution to heat up.
Here’s a breakdown. In the first half of this year, U.S. music fans paid for 25-30 million digital tracks per week, according to Billboard. In October and November, that number dipped below 20 million. Billboard blames “a web of interrelated stories that show new technologies affecting consumer behavior” for the decline, with the most obvious culprit being that little green and black icon on your home screen.
READ THE FULL STORY AT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304020704579276123352482930
(from Chris Castle)
by Chris Castle
Joaquín Almunia, the Vice President of the European Commission in Charge of Competition currently investigating Google’s unsavory business practices in Europe may wish to consider the dark underbelly of Google’s advertising business when deciding whether to give the company an unprecedented third opportunity to settle the competition questions against the global monopolist.
According to evidence released by the Justice Department in the Megavideo criminal prosecution, Megavideo was a Google Adsense customer until at least May 17, 2007:
On or about May 17, 2007, a representative from Google AdSense, an Internet advertising company, sent an e-mail to DOTCOM entitled “Google AdSense Account Status.” In the e-mail, the representative stated that “[d]uring our most recent review of your site [Megaupload.com,]” Google AdSense specialists found “numerous pages” with links to, among other things, “copyrighted content,” and therefore Google AdSense “will no longer be able to work with you.” The…
View original post 993 more words
A fascinating twist in the saga of Rap Genius…
“We effed up,” lyrics annotation supersite Rap Genius admitted this week after its SEO cheating was revealed. They sure did. And there’s good reason to believe this isn’t just a gaffe for the cartoonish startup posse: a Google eff up could haunt them forever—but no one search should have all that power.
Rap Genius will never be safe on the internet again, because as far as they’re concerned, Google is the internet. The search engine functions like public infrastructure, a road that takes anyone who wants to look up lyrics to the internet lyrics store, but it thinks like any Walmart of Exxon. It has its own secret rules, its own private penalties, and its own willingness to harm any company that dares make it look stupid. The Rap Genius co-creators must have known what they were getting themselves into: an inordinately complex game of Mouse Trap with the devil that’s finally snapped back.
READ THE FULL STORY AT GAWKER:
http://valleywag.gawker.com/is-rap-genius-fucked-1489917137
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