Author: Trichordist Editor

Trichordist Editor

Shut Up and Sing: Goldiblox Shows Silicon Valley’s Latest Strategy to Intimidate Songwriters

More MUST READ info on this case regarding the unlicensed use of the Beastie Boys classic “Girls” as another Silicon Valley company attempts to suppress the rights of artists and creators.

Music Technology Policy

As MTP readers will know, part of Silicon Valley’s legal strategy for over a decade has been to twist the defense of “fair use” into an unrecognizable mass that has the same end result as all of the Valley Boys attacks on copyright–artists get nothing and Googlers can buy a $15 million soundproof love palace in Manhattan.  So naturally when the House Judiciary Committee has announced the Chairman’s intention to hold hearings to review the affirmative defense of “fair use”, it would be to the advantage of tech companies to silence any artists or songwriters who would offer a competing view.

Because as we know–everything’s a remix, right?  And if you review the requirements for copyright protection, originality–however small–is generally thought of as a constitutional requirement outside of Silicon Valley.  So if you wanted to undermine copyright in public opinion and you didn’t think you’d have the votes to…

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by Trichordist Editor

Goldieblox Meets Chucky: Case Targets Songwriters and Producers

This is a must read. So much for musicians and songwriters making money from “Sync Licensing” that’s now “Fair Use” too… seriously…

Music Technology Policy

Producers and songwriters should be aware that in the Temporary Autonomous Zone of Northern California (home of the class action award payoffs to the EFF, Berkman Center and other places where copyright haters thrive), the new new thing appears to be suing record producers and songwriters.  Rick Rubin in particular.

According to Adland.tv:

Last week Goldieblox made a big splash on the internet with their Rube Goldberg style gizmo in their commercial which depicted bored girls who decided to build a “Der lauf der dinge”, or a HONDA “Cog” style machine out of ordinary household things, set to the tune of Beastie Boys “Girls”, but with new lyrics. The creative engineer who built the contraption in OK Go’s “This too shall pass”, Brett Doar, spent 2 1/2 weeks building the gadget in the Goldieblox ad.

Goldieblox isn’t just a pink board with holes in it…

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by Trichordist Editor

Finnish pop musician earns mere pennies on Spotify | YLE

Finnish pop artiste Anssi Kela has gone public with his earnings from content streamed via the popular commercial music streaming service Spotify.Kela claims that on average he earns an underwhelming fraction of a cent for each song played via Spotify’s free service. The precise sum is 0.002 euros, or considerably less than one cent.

Read the full story at YLE:
http://yle.fi/uutiset/finnish_pop_musician_earns_mere_pennies_on_spotify/6921281

by Trichordist Editor

Why does Google Play’s Tim Quirk show such disdain for musicians? | The Guardian

Musician turned digital music executive [Tim Quirk] hits the wrong note with artists and composers over rights and royalties.

It’s perhaps not surprising that someone working for a digital music service is telling artists not to worry their pretty little heads about getting paid properly, but what may surprise some people is that Quirk is – or at least used to be – an artist himself.

Sure, many online music service executives claim to be musicians in order to convince artists that they’re on their side, despite them driving down royalties. Tim Westergren, the head of Pandora, has used that argument, claiming he cares about musicians while going to Congress to try to reduce songwriters’ royalty rates from next-to-nothing, to even less than that.

Back in 2009, he [Quirk] was raging against the major label system, but now that he works for a corporation that reported more than $50bn in revenue last year – more than three times the $16.5bn revenue of the entire global recorded music industry in 2012 – he appears to think musicians should now simply accept whatever scraps his company chooses to throw their way.

Read The Full Story at The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/nov/14/google-play-tim-quirk-music

by Trichordist Editor

Beck on Spotify: “The Model Doesn’t Work. And the Quality Sucks.” | DMN

The model doesn’t work, so we have to come up with ways in which people can help us to make music for free, or at least for much less. But the current way isn’t working, something’s gotta give.

If I tried to make my albums with that Spotify pays me, I wouldn’t make them. I couldn’t hire other musicians or someone to master it; I’d have to do everything myself.

Read The Full Story at Digital Music News:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/11/14/beckspotifywork

by Trichordist Editor

Lessons from the Music Industry: Should We Put Our Faith in Technology Companies? | TSK

The new landscape is instead dominated by technology companies who see all creative content as mere fodder for fueling their own business models (selling ads or devices for example) and they offer no support, no insulation:

The new bosses further cement their position by “waging a cynical PR campaign that equates the unauthorized use of other people’s property (artist’s songs) with freedom.” Through an army of “quasi-religious” surrogates (“freehadists”), the industry pushes for a “Cyber-Bolshevik campaign of mass collectivization,” where creative output is devalued. He sees it as particularly cynical because there’s one exception to this devaluation, one type of IP that is seen as sacrosanct — and that exception is software patents.

Lowery states that suggestions that artists simply need to find a new business model are a clear indication of awareness that artists are getting a raw deal. The new business model is already here, it’s been in place for over 10 years, and it’s making an enormous amount of money. But very little of that money goes to the creator.

At some point, one has to question whether it is still possible to earn a living as a musician, or any type of creator.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE SCHOLARLY KITCHEN:
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/06/05/lessons-from-the-music-industry-should-we-put-our-faith-in-technology-companies/

by Trichordist Editor

Eminem Makes Public Service Announcement Against Music Piracy | AHH

Eminem sent out a public service announcement to address online piracy in the wake of his latest album The Marshall Mathers LP 2.

The album leaked online earlier this week and the Shady Records machine quickly went to work to suppress the leak. Eminem and his management even went as far as making Rap Genius remove the lyrics to the songs.

READ THE FULL STORY AT ALL HIP HOP:
http://allhiphop.com/2013/11/01/eminem-makes-public-service-announcement-against-music-piracy/

by Trichordist Editor

Amanda Palmer: Spotify and iTunes “Aren’t Putting Any Money Back Into Content Creation” | DMN

We’ll be running more of the artist feedback and commentary from last week’s Virgin Disrupters roundtable. Here’s Amanda Palmer,

“Can I speak up here? I’d like to just add to what Zoe [Keating] was saying. There’s also – the other kind of general problem that I think we’re seeing that doesn’t really get addressed very much because it’s so big and possibly un-fixable is that as bad and clunky as the major label system was, you still had a constant influx of capital back from those giant, sometimes soul-sucking systems, back into content creation.

And one weird thing is that iTunes, Apple, Spotify, Google, whatever, all of the people who are profiting – [and] YouTube – who are profiting off the artists from the small level to the huge levels aren’t really feeding very much back into the creation of new content.

READ THE FULL STORY AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/10/29/palmeritunesspotify

by Trichordist Editor

T Bone Burnett vs. Silicon Valley: ‘We Should Go Up There With Pitchforks and Torches’ | THR

The entire infrastructure that supported the world of music for a century has been dismantled, and in its place we’ve got these little things, these little handheld devices. The worldwide web was supposed to give everybody access and democratize everything. It was supposed to create a level field and increase the middle class and everybody had more access and more information. But now anybody can say anything and nobody cares. This is the problem of ubiquitous data.

And what’s happened in reality is that the power’s been consolidated in very, very few companies, and the middle class of musicians really has just been wiped out. I mean, the Internet has been an honest-to-God con.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER:
http://m.hollywoodreporter.com/earshot/t-bone-burnett-silicon-valley-652114

by Trichordist Editor