A must read Hypebot guest post by Keith Bernstein, Crunch Digital Founder that reprises the important themes he raised in his inspirational presentation at the invitation-only closed-door meetings on music-tech solutions held last fall.

The best solution is a direct licensing service that connects digital music services with music publishers, which would allow streaming services to effectively and efficiently obtain the licenses they need and make sure they have all the data they need to report royalties –  this will help shield them from future problems. Such a licensing service would act as an administrator to the digital streaming service and as an agent to the music publishers and songwriters  – and be able to update song ownership information, essentially functioning as a back office to make sure everything was running smoothly. Currently, Crunch Digital has built a database of a majority of US music publishing copyrights that are in use among digital services and they keep their data fresh with updates coming from the music publishers they work with.  As an independent company that is not tied to a trade organization or a PRO, Crunch is in a position to provide a direct licensing solution for streaming services that will work for all parties involved.

Read it all here: “We Know Compulsory Licensing Is “Broken” – Here Is How To Fix It“

It’s important to remember that David Lowery could have just sued Spotify over his own catalog.  He didn’t do that.  He brought a class action for the good of all songwriters who get overlooked and disrespected by Spotify and that’s a lot of people.  I don’t know Melissa Ferrick, but I would bet the same could be said of her.

The plaintiff who can’t be bought off is a defendant’s worst nightmare.  This is particularly true in David’s case because in addition to whatever money damages the class may be awarded, David is also asking for an injunction to require Spotify to bring in an independent third party compliance examiner to fix Spotify’s massive failure to identify copyright owners.

That injunction is probably more fear-inducing than whatever the payment might be, because that will once and for all fix the problem and eliminate the slush fund–or force Spotify to stop exploiting uncleared tracks.  Make no mistake–unpaid royalties are a source of interest-free loans.

Why do I think that Spotify is most afraid of someone they don’t control getting inside the company and looking under the hood?

Read the rest David Lowery is Spotify’s Worst Nightmare from Music Tech Policy

It’s hard to believe that an artist has to go through what Kesha has been through, but there it is.  We’ll have more on this in coming days, but this post by @morayati is one of the better ones that summarizes the problems with the case.

One of the problems with the “savior” approach to A&R is that people lose sight of the reality that regardless of how effective the producer is, regardless of how great the songs are, hit records are a product of hundreds of people working their fingers to the bone to make something happen–starting with the artist.  That includes everyone at the record company, the managers, booking agents, the entire team.  And the producer.  If you have that team and those resources behind a great artist, that producer may prove himself to be not that critical a component to the artist’s career after all.

Why Sony is allowing this to happen at all, but especially when the public is on a collision course with Sony Corp  (aka “Big Sony”) is a mystery.  They could do the right thing now or wait until Tokyo tells them to.

Even looking at it from that cold-blooded commercial point of view, it’s certainly not worth compromising your personal ethics over the A&R savior-du-jour.

Some reporting questions for the Kesha court case

The key quote from the Kesha/Dr. Luke court battle, which has just taken a dispiriting turn, is this, by judge Shirley Kornreich: “My instinct is to do the commercially reasonable thing.” A lot has been written, rightly, about what a chilling statement this is, and there’s been a lot of talk about how best to support Kesha.

The great artist Tish Hinojosa wrote a must-read opinion piece for her home town paper, the Austin American-Statesman, about the realities of gigging in a “no cover”/”tip jar” reality that is all too common at live music venues across the country.

In her post “Austin venues, patrons can do more to pay musicians fairly,” Tish lays bare the ugly truth that we experience every day–wage stagnation for musicians produces the “you’re lucky to have a job” mentality with many venues:

I am finding that even Austin’s best-known and talented support — aka “side” — musicians and singer-songwriters are playing for peanuts, meaning, for the same or less than we were earning in the 1980s. In the meantime, the cost of living in this city has grown tremendously — and so has the city’s pocketbook. That Austin’s reliable, hard-working, talented and diligent musicians can’t even afford to live in the city is a shame, especially considering that they are the backbone of the “Live Music Capitol Of The World.”

Too many Austin venues are taking advantage of good musicians who just need to work and are offering those artists “this or nothing deals” like: “Do you know how many of you would be happy just to say they play here?”

Tish’s post links to another Statesman story about the findings of the 2015 Austin Music Census which confirmed Tish’s concerns about the music community.  The City of Austin commissioned the Austin Music Census, the only study of its kind, that surveyed 4,000 members of the Austin music community and identified the “no cover” issue as a major problem that needs to be addressed.

In her must-read post, Tish gives the human side from an artist’s perspective on the ground.  Wherever you live, we believe that you’ve probably experienced the exact same take-it-or-leave-it deals that amount to “pay to play” enforced the old fashioned way–by intimidation.

Thanks to Tish for speaking out.