Category: artist rights

Perfect timing for SXSW!

Music Technology Policy

In case you were wondering what ever happened to the so-called Internet Radio “Fairness Act”, here’s another little taste of what Big Tech has in store for artists–particularly “legacy” artists, meaning artists with strong catalog from the past.  Let’s say from before 1972.

What’s magic about 1972?  That was the year that the US Congress recognized a copyright in sound recordings (February 15, 1972 to be precise).  “Pre-72 masters” as the recordings are known were protected by state law before that.  So it is not that these older recordings are not protected–such as those by Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Bob Wills, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Buddy Holly, Glenn Miller or Robert Johnson–it’s just that they are not protected by federal law.

True to form, Big Tech and their pals at the National Association of Broadcasters are busily trying to screw artists on pre-72 masters out of public performance royalties on…

View original post 662 more words

by thetrichordist

Whose Idea was the RSC Memo on Copyright? Don’t ask Derek Khanna

Derek Khanna has been on a media blitz lately following the White House’s endorsement of a “We the People” petition to “make cell phone unlocking legal”. Khanna — who considers himself a “copyright reform” advocate (but in our opinion could more accurately be called a “Derek Khanna” advocate) — created a moral panic over cell phone unlocking as the first step in a sustained “war” against artists and creators, the goal of which is to strip them of their already weak legal protections.

Khanna, you may recall, first stepped into the spotlight last November after he authored a memo for the Republican Study Committee that called for severe and regressive changes to copyright law. The memo was filled with historical and factual errors (as well as numerous typos) but was considered one of the most eloquent writings to come from the copyleft; it was quickly withdrawn from the RSC’s website.

Earlier, we had noted that Khanna himself has publicly admitted of the memo, “No one requested it. I just thought it was a good idea.”

khannareddit

Interesting. Because just a few days ago, Khanna spoke about the memo to Ezra Klein at the Washington Post. His story was a little bit different this time. According to Klein:

It was November 2012 and Derek Khanna was working as a staffer in the Republican Study Committee, which acts as a kind of think tank for the conservative wing of the House Republican Conference. Khanna, whose job was to follow issues pertaining to technology, homeland security and government oversight, was asked to draw up a short brief on copyright law — something the group could hand out to House Republicans in the hopes of getting some legislation moving. “The memo wasn’t my idea,” he says.

(Tip to Derek Khanna: if you want to get into politics, you have to make your flip-flops a little less obvious.)

by Trichordist

David Lowery at South By Southwest Austin TX

I am fortunate enough to attend SXSW this year as fan, artist and as a panelist.  So much good stuff to see.  But here are some highlights.

March 13th. 12:30pm I’m gonna start my day at the Anatomy of Amanda F-ing Palmer.  While I sometimes disagree with Ms. Palmer about things  (crowd funding helps incumbent artists like myself but not necessarily unknown artists)  there is no denying that she has set a bold example for how independent artists can operate in this day and age.  Before her Kickstarter success the conversation was about whether artists should be paid to record at all.  You know,  sell T-shirts and such.   Thanks to Ms. Palmer, the conversation is now about how artists should be paid to record.

March 13th  4:00 pm.   Camper Van Beethoven at the Brooklyn Vegan Party.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2013/03/brooklynvegan_f_5.html

March 13th 7:00 pm  Camper Van Beethoven at the Make Your Mark Party.

March 14th  2:00pm   David Lowery panelist at the “Big Data: New Oil or Snake Oil”

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_MP4094

Right after that I’m gonna race over and see:

March 14th 3:30pm  East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedys at “Infamous Band Disputes & How to Avoid Them.”

http://blog.legalzoom.com/intellectual-property/hang-out-with-joe-escalante-and-east-bay-ray-at-sxsw/

March 15th 5:00 pm  David Lowery panelist at “Who’s ripping you off now.”

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_MP3736

Hope to see you there!

by Dr. David C Lowery

Trichordist Picks #SXSW Panels Of Interest @ SXSW South by Southwest 2013

Here’s a quick look at what may be panels of interest during music… some because we agree with them, some because we really, really don’t… but we’d like to think we remain open minded, teachable and in search of common solutions and goals to benefit artists rights in the digital age… and, you never know what kind of BS will be peddled and spilled…

### TUESDAY MARCH 12 ###

Tuesday March 12 – 11:00AM -12:00PM

Constructive Disruption for the Music Biz

After the record industry and the live music industry, it’s time for innovation and constructively disrupting how the music industry operates. It’s time to open up the shop and see what outside influences can bring to th…

Brooke Parrott, Finian Murphy, Jim Carroll

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Tuesday March 12 – 11:00AM -12:00PM

Downloaded: The Digital Revolution

This session presented by SXSW Film and is open to all badge types. Join a round table discussion of the Digital Revolution; how we got here, how the world has changed and what are the best ways forward in these content…

Alex Winter, Chuck D, Eugene Hernandez, John Perry Barlow, Sean Parker, Shawn Fanning

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Tuesday March 12 -5:00PM – 6:00PM

Fair Play: Music Tech Startups and Artists

It’s a complicated new music world for both tech entrepreneurs and artists, one fraught with anachronistic copyright, byzantine royalty structures, and perhaps most importantly, a cultural divide between the two business…

Doug Freeman (Austin Chronicle), Daniel Senyard (Vivogig), Jean Cook (Musician/Future of Music Coalition) and Brian Zisk (SF MusicTech)

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### WEDNESDAY MARCH 13 ###

Wednesday March 13 -12:30PM – 1:30PM

The Anatomy of Amanda Fucking Palmer: An Inside Look

Look at the inner workings of a multi-million dollar global recording, touring and merchandise business that is 100% artist controlled. Amanda Palmer raised a record-breaking $1,192,793 on Kickstarter from 24,883 fans —

Kendel Ratley, Kevin Wortis, Martin Goldschmidt, Nicole St Jean, Vickie Starr, Amanda Palmer

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Wednesday March 13 – 2:00PM – 3:00PM

Artists Staying Afloat in the Digital Revenue Stream

As new business models of digital music consumption grow and new services keep launching where does the artist fit in? The headlines all scream about what the artist makes on this service or that. But does the artist hav…

Eric Garland, Jeff Price, Trevor Skeet, Scott Reilly

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Wednesday March 13 -2:00PM – 3:00PM

Music Subscription & Artist Revenue

Heated discussions in the music business surround the topic of subscription music, and the effect on the bottom line of the rights holder, artist and songwriter. One side of the aisle claim that on-demand streaming serv…
Adam Rabinovitz, Brian Slagel, Christina Calio, Dan Kruchkow, Steve Savoca, Antony Bruno

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Wednesday March 13 -5:00PM – 6:00PM

The Fight for Fair Fees in the Music Industry

Once upon a time, terrestrial radio was the only game in town and they do not pay performance royalties. With the advent of online and satellite services, we’ve amassed a patchwork of legacy policies that create a compl…

Chris Harrison, Julia Betley, Patrick Reynolds, Patrick Laird, Erin Griffith

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### THURSDAY MARCH 14 ###

Thursday March 14 -12:30PM – 1:30PM

Music Curation in 2013

As was predicted from the earliest days of the internet, curation is becoming a bigger factor in the music marketplace both on and off line. Explore the process in which specific associations and gatekeeper on the landsc…

Daniel Seligman, Johanna Rees, Ryan Schreiber, Steve Blatter, Mark Kates

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Thursday March 14 -12:30PM – 1:30PM

Silicon Valley Isn’t the Enemy Anymore

Beyond Spotify and Pandora, a new group of digital music companies are emerging. These companies are bringing together artists, content carriers and labels to create new user experiences, business models and opportunitie…

Michael Cerda, Paul Resnikoff, Phil Lang, Tyler Lenane, Mike McGuire

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Thursday March 14 -12:00PM – 3:00PM

Big Data: The New Oil or the New Snake Oil?

Mobile technologies have enabled music executives to understand as never before how people are consuming music. What people are listening to is just the tip of the iceberg – now, labels can see where they are and even wh…

David Lowery, Alex White, Jon Vanhala, Marie-Alicia Chang, Will Mills

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Thursday March 14 -3:30PM – 4:30PM

Infamous Band Disputes and How To Avoid Them

Hear about the trials, tribulations and aftermath of band warfare from defendants and plaintiffs willing to share behind-the-scenes details of their high profile legal battles with former band mates. Discover the ramific…

Anita Rivas Gisborne, Esq, East Bay Ray, Joe Escalante, Neville Johnson, Matthew Belloni

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Thursday March 14 -3:30PM – 4:30PM

The Artists’ Copyright Conundrum

Artists make difficult choices in deciding where they fall in the copyright debates. They must strike their own balance between seeing copyright as a way to make money and not wanting to alienate their fans. What measure…

Andrew Bridges, Karen Thorland, Kristelia Garcia, Wendy Seltzer, Margot Kaminski

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Thursday March 14 -5:00PM – 6:00PM

Downloaded: The Music Industry in the Digital Age

In 1998 Shawn Fanning, a teenage hacker and programmer, created the code that would become the basis for all peer-to-peer file sharing. Shortly after, Fanning and his business partner, fellow teenage hacker Sean Parker, …
Alex Winter, Bill Flanagan, Chuck D, Ian Rogers, J Keyes, Paul D Miller (aka DJ Spooky)

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Thursday March 14 -5:00PM – 6:00PM

Songs and Recordings: How They Make Money Worldwide

Songwriters, recording artists, publishers, record companies, musicians and performers share in the billions of dollars being generated from music being performed and sold worldwide. Royalty and deal making experts take …

Jeffrey Brabec, John Simson, Todd Brabec

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### FRIDAY MARCH 15 ###

Friday March 15 -11:00AM -12:00PM

Selling Albums in a Spotify World: Non-Traditional Strategies

Is the subscription music business model ultimately a positive or negative for music industry revenues, compared to the purchase model? Whichever side of the argument you land on, it’s agreed that maintaining a healthy b…
Amanda Palmer, Darius Zelkha, JT Myers, Thaddeus Rudd

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Friday March 15 – 2:00PM – 3:00PM

Album Release Strategies for the 21st Century

With all of the tools that are available via the web, artists and labels are making more mistakes than ever in the planning of their release strategies. Find out about effective, yet affordable, marketing, sales, and dis…

Adam Pollock, Joe Esposito, Rey Roldan, Sarah Landy, Vinny Rich

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Friday March 15 – 3:30PM – 4:30PM

CLE 4: Digital Distribution – Where the Future Money Is

The status of the law and business of the non-physical retail, commercial and licensing recording world.……

Bryan Calhoun, Christine Pepe, Cindy Charles, John Simson

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Friday March 15 – 5:00PM – 6:00PM

Streaming Music: A River of Cash or Up the Creek

Many artists, managers and labels see streaming as stripping away the already beleaguered retail sales and leaving them with only fractions of pennies for their work. Meanwhile streaming services believe holdout artists …

Emily White, Jon Maples, Richard Jones, Simon Wheeler

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Friday March 15 – 5:00PM – 6:00PM

Who’s Ripping Me Off Now?

In June 2012, a blog post by musician David Lowery set off a firestorm. Written to an intern at NPR who admitted to not having paid for the 11,000 tracks in her collection, the post generated more than a million views in…

David Lowery, East Bay Ray, Daryl Friedman

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### SATURDAY MARCH 16 ###

Saturday March 16 -11:00AM -12:00PM

CLE 5: The Politics of Music, and Future Copyright Battles

A dissection of the political interests and energy regarding music policies and law.……

Barry Slotnick, Colin Rushing, Lee Knife, Jay Rosenthal

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Saturday March 16 – 12:30PM – 1:30PM

So We Won SOPA: Turning a Moment into a Movement

The fight over SOPA/PIPA was a Washington watershed: 15 million Americans contacted Congress and stopped laws that would have harmed online culture and innovation. Learn how to transform this victory into a strong, self-…
Jayme White, Julie Samuels, Laurent Crenshaw, Michael Petricone

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Saturday March 16 – 3:30PM – 4:30PM

CLE 8: The Crystal Ball: Divining The Future of Music Law

Experienced music lawyers ponder, predict and pontificate on the future of music and music law.……

Kenneth Anderson, Tim Mandelbaum, Ken Abdo

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by trichordist

Global Music Sales Up… Three Tenths of One Percent (0.3%)… Pop The Cork… Really?

Here we go… everything is better. Problems solved. Told ya so…

It’s pretty funny to see the level of excitement on what may be a statistical flat line of global music sales. Less than one third, of one percent of a gain from year to year and you’d think people are ready to party like it’s 1999!

Not that we aren’t encouraged by what may represent the ultimate bottoming out of the industry after a decade plus decline, but a healthy dose of reality is in order. Even a net positive gain of just 3% might be cause for some celebration, but we are cautiously optimistic about a gain of only three tenths of one percent.

Stay tuned…

www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2013.pdf

by trichordist

A Tale of Two Petitions: Is Someone Scamming the White House Petition Site?

We have heard quite a bit about how “100,000 people have signed a White House petition!” which prompts action from the White House on a particular issue.  The implication is that the White House petition was established by an American and the response to it is reflective of the will of the people.  Meaning the American people, because it’s the American President who is being called on.  Democracy in action, right?

This emphasis on “American” is not jingoism on our part–it’s the clear implication of the petition process and is the unstated assumption of everyone discussing these petitions, and particularly of the supporters of the issue being “voted on”.  For example, Mr. Derek Khanna says he started a White House petition to “unlock” cell phones–got to love those “moral panic” narratives–and then the White House says they will support US legislation and presto chango Senator Wyden (remember him from IRFA?) and Rep. Eshoo (from Palo Alto, home to…guess who) have introduced “unlocking” legislation to make it so.  Very symmetrical.  Very.  Almost like they planned it that way.

But how did this all start?  A White House petition that was signed by 100,000 “people”.  So you would have thought that there would be some controls at the White House petition site to make sure that all this activity didn’t get started based on a false assumption–that someone had checked to see if the signers of the petition were in fact the citizens over whom the legislation will prevail.

The UK Solution

We are not the only ones who have these “e-petitions”–the UK does, too–with a few differences explained on Her Majesty’s Government’s website:

What are e-petitions?

e-petitions are an easy, personal way for you to influence government and Parliament in the UK. You can create an e-petition about anything that the government is responsible for and if it gets at least 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in the House of Commons. You can find more information about how the House of Commons deals with e-petitions on the Backbench Business Committee website This link opens in a new window

So you think, “Great, I’d like to get in on that!”  Maybe you can get the House of Commons to debate making July 4th a national holiday in the UK!  So you sign up to sign an ePetition to make the UK government do back flips on your command (and 100,000 of your favorite sock puppets).  Ah, not so fast.  The Brits did run an empire, after all.  You are confronted with this sign in:

UK Govt ePetitions

So you must be a British citizen or resident in order to sign the e-Petitions.

That actually makes sense, doesn’t it?  If a government is going to establish a petition method, shouldn’t it be limited to the people who are going to have to live under the laws it might be used to create?  We were also struck by the far, far lower vote tallies in the active UK petitions compared to the US.  Could there be a connection?

This all makes sense to us and also, more importantly, to the UK government.  If US residents or citizens want to express their views about something in the UK, there are plenty of casual polls they can game…sorry…vote in.  They don’t need access to the right to petition the UK government.  Seems like we fought a war about that once.

The White House Petition

So having established that the UK government sensibly blocks (or at least tries to block) non-residents and non-citizens from petitioning the UK government, we expected to find the same controls present in the White House petition site.  Not at all.

You do have to sign up for an account and give your email and name–a zip code is optional.  So just as a test, we signed up for an account and instead of giving a US zip code, gave the UK postal code for the Houses of Parliament in London.  That’ll surely get us rejected by the White House, right?  The UK uses letters and numbers, not related in any way to a zip code.

So here’s the petition we tried to sign up for: Designate May 20th as Macho Man Randy Savage Day

White House Petitions

So when you try to sign up, you are told to put in name and email and the optional zip code.

White House Petitions 2And here’s what happened when we signed up and got a White House petition account using the UK postal code:

White House Petitions Membership

We found this incredible, so asked friends in the UK and in Canada to try to sign up to vote for the Macho Man, fully expecting that their IP addresses would be geoblocked.  Nope–both were able to sign up and both were able to vote for Randy Savage and used UK and Canadian postal codes to do so.

So who signed Mr. Khanna’s petition?

by thetrichordist

The Wall Street Journal Reports on Ad Sponsored Piracy – Mainstream News Outlets Acknowledge Major Problem Effecting Artists And Creators

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal added it’s voice to mainstream news outlets such as The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times reporting on major brand funded ad sponsored piracy.

Another focus is online-ad networks, which media companies say help finance piracy by placing ads on sites that traffic in unauthorized content. A study last summer, commissioned in part by Google, found that 86% of peer-to-peer sharing sites are dependent on advertising for income.

NBC’s special unit said it recently discovered advertisements for Blockbuster and the U.S. Forest Service on cyberlockers that had trafficked in its content without permission. The ads had been supplied through Google’s AdSense, which places ads related to keywords.

Blockbuster said it had “policies and controls” to stop improper ad placement, but called it an “ongoing challenge.” The Ad Council, which handles ads for the Forest Service, said any time its ads ran on questionable sites, it requested that they be taken down immediately.

After a request from NBC, Google removed the ads, said NBC Universal’s Mr. Cotton.

A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on the ads but said that, as a policy, AdSense ads aren’t supposed to be displayed on sites that contain or link to copyright-infringing content. She noted that the company disables “thousands of accounts proactively, as well as at the result of requests.”

Read more here : WSJ – As Pirates Run Rampant, TV Studios Dial Up Pursuit

by trichordist

Music Technology Policy

Now here’s an interesting article in AdExchanger, a site apparently targeting the ad network trade.  (Lest we be accused of speaking of that which we do not have direct knowledge, it’s perhaps best to seek confirmation from a knowledgeable source.)  It is quite remarkable in the blitheness with which it acknowledges that big brands are funding pirates (or what used to be called “rogue sites,” if you remember that one).  To wit:

A big factor in play is that these categories [that is, the piracy categories] toward lead gen[eration] and other performance driven metrics. In other words, they’re inherently less focused on adjacency issues.

Ah, “adjacency issues.”  Of course.  Sounds so insignificant, doesn’t it?  What exactly would constitute focusing on “adjacency issues”?

“I would guess that the CMOs of many companies do not actually understand that they are appearing on some of these sites to the extent that they…

View original post 592 more words

by Trichordist Editor

Having thought they were subverting the corporate music industry with In Rainbows, he now fears they were inadvertently playing into the hands of Apple and Google and the rest.

Music Technology Policy

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has a striking interview in the Guardian in which he sums up the band’s realizations about what David Lowery calls the “New Boss” reality:

“[Big Tech] have to keep commodifying things to keep the share price up, but in doing so they have made all content, including music and newspapers, worthless, in order to make their billions. And this is what we want? I still think it will be undermined in some way. It doesn’t make sense to me. Anyway, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The commodification of human relationships through social networks. Amazing!”

He is, of course, exactly correct.  What does this “commodification” or the Americanized, “commoditization” mean exactly?

In a prescient 2008 book review of Nicholas Carr’s The Google Enigma (entitled “Google the Destroyer“), antitrust scholar Jim DeLong gives an elegant explanation:

Carr’s Google Enigma made a familiar business…

View original post 593 more words

by trichordist