Category: Artists Rights Watch

Rap Genius Says It Will Seek Licenses for Lyrics | NYT

It’s been an interesting week in the battle over unlicensed lyric websites. These lyric sites, likes music piracy sites earn revenue from advertising but don’t “share” any of that revenue with artists and songwriters. The New York Times reports.

Rap Genius, a website that was accused by music publishers on Monday of reprinting thousands of song lyrics without permission, revealed that it had a major licensing deal all along — and also indicated that the site was likely to pursue more such deals in the future rather than fight with publishers over copyright.

…

“We want to spend our time building an interesting product and community instead of building a legal case, even though we’re sure it would be interesting,” he said. “We chose to partner up with the music publishers and license the lyrics so we could get on with our work and establish closer ties to songwriters and artists.”

David Israelite, the president of the publishers’ trade association, said of Rap Genius’s deal with Sony/ATV, “I think it proves that what Rap Genius is doing is not fair use, and I am hopeful it is a first step toward becoming a fully licensed site.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE NEW YORK TIMES:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/business/media/rap-genius-says-it-will-seek-licenses-for-lyrics.html

by trichordist

The High Cost of Free | Music | East Bay Express

A new documentary takes a hard look at how the digital age has eroded the value of music and the ability of musicians to make a living.

Unsound, which is currently in the midst of an Indiegogo campaign to raise $52,000 to finish an edit of the film, marks Count’s first foray into the documentary format — an endeavor that required him to take a two-year break from his music career. In a phone interview, Count said he was “the last person in the world” who he thought would take an activist stance on an issue, but this was something he couldn’t ignore.

Thirteen years since the Internet Revolution, I watched all of the artists around me make less and less while their popularity increased,” he said. “I saw how unfair that was. I saw how afraid people were to speak out. How could it be as artists — who are the most vocal during times of injustice — how are they so afraid that they weren’t writing about this? I thought that was a little shocking. This is a very compelling story.

READ THE FULL STORY AT:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/the-high-cost-of-free/Content?oid=3762154

by trichordist

Congresswoman Judy Chu: Too Many Americans Think Piracy is OK | THE WRAP

The American public doesn’t understand the consequences to piracy. There are large segments of it that even think it’s okay.

We need to have a greater understanding of [piracy] by the American public. Piracy affects one of the main American exports. It’s a huge industry for the United States, and Americans have to understand it is not right to pirate information.

The MPAA just did a study on how people get pirated content. 74 percent said they first were introduced to infringing content through search engines.

We need to develop a better system for fighting piracy than a whack-a- mole project.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE WRAP:
http://www.thewrap.com/congresswoman-judy-chu-many-americans-think-piracy-okay/

by trichordist

In Music Piracy Battles, Lyrics Demand Respect Too | NYT

David Israelite, the president of the trade group, said that his organization was filing take-down notices against what it called the 50 “worst offenders” based on a web search conducted by David Lowery, a researcher at the University of Georgia. Mr. Lowery, best known as the lead singer of the alternative rock bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, has become an outspoken advocate for artists’ rights in the digital age, which has often put him at odds with technology companies large and small.

“These lyric sites have ignored the law and profited off the songwriters’ creative works, and N.M.P.A. will not allow this to continue,” Mr. Israelite said in a statement, referring to his organization. “This is not a campaign against personal blogs, fan sites or the many websites that provide lyrics legally. N.M.P.A. is targeting 50 sites that engage in blatant illegal behavior, which significantly impacts songwriters’ ability to make a living.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE NEW YORK TIMES:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/business/media/in-music-piracy-battles-lyrics-demand-respect-too.html

by trichordist

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

The Recording Industry: Fiddling while Rome burns. | AdLand

Here come the YouTube Music Awards. YouTube pays artists less per play than Spotify and YouTube get an awards show with artists support. We get what we deserve?

In terms of artists getting their royalties fucked so royally, no one beats Big Tech. The money that should be distributed to musicians is going to google or to ad-supported pirate sites rather than the content creators themselves.

Yet Big Tech is doing what the recording industry can’t. In terms of innovation, the recording industry’s been asleep as the wheel since Napster first rolled out.

READ THE FULL POST AT ADLAND:
http://adland.tv/node/156185#qmSjKtWGAhJ3HzaA.99

RELATED:
YouTube Shares Ad Revenue With Musicians, But Does It Add Up? | NPR

by trichordist