Category: Songwriter Rights

LouFest 2014: Cake’s John McCrea Talks | MusicTimes

“As much as I hated major labels and indie labels, probably more than anyone I know, one thing you can say for them is that they were able to translate the success of one band and invest in a new band that no one knew about. And there is nothing currently that is actually doing that anymore. So that’s a structural problem. But you know who is going to fight to keep the current status quo are the tech companies that have grease running down their faces and hands from the fat of their plunder.”

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW AT MUSICTIMES:
http://www.musictimes.com/articles/9699/20140905/cake-john-mccrea-talks-follow-up-showroom-compassion-loufest-2014-distance-music-industry-tech-companies.htm

by trichordist

2.5 Million P2P Users Worldwide Illegally Shared The Top 60 Video Game Titles | Digital Journal

It’s not just music…

“With most of these games being $20 and $50 or more to download, the loss of revenue from this amount of piracy is huge,” said Kyle Reed, Co-Founder and COO, CEG TEK. “There’s been a lot of debate about whether or not piracy is really an issue for the massively successful video game business, but if publishers like Electronic Arts are losing nearly $30M a day in potential revenue on 13 of their hottest titles, that’s something to be concerned about.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT DIGITAL JOURNAL:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1983503

by Trichordist Editor

Songwriters Are Losing $2.3 Billion A Year Due To Outdated Government Regulations | BuzzFeed

Right now a byzantine system is in place that not only dates back more than 70 years but also differs depending on the distribution platform. Traditional radio stations, for instance, pay royalties to the composer of a song, but not to the artist or band performing it — known in industry parlance as a performance right — if they are different. Sirius XM only pays royalties for songs released after 1972. Pandora does pay government-mandated royalties to songwriters but has been aggressively lobbying regulators to lower the rate in recent years. Use of music in both professional and user-based content on YouTube and other websites and in TV shows or commercials is yet another category of music licensing, with the difference being that it is free-market-based and not subject to government oversight.

READ THE FULL STORY AT BUZZFEED:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/peterlauria/songwriters-are-losing-23-billion-a-year-due-to-outdated-gov

by Trichordist Editor

Will YouTube really block indie labels if they snub its new music service? | The Guardian UK

Ugly dispute with indie labels is provoking anger online, so what are the facts – and rumours – about YouTube’s streaming plans?

The accusation from WIN, representing its independent label members, is clear: if labels don’t sign up for YouTube’s new paid music service at the (non-negotiable) terms, their entire catalogues will be blocked on YouTube – all of YouTube, not just the new premium bit.

Note too the “significantly inferior” terms reference in Wenham’s letter. At WIN’s press conference, songwriter (and Guardian journalist) Helienne Lindvall said that “We’re hearing that a billion dollars has been paid by YouTube to the major labels” in advances for its new service.

Some of the anger in this dispute is the perception by indie labels that their major rivals have inked lucrative deals with YouTube while leaving them with the crumbs.

That billion-dollar figure is hearsay, of course. But note that YouTube said in February that it had paid $1bn out to music rightsholders in royalties so far, and then consider Kyncl’s quote in the FT interview: “That number is going to double soon.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE GUARDIAN UK:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/18/youtube-indie-labels-music-service

by trichordist

YouTube steps up row with indie labels by confirming imminent video blocks | Music Ally

This story is taking on a lot of dimensions of what it might be and what it might mean, Music Ally tries to get some late breaking insight. Of particular note is the comment by Radiohead manager Brian Message, read on…

“YouTube executives argue that they cannot offer music on the free service without it also being available on the paid service as this would disappoint its subscribers,” as Billboard puts it.

Meanwhile, you had the BBC suggesting that indie videos uploaded to YouTube via Vevo would still be available, while only “videos which are exclusively licensed by independent record labels, such as acoustic sets or live performances” will be taken down.

Clear as mud, then. Radiohead manager Brian Message was asked at Music Ally’s transparency event last night whether he thinks YouTube will follow through on the threats: “I quite hope that they do! It would be quite interesting to see what happens next!” – not as flippant as it reads in print, but more an admission that it’s only once blocking start happening that the industry will know exactly what YouTube is threatening.

This dispute is bad for everyone: for labels and artists, for fans, and particularly for YouTube, for whom accusations of bullying indie labels will be hard to brush off.

READ THE FULL STORY AT MUSIC ALLY:
http://musically.com/2014/06/18/youtube-steps-up-row-with-indie-labels-by-confirming-imminent-video-blocks/

by trichordist

Van Dyke Parks on How Songwriters Are Getting Screwed in the Digital Age | The Daily Beast

Forty years ago, co-writing a song with Ringo Starr would have provided me a house and a pool. Now, estimating 100,000 plays on Spotify, we guessed we’d split about $80. When I got home, on closer study, I found out we were way too optimistic. Spotify (on par with other streamers) pays only .00065 cents per play.

There’s less support for all the arts today, and the blade gets duller with every cut in arts funding. It degrades dance, opera, even academia and, significantly, the art of journalism. As a result, in the U.S., public opinion suffers from what we call “infotainment.” That’s a genre of media news that is not informing, entertaining, or remedial. And it’s a direct result of a vacuum of patronage (and by patronage, I don’t mean just Medici-style sponsorship but the willingness of all arts consumers to pay for what they listen to, read, and watch, and for the industry to fairly recompense creators).

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE DAILY BEAST:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/04/van-dyke-parks-on-how-songwriters-are-getting-screwed-in-the-digital-age.html

by Trichordist Editor

T Bone Burnett’s plea: The piper must be paid| LA Times

Fans can still hear the work of America’s musical pioneers, thanks to online and mobile services. Through downloads and streams and services such as Pandora and Sirius XM Radio, these giants’ recordings continue to captivate and influence young musicians, singers, songwriters and producers.

Yet some of these same companies have made the decision to devalue the music of these artists for their own profit by not paying for it. In doing this, they devalue the substance of their own medium. For the last 20 years we’ve witnessed an assault on the arts by the technology community — especially when it comes to music.

This devaluation is troubling because music is not only the creation of people who make this art for us; it is how they earn a living. Music is how they feed their kids and provide for their futures.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE LA TIMES:
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80409552/

by Trichordist Editor

Thievery Corporation’s Rob Garza on how “we live in a streaming world” | GIGAOM

Gigaom: You have an incredible vantage point. You are an artist yourself, you work with other artists; you also have a record label. You are constantly on tour. Can you talk a little bit about impact of things like Spotify, iTunes and all the digitization of music? There’s a lot of people who don’t care much about Pandora and Spotify.

Rob: It’s great that people can explore different artists, find music on Spotify, YouTube, things like that. At the same time, do I think that it’s sustainable for the music community? I don’t think so, because a lot of this money just goes back into the pockets of the tech companies. Before, it would go to major labels some things like that.

I’m not defending major labels, but at least major labels would take some of that money, and invest it to find and develop new artists, and trying to give artists a career. That’s the one…for me kind of missing link in this whole equation is that, that money goes to Google Play or goes to iTunes or goes to Pandora or Spotify.

The royalties are miniscule. Also, those companies don’t make it a habit to invest in new music, new art and new talent. It keeps a lot of resources from coming back into the community.

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW AT GIGAOM:
http://gigaom.com/2014/04/18/the-gigaom-interview-thievery-corporations-rob-garza-on-how-we-live-in-a-streaming-world%C2%9D/

by trichordist

Amazon’s Streaming Contract Is “Entirely Unacceptable” | Digital Music News

Amazon is trying to bypass US Copyright law and define its own royalty rates

Section 115 of the US Copyright Act is the rate, set by the government, that defines the mechanical royalty rates. Most people know that the statutory mechanical royalty rate is currently 9.1 cents per download or physical “phonorecord” under 5 minutes (and then 1.75 cents per minute thereafter), but few know what the rate is per stream. That’s because the streaming rate is based upon the streaming service’s number of subscribers and users. More subscribers to the service equals higher mechanical royalty rates.

For the record, Spotify, Beats and the other streaming services all follow Section 115 of the US Copyright Act and follow the defined mechanical royalty rates.

READ THE FULL POST AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/04/10/amazons-streaming-contract-entirely-unacceptable

by trichordist