Artist Rights Villians: Pandora’s Christopher Harrison

It’s common for lawyers to try to defend their poor moral choices in clients by saying, “I was just the lawyer,” kind of like “I was just following orders.”  If you were talking about a criminal defense lawyer or someone who chose to defend a controversial bad guy because everyone is entitled to a defense, that would be one thing.  Particularly if the lawyer was a poorly compensated public defender.  But when you’re talking about someone who takes a job complete with stock options that makes them rich, that “I was just the lawyer” thing is harder to rationalize.

Pandora’s Assistant General Counsel Christopher Harrison not only brings with him the Pandora baggage, but as Billboard reports, he’s seen this movie and he knows how it ends.  In Billboard’s post about the payola issues in Merlin’s direct deal with Pandora we discover some details about Harrison’s past that every artist and songwriter should know:

Merlin’s critics [who might they be, we wonder?] say the deal could backfire on artists and labels in another way. They point out that if incremental play produces an overall average per-stream royalty rate that is lower than the statutory rate, the Copyright Royalty Board could take the lower number as the market rate and lower the overall statutory figure in its revisions.

Why? Back in 2007-2010, when ASCAP and BMI rate court judges were involved in litigation between DMX and performance rights societies, the judges examined the direct licensing deals DMX cut with publishers. During that process, judges did not review the advances or any of the other aspects of the deal, and only looked at the reduced per-store royalty rate Consequently, in the case of BMI, this resulted in the per-store negotiated rate falling from $36.36 to a per-location fee of $18.91, much to the chagrin of the publishers, who stayed a part of the PROs’ blanket licenses. The ASCAP rate court returned a similar finding.

(Did we mention that Pandora vp of business affairs and assistant general counsel Chris Harrison was DMX’s vp of business affairs at the time of the rate court ruling in a lower per-location blanket fee?)

Harrison seems to have a thing about screwing artists and especially songwriters.  As Billboard reports, he has a particular modus operandi of twisting up a combination of direct deals with the government rate court’s boot on songwriters necks to profit his company and ultimately himself.  As former Googler Tim Quirk might say, Harrison  seems to have a royalty fetish.

You might even think that Pandora hired Harrison because he already made his bones screwing songwriters while he was at DMX.  Being “just the lawyer” when a certain group of people gets screwed once might be coincidence–but doing it twice at both DMX and Pandora is a little too coincidental.  What will he do for an encore?  You might get the idea that the guy actually likes it.

Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss–and we won’t get fooled again.

by thetrichordist

Google May Continue Driving Traffic To Pirate Sites After DMCA Notices by Using Its Google Alerts Product

Google’s ploy to get around 345 million shakedown notices

Music Technology Policy

Searchenginewatch reports that Google received 345 million takedown notices during 2014 for search results alone–i.e, not including YouTube, Blogger or other Google properties–and it also doesn’t count the links that Google repackages and sends out through Google Alerts.

If you’ve been following the daily updates in the Google Transparency Report, this 345 million number will come as no surprise, as Google has been clocking about 30 million notices a month for a while now (currently even higher at 36 million for the last 30 days).  But what about the links to pirate content that Google delivers to your inbox daily through Google Alerts along with social media links so you can “share” those links to others through Google+, Facebook and Twitter?

Janita G Alert Email

Why so many DMCA notices?  Google would like you to believe that the high number of DMCA notices is due to aggressive tactics by copyright owners.  The truth…

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by thetrichordist

A Guide to Music Performance Royalties, Part 1

A nice primer for musicians and songwriters from Music Tech Policy.

Music Technology Policy

Let’s start at the beginning.  Broadly speaking, each recording of a song contains two copyrights: the copyright in the “musical work” or what is commonly called the “song” and the copyright in the recording of the song, commonly called the “track” or the “master”.

90% of all mistakes made by anyone in discussions of the online music business (and really the music business in general) starts right there. If you made this mistake, don’t feel self-conscious.  You are not alone, believe me.  Sometimes shockingly not alone.

Ownership and the Inception of Creation.  A song is not a recording and a recording is not a song. Each can be, and usually is, created by different people.  Songs are created by a “songwriter” (usually teams of songwriters coming together to write a single songs or many songs).  Recordings are created by “artists,” usually teams of artists known as a group or…

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by Trichordist Editor

Involuntarily Distribution Business Subsidies | East Bay Ray

One of the talking points that various tech company commentators, academics and bloggers have used to try to justify companies exploiting an artist’s work without consent (a loophole in safe harbor) is that it would lessen the barrier for tech companies to start up. The idea is that creators should be required to give something up to facilitate this goal. Business start-ups are all well and good, but to require anyone to involuntarily subsidize a business, internet or otherwise, with something they have put time, effort, money, and skill into is extremely problematic.

Would these same people advocate that landlords and utility companies also give up income and the right of consent to help internet companies? That would also make it easier for them to start. But no one has suggested that.

It could be ruinous for creators to be required to be involuntarily involved in start-ups that may or not succeed, tying them to businesses that the artists has no way to vet to see if they even know how to distribute competently or honestly. If they are to survive, artists need to examine their licensees and distributors. I’ve seen many artist’s careers die prematurely from incompetent, greedy or dishonest businesses. (Compulsory licenses that are a last resort to negotiation, rather than the first resort to eliminate negotiation, is an alternative that has for decades shown itself to ensure artist’s sustainability.)

To put it into personal terms, I shouldn’t be forced, or any person for that matter, into being a lab rat for some click bait experiment. And then if the experiment is successful, none of the content creators share in any of the IPO rewards. A bit un-American I’d say and bad policy, it does not allocate rewards according to risk.

History has shown that exploitation of another person’s work with little compensation or without their consent to insure an enterprise’s survival is fraught with ethical and moral issues. If internet companies can not make money selling a product or service on merit and integrity, and treating the people that supply their “product” justly and with respect, something is not right. No matter how well intentioned by well meaning people, economic philosophies that ignore consent or fair compensation, rarely turn out good for society.

– – –
East Bay Ray is the guitarist, co-founder and one of two main songwriters for the band Dead Kennedys. He has been speaking out on issues facing independent artists—on National Public Radio, at Chico State University, and on panels for SXSW, Association of Independent Music Publishers, California Lawyers for the Arts, SF Music Tech conferences, Hastings Law School and Boalt Hall Law School. Ray has also met with members of the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. to advocate for artists’ rights.

by trichordist

Artist Rights Leaders: Taylor Swift

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After the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, we thought we should start recognizing and praising those who stand up for artist rights.  We will also identify those who oppose artist rights and tell you why we think they are villains.  Not all of these people will be famous and you may not recognize some of their names, but that’s kind of the point.  We also want to emphasize that we’re not comparing anyone to anyone else, we’re just appreciating people for what they do and who they are–on both sides.

When we look back on the last year, there’s probably no one who did more for artist rights than Taylor Swift.  She really did not need to take on these issues, she could easily have sat back and let the money roll in.

And yet she did.  She put her career on the line and challenged the definitive “new boss” digital business–Spotify.  She challenged them in a very straightforward way by simply saying no.  Taylor had a lot to lose, and she went above and beyond to stand up to the “new boss.”

Spotify’s Daniel Ek revealed himself and did his best to play the “Lars card”–he talked down to her and attacked her.  Not as badly as the calculated and well-financed humiliation of Metallica by Napster’s litigation PR team, but a strain of it.  Can you imagine Steve Jobs doing that?  No way.  But that’s OK, we finally got the evidence on who this guy Ek really is and what his company really stands for.  Same old same old.

Taylor also showed that you don’t need YouTube, either–and she turned her team loose to present herself on YouTube the way she wanted, not the way YouTube wanted to force her to be presented.

She challenged The Man 2.0 by simply being who she was and exercising her rights as an artist–the very rights that the “new boss” constantly tries to take away from us.  It’s really simple:  The new boss needs hits, and hits don’t need the new boss.

And Taylor Swift showed us that artists can be strong and classy and successful, all at the same time.  She reminded us that it’s OK to take care of our business the way each of us want.  And she said it in the Wall Street Journal!

Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.

 

by thetrichordist

Satire is Serious Business

Music Technology Policy

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death…

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

Conscientious Objector, by Edna St. Vincent Millay

It’s hard not to love the French in general and it’s actually quite impossible for me.  I realized I wasn’t going to win this one the first time I saw a McDonald’s on the Champs-Élysées and felt like I’d just been stabbed.  Or being moved to tears by Edith Piaf singing La Marseillaise (which is how I learned to roll my “r” in French, or try to).  Too late, I thought, they’ve really got…

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by thetrichordist

Nashville’s Musical Middle Class Collapses | Tennessean

This says it all…

Since 2000, the number of full-time songwriters in Nashville has fallen by 80 percent, according to the Nashville Songwriters Association International. Album sales plummeted below 4 million in weekly sales in August, which marked a new low point since the industry began tracking data in 1991. Streaming services are increasing in popularity but have been unable to end the spiral.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE TENNESSEAN:
http://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/01/04/nashville-musical-middle-class-collapses-new-dylans/21236245/

by trichordist

Google’s Muscle-Based Defacto Compulsory License: What About We Don’t Like You Don’t They Understand?

Music Technology Policy

The wisest among you learn to read your portents well
You know there’s no need to hurry, it’s all downhill to hell…

Don’t Stand Still, written by The Original Snakeboy, performed by Guy Forsyth on Unrepentant Schizophrenic Americana.

GMR Formed Out of Pandora Lawsuits Against Songwriters Affiliated with ASCAP and BMI

Yes, the portents are in the water–there will eventually be a showdown with Google (and probably Pandora, too) over the songs they routinely infringe in the name of “permissionless innovation.”  Whether it is today or tomorrow, that day is coming, and by the looks of it the first collision will be between Google’s bully boys and songwriters represented by Global Music Rights, the new PRO backed by Irving Azoff.

The why of all of this is pretty simple:  The unelected ASCAP and BMI rate court judges have decided that the government’s consent decree says that the only way…

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by thetrichordist

@andreworlowski’s Must Read Post at @theregister Exposes Google’s Astroturf Attack on the Truth

Another must-read exposé from Andrew Orlowski at The Register on Google’s desperate attempt to deflect attention from potentially criminal acts by their senior executives–it’s just plain vanilla astroturfing by another multinational in the worst traditions of British Petroleum, Enron, Halliburton, Reynold’s Tobacco and United Fruit.  Just another day at the white collar no-honor farm.

Blind justice: Google lawsuit silences elected state prosecutor

Mountain View moneybags tip the scales

Google’s success in “assassinating” a democratically-elected legal opponent last week raises troubling questions about corporate power and accountability. The feisty attorney for the USA’s poorest state is now trying to make peace, after being on the receiving end of a highly unusual lawsuit from Google.

Even if you will have no truck with the pigopolists of Hollywood, you should know the facts. A global corporation which is expected to bank $60bn in revenue this year and which is worth $382bn, has silenced an elected prosecutor.

Google’s income is 30 times that of the General Fund in Mississippi; its market valuation is four times the entire state’s GDP. What did Jim Hood do to make himself Google’s enemy? You may be surprised by the answer, which, it turns out, has nothing to do with Hollywood.

Let’s examine what happened to him – and what questions it raises.

Read it on The Register

by thetrichordist

Wondering Sound: “David Lowery Has Become Most Important Spokesperson for Artists Rights In Digital Era”

‘In the last three years, David Lowery has become perhaps most the important and ardent spokesperson for artist rights in the digital era. Who is he?’

Balanced, funny and in depth profile of fellow Trichordist writer David Lowery.  Must read.

READ THE FULL STORY AT WONDERING SOUND:
http://www.wonderingsound.com/feature/david-lowery-digital-music-cracker-interview/

by Trichordist Editor