Tag: east bay ray

Dead Kennedys’ East Bay Ray: The ‘Free Internet’ Will Not Set You Free | NY Observer

These Internet theorists also invariably fail to distinguish between the profound moral difference between sharing something with a friend and distributing, without permission, other people’s files for profit. It’s a crucial distinction.

One of the reasons that this distinction is not brought up is because the Internet corporations don’t want you to see much discussion about the enormous riches being made on the Internet from both the consensual and nonconsensual selling of your information to advertisers, as if it didn’t matter. The advertising system has money and money is power. Ask yourself: Are you gaining real power over your destiny from the Internet, or just stuff?

by trichordist

Searching for answers from Google about Google | The Hill | East Bay Ray

In 2001, a journalist named Bethany McLean posed a simple question in Fortune Magazine: “How exactly does Enron make its money?”

Neither company executives nor outside analysts could give her a simple answer. Her one question is now seen as the drip that opened the floodgates that drowned Enron. By 2006, the one-time Wall Street darling was closed, companies that enabled the fraud had failed, and executives were imprisoned. All this happened because Bethany McLean got the chance to ask a question.

…

The only way we’re going to learn about what Google is doing is through legal challenges like that of AG Hood.  I don’t see any Congressional hearings looking into Google’s practices (especially with Google spending almost $17 million on lobbying this past year). I don’t hear President Obama asking about Google (see previously mentioned $17 million). While there are European leaders and governments pushing Google to be more transparent, I don’t know why we’ve outsourced an investigation we ourselves should be doing.  I worry that if Google can block a state’s top law enforcement officer from even asking questions, then who is there to stand up and search for the answers we clearly should be seeking?

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE HILL:
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/232681-searching-for-answers-from-google-about-google

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

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.

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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

Dead Kennedys’ East Bay Ray Explains How YouTube Is Stealing From Musicians | New York Observer

Taylor Swift recently brought these “robber baron” business tactics into the mainstream. When she removed her catalog from Spotify, they were trying to force a bad deal on her. Dead Kennedys had Spotify figured out early on, we pulled most but not all of our tracks off of Spotify back at the start of 2013. Musicians are not against streaming, but we are against “plantation/sharecropping” business practices. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Educate yourself about what’s really going on and the reality is shocking. Don’t buy the lies and memes, educate people, share this article, stand up. The Internet is not like the weather, it was created by humans and can be changed by humans. It’s not about regulating the Internet, it’s about regulating businesses. (They’ll try to confuse that, too.)

by Trichordist Editor

What YouTube Really Pays… Makes Spotify Look Good! #sxsw

Is this the future of music? We continue to look at more artist revenue streams.

We’ve been waiting for someone to send us this kind of data. This info was provided anonymously by an indie label (we were provided screenshots but anonymized this info to a spreadsheet). Through the cooperative and collaborative efforts of artists such as Zoe Keating and The Cynical Musician we hope to build more data sets for musicians to compare real world numbers.

In our on going quest for openness and transparency on what artists are actually getting paid we’d love to hear from our readers if their numbers and experience are consistent with these numbers below. At the very least, these numbers should be the starting point of larger conversations for artists to share their information with each other.

Remember, no music = no business.

whatyoutubereallypaysFor whatever reason there appear to be a lot of unmonetized views in the aggregate. So let’s just focus on the plays earning 100% of the revenue pool in the blue set. These are videos where the uploader retains 100% of the rights in the video including the music, the publishing and the video content itself.

Plays  Earnings  Per Play
2,023,295 $3,611.84 $0.00179
1,140,384 $2,155.69 $0.00189
415,341 $624.54 $0.00150
240,499 $371.47 $0.00154
221,078 $313.47 $0.00142
TOTALS TOTALS AVERAGE
4,040,597 $7,077.01 $0.00175

So it appears that YouTube is currently paying $1,750 per million plays gross.

We understand that people reading this may report other numbers, and that’s the point. There is no openness or transparency from either Spotify or YouTube on what type of revenue artists can expect to earn and under what specific conditions. So until these services provide openness and transparency to musicians and creators, “sharing” this type of data is going to be the best we’re going to be able to do as East Bay Ray comments in his interview with NPR.

As we’re now in a world where you need you need a million of anything to be meaningful here’s a benchmark of where YouTube ranks against Spotify.

Service  Plays  Per Play  Total  Notes 
Spotify To Performers/Master Rights 1,000,000 0.00521 $5,210.00 Gross Payable to Master Rights Holder Only
Spotify To Songwrtiers / Publishers This revenue is for the same 1m Plays Above 0.000521 $521.00 Gross Payable to Songwriter/s & Publisher/s (estimated)
YouTube Artist Channel 1,000,000 0.00175 $1,750.00 Gross Payable for All Rights Video, Master & Publishing
YouTube CMS (Adiam / AdRev) ** 1,000,000 0.00032 $321.00 Gross Payable to Master Rights Holder Only

The bottom line here is if we want to see what advertising supported free streaming looks like at scale it’s YouTube. And if these are the numbers artists can hope to earn with a baseline in the millions of plays it speaks volumes to the unsustainability of these models for individual creators and musicians.

Meet the New Boss: YouTube’s Monopoly on Video | MTP

It’s also important to remember that the pie only grows with increased revenue which can only come from advertising revenue (free tier) and subscription fees (paid tier). But once the revenue pool has been set, monthly, than all of the streams are divided by that revenue pool for that month – so the more streams there are, the less each stream is worth.

All adrev, streaming and subscription services work on the same basic models as YouTube (adrev) and Spotify (adrev & subs). If these services are growing plays but not revenue, each play is worth less because the services are paying out a fixed percentage of revenue every month divided by the number of total plays. Adding more subscribers, also adds more plays which means that there is less paid per play as the service scales in size.

This is why building to scale, on the backs of musicians who support these services, is a stab in the back to those very same artists. The service retains it’s margin, while the artists margin is reduced.

[** these numbers from a data set of revenue collected on over 8 million streams via CMS for an artist/master rights holder]

RELATED:

Streaming Price Index Updated 2014 : Per Stream Pay Rates

Music Streaming Math, Can It All Add Up?

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

by Trichordist Editor

The Beastie Boys Fight for Your Rights : Guest Post by East Bay Ray

[An update. The corporation Intuit sponsored a competition for small businesses to get a Super Bowl ad and awarded it to GoldieBlox, despite the company being invovled in a lawsuit for doing something that violated the contest’s own rules. What kind of message does that send?]

First, we have the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people. Now, with a recent dispute between toymaker Goldieblox Inc. and the Beastie Boys we have a corporation — in the fine tradition of the Dred Scott decision — attempting to justify the exploitation of people’s work for the benefit of a business.

The reasoning Goldieblox, Inc. — which hijacked the Beastie Boys’ song “Girls” in a recent promotional video — uses to justify economic exploitation is right out of the book 1984: in the name of the greater “common good” (and to make even bigger profits), an individual’s autonomy is not important. To paraphrase George Orwell, Exploitation is Innovation.

There are some legal commentators who try to contend that the Goldieblox ad is not primarily aimed at advertising a product but “spreading” the company’s message that “traditional girl toys aren’t all that great for modern girls.”

Somehow that makes economic exploitation okay.

Well, looking past their doublethink, “a commercial ad is not an ad,” the video was, bottom line, to advertise the brand Goldieblox, Inc., a for-profit company. Whatever other message the ad has isn’t relevant. Just because you claim the message is positive, you don’t have to ask? Who decides if it’s a positive message or not? What if a company like Walmart wanted to use someone’s work without compensation to promote their “message,” would that be okay too? What is so hard about asking permission first? It’s the human thing to do.

What some are advocating here is ultimately nothing less than the violation of a basic human right everyone has: the right to the material and moral benefit in work you’ve created. The authors of the Slate article seem to have no problem that people are to work while others get rich off that labor. Why not at least demand that Goldieblox pay the Beastie Boys a share of the company’s profits? Or is treating people like sweatshop peasants, framed as “innovation” in true 1984-style, just too important a “social value” that it overrides people’s rights? Maybe it’s of value for a corporation, but absolutely not for human beings. Think about it, how can you be free if they take away your right to say “No”? Or take away your right to share in income you produce?

This is not just a problem for artists. From the viewpoint of many Internet companies, your personal information and photos are the same as the Beastie Boys music. If it draws eyeballs then corporations can use it without your consent to get rich selling advertising, like your Instagram photos, your Facebook profile, etc.

What’s happening to musicians will happen to you. Anyone who wants internet business executives to step up and treat us all as humans, stand up and say, “I am the Beastie Boys.”

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East Bay Ray Img_8808s2East Bay Ray is the guitarist and co-founder of the band Dead Kennedys. He serves on the advisory board of the the Content Creators Coalition, an artists rights organization that enables people who create content — recording artists, songwriters, journalists, filmmakers, producers, photographers, visual artists, and performers — to join together and gain fair treatment from those who profit from their work.

The Content Creators Coalition link is http://www.contentcreatorscoalition.org/

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RELATED:

Goldie Blox – SPIN’s 2013 Hall of Shame | SPIN

Beasties Countersue GoldieBlox–GoldieBlox brings in Google Books Lawyer

Shut Up and Sing: Goldiblox Shows Silicon Valley’s Latest Strategy to Intimidate Songwriters

by Trichordist Editor

Thom Yorke, Trent Reznor and a Chorus of Artists Speak Out For An Ethical and Sustainable Internet

Perhaps 2013 will be the year that we see as the tipping point in artists rights advocacy for an ethical and sustainable internet. There have been more artists speaking up vocally this year than we can remember over the last decade. The hangover from an excess of hope that the internet would empower musicians has begun to set in as the evidence of more, and worse exploitation becomes increasingly obvious every day.

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke noted his realization about Google and other big tech companies.

“[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?

“We were so into the net around the time of Kid A,” he says. “Really thought it might be an amazing way of connecting and communicating. And then very quickly we started having meetings where people started talking about what we did as ‘content’. They would show us letters from big media companies offering us millions in some mobile phone deal or whatever it was, and they would say all they need is some content. I was like, what is this ‘content’ which you describe? Just a filling of time and space with stuff, emotion, so you can sell it?”

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has also been outspoken this year commenting first on streaming services, and then later on the value of music.

“I know that what we’re doing flies in the face of the Kickstarter Amanda-Palmer-Start-a-Revolution thing, which is fine for her, but I’m not super-comfortable with the idea of Ziggy Stardust shaking his cup for scraps. I’m not saying offering things for free or pay-what-you-can is wrong. I’m saying my personal feeling is that my album’s not a dime. It’s not a buck. I made it as well as I could, and it costs 10 bucks, or go fuck yourself.”

Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains refused to play new songs in the bands live set until the new album is released to protect the integrity of the bands work.

“Well, in the old days – if you start out with ‘in the old days,’ you’re totally an old f–k – you were able to play a lot more stuff live,” Cantrell tells Spin magazine. “But with the advent of the Internet and sharing and shit going everywhere, you can’t do that anymore. We really haven’t been playing anything off the new record that’s not out yet. We’ve been playing ‘Hollow‘ and ‘Stone,’ and now that it’s going to be released, we’re thinking about whipping out ‘Phantom Limb‘ and maybe a few more.”

Quincy Jones discussed his legacy and the challenges presented for new artists in an environment of unprecedented piracy.

What’s sad is that there is 98 percent music piracy everywhere on the planet. It’s just terrible. What if these kids (who download music illegally) worked for me for two months and then I said, “I’m not going to pay you.” That’s just not right.

Aimee Mann brought a lawsuit against a digital distributor.

Guy Marchais of the band Suffocation showed fans how to buy a CD and explained the importance of supporting artists with legal purchases.

Marc Ribot of Ceramic Dog (and sideman for Tom Waits) took up the battle against Ad Funded Piracy.

We don’t know what the ultimate solution is — but we know it isn’t the impoverishment of musicians and defunding music. And we know it isn’t pretending that no-one is being hurt. Corporations are making huge profits from the ads on ‘free’ sites, from selling the hard and software that make illegal downloading possible.

Austin band Quiet Company noted their disappointment after an internet marketing partnership experiment.

““After everything, I’m not sure there is a new model. The old model is still the model, it’s just that the Internet made it way worse.”

East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedys noted who is making money and who is not at SF Music Tech.

“There’s opportunists on the Internet that have taken advantage of the artists, [they’re] giving a free ride on a carnival horse, but they’re starving the horse.”

Zoe Keating spoke to the NY Times about how artists in certain genre’s such as classic and jazz maybe condemmed to poverty in the new digital economy without better mechanisms in place.

“In certain types of music, like classical or jazz, we are condemning them to poverty if this is going to be the only way people consume music.”

Blake Morgan went public with an email exchange between him and Tim Westergren over Pandora’s attempts to reduced already low royalties to artists.

I hear you when you say you’re “seeking a balanced structure that allows musicians to generously participate in the business.” But respectfully –– and this is quite important –– musicians are what your business is built on.

Without us, you don’t have a business.

Victoria Aitken wrote about the effects of piracy on EDM artists.

“The Internet pirates have made me, and thousands of other musicians, walk the plank. We now have to swim in shark-infested waters where the big fish gobble up our dues and the pirates laugh their way to the bank.

I believe this basic injustice must be remedied – Internet pirates are white-collar criminals. They should pay the royalties they have stolen or be answerable to the law, like looters, burglars, and fraudsters.”

Pink Floyd expressed their feelings about Pandora and digital royalty rates for the next generation of musicians.

It’s a matter of principle for us. We hope that many online and mobile music services can give fans and artists the music they want, when they want it, at price points that work. But those same services should fairly pay the artists and creators who make the music at the core of their businesses.

Martha Reeves also explained the importance to continue to work towards fair royalties for artists in the new digital economy.

Musicians should be paid a fair value for their work and all digital services should play by the same rules. These are just common sense ideas, and once Congress adopts them as law, future generations will wonder why we ever struggled over them. But that’s why we must keep struggling – until justice is done.

Shawn Drover drummer for Megadeth responded to a question asking if the band had been effected by piracy.

Of course it is. We are certainly thrilled to have a #6 record on Billboard in America and #4 in Canada, but sales are way down for the entire music industry right across the board, which is a real drag. Internet piracy, torrent sites and all that are the reason why. Concert attendance for us is still great around the world, so we are definitely happy about that.

by Trichordist Editor

The “Chilling Effects” of YouTube’s Internet Censorship and Lack of Transparency

We’ve been watching with interest a story developing over at Digital Music News. The site ran a guest editorial by Jeff Price promoting his new YouTube Content Management System Collections Service, Audiam.

It’s interesting to note how Price targets distribution companies as the black hats but does not criticize YouTube for their less than stellar “Openess and Transparency” with artists. East Bay Ray of The Dead Kennedys spoke to NPR about his frustrations with Google.

YouTube Shares Ad Revenue With Musicians, But Does It Add Up?

“Holiday in Cambodia” by the punk band Dead Kennedys has been streamed on YouTube over 2.5 million times. Guitarist Raymond Pepperell — also known as East Bay Ray — says, overall, Dead Kennedys videos have been watched about 14 million times. But the band has only seen a few hundred dollars.

“I don’t know — and no one I know knows — how YouTube calculates the money”

It’s easy to see why so many readers took exception to Price’s understanding of how YouTube monetization works (or actually doesn’t). One of those people wrote a response to Price’s editorial, Emmanuel Zunz of ONErpm.

Why Jeff Price Is Horribly Misinformed About YouTube Monetization…

If I understand Audiam’s business model correctly (I have tested the service), it’s a pure Content ID play.  So here is my first point: Audiam states that they pay artists 100% of the revenues they collect for them from their own channel.  But by generating UGC claims on their channels that pay out at 35% instead of the Standard 55% an artist can get on their own, they are actually reducing the amount of money a musician can make through a Standard direct deal with YouTube.

What follows is the real story about the lack of transparency and openess that Google claims is essential to a “free and open” internet. You know, the kind of “free and open” internet where you make the music, movies, books, photos, etc and Google is “free and open” to monetize it without restriction. “Permissionless Innovation” yo!

So apparently when Zunz was being transparent and open (um, without permission) about Google/YouTube payments and policies in his response to Price he got a little to close to home in revealing Google family secrets. The result was a panicked Zunz contacting Digital Music News to remove, retract and/or otherwise redact the information that Zunz had made public. Oooopsies…

YouTube Demands the Removal of a Digital Music News Guest Post…

According to ONErpm, YouTube has demanded that the entire guest post – here – be ripped down, which would obliterate nearly 100 comments and the knowledgebase that comes with that (not to mention the detailed information in the post itself).

But the story doesn’t end there. Zunz had already written a second a highly detailed post for Digital Music News detailing how YouTube monetization actually works! Unfortunately that “Open and Transparent” post is not going to see the light of day in educating musicians about the actual mechanics, percentages and payments by YouTube.

YouTube Successfully Intimidates a DMN Guest Contributor…

It’s called “the chilling effect”…

Despite serious threats, YouTube has been unsuccessful at removing an earlier article on Digital Music News about confusing royalty payouts and specifics.  But what they have been successful at is preventing the next one: a 4,000+ word, highly-detailed essay on YouTube best practices and royalties, from a company highly-specialized in YouTube distribution.

The company simply got spooked, and asked that we not print the piece for fear of having their MCN status revoked by YouTube.  So here’s what artists, labels, publishers, startups, and the industry is missing as a result.

So the next time someone wants to talk about the benefits of a transparent, free and open internet based in permissionless innovation it might be worth while to send them this post. After all wasn’t it Google Chairman Eric Schmidt who said, “If You Have Something You Don’t Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn’t Be Doing It“?

So when Google protects it’s interests it’s “business” but when musicians protect their rights it’s “censorship”.

Where are the defenders of internet freedom when you need them? The crusaders against internet censorship are silent…

by Trichordist Editor

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

How Musicians Are (Not) Making Money, and who is… @SFMusicTech w/ East Bay Ray

SF Music Tech is always a great place to get the temperature of the current ideology and trends relating to music and technology. Brian Zisk does a great job of creating an environment for the tech community to explore it’s relationship to music and musicians.

Respect Musicians Choices. Musicians need to get Paid.

Artists should have creative control over their work, their careers and they should be paid fairly. We couldn’t agree more. This sentiment was echoed by Emily White of Whitesmith Entertainment on one panel and was ofter heard repeated during the day. Whenever there was a “shout out” to give props to musicians it was almost always met with universal applause from the audience regardless of the panel topic.

During the day the mantra of how artists deserved respect and payment was heard over and over. Everyone loves musicians. Musicians need to be paid. But some struggled to truly accept this as a universal concept that extended to businesses operating on the internet as well.

We’ve all heard the stories of musicians being exploited by record labels, music publishers, band managers, booking agents, etc. These tales are almost universally met with disgust, as they should be. But when artist exploitation takes the form corporate profiteering on the internet the tech community often recoils into a bit of selective reasoning and double standards.

So let us say this loud and clear about people throwing stones inside of glass houses… any wrong doing of illegally exploiting musicians for corporate profiteering should be unacceptable even it is happening on the internet.

How Musicians Are (Not) Making Money

Kristin Thompson from the Future OF Music Coalition noted that even though there may be many new revenue streams available to musicians, many of them only pay “micro pennies.” The consensus was clear and perhaps best summed up by Incubus manager Steve Rennie who essentially said, “eventually this should all work it self out where musicians can earn professional careers again, but the timing might just be really bad for this generation of musicians, and that’s the luck of the draw in life.” We actually don’t find that to be encouraging.

The irony and the disconnect didn’t take long to surface when East Bay Ray from the Dead Kennedy’s pointed out how exactly musicians don’t get paid from corporately funded music piracy sites when he showed a screenshot from mp3skull providing free downloads of his bands music financed by 1-800 Flowers and Alaska Airlines.

Willful Blindness

Of course those who believe in the exploitation of musicians for the profit of internet businesses had no problem rapidly resorting to name calling when it would be a lot more productive to acknowledge the problem as a detriment to the livelihood of musicians, and seek to work towards a cooperative solution to help musicians get paid.

What about Transparency, Being Open and More Human?

Ray went on to note how the negative effects of these sites create an environment that allows companies like YouTube to operate as an opaque black box. Using the best publicly available information he quickly calculated that YouTube’s 35% payment to artists (versus Itunes and Spotify’s 70%) could be a contributing factor to the 45% decline in professional musicians in the last decade. By Ray’s calculations (here at Digital Music News) the numbers may create a loss of 12,000 middle class musicians.

The Elephant In The Room

Some would like to argue that the revenue these sites are generating is inconsequential. These people seem to have difficulty understanding that if brand sponsored piracy can support 200,000 infringing domians that Google is tracking in it’s transparency report, then there is clearly enough there that musicians should be getting paid.

The real point is that there appears to be plenty of money being made online from the distribution of music, it’s just that the money is not being “shared” with musicians.

200kDomainsTracked

Any honest conversation about compensation to musicians has to address the single largest detriment to the revenue of artists at any level, which are the ad network financed music piracy sites. Ignoring these sites leaves out the most critical variable in evaluating fair and ethical compensation models when over 200,000 sites pay nothing at all to musicians with unlimited access to illegally free inventory. These sites profit from exploiting musicians and paying the musicians nothing.

Any legally licensed, legitimate music tech start up also has to acknowledge that mass scale, enterprise level, commercial infringement of music does NOT create a better environment for innovative entrepreneurs but rather a much more difficult one.

The truth is, there is no new professional middle class of musicians. The grand experiment of the digital utopia has been a massive failure for musicans and everyone at SF Music Tech now knows it. The soft back peddling by most on old hard line positions shows clearly that the reality for professional musicians has gotten worse, not better.

One of the most overheard phrases of the conference was, “we have to do better to get musicians paid.” Indeed, as we have noted here the truth is self evident, if the Internet is working for musicians, why aren’t more musicians working professionally? Not everyone aspires to work a day job, make music as a hobby and allow internet corporations to profit from their labor, illegally.

“Here we are, stuck with all these people who want music for free,” said Dave Allen, founding member of Gang of Four and interactive strategist at the branding agency North. “We have to find a way for musicians to make a living.”

If the tech and internet community are truly interested in getting musicians paid wouldn’t it make sense to start where money is already being made?

by Trichordist Editor