Tag Archive for 'music'Page 3 of 7

MySpace Music

published
on October 7, 2008
by
ACtual
in collaboration, future of music, music, music business, music history, and technology
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Social networking site MySpace jumped into the music industry recently, setting up deals with the major labels to stream free music to the users of the site. The news I read yesterday stated that in only the first week, over 1 billion songs were streamed. The commentators seem to view this as a monumental feat, despite the fact that a) they’re free, b) there’s millions and millions of users on MySpace and c) they’re instantly and readily available. In fact, the majority of the press I saw yesterday centered around the idea that this was a sort of challenge to Apple’s iTunes.

Let’s be clear. Streaming music that is paid for by advertising is not the same as music sales. The record labels may use the income from the deals to pad their sales/income numbers, but a streamed song does not a music purchase make. The purpose of the move from CD to mp3 rather than CD to stream is that people like owning their music, taking their music around with them and playing it for others. The stream is great as a form of promotion and introduction to the music, but you can’t take it with you.

This isn’t to say that I’m against streaming music in any way. Pandora is pretty genius, and I would never knock my old home, USC’s streaming radio station that can be found at KSCR. But for industry writers, who in some part can help influence the record execs that read their work, starting to compare a free streaming music service on a social networking site to the largest music retailer in Apple’s iTunes is like comparing tap water to wine. Just because it’s free and easily accessible doesn’t mean that it can trump the demand for quality and the ability to save something far into the future. Of course, if users find a way to “bottle” the stream to their music library, how interested in continued streaming would the labels be?

As for where this turns the music industry, I think the only answer everyone has for sure is that no one has any answers. The labels are still looking to make money off of solid media sales, as mentioned previously, data companies like SanDisk are looking for ways to make albums smaller and more accessible, and artists are still trying to figure out how the industry would work without them given that they only make 9.1 cents from a song royalty, but there’s no money for the labels if they don’t have the song to exploit in the first place.

So for now, we watch. I’m sure it won’t take long for MySpace to surpass 5 billion streams, but how the labels will react to that and attempt to use it to influence other sectors of the music industry will be interesting to see.

iTunes, DRM and Artist Royalties

published
on October 3, 2008
by
ACtual
in future of music, music, music business, music law, and politics
. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Earlier this week, alarm bells were ringing when a quote from Apple in 2007 found its way back to the top of the news heap. That quote? That if royalties were to change to a point of being unprofitable to Apple, it would shut its iTunes store down. Now even the thought of this, among Apple and its competitors, has been brewing frightening thoughts for the consumers for a while due to the fact that virtually all the music these stores sell is DRM protected. Of course, the DRM is built into the song, so what exactly happens if the company selling the songs ends their existence? Well, it looks like the DRM for the material would expire, leaving consumers with hundreds if not thousands of “purchased” songs that will no longer play anywhere. As a music lover (and legal buyer of mp3s), this kind of news, even if it is an undeveloped thought, causes a good deal of frustration. Here the studios want consumers to pay for music, foregoing the option of downloading all the music they want illegally for free, but the copyright protection within the music means that if the retailer goes down, the files go down with it? That’s like buying a CD at Tower which is then erased when Tower goes out of business (you all do still remember Tower, don’t you?)

So what can we do about it when the very mechanism that has allowed music labels to go digital, and therefore the infrastructure that controls all of our legal downloads, is compromised by companies willing to close their DRMs? Unfortunately, not much. Short of burning all of your DRM tracks to a CD and then re-ripping them to mp3s to strip of them of their DRM (and some sound quality in the process), if a store goes down and discontinues its DRM licensing, all the tracks you’ve bought could die on your iPod. This to me seems like the ultimate Trojan horse of the music industry…we don’t want you to have mp3s, but if you do, we’ll create a way so that once they’re in your music library, should the stores you bought them from close, we’ll demolish your entire music collection from the inside.

I understand the purpose of DRM, but unfortunately its just not a viable business model if there are ways to stop the music playback at any point after the purchase. The point of buying music is that you have it forever. All the CDs I bought are still mine and will be mine for as long as I manage not to lose or damage them. The idea that you could buy a song which at some point in the future becomes unusable is, to me at least, outrageous.

The reason that all of this has come about this week is because the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) was weighing a decision to raise the artist royalties on digital downloads from 9.1 cents per song to 15 cents a song. From what I can ascertain from the article announcing the steady royalty fees, a .99 cent iTunes song is sold like this…

1) Apple sells the song for .99. 2) Apple keeps .29. 3) Apple gives .70 to the record label. 4) Record label gives the artist 9.1 cents, keeping 60.9 cents. I don’t know about you, but even at 9 cents a song, it seems like the labels and iTunes are getting over on the artist. Are we really supposed to believe that the iTunes store deserves to keep almost three times as much money for a song it sells than the artist receives?

What this scare does do is make it painfully obvious that the record labels and online music stores need to create a way and find a method to allow consumers to legally retain their music, no matter what happens to the store you buy it from. Should royalty rights eventually be raised in favor of the artist, it would be a travesty for Apple to claim it can no longer operate iTunes profitably (with the number of sales they have per year and the fact that they’re getting money just to be a middle man, it would be very hard for me to accept the idea that they aren’t profitable), disable the DRMs and leave music consumers with a bunch of dead and unusable files. Apple needs to show a little more foresight and decency when it comes to wolf cries of lost profits with a change from 9.1 to 15 cents of royalty. This could have been Apple simply playing politics in order to protect its profit margin, but even then the greed factor, given what the artists out there are making, comes into play.

For now (the CRB’s decision lasts 5 years), it appears we can rest easy. But it makes it clear that more thorough examinations of the digital music sales industry, DRM technology and what the rules and technology mean to consumers are necessary and should not be ignored.

The Future of Copyright Law: Moral Rights & Attribution for Music

published
on August 17, 2008
by
Alan Khalfin
in activism, future of music, music business, and music law
. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

As a musician, my biggest concern with releasing my music over the web for others to remix is not that I’ll get paid if money is made, but that I’ll be attributed for my work. This is because, as an unsigned and unknown artist, I am currently more interested in cultivating a fan base than profiting from my art. As I see it, I will find creative ways to profit from my work once I have actually formed something that resembles a fanbase.

A good way of providing artists with attribution, irrespective of the destiny of their art, is through implementing a moral rights scheme that would ensure attribution for authorship, even if ownership of the music belongs to a third party. Originally laid out in Article 6bis of the Berne Convention of Literary and Artistic Works, moral rights were extended to music in 1996 through the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. Article 5(1) of that treaty reads: “Independently of a performer’s economic rights, and even after the transfer of those rights, the performer shall, as regards his live aural performance or performance fixed in phonograms, have the right to claim to be identified as the performer of his performances…and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of his performances that would be prejudicial to his reputation.”

Moral rights generally include three rights: the right of attribution, the right to have a work published anonymously or pseudonymously, and the right to the integrity of the work. These rights are separate from economic rights, and belong exclusively and perpetually to the original creators of the work, and not any third party who assumes ownership of a copyright, such as a record label.

In the music context, I don’t believe in the right to integrity, as in my mind, a piece of music is never finished, but rather constantly evolving. But, the right of attribution is paramount in the digital context. Since media can so easily be shared today, sharing should be embraced as long as the original authors are always attributed. Creative Commons has embraced this notion since its inception, and it’s time for Congress to recognize that this needs to be added to the Copyright Act to meet the necessities of the digital era. In fact, the United States Court of Appeals held, in Jacobsen v. Katzer, that Creative Commons licensors are entitled to copyright infringement relief. This means that if somebody uses a CC work that requires attribution without attributing the original author, a claim for copyright infringement exists.

With this legislative change, the US, a Berne and WIPO signatory, would seemingly be killing three birds with one stone: 1) deal with copyright law’s inadequacy in the digital age, 2) comply with Berne by adopting am adequate Moral rights scheme, and 3) comply with the WIPO treaty by extending moral rights to music. While the US became a member of the Berne Convention in 1989, the US has chosen to narrowly adopt a moral rights scheme and to apply it exclusively to visual arts under the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) of 1990. By omitting to do so, the US is failing to comply with the Berne convention and the 1996 WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. So, maybe its time for Congress to actually got off its ass! I mean, are musicians less important that visual artists? Or is it that visual artists have more lobbying power?

An adoption of a music moral rights scheme would greatly tickle my paranoid pickle in the digital era, and it would help me feel comfortable in distributing my digital music in creative and innovative ways. Evolve, damnit!

Wait, You're Telling Me the Long Tail Is Flat?

published
on August 5, 2008
by
Alan Khalfin
in collaboration, DIY, music, music business, and music law
. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Have you heard the news? Apparently the long tail is flat. For those of you unfamiliar with the long tail, it’s a theory coined by Chris Anderson (The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More) that describes the niche strategy of businesses that sell a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities. Because of the low overhead incurred through the selling of digital products, the long tail was supposed to help retailers of less popular items earn significant profit by selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers (instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items).

For musicians, the long tail of music was supposed to help redistribute the wealth a bit in the music industry. It was supposed to shift the industry away from having a few big artists that earn large profits to having many smaller indie/niche artists that earn moderate profits. The notion behind this was that through digitization, niche releases are more accessible to fans and thus easier to discover, purchase, and consume. Through this long tail of music, a musician’s middle class was supposed to have been formed. Well, where is this musician’s middle class that Gerd Leonhard and Dave Kusek wrote about a few years ago? Why has the long tail not proved to be commercially viable? Why aren’t niche artists profiting from their art online?

I suspect that the long tail theory is still viable for indie and unsigned artists to make money from their works. It’s undeniable that given the low overhead of making and distributing digital music, an artist could sell less and make more. Plus, there are more licensing/placement opportunities today than ever before and there are plenty of sites that help musicians leverage this. But still, why then is the long tail flat?

In my mind, there are three main reasons:

First, Creative Commons licensing has failed to help musicians monetize their works. Any notion of CC providing a viable profit mechanism for musicians is a pipe dream. The purpose of CC licensing is to expand the range of works available for others to legally share and collaborate on. It’s clear that this is the direction that Copyright Law should go in. It’s also undeniable that CC has a noble purpose that contributes to more creative works for the general public to enjoy. But, CC hasn’t actually been leveraged to make artists licensing works under it any money.

While the reason I make music is not to make money, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing a little profit from my works. Perhaps, CC has overlooked this. With the vast number of works distributed under CC, how can their collective power be leveraged to compete against the market power of bigger acts. Isn’t this what the long tail is all about? If CC doesn’t figure this out, how can it reasonably expect to be an appropriate solution for distributing creative works? Right now, CC licenses seem like a better fit for reference works that people can use to share knowledge. But for unique works of art, the notions of sharing and monetization must be intertwined. Wouldn’t you rather your favorite artists not get a day job so that they can always be making new music for you?

Second, long tail artists haven’t been working collectively to distribute their music. It’s hard to argue against the power in numbers; simply put, the more people that work together on a common purpose, the higher the chance that purpose is achieved. This is the underlying theory that the American Revolution was built on (“Join or Die” anyone?), that collective bargaining is based on, and that a shit ton of sites on the web base their successful business models on (Craigslist is a classifieds aggregator; eBay is an auction aggregator). So, why aren’t long tail musicians taking advantage of this?

There have been some attempts to do this, and some are even successful. Magnatune, for example, aggregates CC works and sells them in an Itunes style store. But the biggest vault of CC works, ccMixter (CC’s own music sharing/collaboration community), has no monetization whatsoever, not even ads (which its artists could perhaps see a rev share on). Why hasn’t ccMixter leveraged the collective power of its community to make its members some money? Because of this, CC licensing seems to be more effective as a marketing tactic than a new rights management system — license one song under CC, have fans share and remix it, and have this exposure trickle over to other songs which are sold.

Merlin is a good example of an organization that is thinking about the collective power of long tail musicians. Merlin is the world’s first global new-media rights licensing agency that manages new-media rights for indie artists. The collective market share of Merlin artists is larger than EMI’s market share. That’s right, its market share is on par with the majors. Through this mechanism, indie acts can punch above their weight to eat like a bird and shit like an elephant. And while Merlin dropped the ball a bit on the Last.fm negotiations, it wil be successful if it can find novel ways to leverage the power of its artists.

Third, long tail musicians haven’t been presented with the right ways of creatively distributing their music so that they can actually make a profit. Despite the digital boom, it’s still hard for unsigned and indie musicians to make much money form selling finished songs. While it’s easy to give fans the option of buying a song, the reality is that more music is now being distributed than ever before and musicians have to compete against other long tail musicians and the many options consumers have to get the music for free.

What seems to be happening is that long tail artists are stuck on the notion of just selling finished works. If Merlin fails, it will certainly be because of this. Instead, long tail artists need to look to aggregating as many sources of revenue as possible, and to create as many value adds for their music as they can. A finished song should only be a part of the value proposition an artist gives a fan. If these value adds are engaging and give fans a new experience, they will convert casual fans into loyal fans and will give them a reason to financially support artists. While there are tools on the web such as Topspin, ReverbNation, and AWAL that currently target indie and unsigned artists, these services need to recognize that focusing on selling finished works may not be entire answer.

So how are we to aggregate and distribute the long tail of music so that its collective power starts making an economic fuss? How do we improve music discovery so more of these artists get discovered? And if we’re not able to sell songs, what other kinds of value adds can we give fans to boost our brands and how do we monetize those value adds? The answers to these questions are at the heart of a the type of service that unsigned/indie musicians need to profit from their works in this new era of music. Soon, we will all find out.

Fight With Tools – The Flobots Are Impressive

published
on August 4, 2008
by
LG
in activism, artist/album reviews, concert reviews, music, and music business
. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Can you ride your bike with no handlebars? Most likely, the image has crossed your mind lately if you listen to the radio. Radio stations all over the nation are getting flooded with requests for the single “Handlebars” by the Flobots. I gotta say… the song is catchy, it grows on you. Although, the Flobots are SO much more than the song “Handlebars.” Last night I attended the Flobots, People Under the Stairs and Busdriver concert at the infamous 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. Last week I had the pleasure of chatting on the phone with Flobot #5 who is one of the lead MC’s of the group. After the interview and seeing these guys on stage I realized they’re out for so much more than having a hit single, selling albums and moving t-shirts. These guys (& girl) are out trying to engage with young minds and encourage people to go out and make a change. The Flobots are extremely passionate about their message. I usually hate musicians who go on stage and “preach” but this was entertaining and motivating. They got the crowd involved with their music & their message. Absolutely one of the most exciting live concerts I’ve ever seen. Also, their encore was too cool. The viola player came out and sang “Heartbreaker” by Pat Benatar. She was fantastic… rocking out all over the stage. It was like the cute, geeky, orchestra dork busted out of her shell and became a hot female rock star in flip flops. At the end of the song the MC’s came out and freestyled while the band played the “Heartbreaker” melody in a super amped up rock style in the background. It made for a great ending to a great show. The Flobots are 2 MC’s, a viola player, drummer, bassist and guitarist. They have a ton of energy and I feel like we’ll be hearing a lot more of them in the future. Honestly, it’s refreshing knowing that there are still musicians out there who don’t focus on the glitz and glamor of being a rock star. The interview with Jamie (Flobot 5) proves true…

Flobot #5 Phone Interview: 7.30.08

LG: MixMatchMusic really digs the Flobots’ mixed style of genres. How did your sound piece together? Was it an idea that you searched after to create?
F5: “I think it came together out of a general openness on the part of everybody in the band to stretch themselves a little bit genre wise. The other MC and I were performing with Mackenzie the viola player… so at first it was just the 3 of us with some DJs. Then Andy suggested hey, why don’t you combined this into a live band? I think if you had a cool band behind you it would work. So we tried it for one show and the audience responded and we enjoyed it and then it became what you see today.”

LG: What was the Flobots’ first live performance like and where was it?
F5: “it was a Rock the Vote sponsored show in Denver. We were also involved in this effort called voter cruise. We had founded this effort to do youth voter engagement through music. So we had been getting good responses, the 3 of us with DJs. Having the live band behind us… with people moving around a lot more… it just felt more full. I think just for our particular combination of people it worked the best.”

LG: What online platform helped the Flobots promote themselves the most?
F5: “We have our own site… FightWithTools.org specifically for our street team. Basically what we did… a lot of people find our music powerful and leave our show all charged up with no where to go. So we created a non-profit organization that has its own infrastructure set up to provide a place for fans to go. It’s FightWithTools.org. It’s a way for music fans of all sorts can connect with each other and start making a change in the community, beginning with voter registration and moving on to other things next year. We’re really excited. We hope it can be a model for how music can be harnessed for social change.”

LG: Is there a certain sound or instrument that the Flobots would like to add to their band in the future?
F5: “You know… a 6 person band is a lot of people and a lot of dynamics. I don’t think we’re looking to add anything. I think we’re excited to write new songs ourselves, stretch our instruments… stretch our sound in new directions. There’s a whole lot more that we can do and we’re really excited to do it.”

LG: What overall message would the Flobots like to give out through their music?
F5: “I think it’s several things. One, that music is powerful. I don’t know if people are recognizing how powerful music is. If you look at any social movement in the United States, music has been a big part of it. Look at the Civil Rights movement. People were singing songs as they were being threatened with beatings and threatened with arrests. As they were in jail they kept themselves energized by singing. They were able to stand up to folks and claim the moral high ground by singing. There’s a lot of history there… the music being powerful. We wanna try and reclaim that and do it in a way that’s relevant for 2008.”

LG: How do you feel about what’s happening in the music industry (ie big labels crumbling, CD sales dropping, everything happening online, indie artists promoting themselves online, etc)?
F5: “I’m actually pretty outside the loop with the music business. I’m not honestly affected by it or a part of it. Personally…. for me, the most important thing as an artist, is for people to hear something I’ve created. That’s the most gratifying thing. Obviously it is good to make a living off of it as well. My feeling has always been when you’re really small you want people to hear your music. So I don’t care if people burn the CD while I’m small cause I want them to hear it. When you get big enough… you get to the point where you’d kinda be an asshole if you got too upset about it because you’re doing what you love. You’re living off of it. In the middle… there’s an artist that really makes a lot, there’s a sense of support any way you can. Truth is … people make their money off of live shows. I think the way that it is changing… it’s inevitable. People that understand that and adapt to it will be the ones that come out on top. We don’t focus all of our energy on loss of CD sales. We focus our energy on our live show and word of mouth. We get people excited enough that they want to support us however we can. I think that’s the way to succeed.”

To conclude, I was pleasantly surprised by The Flobots in concert. They’re touring the country right now. I strongly suggest you go see their show if they’re coming to your town. The shows have been selling out everywhere so get your tix quick! Check out their tour schedule.

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Check Out “Fight With Tools” (my personal favorites are “Rise” and “Stand Up”)

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