http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003844114
An interesting article on a couple levels. First, it shows one big time artists prespective on the digital age. More or less finding the ability to still top the charts without using what has become one of the most popular and prosperous method of making record sales. Kid Rock and his people are making statement on the digital age in that both it has driven people away from actually obtaining a complete album and showing that the old way of business, with fan support, can still brign in profits.
The later portion of the article also stood out to me because of the popularity of the “360 deals”. With branding and imaging becoming increasing important and an essential part of of financial profitability to both the artists, labels, and just about everyone, and some peoples willingness to do anything for a dollar, I personnally found it refreshing to hear that Kid Rock is on board with this side of the business, but at the same time on his own terms.
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003844114
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First, let me explain the title. A motion for summary judgment was decided by the district court in Arizona, Atlantic Recording Corp. v. Howell. This is another case where suit was brought against and individual for copyright infringement for using a P2P network. Once again that network was KaZaa. Once again the question was, were the files in the users share folder that could be download by others copyright infringement under U.S. Federal Law. While it is not crazy that the Arizona court decided on the summary judgment the way they did, the decision was contrary to other court decisions on similar issues (hence the title). In the State of Arizona, keeping a file in a share file is not unlawful distribution, and therefore not violative of the Copyright Act. “Actual dissemination of the of copies or phonorecords” must be shown. However, for those of you who are unfamiliar with legal jargon, that mere fact that Atlantic Records did not win on summary judgment does not mean that the user has one the case, rather the case must now go to trial and it will up to a jury to decide based on the facts and arguments raised by both sides. The Arizona District Court, and Judge Wake, the presiding judge, have been applauded by many in the legal community partiularly those who are among the greater minds in copyright law. For more see Patry.
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We all know that the biggest shots that the CD has had to take have been from the digital explosion. Be it pirating, legal online sales, or otherwise the popularity of the compact disc has free falled. And now another rival appears to see a golden opportunity to get its revenge. Thats right, vinyl. The RIAA has itself conceded that vinyl sales in 2007 have increased from recent years, while cd sales continue to shrink. So while new technologies may be delivering Clubber Langesque hooks, could vinyl be that gut shot that takes the last wind out of CDs?
For more information see: http://blog.wired.com/music/
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Copyright law protects the author from unauthorized distribution of their work. However, there is one caveat to this, this caveat is commonly known as the “first sale” doctrine. The doctrine is really exactly what it sounds like. Once a first sale has been made, where presumable the author has been compensated/rewarded for his/her work, the subsequent LEGALLY authorized owner of that work may distribute that work as they please. Legal scholars and U.S. case law has furthered construed the doctrine to expand beyond just “sales” and to apply to any work that was legal given to another party, as William Patry terms is it, the doctrine applies when a work has been “exhausted”.
Following this extension of “sale” to encompass “exhaustion”, a summary judgment motion is pending in Federal Court in California, UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Augusto, 2:07-cv-3106 SJO (AJWx). In short, UMG is suing Augusto for his sale on ebay of a promotional CD purchased from a second hand music store and stamped not for resale, promotional use only. So Augusto legally obtained copies of copyrighted works, which under the first sale doctrine he should not be prevented from disposing of at his own will by the original copyright holder. However, UMG is taking the position that by affixing language such as “promotional use only” there has been no sale or relinquishment of rights to any subsequent holder of that work. The Court has not yet decided on this motion, and even if the summary judgment motion is not granted the case could still go to trial and the issue litigated. So we may not have California’s answer to this question for quite some time.
I came across this case when browsing through the Electronic Frontier Foundation website. You can check out EFF yourself to see their insight on it. It is their point of view that allowing UMG to win and making copyright owners able to affix restrictions on their products circumvents copyright law. I have to agree with them on that point, and then the “slippery slope” argument can be made. But it is important, being a neutral observer, to look at the other side. The motion was just filed on April 7, 2008 so UMG’s reply is not yet available, and I have not had the opportunity to see if they filed their own summary judgment motion. So to discuss the other side I have to use pure speculation. Valid promotional materials have significant value to its owners. They are given for free or at reduced costs in order to illicit recognition of the public and jump start sales at full price. While the law does not limit the doctrine to only applying when there is a sale, it is meant to not allow the original holder to not profit more than one (monetarily or otherwise), in this instance, however, there will be no profiting because they will undercut by the seller of the second hand owner of the good.
This leads me to my next question, why is Augusto the only named defendant, why not the second hand store he purchased it from? That probably isn’t too difficult of a question, as some of those places were the Salvation Army and other such stores. Additionally, UMG was aided by the RIAA, where a focus has been on online issues. Arguably, had Augusto sold the promos through another medium other than the internet, specifically ebay, he may not have been tracked down by UMG and the RIAA.
Regardless, this should be an important decision, especially since it is in the 9th District, which mean California, where a large portion of music, literature, film, etc. comes from.
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The L.A. Times today reopened the unsettled question that everyone should want to know the answer to. See the post here. Basically the question is, with regards to P2P filesharing of songs, when does the infringement occur and who should be the “infringing” party? Part of the reason that this question is so important is because one tactic by the RIAA has been to download the song from the file sharer to guarantee that they can prove the music is being shared. But if it is determined that the end user is really the infringer it will be more difficult to track down the “suspect”. If you do link over to the post be sure to continue through to the comments. The post author himself defers to Patry and von Lohmann, and out of respect to them I must do the same. As such, I will refrain from sharing my own personal legal analysis. However, if you do proceed to the comments you will note conversation regarding what U.S. has codified as constituting an infringement. To date, non of the RIAA or other filesharing cases have answered the question of what is and where does infringement via this medium take place. This is a topic that steriX will be sure to stay on top of, as should you.
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Edgar Bronfman Jr.Photo: Getty Images
Last Thursday, Portfolio broke the news that Warner Bros. Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. had hired ex–Geffen Music executive Jim Griffin to launch an innovative new initiative that will almost certainly fail to save the troubled recording industry. Under the proposed plan, Internet users would pay a tax (Griffin suggests $5) on top of their monthly service bill allowing them to download all the music they want, without fear of being sued by the RIAA. All collected revenue would be shared among musicians and copyright holders after record labels took their (presumably enormous) cut. Obviously — as lots of irate nerds on the Internet have already pointed out — such a thing would likely never work for millions of reasons. Nevertheless, Bronfman has reportedly signed Griffin to a three-year contract to put the plan into action (or something). Hey, why don’t the record companies just save themselves some grief and hire a few nerds?
Yes, Griffin, a Geffen executive turned industry critic, is
well credentialed and obviously a perfectly intelligent guy; as far as major-label music executives go, Warner would’ve been hard-pressed to find a more forward-thinking one, or one with a more realistic perspective on his industry’s situation (“Today it has become purely voluntary to pay for music,” he told
Portfolio. “[T]he music business has become a big tip jar”). But, given the dire circumstances, isn’t it sort of surprising that record companies still aren’t willing to hire someone outside of their own industry to help them find a digital future.
For the past few years, almost every lucrative innovation in music, from iPods to Guitar Hero, has come from technology nerds with zero music-business experience. Seemingly none of the skills that propelled the recording industry to bloated, profitable excess in previous eras have any relevance in the current Web-centric economy, so why — nine years after having their milkshakes drunk by a geeky, Napster-inventing college kid — are record labels still hiring only people with music-business backgrounds? Would it kill them to get a nerd or two on staff?
Surely with the outlandish salaries they pay their executives (regardless of performance, apparently) they could afford to recruit a few MIT grads or at least a disgraced former tech CEO. Maybe then they could turn a profit on the Internet without splitting their margins with Apple and MySpace or, at the very least, have someone around to let them know when one of their harebrained proposals (like requiring Internet users to pay a monthly tax on the music they’ve already been getting for free for a decade) might be met with less than unbridled enthusiasm.
We were surprised a few months ago when we found out that the labels never called in the geeks during the early days of file-sharing. It still seems like even now — with most of them still staffed by the same executives that ran them into the ground — they still haven’t learned their lesson.
via
Warner’s New Web Guru [Portfolio]
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iConcertCal is a free iTunes plug-in that monitors your music library and generates a personalized calendar of upcoming concerts in your city. It is available for both Windows and Mac OS X and supports worldwide searches. 
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I love Billy Bragg, his attitude, his on the sleeves politics, his music, everything about him. So I read his op-ed in today’s Times with interest.
In it he argues that Bebo, which may or may not have built it’s audience on the backs of artists who uploaded their music for free consumption, should have shared some of their $850mm payday with those artists.
I think that specific suggestion is not workable for a host of reasons, but his basic point – that creative artists (whether they be musicians, filmmakers, screenwriters, painters, poets, etc, etc) need a way to make money online and they don’t have one – is directionally correct.
Some of my favorite bloggers have already weighed in on the discussion. Arrington in his classic in your face fashion feels no sympathy and argues that online is the best promotion that an artist can find in today’s world. Mike is right, but the problem is “promoting what?” Merch and touring hardly cuts it and the loss of music sales hurts everyone, including the artist.
Nick Carr, predictably, takes the opposing view and says:
arguments to the contrary are ultimately specious and self-serving. Exploitation is exploitation, no matter how lovingly it’s wrapped in neo-hippie technobabble about virtual communities, social production, and the gift economy.
I am tired of the arguments, no matter who is making them. It’s time to help these artists get paid. There is a royalty structure in place for streaming music. It’s a penny per listen for on demand and about a tenth of that for something less than “on demand”.
These rates aren’t right and need some tweaking, but I am firmly in the camp that royalties can and should be paid to artists for the streaming of their music on the Internet. I’d pay them if it were easy to do so. I stream artist’s music all the time on this blog and my tumblog. But I don’t know how many streams are played, I don’t know how much I owe, there’s no easy way for me to pay it, there’s no easy way for me to share my ad revenue with them, etc, etc. As far as I know, if I wanted to pay $1000 right now to the artists, there isn’t even anyone to take my money and send it to the artists.
Who is going to build the infrastructure the artists and the web services need? Who is going to deploy it at the micro-scale that most mp3 blogging happens? The music industry is all about demanding to get paid, but I don’t see them building the systems to make it happen easily and within the constraints of what an online business model can pay.
I know one thing for sure. Artists, particularly musicians, are entertaining people more and more every day because of the Internet. Entrepreneurs are building a host of great ways to discover and listen online. And if there were an easy and affordable way to cut the artists in for a piece of the action, most would do it in a heartbeat. It shouldn’t be necessary to wait for the $850mm payday to get paid.
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