Dance Music Business Resource

EU finally cuts through licensing red tape for digital music

EU regulators ordered 24 music societies across Europe to modify or ditch their agreements that bar music services from selling or broadcasting music across borders, forcing those services to set up individual storefronts for each of the EU's member states that may or may not carry all the same content.

Also struck down: members must be allowed to switch to another society. Musicians are allowed now to join any society in Europe, not just in their own country.

This does mean iTunes is going to take over.

GEMA however can still impose fees to press vinyl (even though they give the money back to you later). But you can press records in other countries to avoid that.

EXCESS COPYRIGHT: Is Torture by Music a "Performance in Public"?

Is Torture by Music a "Performance in Public"?
Certain collectives are quick to collect money from those in nursing homes, hospitals, prisons etc. on the basis that these are "public" places. Never mind that the audience is captive and it's their home, like it or not.

Well, it turns out that music is used at Guantanamo for torture purposes, according to the BBC.

...

Leaving aside the legal niceties about whose law if any applies in that dreadful place, one can only wonder if ASCAP might not want a piece of the action.

awesome. via boingboing

european download sites prices for yanks

As of today (Dollar having a "good day" at 1.55):

http://Boomkat.com 99 p = $1.95

http://bleep.com €1.35 = $2.09

http://beatport.com €1.99 = 3.09

Boomkat, in my opinion is the by far the most pleasant place to shop since you really learn a lot about artists and its the best looking to spend time on. Good techno selection, great dubstep selection, great electro, "future funk" (sorry, when did that get invented ? its trip hop, right ? ) etc.

Beatport sounds weird. It remind of me of being in a record store : fucked up headphones, bad needles, mono, store secretly installs aphex exciter to try to get rid of that back stock. Free coffee. That always works: gets the kids to buy more.

NYT: Going, Going ... But Not Yet Gone

Since 2003, at least 80 records stores have closed in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

New York Times

Sports is not art : Specimen 0843 (SportsTrax)

Saturday, April 26, 2008 / 8 pm
Specimen 0843 (SportsTrax)

In 1997, the Motorola and Stats Corporations made a pager-type device called SportsTrax, which displayed score updates of US live sports games. A conflict arose when the NBA claimed that Motorola and Stats were not entitled to use the score data. During the court case NBA v. Motorola and STATS, Inc., the judges stated that “professional basketball games are not original works of authorship protected by copyright.” Sports games are considered accumulations of facts (nature) and are not afforded copyright protection unless they are fixed in a tangible medium of expression (culture). Under the title Specimen 0843, Agency brings together an assembly of performers, legal scholars, athletes, and economists to explore questions of copyright, originality, and authorship, and shows what sports can tell us about art. Kobe Matthys is artist and founder of Agency. He conducts longterm research on the practice of reappropriation and the public domain. Agency, founded in 1992, has for several years been preoccupied with “quasi-things”—things that have uncertain status and sit at the bifurcation of “nature” and “culture.”

Mime Centrum Berlin, Schönhauser Allee 73, 10437 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, U2, S8/S85/S41/S42 Schönhauser Allee

Admission 3,- €

Some advanced software based compositions completely do away with the concept of authorship and wander in to the area of data mapping. As artists we know how irrelevant this old style copyright law is. But I think we should not forget that copyright law is also a wonderful achievement for artists : it gives us the protection over our creations that is already granted (by common sense and convention) to physical objects. I'm not of the opinion that we should pirate everything, sneer at the RIAA (although they are worth sneering at) and go running off into a "data wants to be free" future.

Energy would be better spent devising a clever new income stream.

ASCAP attacks

ASCAP demands $1000 from a small non-profit art gallery in Baltimore.

Actually, it wasn't really a concert; it was more of a performance-art piece by Lee Connah involving "old recycled objects" and the playing of vintage vinyl records.

ASCAP demands big money from a mostly world music non-ASCAP club. But the club gets caught playing a Madonna record one night and ... pays up.

And as usual, all the money that ASCAP takes in it gives to artists that show up on commercial radio. Its a mob racket. They collect from every coffee house and club and they give all of that money to commercial radio artists.

In Europe clubs will allow you to submit a playlist and distributes accordingly. Especially for festivals, so I have heard, its a good idea to submit that playlist because not a lot of other people are bothering. If you played all your own stuff, you will get paid.

There should be a system whereby artists and venues can pledge that there is no ASCAP/BMI music being played. ASCAP was formed as an artists organization, a new one is required to protect us all from ASCAP. The problem is that a DJ may not think about it and slip some remix or pop hit in (even as a joke).


Good article, worth a read.

You only get money from ASCAP when your song is sampled. If you're getting airplay on commercial radio, you'll probably be sampled, maybe quite a lot. If you're not getting airplay on commercial radio, the odds of never getting sampled is pretty high. If you are an independent artist, the odds of being on commercial radio tend toward zero.

Imeem Acquires Snocap

You know I've never sold a single track through SNOCAP. Founded by Mr. Napster (who has now moved onto his new startup, a WOW social networking site), SNOCAP has been "struggling" for a minute. It seems nobody on Myspace actually buys any of those tracks. In a world of information overload, who has time to listen to all of these things, let alone buy any of them ?

Imeem I quite like. They use advertising income to pay off the labels. Apparently there is some SNOCAP fingerprinting technology that will help them in their tracking.

WMG: 7.29 -1.45 (-16.59%) - Warner Music Group Corp.

Wow, Warner's stock has gone down 73% in the last 18 months !

Today, Feb 6th 2008 they just plummeted 16% due to reporting losses.

Of all the majors, I always liked Warner's the most. During the grunge years they didn't seem to interfere with the artist's choices of covers or track selection. Indie labels always get real involved and tell the artist what to do. The majors at that time knew to let those crazy kids do what they do best.

Harry Fox Agency HFA - mechanical licenses for cover songs

"Songfile" can be used by musicians who plan to make and distribute 2,500 copies or less of their recordings to obtain the necessary licenses for cover versions of songs. Licenses can be obtained for CDs, cassettes, LPs, or permanent digital downloads (DPDs).

Customers can create an account with the Songfile service, search HFA’s catalog of almost 1.9 million songs, and complete their mechanical licensing transaction in minutes. Royalties are calculated at the statutory mechanical rate (currently 9.1¢ per copy for songs 5 minutes or less in length, or 1.75¢ per minute (or fraction thereof) per copy, for songs over 5 minutes). There is also a nominal processing fee ($13-15) on each song licensed.

via http://www.filmmusicmag.com/news/Harry-Fox-Agency-Upgrades-Online-Mechanic...

qtrax tries it again : ad supported legal p2p

This is a model that I suggested and supported many years ago. There are many hurdles. Qtrax is having a go at it now.

Its a windows/(mac-coming march 18th) P2P application with a built in web browser. It only shows files from labels that qtrax has licensing agreements with. Initially it uses the Gnutella network. It converts the files into an proprietary audio format 'MPQ', adds a windows DRM layer and plays the music only from within the application. It counts the number of track plays, shows ads to earn revenue and pays the artists royalties.

Sounds like I won't be using it.