8Sided Blog

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A Mess of Headaches

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I have nothing that coherent (i.e., reassuring) to say about Songtradr’s acquisition of Bandcamp. There’s an opinion that Songtradr appears to be a better fit for what Bandcamp does than Epic Games. I’m not so sure. Songtradr is interested in exploiting art (‘exploiting’ is used here factually, not judgmentally) rather than creating art. One could argue Epic at least had a hand in creation — I’m sure many of its game designers consider themselves artists.

A company changing hands in under two years doesn’t bode well. The sale also may betray a purpose behind Epic’s mystifying-at-the-time purchase of Bandcamp. Is it far-fetched to suspect Bandcamp was a chess piece in Epic’s protracted battle against Apple over the high % take from app store sales? For this reason, Bandcamp doesn’t allow purchases from its app, as Apple would compromise Bandcamp’s payment of around 82% of sales directly to artists. At the time of Bandcamp’s acquisition, this tale of the small fry (artists) suffering under the heel of the giant evil villain (Apple) was helpful as a narrative Epic wanted to argue in court. As Apple prevailed for the most part, perhaps Bandcamp’s advantage to Epic expired.

Others have noted that Bandcamp successfully unionized right after Epic’s acquisition. Bandcamp could be seen as a hot potato that might be hot enough to trigger similar moves throughout the larger company.

As for Songtradr, one must consider how a company expects to make money from something like Bandcamp. Songtradr’s statement promises that this new arrangement will “offer Bandcamp artists the ability and choice to have their music licensed to all forms of media.” Sounds great from the outside, but Songtradr presently charges its artists to enter into licensing opportunities. It’s not a lot — $50 a year for the privilege — but pay-to-play licensing platforms tend to put a bad taste in my mouth. And Songtradr utilizes all-you-can-eat licensing models. That means a business or licensee pays a yearly flat fee and can use as much music from Songtradr’s catalog as they wish.1Though I’m sure high-profile licenses like TV shows are exempt, I don’t know how many of those kinds of licenses the platform really does. Most prominent music supervisors steer clear of quantity-over-quality outlets like this. There’s not a whole lot of money for the artist under this model, and it’s doubtful a meaningful percentage makes back their yearly $50.2I’m happy to hear otherwise in the comments from artists with positive experiences.

The real question is how Songtradr can navigate the uncertainty about music rights pervasive on the Bandcamp platform. This wasn’t a problem before, as Bandcamp never got too deep into any usage scenarios that required scrutiny. That’s why the platform is rife with songs containing uncleared samples, cover songs that haven’t been properly registered, and even ‘bootleg’ remixes and appropriation of others’ recordings. Before, no one really seemed to care. But it’s a potential legal disaster for a platform that hopes to add Bandcamp artists to its licensing catalog simply by having them opt-in and pay a fee.

Songtradr will obviously require artists to sign an online contract stating that they own all the rights to the music and that they’re responsible for any legal trouble. But many artists have no idea about the rights to their songs. I still run into producers who think if they’ve bought a song, that gives them a license to sample it at will. And there are others who believe their unique ‘take’ on a classic tune makes them the credited writer. More often, many artists will opt in without consulting (and maybe without identifying) their songwriting — or label! — partners, inspiring a whole mess of headaches. Sure, an online contract with the artist will allow Songtradr to shift the legal blame, but believe me, after a few mid-profile licensing snafus where the client has to redo a project, all platform credibility is lost.

But what happens to those of us who love and use Bandcamp? As I told an internet friend, “Like reciting ‘memento mori,’ we need to always think about what we do in a world without Bandcamp because that day will come.”

I wrote in a prior blog post that having a central hub for your artistic endeavors that you own and control is essential, preferably accompanied by an email mailing list. If Bandcamp gets destroyed and your ‘store’ moves elsewhere, you need a way for your audience to know. Better yet, have your music also available to stream and purchase on your website or hub. Then, if Bandcamp or whatever is no longer an option, your audience will still have the means to access your music while you explore the next steps.

Elaborating further on this point, Peter Kirn wrote something important about Bandcamp and any potential replacement on his Create Digital Media blog:

Honestly, the real problem is, given the nature of platform capitalism and the governance of private corporations being for investor benefit, ultimately all these tools are doomed. It’s not really fair to say these services are artist-first, because artists ultimately have limited say over them. That’s not to say we shouldn’t use these services, but the dependency on them – and the extent to which we’re serving someone else’s needs – should absolutely be a worry.

That’s the rub. Not only should artists have hubs and sites under their command, but we need to start thinking about true artist-first tools that operate on community rather than profit. I feel that the rise of things like ActivityPub is pointing the way. And I know smart people are working right now on this sort of thing for the discovery and distribution of music.

I’m hopeful that the uncertainty around Bandcamp might be the thing that moves thought into action. When you consider how interests are presently aligned, here’s never been a better time to make something new and important happen for the betterment of independent music.

Punching the Disinfo Machine

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This Spotify dust-up is fascinating, isn’t it? I spent much of the last 48 hours talking with people about it, explaining what’s going on, and mildly debating it (though please remember that I don’t argue on the internet). People have questions and there’s still a lot to understand about a situation that’s starting to feel like a runaway train. I thought it would be fun and helpful to do a self-Q&A to clear up some things and offer an opinion on why I believe this is a meaningful moment.


• Why pick on Spotify? There are awful content and disinformation podcasts distributed by Apple, Amazon, and more. Is it hypocritical to leave Spotify but remain with the others?

It’s hard not to argue that under late capitalism any large corporation will end up going down a dark path (just ask the folks who eventually removed “Don’t be evil” as their unofficial motto). Thus sole reliance on any corporation, especially for one’s artistic output, is something to avoid whenever possible. There’s also the messy perception of shared endorsement when the platform one relies on does nasty things.

While disinformation is undesirable on any platform (and the climate change denial stuff concerns me just as much as the pandemic stuff) there is a difference in how Spotify participates in its distribution. Spotify’s relationship with Joe Rogan’s podcast involves a layer that’s more complex than other negligent platforms that host disinformation podcasts.

Spotify paid Joe Rogan over 100 million dollars for exclusive rights to the podcast. That’s a lot. And artists and subscribers aren’t entirely wrong in feeling like they help pay for that by utilizing the platform. And, by paying this much for a single property, it’s in Spotify’s interest to relentlessly promote that property. In my experience, Rogan’s podcast is the top podcast recommendation on the Spotify dashboard a lot more often than it isn’t. I’ve never listened to a podcast through Spotify in my life but, almost without fail, there it is. Recommended for me and, I’m sure, recommended for you as well.

Those are the things that Neil Young et al. find most disturbing, which differ from, say, how Apple hosts toxic podcasts on its platform. This doesn’t excuse Apple or anyone else — pretty much every platform is guilty to some degree. Which I think is another reason why we’re picking on Spotify: there’s a sense of helplessness in the sea of disinformation and targeting Spotify feels slightly hopeful. It’s a message delivered to a company financially invested in the disinformation and a tangible loss (in invested money or share price) might make other platforms think twice.

Admittedly, this sounds quixotic. But I don’t think that’s a reason not to strive for a world we’d like to live in.

• Why are Neil Young and Joni Mitchell the ones pulling music off Spotify and not any current top artists?

The particulars of major label artist deals are varied and tricky and often put the artist at a disadvantage in distribution decisions with their catalog. (I released three albums through a major in the late ’90s and there is no way that I’m able to pull those off Spotify.) No matter how big newer artists are (and I’m talking ones who came up in the last 20 years) they are most likely still locked into contracts that last multiple releases and decades. So, it’s not surprising that ‘legacy’ artists are ones able to do this as they’ve gone through at least a few renegotiations, theoretically able to get better terms and more control each time.

But — many legacy artists also have their hands tied, thanks to those huge payout publishing acquisition deals that have been happening. Neil Young may have negotiated the final say over where his songs can appear in his recent deal (and Warner Bros is an accomodating partner) but it’s possible Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen didn’t. We don’t know. Related: this tweet from David Crosby.

• What about Taylor Swift? She kept her music off Spotify before. Wasn’t the whole point of leaving Big Machine Records to gain control of her music rights?

As for Taylor Swift, we can only guess at why she won’t (or will she) do anything. She did sign a new deal with Universal Music Group after her fights with Spotify and Apple, so her amount of control may have changed (and I assume she was aided in those fights by a label that was apparently sympathetic with her wishes, which would be ironic). Yes, her owning her masters was publicly a big part of the Universal deal, but I bet that ownership comes over time (10 years after the release date on a recording, for example) rather than right away — but different than the perpetuity of her Big Machine terms so better for her in the long run.

Plus, the fact that Swift has an antagonistic relationship with her former label which controls most of her recordings probably means she couldn’t remove everything even if Universal agreed.

• OK, if the artists can’t remove music from Spotify shouldn’t they at least all speak out?

Yes, a lot of these artists that don’t have control over their recordings could and probably should speak out — and some are! But there’s the danger everyone doing the “thoughts and prayers” thing could become performative overkill and fade with no real bite like tweeting a black box did. In my opinion, if an artist really wants to make an impact, don’t mention Spotify at all in posts, on the artist’s website, and in public (unless to occasionally remind listeners not to go there) — send fans to other platforms. Bandcamp’s a great choice.

• I can’t help but think that Neil Young and Joni Mitchell won’t have enough impact. Only older music fans care about them, not the demographic that Spotify wants to reach.

Hey, I’m a Gen X’er who likes Neil Young — I was converted after seeing him out-feedback Sonic Youth in the early ’90s. But, okay, Neil and Joni may mainly appeal to the ‘olds.’ You know what, though? Large and important parts of the music industry are still being run by the olds (including the journalistic side). The impact may be subtler and greater than you might think.

• Where do you think this is going?

My hope is that we’re another step closer to a split in the music industry and how music is consumed. That wouldn’t be anything new — until streaming came along, the independent label and artist ecosystem existed separately from the corporate one with some overlap. The introduction of streaming brought the promise that those sides could live peacefully under one roof (or platform). We’re starting to see the problems and ethical conflicts brought about by that notion. Here’s something from 2019 I wrote on this topic and, surprise, Neil Young plays a role in that post, too.

Gingerbread Mixtape

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ASCAP, BMI Partner To Launch SONGVIEW Comprehensive Song Database → If you’re a music publisher, perennially at the top of your Xmas list is a central database for looking up song rights information. In other words, a search engine that’s PRO agnostic: input a song and find out the writers, the publishers, and the shares no matter the rights owner. But BMI’s search only shows songs with BMI representation, ASCAP shows only ASCAP, and so on. So, until you strike gold, you’re going from PRO-to-PRO to find writer and publisher details on a song. 

Here’s a start: today, BMI and ASCAP announced Songview, a search platform that shows results from both repertoires. It’s slicker than the companies’ previous search engines (it’s especially an upgrade for BMI) and seems to return more accurate results. This will make things easier, but I’d love SESAC and the others to come on board. And my face would assume a permanent joyful expression if one day Songview included details from international publishers and PROs. How cool would it be to look up a song and see if other publishers control it in different territories? Often it seems that half of a music licensee’s job is figuring out this complexity, investigating like a song-rights sleuth. Regardless, I’m encouraged by Songview. Fingers crossed that these are early days, and the participation of other PROs on the platform is on the horizon.

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Every holiday season, David and Jennifer send us (and other lucky friends) an assortment of hand-crafted gingerbread cookies. This year I got a mixtape. Goes great with coffee. (Be sure to check out David’s blog 1000 Cuts.)

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Holy Tongue – Holy Tongue → No one knows where dub goes. UK duo Holy Tongue are doing their damndest to track it down. Witness: Post-punk spliced with dub the way it was done, anachronistic but futuristic like if at the end of Primer the time machine room was revealed to be This Heat’s Cold Storage studio. Holy Tongue are Valentina Magaletti on drums and percussion and Al Wootton on guitars, synths, and the occasional siren. The performances are improvised, phase two of the magic apparently happening on the mixing desk where the Tubby/Sherwood spirit inspires all manner of echoing, hi-hat filtering, spring reverbing, and other ravishing embellishments. The result is as good and gritty as many early ‘80s On-U experiments. It’s refreshing in 2020 to hear something so raw yet technical, unsequenced but rhythmically tight. There’s no word whether Holy Tongue is a one-off or a continuing affair. I’m rooting for the latter (and live shows!). This tradition of exploratory studio hybrid-dub needs to live on and on and on, like a tape delay’s rising, infinite ghost tail.

YouTube Grapples with the Short and Unintentional

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Here’s an interesting development in how YouTube handles claims of copyright infringement for the appearance of “very short or unintentional” musical content. Let’s go to TechCrunch:

Going forward, copyright owners will no longer be able to monetize creator videos with very short or unintentional uses of music via YouTube’s “Manual Claiming” tool. Instead, they can choose to prevent the other party from monetizing the video or they can block the content. However, YouTube expects that by removing the option to monetize these sorts of videos themselves, some copyright holders will instead just leave them alone. […]

Creators were also given tools of their own that let them easily remove the clip or replace the infringing content with free-to-use tracks.

The Verge:

Creators on YouTube have increasingly struggled with record labels claiming copyright on their videos when snippets of music appear momentarily in the background, like from the radio of a car passing by. YouTube’s new rules don’t stop these claims from happening, but they attempt to discourage the claims by removing a key incentive for copyright holders: the ability to make money. […]

There are a couple of big caveats to the policy, though. It only applies to “manual” copyright claims — that is, when a record label or other rights holder identifies something that belongs to them and files the violation notice by hand. If a music clip is caught by YouTube’s Content ID system, which scans videos for infringing material, then rights holders will still be able to make money off of the video, regardless of how brief or unintentional the music is.

Complete Music Update:

YouTube also suggests creators make sure that there is no music playing in the background when a video is shot. Even though, in many countries, that would be covered by a copyright exception anyway, meaning no licence should be required. But, of course, rights management tools on user-generated content platforms are still struggling with the ins and outs of copyright exceptions and, in the US, the always ambiguous concept of fair use.

There have been exceptions for music use considered ‘diminutival’ (a fancy word I learned from a lawyer at Podcast Movement in reference to, say, singing a single line from a song in your podcast). And traditionally music that appears in live broadcasts — for example, a news report with a song playing at a business where an interview is taking place — is exempt. Though, in that case, any not-live rebroadcast would need to clear the song. It’s tricky.

In the past, a music rights-holder could claim a song appearing in a video that falls under the category “very short or unintentional” — like a song blasting out of a passing car for a second — and monetize the entire video for herself. In some cases, this claim process makes sense, but, in others, it’s potentially abusive. The Verge notes a popular YouTuber who lost monetization on a prominent video because he quoted a line from Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer.”

YouTube’s new approach is unique. Monetization became an incentive to overindulge in copyright claims, so that option is no longer available for these short uses in manual claims. Instead, the video can be blocked, or its monetization credentials removed for everyone. The video creator has the option to edit the offending song out of a problematic video to reinstitute monetization. It’s important to note that if the Content-ID robot identifies a song, then all bets are off — as before, the rights-holder can claim full monetization without any options to the video creator.

The solution is flawed and, I’m sure, an experiment. The push-back is that any video that incorporates a song becomes a derivative work of the infringing content, no matter the length or context. Thus the work becomes the claim of the infringed rights-holder. I see that point, and the recent EU judgment on Kraftwerk’s metal-on-metal hit shows how diminutive length often doesn’t matter.

But my feeling is that, for now, this is a suitable compromise. The legal boundaries of user-generated content are still under review. Experiments like these will help define how we, as rights-holders, deal with an ‘everyone is a creator’ culture in a way that exercises ownership without discouraging spontaneous homespun creative works.

Red Bull Music Academy’s Closing and the Mirror Universe

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Marc Schneider in Billboard:

Energy drink maker Red Bull is ending its partnership with consultancy company Yadastar, which oversaw the Red Bull Music Academy and its associated entities, including a radio station, event and festival series and online publication. As a result, RBMA and Red Bull Radio will cease operations in their current forms as of late October, Yadastar announced on Wednesday. […] Whether that means the ultimate end for Red Bull’s foray into radio and other types of music-focused projects Yadastar oversaw remains to be seen. A Red Bull spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Corporate patronage is always tricky, even more so in the current age when ‘brand partnerships’ are how some artists are able to maintain careers freely. But Red Bull’s embrace and support of usually electronic, often uncommercial music didn’t come off like a brand alliance. You can either see that as a savvy success in sophisticated brand management or a resource-draining failure. I bet Red Bull’s attitude steadily shifted from the former to the latter over 21 years. All I know is I’m a huge fan of the music history journalism on Red Bull Academy Daily — check out this Simon Reynolds piece on the North American ‘60s acid rock electronic avant-garde! — and many of the programs on Red Bull Radio — holy cats, this entire archive of Kirk Degiorgio’s Sound Obsession show! But I don’t think I’ve popped the tab on a can of a Red Bull drink in at least a decade. I’m not alone, and I’m sure plenty in C-level management at the company have issues with Academy fans like me.

Ed Gillett in The Quietus:

… however gentle Red Bull’s advertising may have been on the surface, it’s self-evident that those holding the purse strings would have expected a meaningful return on such substantial investment. RBMA’s vast trove of learning and experience may have functioned as a public good, but it was not incorporated or owned as one – ultimately, if and when it no longer made financial sense to Red Bull’s owners for it to exist, then its importance to a wider community of artists and listeners could never have been enough to save it.

In this, RBMA reveals the uncomfortable truth that many of the most influential nodes in our collective network of globalised underground music, whether news sites subsidised by property developers or streaming platforms funded by venture capital, rely not only on the creative communities who provide their content and create their value, but also on the continued indulgence of wealthy benefactors, whose priorities can and will change. In Red Bull’s case, an expectation of the eternal good will of CEO and owner Dietrich Mateschitz might be viewed as optimistic, given his widely-publicised and noxiously reactionary political views.

Is a reliance on (or an optimistic holding-out for charity from) corporate patronage keeping grassroots artistic communities from forming? What will happen to the community around Red Bull Music Academy? Is it shattered? Will we all go home now that the money isn’t there? Or, more importantly, do we need that money to maintain an influential and productive community?

I look at dublab which has independently operated as an online radio station — and, yes, a community of artists — since 1999. Sure, they list RBMA as a ‘programming partner’ (I don’t think there’s any funding involved), but the organization is, for the most part, listener and event supported. There’s a culture based around dublab, very much tied to the Los Angeles underground. They don’t have the impact of a Red Bull Radio but imagine a dublab in every city with an underground music scene. Now imagine all those stations and communities networking and supporting each other. That’s powerful stuff, and a CEO’s supposed altruism isn’t required.

Let’s circle back to the high-quality content RBMA, and its contributors, have gifted us. In the paragraph above I mentioned two favorites: the Simon Reynolds article and Sound Obsession show archive. I hope you aren’t reading this after October, clicking those links, and finding dead web pages. That’s another worrying problem — art becomes ephemeral when it’s subject to and owned by a corporate patron. If Red Bull is ready to wash its hands of the expense of artistic charity, what further incentive is there to keep the content online?

Terry Matthew in 5 Magazine:

We like to think that information, which wants to be free, will also propagate on its own: that once released, a document or story will be replicated in so many places that you can never take it down again. The internet is forever, we think – but it’s not. According to a New Yorker story by Jill LePore about the Internet Archive, the average life of a web page is about a hundred days. […]

Carter Maness brought this up four years ago about the fate of thousands of blog posts he’d written while employed by AOL and other media companies. “We assume everything we publish online will be preserved,” he wrote. “But websites that pay for writing are businesses. They get sold, forgotten and broken. Eventually, someone flips the switch and pulls it all down. Hosting charges are eliminated, and domain names slip quietly back into the pool. What’s left behind once the cache clears? As I found with that pitch at the end of 2014, my writing resume is now oddly incomplete and unverifiable.” Maness published this story on The Awl, itself defunct and starting to show visual signs of code decay.

Of course, this isn’t solely a problem of corporate patronage. dublab could cease operations tomorrow, the entire site and archive vanishing into the digital ether. And it’s not just a digital feature either — there have been repeated stories of film history destroyed in warehouse fires. But things do get messier if RBMA claims ownership of its material and Simon Reynolds can’t re-post his article on his blog, or Kirk Degiorgio isn’t allowed to upload his Sound Obsession archive to another site. That’s where the subject of patronage matters the most — when reproduction is possible and warranted, but the dual roadblocks of sponsored ownership and digital obsolescence realize a mirror universe where the artwork never existed.

🔗→ Red Bull Music Academy, Red Bull Radio to Shut Down
🔗→ What Does Red Bull’s Corporate Exit Means For Underground Music?
🔗→ 404: The Internet Has A Memory Problem

Don’t Let Music Become Software

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Above: another pic from the sticks, hope I don’t get ticks. I’m hiding out in this remote location for a couple more days.

I’m a fan of email newsletters — I subscribe to way too many — and one of my favorites is Cherie Hu’s Water & Music. Even outside of the newsletter Hu is one of my favorite music industry writers/pundits, and she seems to reserve her most thought-provoking opinions for the newsletter. And 2018’s final edition of Water & Music, titled ‘The Music Industry’s Inconvenient Truths,’ is a corker.

The premise revolves around answers to the question, “What is one truth about the music industry that very few people agree with you on?” I can’t say I strongly disagree with any of the responses Hu received, and this one bolsters the direction of my consulting work. But it’s Hu’s two answers to the question that elicit the most thought — this newsletter’s been reeling in my head since I read it a few days ago.

Hu’s first answer has familiarity as she’s dropping some Seth Godin knowledge and I just finished his latest book, This Is Marketing. The concept of the ‘smallest viable audience’ is emphasized, which states that an artist should only seek to please his die-hard fans. Musicianship and ‘honing the craft’ remain important, but not at the expense of serving the needs of those who support you. Says Hu:

Let’s put it this way: as long as music can be materialized as an item or activity whose purchase generates revenue for somebody, music is a product. People who buy or engage with a musical product are referred to by the industry as “fans,” so “fan” is just another word for “customer.” Customers buy the products that best satisfy their own needs and desires. So, like in any other industry, the best music products most effectively address customers’ needs and satisfy clearly-defined gaps in the market that other products haven’t filled.

In This Is Marketing, Godin argues that we are all marketers as individuals seeking to make a change in others. For the recording artist, that change is as simple (or complex) as convincing a listener to check out her album rather than someone else’s. Godin then challenges us to think of ourselves as something more than marketers — also as teachers, delivering value and reward to our customers/fans. With a teacher mindset, we’re encouraged to produce meaningful content for those who are paying the most attention.

I could go on and on about this but I’ll save it for a future post. I’m cutting myself short as I can’t wait to get to Hu’s next proclamation: “The word ‘creator’ does more harm than good:”

I understand that the word “creator” might be the simplest, most easily accessible term for addressing all possible users releasing content on a given platform. And don’t get me wrong: democratizing creativity is undeniably a force for good, and the last thing the world should do is give fewer people access to tools for making art and expressing themselves. But who owns and profits from that creativity is an entirely separate debate, in danger of being obfuscated by the widespread adoption and promotion of “creator” as a job title.

It may seem like semantics, but the way we adopt and use language rewires our thinking (hello, George). Hu’s point— which I never considered — is that the more we refer to ourselves as ‘creators,’ the easier it is to submit to the notion that our creations are in fealty to others. Notice how the services almost all use ‘creator’ — a sampling of examples Hu points out include YouTube Creators, Facebook for Creators, Spotify’s “Creator Marketing.’ So when a platform sneakily claims ownership of our work — as Spotify did with its #PraiseV campaign (see Hu’s newsletter) — we’re desensitized against protest. Hu again:

Throughout history, the democratization of creativity has coincided with a dilution of clarity around ownership […] [and] the mechanisms by which other companies can claim IP ownership in a world of democratized creation are becoming much swifter than reading through tens of pages of a record contract.

I feel like the tech platforms — Spotify, Apple, Amazon, et al. — would like us to start thinking of music as software. That is, we’ve ‘created’ something that’s inseparable from their technologies. Just as Omnifocus, my to-do app of choice, won’t run and can’t exist without my iMac, a song can’t exist without Spotify. Then we start thinking of our music as dependent on the platform when, of course, it’s the other way around. 

That’s one thing I love about music publishing. Its framework forces us to think of compositions as separate from the recordings and undetachable from the songwriter. A song isn’t a creation, per se, but an idea tied to an individual (or individuals, if there are co-writers). The tech platforms have had their problems with music publishing, showing that the intimacy of composition may help protect against music becoming software.  But, as Cherie Hu points out, the real battle may be fought through language and how a shift in simple phrasing affects the ownership mindset of future songwriters. Let’s hold on to our ideas and understand that songs are breathing things that exist on their own, platform be damned. Don’t let your music become software.

P.S. — I realize this last bit may seem in contradiction to the first, where it appears I’m referring to songs as product. But it’s not in opposition at all if you understand the type of marketing we’re doing as artists. Godin’s This Is Marketing will help you understand and I recommend it. 

P.P.S.— There’s no disrespect intended to software and software makers. But I feel programmers have a better understanding of their IP rights in the milieu of platform-dependence than songwriters and artists do.

Dubset’s Major Move

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TechCrunch:

Spotify and Apple Music could soon get the legal grey area of music like remixes and DJ sets that today live unofficially on SoundCloud. Sony Music Entertainment today became the first major record label to allow its music to be monetized through unofficial mixes thanks to a deal with rights clearance startup Dubset. That means Sony’s master recordings will be indexed by Dubset, and rights holders will be compensated even if just a tiny one-second snippet of their song is used in a DJ set or remix.

A source tells TechCrunch that Dubset is getting closer to securing deals with the other two major labels Warner and Universal.

If it can lock down all three, remixes and DJ sets featuring almost any music could be legally hosted on the top streaming services instead of being barred or removed for copyright infringement. That might eliminate the differentiation that’s kept struggling SoundCloud afloat. Illegal music uploaded there has sometimes flown under the radar since SoundCloud is protected by Safe Harbor law regarding user generated content. But if it’s legally available on Spotify, Apple Music, and elsewhere, listeners wouldn’t have to go to SoundCloud.


Could we be stepping closer to a mainstream acceptance of remix culture? A future where derivative works are not only allowed but encouraged is a divergent music future, indeed. As previously stated on this blog, if you can clear unauthorized remixes using Dubset, then why not clear samples eventually? We might be entering an era where most music is fair game for creative mutation, and the original artists get paid. How will that work with songs already released, especially the ones that sneakily didn’t clear drum loops or other samples? Should clearance lawyers start looking at new career options?

As far as Apple Music and Spotify go, I really can’t see them opening up their services to user-uploaded content a la SoundCloud. I’m ready to be surprised, but I do think those predictions are off the mark. The Verge gives a clue to where this might be headed for the two big streamers:

DJ mixes have historically proved to be especially difficult for monetized distribution. “The average mix is 62 minutes long and has 22 different songs in it, and those 22 different songs are represented by over 100 different rights holders,” {Dubset CEO Stephen} White tells The Verge. Using Dubset’s technology, a 60-minute mix can be processed in just 15 minutes.

During that 60-minute mix, White says, MixSCAN will fingerprint every three seconds of audio. “We’re using a combination of audio fingerprinting technologies and fairly advanced algorithmic approaches to identify the underlying masters that are being used in a mix or a remix,” he says. Although MixBANK asks DJs themselves to identify the masters, White says this is just to help validate MixSCAN’s results.


Apple’s Beats 1 Radio regularly broadcasts sets by newsworthy artists and celebrities, but the Beats 1 platform still fails to make the news. These DJ events need exposure outside of the ephemeral original broadcast. Wouldn’t it be nice if the sets were recorded and archived, and then available to play on demand via Apple Music? I think that’s what’s happening here. A different sort of license is required to make these DJ sets available on demand, and every song (and, yes, unofficial remix) must be cleared for this type of usage. Theoretically, Dubset’s technology would not only clear the songs in the mix, but it would be able to do so in 15 minutes. A Beats 1 set could be available to stream on Apple Music within thirty minutes of its broadcast. Voilà. And I’d wager Spotify has similar ambitions.


Previously and Previously and Previously

Blockchain: Anchoring Music in Time and Space

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Benji Rogers (dotBlockchain Music) via MIDEMBLOG:

Blockchains represent the opportunity to anchor a digital event – in this case, music – in time and space. To say “at this time, in this place, these are the people that own the work.”



Today, in 2017, if I’m a songwriter or an artist, I have nowhere in which I can digitally express my rights. As an artist, I come out of the studio, I put that recording on a 20 year-old format like a FLAC or a WAV or an mp3, then I send it out into the world. And I rely on all these other architectures and databases to link together, talk to each other, and get me paid. The problem is that you usually only find issues after they’ve happened, and I just don’t think that’s a modern way to converse machine to machine, using these old formats.



If you’re going to create a new system to digitally enscribe rights, do you do it in a centralised way? That is, do you want to rely on one entity to be the holders of the keys, and therefore give them the ability to overwhelm the system? And if so, you have to trust and rely on them being good people and not wanting to screw artists or performers. If we consider that many centralised systems have been attempted before and have failed, what blockchains represent is a decentralised system, where you are equal among all peers within the system.



That’s powerful because today, if we put our rights into mp3s or WAV files, they’re all alterable. Wherever they go, there’s no way to talk to them. You have to talk to the service providers that administer them and pay out on them. What I think is a much simpler path is if you create a smart, modern digital asset, which is the music with the metadata, and you write that music & metadata to the blockchain, then what you have is a decentralised way of looking at 360°s of the rights of the asset itself. Therefore, wherever I send that asset, if changes are made at the blockchain level, they will express themselves outwards to the asset.



So the obstacles to overcome are that a bunch of the music industry does not want the transparency that this would engender; and a bunch of the music industry is highly invested in payments not reaching the right people in the right way. But that said, what those parties and players are seeing is that if they’re holding a thousand euros under the table, they’re losing out on a million over the table. This system would allow for massive speed in sync licensing, and in confirming who owns what, as opposed to who we think owns it. And I think the other obstacles are ideological: “we’ve already built everything we need, and we’re going to carry on with that, so you take your fancy blockchain somewhere else.” I think that’s a head-in-the sand attitude. It wouldn’t be the first time; hopefully, it’s the last.

Blockchain and the Rights Management Renaissance

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Mediachain Labs blog, one year ago:

The problem is simply that no central database exists to keep track of information about music. Specifically, there are two types of information about a piece of music that are critically important: who made it and who owns the rights to it. Right now, this information is fiendishly difficult to track down, to the great detriment of artists, music services and consumers alike.



If we want to enable maximum value flow and creation, we’ve got to solve the data problem first. Given that context, we should view a blockchain solution as a simple metaphor for shared, networked, media metadata.



Platforms like Spotify and Soundcloud have an incentive to find a reliable, long-term solution to the fractured data problem in order to avoid future lawsuits. Spotify seems to be leading the charge, having recently committed to “fix the global problem of bad publishing data once and for all”. They also have the scale and technical resources to ensure the availability and operation of the network.



Mediachain Labs is leading the open source development of Mediachain, a decentralized data network that aims to make it simple for organizations, creators, and developers to share and reuse information about creative works. As a shared metadata network for music, Mediachain offers a uniform interface to data contributed by multiple participants with no central authority. Because Mediachain is open source and decentralized, all participants remain in control of their data and there is no central point of failure.



TechCrunch, today:

Spotify has acquired the Brooklyn-based blockchain startup Mediachain Labs, whose team will join the company’s office in New York where they will work on developing better technology for connecting artists and other rights holders with the tracks hosted on Spotify’s service.



This is an area where Spotify can use some help, as it turns out. Last year, Spotify settled a licensing dispute with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) in the U.S. over unpaid royalties. Spotify had claimed that it didn’t pay out the royalties because it simply didn’t have the necessary data to help it figure out whose claims were legitimate, or even how to locate the parties. It said it lacked an authoritative database that covered all existing music rights. This opens it up to litigation, which is obviously not the ideal way of managing these payments.



With Mediachain, Spotify potentially has a solution on its hands – but instead of building out a centralized database with music rights information, it looks like it will build a decentralized one. Mediachain says it will turn over the technology it had already built to the open source community as it moves to Spotify.



There’s this announcement – and the dotBlockchain Music Project’s recent alliance with SOCAN, Songtrust, CD Baby, and FUGA – and ASCAP, SACEM, and PRS for Music collaborating on a blockchain-powered “shared decentralized database of music work metadata with real-time update and tracking capabilities” … could we be on the cusp of a rights management renaissance?



Previously and Previously.



Update: CMU Daily once again with the definitive take:

How do you convince the music industry that you’re taking the data issues that continue to hinder the streaming business seriously? Tell em you’re going to fix it via the blockchain and ‘boom’, no one knows what you’re taking about, but boy are they impressed.

Video: Saving “Happy Birthday”

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Here’s a short video documentary on the sinuous story of that song everybody knows and sings and how overnight it went from being a Warner/Chappell cash cow to the public domain. The affair offers some insight into the often complicated worlds of music publishing and rights management.

For years, global music publisher Warner/Chappell claimed copyright of the “Happy Birthday” song, demanding payment for any public performance of it. Jenn Nelson tells the story of her four-year campaign to prove that the company did not in fact own the rights to the world-famous song, whose tune was composed by two sisters in Kentucky in 1893.



Previously: HERE and HERE and HERE,