8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

NFTs for the Rest of Us

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Since my last swipe at NFTs, the hype and debate have skyrocketed. Thankfully, some are looking into the ecological concerns (beyond the band-aid of buying offsets) where solutions would ultimately benefit all blockchain technology applications. And others are exploring how to use the malleable format of NFTs to create or enhance a new kind of art.  

Unfortunately, many see eight-figure sales of a digital collage, and their eyes become dollar signs out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. The overwhelming conversation around NFTs is driven by monster-sized auction results and incredulous “she got how much for what?” takes. This chatter drives the motivation of many artists getting into NFTs: it’s all about making loads of easy money.

Of course, I believe that deserving artists and musicians should be paid handsomely for their art. Duh. But if you’re looking at Beeple getting $69 million for his NFT (and a lot more is going on there) and thinking, “I need to get in on that,” you might want to examine why you’re creating art in the first place.

I’m an idealist, and I think that using the hope of an NFT payday to guide your artistic process is no different than letting a soft drink company change your song lyrics for an ad. That’s cool if you’re cool with it, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that your money-making scheme is anything else just because it’s attached to hip technology.

Seth Godin and Bob Lefsetz have written wise words on NFTs with varying levels of criticism (or realism). But I think that MusicREDEF’s Matty Karas has written the most useful critique so far on what NFTs mean for the music industry. I’m going to quote it almost in full because more people should read it:

Show me this works and I’ll believe NFTs really, truly work: Put an album up for sale as an NFT, straight up, with no bonus content, no scarcity, no exclusivity. A simple $9.99 token available anytime to anyone who wants it. Why would anyone do that?, you ask. For the same reason anyone would sell an MP3s on BANDCAMP or ITUNES, I’ll answer, with the bonus that everyone, from the artist to the songwriters to anyone else who needs to get paid, can get paid instantaneously, no waiting weeks or months, no need to ever wonder if the numbers are being reported accurately, no need to worry about someone pirating the music, and if someone wants to resell it at a discount (because that’s the only way you can resell something that’s readily available) or at a markup (because maybe one day you’ll put it out of print), the artist can get a cut of the resale either way. I get the fun of auctions and the allure of exclusivity and the dream of seven-figure transactions, and there’s a place for all of that of course … But if you’re telling me NFTs are important because they’re a way to authenticate ownership and control distribution and streamline payments, then show me they can do that without raising the price of an album from $9.99 to $9,999.99 and without creating one more experience your average fan can never have.

That’s the rub. There’s a ton of promise in NFTs and blockchain for artists and labels. The technology adds personalization and ownership to digital music and might be a path for fans to move away from the mess streaming’s gotten us into. But before that can happen, we’re going to have to stop looking at NFTs as a high-dollar fad, a get-rich-quick shortcut, or patronage from the crypto-affluent. It’s time to get into the bones of what the technology means for everyday fans, artists, and recording artists and steer the conversation toward the future.

Update → Via a recent post on David Gerard’s Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain blog:

Put a large price tag on your NFT by buying it from yourself — then write a press release talking about your $100,000 sale, and you’re only out the transaction fee. Journalists who can’t be bothered checking things will write this up without verifying that the buyer is a separate person who exists. Just like the high-end art world!

Tony Wilson’s Three-Way Proposition

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Lest we forget, Factory Records impresario Tony Wilson was a digital music pioneer. Marking 13 years ago today since his untimely death, The Guardian profiled Wilson’s ill-fated start-up, Music33. This venture was an online MP3 store, launched three years before the iTunes shop (but, to be fair, a couple of years after eMusic). 

Wilson approached the majors, but they wouldn’t get on board. If you remember, the prominent record labels were, at the time, adamantly opposed to download stores and even more resistant to unbundling songs from their albums, a built-in feature of Music33. “People want to buy songs,” Wilson insisted. He did enlist some cool indie labels like Skam (home to Boards of Canada), Mark Rae’s Grand Central, and Blood and Fire. The latter was a dub/reggae reissue label that I adored and had no idea until today that Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall was partly responsible. 

Music33 didn’t go well, ahead of its time like a lot of Tony Wilson’s endeavors. Download speeds circa 2000 didn’t cooperate, users had to redeem their purchases via passwords, and the management of micro-payments was impossible. Music33 was doomed to fail. 

In just a few years, technology solved all of those problems for Music33’s successors. But there was one idea Wilson had that didn’t carry over to our modern paradigm. From The Guardian piece: 

Wilson conceived Music33 as an online record store. The price of a song would be split three ways – 11p apiece for the website, for the artist and for their record label. Wilson felt, as he told me in 2000, that “these shits” – the labels – “saying to the artists: ‘You can have so much per cent’ can go screw themselves.”

The three-way split is an intriguing proposition. That arrangement strongly favors the artist as, after recouping, the artist also gets part of that label split — or all of it, if self-released. That’s in addition to a mandatory third of the total proceeds. Of course, the artist would need to be in direct contact with the store to get her 1/3 share which is problematic. But, as we’re dreaming here, imagine that neighboring rights organizations like SoundExchange handle the artist’s portion. That direct relationship for artist payments already exists with SoundExchange, and gathering performers’ royalties from downloads (or streaming) isn’t that far from what the organization already does.

What if Music33 had taken off and set the tone for the structure of download payments, evolving into the standard rates for streaming payouts? With artists guaranteed to receive at least 33% of streaming royalty, today’s landscape would look quite different. 

Update: As I tweeted, songwriters and publishers would still get the short end of the stick in Music33’s alternate timeline.

🔗→ ‘You’ve been smoking too much!’: the chaos of Tony Wilson’s digital music revolution

The Limits of Experimentation

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The absence of a significant musical trend or cultural movement so far in the 21st century: I’ve attributed this to a lack of territorial isolation in that movements (artistic and cultural) would spring out of ‘scenes’ that existed locally but not globally. Now that we have constant connectivity, this separateness is rare, and thus so are movement shifts.

There may also be an element of technology involved, and not just in the advances of global connectivity. Technological progress has created musical trends and genres; think of the increasing number of audio multi-tracks and how that begat Sgt. Pepper’s or Pet Sounds. Or of the fuzz guitar creating psychedelia, the drum machine and sequencer creating electronic dance music, etc.

We can look to film as a guide. There’s a dramatic difference in movies produced in the ’70s versus those in the ’60s and in movies shot in the ’60s compared to those in the ’50s. Many people, especially the young, in the ’70s, would have a hard time watching ’50s movies as they seem old-fashioned. The shift in style and look is pronounced. There are aesthetic differences, too — subjects that were taboo at one time became commonplace decades later, for example — but often, technological developments that influenced the culture inspired these changes.

Think of Jean-Luc Godard and the jump cut. An editing technique that was so radical at the time of Breathless is commonplace in film and TV (and YouTube) now. Godard made it revolutionary because cinema, as a developing art form, still had areas left to explore. As time moves forward, the technology of the medium is no longer one of limitation. 

Another example is the brilliant Russian Ark, an ambitious 2002 film created in a single long camera shot. Digital filmmaking was new, and the hard drive space available to the cinematographer dictated the ‘single shot’ running time of Russian Ark. Compare this to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, meant to look as if it is a long, single-shot movie, but throughout, there are several sneaky cuts. The length of a roll of film limited Hitchcock as he had no access to hard drives, but this did not make Rope any less radical in its era. Now, the single-shot film is commonplace — a technique used and overused by modern filmmakers with an almost unlimited amount of digital storage space at their disposal.

Limitations of a medium breed experimentation as the artists push and explore what is possible. With limits removed, this experimentation takes other forms.

Epiphany in Yekaterinburg

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If there’s a thread running through what I write about on 8sided.blog, it’s how the rush of progress affects our culture, specifically as it pertains to art and creativity. It’s tempting to focus solely on the technology as it’s what’s driving most of this progress, but I’m fascinated by the big picture effect on human society and you and me. Most of the time, I’m thinking about music — how we listen to it, how we make it, and what value we put on it. The blog’s tagline is ‘thinking about music’s place in the 21st century’ and that about sums it up.

Last year I hit 50 years (I think I just passed the Brimley/Cocoon Line), and I often think about how I recorded my high school punk band on a 4-track cassette recorder, tape hiss my worst enemy. And then, in college, I cut reel-to-reel tape with razor blades to splice together extended dance remixes to play on the radio. I was a film student for a while, and I loved the monk-like discipline of cutting film in the same way. In about five years, technology erased all of these activities. I was part of the last generation to touch tape with a razor blade.

I often tell the story of obsessing over a magazine record review as a teenager and trying to find the album. I lived in Central Louisiana, and a lot of independent records were hard to come by. But I’d look for this record that I only read about for months and months and months. I finally found it on a family trip to Baton Rouge, in a hip record shop on the outskirts of LSU. So excited! And when I got home and put that record on, it sounded like the greatest thing I ever heard. That obsession, that hunt, that feeling — is that still a thing?

But lest you suspect I’m on a ‘let’s go back’ nostalgia trip, know that I would have traded all of that for the technology we have now. I’d trade my experiments with the 4-track cassette recorder and all its creativity-inspiring limitations and all the tape cutting. I would even trade that obsessive feeling of the record hunt that’s impossible for me to explain to anyone 15 years younger than me. I mean, I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be a teenage music fan with the world’s recordings available anytime — to read a review and thirty seconds later I’m listening.

There’s been a shift in my brain as I move from one era to the next, a shift that happens so fast that I can’t help but notice it. No boiling frogs here. And it’s still happening, and it’s happening to all of us, whether we’re 50 or 15 or 35 or 95. That’s what fascinates me — those moments when I realize the game has changed and the way I process art or approach creativity has, too. And it seems like this happens every month now.

Yekaterinburg, Russia on a map

A story: in early 2001 or thereabouts, I was somehow booked to DJ at a basement nightclub in Yekaterinburg, Russia. I had the expected American assumptions of a club night in Siberia (or the Urals — there’s some debate about that), that I’d be blowing minds with all of my hot-off-the-presses tunes that these isolated punters had never heard before.

I walk into the club and immediately hear the local DJ before me not only playing loads of tunes I had planned to play in my set but also playing fantastic music I had never heard before. I was stunned. We were three hours deep from Moscow by plane! How did the DJ find this music? I went into the DJ booth and noticed that he was playing off burned CDs marked with Cyrillic Sharpie scrawl.

I was witnessing digital music changing the world. Napster, Soulseek, and all the others leveled the playing field. Suddenly DJs everywhere had access to most of the same music as me, and it was time to step up my game. I remember standing in that DJ booth realizing the weight of this — music was suddenly ubiquitous, and fans in faraway cities you’ve never heard of can hear it, love it, and rock it out in their DJ sets. In the snap of a moment, my world seemed completely different.

This post was adapted from the debut episode of my email newsletter Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care. Click here to check out the full issue and subscribe.

Looking Back to Go Forward

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Predicting is a slippery business. We can spot trends and have a general idea where things are going, but how can we accurately predict? Is it worth the effort? Alvin Toffler said that “No serious futurist deals in prediction,” while Warren Ellis stays out of the game as “it’s a quick way to look like an idiot.”

For example, in the ’90s, there were plenty of yearly predictions, but few that foresaw the approaching tsunami of the internet, soon to wipe away the music industry. Some accurate predictions, or at least ones that the powers-that-be would listen to, would have been helpful. Instead, there were a lot of ‘idiots.’1I didn’t see the tsunami coming, either.

David Bowie was known for his prescience, and he wasn’t afraid to casually lay down a prediction or two. After all, it’s the seasoned player — but one open to changing possibilities rather than in resistance or denial — who has great insight on the future. The young are often seduced by the new, while nostalgia binds the oldsters. But some are like Bowie, using tradition and history as lenses for viewing technological disruption.

Here’s what David Bowie told the New York Times in 2002:

“Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity … So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.”

The idea seems quaint now but, in 2002 — the age of Friendster! — Bowie’s words were a shot across the bow. The most radical part is his acceptance, a confidence that the genie is loose, and the bottle is rolling down a hill. Only a few in the industry felt this way. Instead, there was the grasping, the hanging on, the desire to extend the status quo of inflated compact disc profits.

Some more from Bowie:

“ I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way,” he said. ”The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.”

Again, crazy talk for 2002. Of course, copyright does still exist, but Bowie wasn’t too far off. The magnitude of user-generated content and YouTube’s use of ‘safe harbor’ under the DMCA was unforeseeable, from a copyright perspective, in 2002. It turns out Napster was the pre-show.

But this disruption isn’t total. That’s why it’s wise to listen to voices that can look back and understand how technological developments fit within longstanding traditions. We can change how we listen to music, but we’re still listening to music in the same way. We can change how we make music, but we’re still essentially making music in the same way. Our incentives remain untouched by the march of progress.

Looking forward is important for reasons of preparation and, as my friend Craig says, “going where the puck’s headed instead of simply chasing the puck.” But we should always remember why we’re here. Despite all the talk of AI and VR and which tech company is acquiring a different tech company, we want to love music. We want to get excited and tell our friends and exist in this music universe as social beings. David Bowie is right that changes are happening whether we like it or not. But the exciting part is working out how these changes bring us together as music fans. To lose sight of why we’re here is as misguided as chasing the genie’s bottle down that hill.

With that in mind, I participated in SynchTank’s Trends to Watch in 2020 (‘trends,’ not ‘predictions’), joined by three industry pundits of serious smartness. Bucking Ellis and his quote above, their predictions are wise and thought-out, and their proximity to my opinion certainly helps my case.

I’ve been thinking a lot about social media and an artist’s fealty to corporate platforms. My contribution to the Trends piece reflects this and combines prediction with a dose of wishful thinking:

Over the past decade, artists and labels — using technological tools — have become increasingly independent, capturing control and ownership of publishing, masters, and avenues of distribution. But independent marketing fell into the trojan horse of social media, with many artists exclusively relying on the likes of Facebook to get the message out. The keys to discoverability were firmly in the hands of a new crop of corporate gatekeepers.

Undesirable actions by these platforms — such as algorithmically cutting access to fans and unrepentant involvement in political and privacy scandals — started opening eyes to the pitfalls of this reliance. Displeasure continues to grow as these companies fight back by further segmenting audiences and requiring even larger ‘boosts’ to reach one’s fans. The 2020 election — a looming social media shit-show — will move this dissatisfaction even more into the mainstream.

Thus, independent artists are increasingly introducing homegrown strategies that are entirely within their control. We see this in the rising talk of reclaiming fandom, direct support of artists, and the importance of individual ‘stories.’ And we see new twists on old concepts. Email lists, creative artist sites, blogs, localized grassroots outreach — tactics that predated social media, now coming together with the latest technological innovations to form a new breed of DIY.

In the aftermath, social media will remain a tool, but merely a tool — downgraded but still handy. It’s a hammer, not a house. Independent artists will understand that, along with increased interest in owning masters and administering rights, control over how artists reach and interact with their audiences is just as vital.

The point stands: technological breakthroughs, especially those that promise too-easy solutions or purport to disrupt, should face the lens of tradition. We relied on these technologies — these shortcuts — to deliver our messages to fans. We believed online connections were authentic when, in fact, our fanbase was closer to commodity, inaccessible and exploited in our names. Instead, we should use technological tools to claim our rights, creative works, and fanbases, not to transfer these to others. That transfer is the easy route, and unfortunately, it’s what the technology was built to offer.

That’s why I’m looking back as I go forward. The future is filled with possibilities that are promising and, yes, others that are terrifying. But considering the roots of why we act like humans — how our intentions are evergreen — can keep us sober and grounded as technology continues to seduce and overwhelm. Our decisions and actions as artists and listeners should rely on our deepest fundamentals and a core understanding of what brought us here. So, TL;DR: In 2020, let your love of music be your guide.

🔗→ David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur
🔗→ Music Industry Analysts on the Trends to Watch in 2020

The Culture-Changing Rollable TV

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Chances are you heard about the 2019 International CES debut of this revolutionary television:

As the host notes, these will be super-expensive at first, no doubt. But flat-screen TVs were expensive as well, and now almost everyone has one. Likewise, I think this ‘rollable’ TV (and the inevitable competing versions) will catch on in a big way. What interests me is how our culture is affected when the TV is no longer the centerpiece of our living rooms. A TV that’s made to be hidden— replaced by a painting or whatever is behind its previously allotted space — proposes a mindset that’s foreign to almost every generation. Can you imagine a house where a big screen isn’t the focus of the primary social room’s furniture and all the attention?

Music Recognition and the Future of Venue Royalty

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DataArt’s Sergey Bludov, writing for the Medium publication Hackernoon, has posted an interesting rundown of Music Tech Trends to Bolster The Music Industry in 2019. He writes that 2018 may have been one of the more pivotal years for technology in music, both in innovation and adoption, which sets things up nicely for 2019. The article explores the potential of sexier tech-topics like artificial intelligence, VR/AR, and wearables, but the area I’m most excited about might seem mundane in comparison. Sergey places it at the top of his list, so I think he shares my enthusiasm. We’re talking about using music recognition technology as a tool to calculate accurate performance royalty payments from song play in venues. I swear — this is super-exciting:

The music industry faces a massive challenge when it comes to monitoring and tracking where and how often a song is being played. Without effective Music Recognition Technology (MRT) artists, publishers, and other rights owners lose their royalties each time music is played in a club, bar or any other venue. And, of course, this is a very serious problem, with some estimating that 25–35% of mechanical licenses in the U.S. are unrecognized on streaming platforms alone. Fortunately, a range of experts around the world are working diligently to solve this major issue through MRT innovations and implementation.

Automatic music recognition isn’t new. In fact, Broadcast Data Systems (BDS) was widely-deployed by the early 1990s for recognizing songs played on U.S. radio stations. However, even though the core algorithm for recognizing music has existed for decades, a large percentage of venues are still not adequately equipped with MRT. The good news is that many companies such as DJ Monitor heading up the technology side. And of course, once the music is effectively recognized, the data is sent to the performance rights organizations (PRO) that handle payment distribution. Paris-based Yacast is another tech company working in this space, as well as SoundHound Inc.’s Houndify, Google’s Sound Search, and others.

I’ve written about this before. Music played in venues (restaurants, nightclubs, hair salons, etc.) cannot be accurately tracked unless someone’s taking notes and submitting tracklists to the PROs. So, historically, the payments venues make to the PROs (mainly BMI and ASCAP here in the states) go into a pool. The top artists of that quarter — who the PROs assume are getting the most venue-play — receive payments from this pool. Of course, this is ludicrous — though there hasn’t been any other realistic solution — and causes frustration for the gothic club or the hipster coffeehouse that’s never playing ‘top artists.’

Shazam-like technology is a hope to solve the problem. With a device installed in venues, the music coming from the speakers can be monitored 24/7 with the info sent to the PROs. Theoretically (and realistically) that info is used to pay out accurate venue royalty to the artists receiving play.

A few countries and PROs in Europe are already testing this — PRS in the UK and GEMA in Germany are working to implement this technology — and it can’t come soon enough for the US and the rest of the world. However, most countries only have one performance rights organization, which makes it easy to select and install the device and have it report back to the appropriate party. The US is an outlier (go figure) in that there are technically four competing PROs. It may be a battle to get these companies to agree on a single device that will report data to each. I’m sure each fork of that data will need to be a private and trusted stream so, for example, BMI can’t see how ASCAP is faring. If they can’t agree then the untenable status quo may hold or — even sillier — venues may be asked to install a separate listening device for each PRO.

The impact of virtual reality and A.I. on music over the next few years will be fascinating to watch. But, to be honest, I am a lot more curious to see how this song-tracking technology develops.

Why Streaming is the Future of DJ’ing

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Download sales are in a free-fall as acceptance of music streaming continues to grow. If you’re in the dance music industry, you might feel some immunity (at least for now) as DJs are your primary customers. And DJs have to download, right? They still need the digital files on a USB, or a CD if they’re (ahem) old school. Well …

Complete Music Update:

Dance music download platform Beatport has acquired Pulselocker, the DJ-centric streaming service that ceased operations late last year.

Pulselocker allowed DJs to access music to include in their sets. It integrated with various DJ software and hardware systems, worked offline, and reported usage back to rights owners. As a result of the deal, Beatport plans to utilise Pulselocker’s patented technology within its own planned streaming service later this year.

Coverage of this acquisition has noted that Beatport previously attempted a streaming service and failed. But it’s easy to see that the plan here is much different. While Beatport’s earlier streaming ambition was to be like a dance music Spotify, the Pulselocker acquisition promises something new: a subscription streaming service for DJs.

I remember once terrifying a DJ friend of mine with the prediction of a ‘Wi-Fi CDJ’ that would access the DJ’s library from the cloud. The result is not that much different than inserting a USB, really — the DJ would be found scrolling through song titles on the CDJ’s screen and queuing selected tracks for play. It made sense for this prediction to be subscription-based, and for the DJ to be able to organize the catalog with folders and tags beforehand using an app. There would also be an offline element in case the network connection got spotty. My friend was worried as this alternate future killed dance music’s market for downloads.

But the last market flying the flag of paid downloads isn’t as healthy as we’d like to believe. DJs are a tribal group, bonding tightly over music and club life. The thought of piracy may not ever enter their minds but sending MP3 copies of a dozen hot tracks to a DJ buddy is an acceptable notion. The dance music world is also rooted in an often desperate promo culture, with labels sending links to free downloads of the latest release to hundreds (sometimes thousands) of tastemakers in one go. Don’t get me wrong — many DJs are still buying downloads, but many others are incentivized not to.


The streaming DJ set-up is disruptive and offers an alternative. The convenience of instantly adding to one’s library transforms copying and sharing amongst DJs into recommending. And I can also see promo services doing deals with Beatport or other streaming-for-DJ services, allowing private ‘lockers’ of pre-release music accessible only through invitation.

There is an issue of bandwidth and audio quality. Discerning DJs prefer the uncompromised quality of a WAV or AIFF audio format, which means large file sizes. But bandwidth and speed are always getting better, and I can imagine these futuristic CDJs utilizing a cellular network in addition to Wi-Fi internet, or can be reliably wired in by ethernet or other systems. There’s also the offline option, and I guess that libraries would be downloaded ahead of time into temporary onboard memory – or transferred to a USB for backup – in case of network failure. If this all works as planned then why even play MP3s? The DJ has the preferable WAV or AIFF option at her fingertips (or, likely, a future lossless format devised for streaming DJs) so why settle for inferior sonics? The overall sound of clubland improves.

For labels and self-releasing artists, the available data will be mind-blowing. Theoretically one could check stats on a Monday morning to see how many times a track got played over the weekend, in what cities, and maybe even — if these future CDJs are geo-located — what clubs. There’s also a payment to labels per play which might mirror Spotify’s subscription model (though I hope Beatport considers adopting a subscriber share model). At first, this may seem a severe downgrade from download income, but when one considers the decline in shared MP3s and the potential monetization of promos (not to mention the improved potential for discovery), then things get a little rosier.

Another factor making a difference is the conceivable ease of reporting venue play for performance royalty collection. Ideally, I’d like to see the streaming service or even the CDJ itself automatically report the set list to performance rights organizations. If that doesn’t happen, then the DJ or venue can easily output a list of the songs played during a set for online submission. This innovation, coupled with the advent of audio fingerprint technology in play identification (already being tested in a handful of countries such as Germany and the UK), helps solve the longstanding problem of inaccurate distribution of venue-related performance royalty. Historically, a nightclub’s yearly license payment to a performing rights organization (such as BMI and ASCAP) goes to an assumed pool of top-tier artists, no matter the music policy of the club. These technological solutions would radically change the landscape, and non-mainstream clubs could finally see their mandatory licensing fees going to underground artists. So, in the near future, a dance music producer could find direct income from DJ play via streaming subscriptions and venue performance royalty.

It’s inevitable that DJs will use streaming or cloud-based services as their ‘record crates’ (well, save for the vinyl hold-outs — like me). DJs are not strangers to disruption, having transitioned from 12”s to CDs to USB sticks to laptops in just over thirty years. But this is the big one, changing how we select, promo, discover, collect, play, and monetize. The art of DJ’ing responds to the technology so it will be interesting to see how this next step affects the DJs, their ingenuity, and the sounds they play.

Songwriters Getting Paid as the Robots Listen

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There are a few options for businesses to legally play music on premises, whether that business is, say, a nightclub, restaurant, or hair salon. An in-store music service like Mood Media (formerly Muzak) can supply channels of pre-cleared tunes for a subscription fee. These services are like radio in most cases, as the business won’t be able to choose any particular song that’s played. The business could also just play music by friends and enter into a direct licensing agreement with each songwriter. That would be a huge hassle and dramatically limit the available catalog.

The most popular option is to pay for the compulsory licenses offered by the performance rights organizations – PROs like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. These licenses allow the business to play songs represented by each PRO. A few factors determine the fee, such as venue capacity, and the business usually obtains a license from all the PROs. For one thing, it’s a lot of work to determine which PRO represents a song the venue wants to play, and the music customers would like to hear are distributed amongst all the rights organizations. Paying fees to all creates full coverage and the freedom to play whatever you’d like.

A venue’s requirement to get a compulsory license is one of the most misunderstood aspects of music publishing. The venues themselves especially misunderstand this requirement. I’ve spoken to many business owners who don’t understand why they have to pay for such a license. The phrase “it’s nothing but a shakedown” is used on more than one occasion. But the simple fact is this: if your business is profiting off of someone else’s music – and playing music to enhance your business qualifies – then the songwriters should get a cut of some sort.

There is another argument made by business owners that I find harder to dispute. Nightclub owners often argue that the fees they pay to the PROs aren’t going to the songwriters whose songs they are playing. This statement is often true. Presently, the PROs have no way to track the songs played in their licensed venues. The businesses could submit a list of all the songs played in a day, but no one is going to do that. Instead, the PROs pool the collected fees and distribute the royalty to songwriters they assume are the ones getting played the most. In other words, popular songwriters, for the most popular songs.

I can empathize, as I DJ’ed hundreds of times exclusively at underground clubs and very few of the songwriters I played (if any) ever saw a penny. I’ve heard tales of clubs in some territories tackling the problem by having the DJs write down all the songs from their sets. I guess it’s the thought that counts, but this is obviously an unreliable and haphazard solution.

There’s a change coming, though. Advances in audio recognition are making song tracking in venues possible. Using technology popularized by the likes of Shazam, songs get identified and, in turn, the appropriate songwriters paid. From a story in Complete Music Update:

Collecting societies PPL and PRS For Music have confirmed that they are expanding a pilot project to test the use of music recognition technology in clubs, pubs, bars and hotels to monitor what music is being played in those spaces.

Peter Marks {CEO of UK clubbing chain The Deltic Group} has welcomed the pilot, saying: “Music is the very heartbeat of our business and it’s in our interest to see that talented artists are rewarded for their creations. With online streaming and other digital technology, it’s increasingly difficult for songwriters and musicians to make a living from their creations, so anything we can do to help and attract and support the latest local talent has to be a good thing”.

I believe GEMA in Germany has also been testing this out.

The ramifications are enormous and welcome; accurate tracking in venues (and eventually across other outlets such as radio and sporting events) will create a great benefit for non-mainstream songwriters.

It remains to be seen if US PROs might look to adopt this technology. The fact that there are multiple PROs in this country may prove to be a stumbling block. A device that listens, identifies songs, and sends data to the PROs would have to be installed in every participating venue. It would be a hassle if each PRO had its own device for every business to install. Could they agree on one shared device? Part of me thinks it unlikely as the US PROs are fiercely competitive. That said, the recent news of ASCAP and BMI collaborating on a musical works database gives us a glimmer of hope.

The US is often the country left behind when it comes to advances in rights management. Let’s hope our industry is proactive in embracing this technology solution to a longstanding problem.

‘Ways of Hearing’ Explores Listening in the Digital Age

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I’m excited about this new Radiotopia podcast named Showcase. Mostly because the first season consists of the six-part series Ways Of Hearing, hosted by Damon Krukowski who you may know as the drummer for Galaxie 500 and a member of Damon & Naomi.

Apparently inspired and culled from Damon’s recent book The New Analog, Ways Of Hearing explores how listening has changed as audio delivery moves from analog to digital. It looks to go much deeper than that, touching on subjects like modern changes in the sharing of information and how audio affects our sense of time. So far the podcast doesn’t go down the tired analog vs. digital rabbit hole, and I don’t expect that it will. Listen to the first episode HERE.

On a side note: certain bands or songs send waves of melancholy down the spine. For me, Galaxie 500 is one of those bands. When “Tugboat” starts playing in the first episode of this podcast I’m overcome with tingles. The song evokes a time and a place, an overwhelming nostalgia, a part of my life (my early 20s) filled with loneliness and sadness. I recorded a Galaxie 500 copycat song, complete with my imitation of Dean Wareham’s first album wail, and played it for a girl I liked. She asked me why I was so sad and then I never heard from her again.

And if you’d like to read the harrowing tale of a great band dissolving then you should check out this oral history of Galaxie 500 on Pitchfork.


Update: If you’re having trouble listening from the player on the show’s site then try this player on PRX’s page.