Cost of Touring Undermines Free-Music Theory

Free-music subsidized via tour income - widely utilized as an excuse in the justification of music piracy - has always been a long shot, unchallenged concept; but the rising cost of gasoline has recently shed light on just how difficult it is to make a living by touring - even in the best of times. Adding insult to injury, artist's creativity is now further taxed with deriving new ways to hit the road without going bankrupt in the process.

From Luciana Lopez, The Oregonian

Tune up the bikes and scrape up the french-fry grease: It's summer touring season for bands. As gas prices climb ever upward, musicians have had to get creative at something more than their music. Portland band Blind Pilot, for example, is traveling under pedal power, and nationally touring psych-rockers Apollo Sunshine are converting their van to run on vegetable oil. There's an easier way to save gas money, though: Portland rocker Michael Dean Damron is just flat-out canceling dates.

Different solutions, but all applied to the same problem: how to balance the need to tour set in motion by declining CD sales against the skyrocketing cost of gas, which makes touring more expensive and less profitable.

Link

Music Performance Fund in Peril

From Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times

For 60 years, the Music Performance Fund, an unsung charity financed by a small fraction of record company sales, has paid the piper -- and just about every other kind of musician -- by helping to bankroll thousands of free concerts annually all over North America.

Now, though, the popularity of music downloads and file-sharing via the Internet has eaten away at record company revenues. And as the industry has dwindled, so has the performance fund's ability to underwrite pro bono shows.

"'Dwindled' is an easy way of saying it's gone to pot," said John Hall, the trustee who has managed the Music Performance Fund for most of the last 18 years.

At its peak in the early 1980s, Hall said, the fund got more than $20 million a year from record companies. Last year, the figure was $3.4 million. In 1984, the fund helped pay musicians' salaries for 55,000 free performances. Last year, there were 9,060. The organization's staff is down from 36 to eight.

Link

U2 Manager: ISPs Strangling Music Industry

From Patrick Frater, Variety:

U2 manager Paul McGuinness launched a blistering attack on the world's Internet providers Wednesday, accusing them of strangling the music industry.

Speaking at the Music Matters confab in Hong Kong, McGuinness likened ISPs to "shoplifters" and accused them of "turning their heads" away from the music industry's troubles and "rigging the market."

"The recorded music industry is in a crisis, and there is crucial help available but not being provided by companies who should be providing that help -- not just because it is morally right, but because it is in their commercial interest," McGuinness said.

Link

International Labels Push For Baidu Boycott Over Music Piracy

From Dow Jones:

Chinese and international record companies called Tuesday for an advertiser boycott of Baidu.com Inc., the country's leading search engine by search volume, over complaints of music piracy.

The statement was signed by record companies including Universal Music Group, EMI Group PLC, Sony BMG Entertainment, Warner Music Group Corp., and local Chinese companies.

The group of companies and associations has sent a letter to advertising companies asking them "to carefully consider whether they should continue to place advertisements on pirating media," the statement said.

Baidu's search engine provides links to thousands of sites that carry unlicensed copies of music. Record companies have filed a series of lawsuits against the site in
Chinese courts.

Link

Recording Industry Lobbied $1.5M in 1st Quarter 2008

From AP:

Recording industry spent $1.5 million in first quarter to lobby on piracy, Internet broadcasts

The Recording Industry Association of America spent more than $1.5 million in the first quarter to lobby on copyright theft and other issues, according to a disclosure report.

As the main trade group for music recording companies, RIAA lobbied the federal government on legislation to strengthen U.S. laws against counterfeiting and piracy, including online theft of music. Piracy is one of the top issues for RIAA, which says music theft results in $12.5 billion annually in terms of lost jobs and wages, tax reeves, personal income tax and lost corporate income and production taxes.

Link

A Bill of Rights for Songwriters and Composers

Created by ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers

We have the right to be compensated for the use of our creative works, and share in the revenues that they generate.

We have the right to license our works and control the ways in which they are used.

We have the right to withhold permission for uses of our works on artistic, economic or philosophical grounds.

We have the right to protect our creative works to the fullest extent of the law from all forms of piracy, theft and unauthorized use, which deprive us of our right to earn a living based on our creativity.

We have the right to choose when and where our creative works may be used for free.

We have the right to develop, document and distribute our works through new media channels - while retaining the right to a share in all associated profits.

We have the right to choose the organizations we want to represent us and to join our voices together to protect our rights and negotiate for the value of our music.

We have the right to earn compensation from all types of "performances," including direct, live renditions as well as indirect recordings, broadcasts, digital streams and more.

We have the right to decline participation in business models that require us to relinquish all or part of our creative rights - or which do not respect our right to be compensated for our work.

We have the right to advocate for strong laws protecting our creative works, and demand that our government vigorously uphold and protect our rights.

Link

In the US, 58% of Music Isn't Paid For

From Guardian:

In 2007, there was an increase in the volume of music acquired for nothing and a sharp decline in the amount paid for, according to NPD's annual survey of Internet users.

Link

Music Piracy is About the Money

If the reasonable logic that follows is accurate, then nothing short of an ISP filtering mandate will save music.

From Chuck Klosterman, Esquire:

Whenever writers try to explain the collapse of the music industry, they inevitably blame the labels themselves; they point out how wasteful and inefficient the corporate structure was at places like Elektra and Chrysalis, and how unfair it is to charge kids so many dollars for a disc that costs pennies to make, and that modern consumers have come to the realization that "music longs to be free." This may all be true, but I'm not sure it's a viable explanation for things like huge layoffs at Def Jam. Lots of industries succeed despite being poorly modeled. What happened is this: Young people needed more money to pay for their rising levels of self-imposed debt, so they unconsciously gravitated toward the first technology that provided a cost-saving alternative. Because four-minute digital-song files are relatively small (and thus easily compressed), ripping tracks for free became the easiest way to eliminate an extraneous cost. It wasn't political or countercultural, and it had almost nothing to do with music itself. It was fiscally practical. It was the first, best solution.

Link

Chris Castle on WMG's Jim Griffin's ISP Tax

From Music Technology Policy:

Capitulating to the wisdom of mobs:

I view the ACS (alternative compensation scheme), voluntary or involuntary, as capitulation. Supporting these systems means that you have lost confidence that the legal system can enforce laws and that you are going to simply define the problem out of existence by making something that is illegal into something that is legal, the alchemy of mere analytics, the chorus of consultants, the wailing of the amicii, the proselytizing of the professoriate. Boy, I’m glad that they solved that problem.

Agreeing to ACS is like agreeing that the mob is right. And that’s a very, very dangerous step in a democracy.

Sampling mechanism could just as well facilitate filtering:

First, how do you answer the question that artists and songwriters will ask, namely “how much do I get paid?”

One way to divide up that money that advocates often raise is based on some kind of sampling of usage. (Jim’s EFF seems to think this is how ASCAP divides up their revenues.)

This sampling idea is, of course, dangerous ground for the defenders of Grokster at EFF. If you are going to sample peer-to-peer or BitTorrent files in order to divide up that disaggregated chunk of money, you need to identify tracks. That can be done with fingerprint technology, and there are several companies out there with fingerprinting tools. I personally don’t think fingerprinting works very well at the network level, but can work very well at the client level. There would have to be some discussion of how to get at the client.

If you can identify the tracks on P2P systems enough to sample—and this is where you would probably lose the EFF and apologists for piracy--you can identify the tracks enough to block and filter—meaning you could stop illegal tracks from ever getting onto the network in the first place.

Beating a dead horse:

This idea has been vetted, argued, legislated and rejected for a good five years, and actually goes back even further than that in the Internet world. Discussing ACS is like going to Thanksgiving dinner with your crazy uncle who always wants to argue who lost Poland. You get really tired of it after awhile.

Link

Report: Japan to Strip Internet for Illegal Downloaders

From Yahoo News:

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese companies plan to cut off the Internet connection of anyone who illegally downloads files in one of the world's toughest measures against online piracy, a report said Saturday.

Faced with mounting complaints from the music, movie and video-game industries, four associations representing Japan's Internet service providers have agreed to take drastic action, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

The newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said service providers would send e-mails to people who repeatedly made illegal copies and terminate their connections if they did not stop.

The Internet companies will set up a panel next month involving groups representing copyright holders to draft the new guidelines, the report said.

Company and government officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the report Saturday.

The actions would be among the strictest in fighting online piracy.

Link

Music Industry Proposes a Piracy Surcharge on ISPs

From Frank Rose, Wired:

Having failed to stop piracy by suing internet users, the music industry is for the first time seriously considering a file sharing surcharge that internet service providers would collect from users.

In recent months, some of the major labels have warmed to a pitch by Jim Griffin, one of the idea's chief proponents, to seek an extra fee on broadband connections and to use the money to compensate rights holders for music that's shared online. Griffin, who consults on digital strategy for three of the four majors, will argue his case at what promises to be a heated discussion Friday at South by Southwest.

"It's monetizing the anarchy," says Peter Jenner, head of the International Music Manager's Forum, who plans to join Griffin on the panel.

Griffin's idea is to collect a fee from internet service providers -- something like $5 per user per month -- and put it into a pool that would be used to compensate songwriters, performers, publishers and music labels. A collecting agency would divvy up the money according to artists' popularity on P2P sites, just as ASCAP and BMI pay songwriters for broadcasts and live performances of their work.

Link

Ambulance Chasing

Cayocosta

If Trent Reznor (or anyone else) wants to do it the right honest way, he or she should support piracy and/or condemn the music industry in such a way that provides no opportunity for personal financial gain while doing so. Otherwise, all you have is self-interested, populist bullshit contrived to make money via capitalizing on the hype of the moment - all the while (wittingly or otherwise) selling their brethren down the river.

Irish ISP Taken to Court Over Illegal Music Downloads

From Mary Carolan, The Irish Times:

Four major record companies have brought a High Court action aimed at compelling Eircom to take measures to prevent its networks being used for the illegal downloading of music.

The case is the first in Ireland aimed at internet service providers, rather than individual illegal downloaders.

Eircom is the largest broadband internet service provider in the State.

Latest figures available, for 2006, indicate that 20 billion music files were illegally downloaded worldwide that year. The music industry estimates that for every single legal downloaded, there are 20 illegal ones.

The record companies are also challenging Eircom's refusal to use filtering technology or other measures to voluntary block, or filter, material from its network that is being used to download music in violation of the companies' copyright and/or licensing rights.

Link

New Music Model for Suckers

Cayocosta

Where once ten or twelve bucks bought as many tunes, thanks to new 'models' we now have the $300 elite collection and/or multi-thousand dollar package including a personal appearance. Offers that unfortunately bilk those most loyal fans while allowing everyone else a free ride - on their generosity.

Brit Gov't: File-Sharing Legislation by 2009

From Lars Brandle, Billboard:

The British government has vowed to take up the fight on illegal file-sharing as part of a multi-stage action plan intended to ensure the prosperity of the country's creative industries.

Should the recording industry fail to break its impasse with Internet service providers on P2P activity by early 2009, the government will take action by means of legislation.

It's one of 26 key commitments for government and industry, published today in "Creative Britain: New Talents for the New Economy."

In the absence of a voluntary solution between rights holders and ISPs, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport report claims that the government "will shortly consult on options for a statutory solution," with a view to implementing
legislation by April 2009.

Link

Music Pirates Face UK Internet Access Ban

From BBC:

People in the UK who go online and illegally download music and films may have their internet access cut under plans the government is considering. A draft consultation Green Paper suggests internet service providers would be required to take action over users who access pirated material.

Under a "three strikes" rule they would receive an e-mail warning, suspension, and then termination of their contract.

Link

Victory Records Respond to Piracy

From the site:

At Victory we give away a lot of free music to help expose our artists. Unfortunately, there are some individuals that do things that are illegal, upsetting and sometimes offensive to them. Dead To Fall, Farewell To Freeway, Secret Lives of the Freemasons and Across Five Aprils have asked us to make a news post about one such person. He could have easily embedded VictorStream (which was mentioned to him) on his blog to share music and video but chose to continue to do otherwise. He has been asked nicely by the bands to take down their material. When he refused we had no choice but to defend our artists’ wishes by having a more official “take down” letter sent.

Link

RIAA Talks About Network Filters

Civilization vs. Savagery

The central concern of Lord of the Flies is the conflict between two competing impulses that exist within all human beings: the instinct to live by rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands, and value the good of the group against the instinct to gratify one’s immediate desires, act violently to obtain supremacy over others, and enforce one’s will. This conflict might be expressed in a number of ways: civilization vs. savagery, order vs. chaos, reason vs. impulse, law vs. anarchy, or the broader heading of good vs. evil.

Link

Verizon Rejects Hollywood’s Call to Aid Piracy Fight

From NYT:

More often than not companies in similar positions have similar views. But when Hollywood asked the two big phone companies to help with its fight against piracy, they responded in opposite ways. AT&T is talking about developing a system that would identify and block illicitly copied material being sent over its broadband network.

Verizon, however, opposes the concept.

Link