Is This Binding

Copyright Law told through a Disney Parody

Brilliant.  Bloody Brilliant.

I know this is quite old, but nonetheless thought I would resserect it.  I am finding myself a big fan of the many Copyright VS Fair Use videos out in the interwebs.  I may just have to make this a weekly post…

Royalty Free Music VS Classical Cues

(This is a Simul-post from ClassicalCues.blogspot.com a music licensing blog that I contribute to.)

I happened to stumble upon a fantastic blog post today while looking at my Google Alert updates. The post comes from a blog called MediaMusicNow. This is the blog of a British entrepreneur named Lee Pritchard who started a royalty-free music company which goes by the same name. The reason I make it a point to bring attention to this blog is the great simplicity in which Lee explains the licensing process. Starting with the conventional old-school major label model and moving to his own royalty free model, he explains much of the intracacies in very easy to read graphs and visuals that help even the most un-initiated get a feeling for the processes involved.

From the 3 main aspects of licensing

To the “old” standard of music licensing

Normally I am not an outspoken fan of royalty-free music as many companies in the sphere have (in my own opinion) de-valued recorded music - at least commercial recorded music. (I believe the phrase “Royalty-Free Music” is a bit of an oxymoron) Many of their buyout plans and bargain basement pricing make it nearly impossible for a label to compete and it just tends to make life a bit more difficult for folks like myself who represent a record label. The only saving grace for a record label is to rest assured that the superb quality of your recordings will out-weigh the discount of having picked your music up from a royalty free music library. Even with my internal feelings about the concept of royalty free music, I am able to find quite a few comparisons in the usage of Classical music for licensing projects and these royalty free one-stops. I would say approximately 85% of the deals I do involve music that is in the public domain, thus removing the publisher from the equation. At that point, I am basically serving as a one-stop licensing solution much as MediaMusicNow and the other companies in that part of the business. One-stop shopping and quick turnaround on deals is one of the things we pride ourselves on and no-doubt this is something that is important to filmmakers and other professionals on a tight production time line.

I urge anyone wishing to learn more about the process of music licensing, copyright and the music industry to check out Lee’s blog as it is chalked-full of great information. Heck, I even urge you to license some music from him for your next project as long as it isn’t Classical music . For that, you of course know to look here!

10 Most Creative People in Music?

Fast Company just announced their 100 Most Creative People in Business, and subsequently their 10 Most Creative People in Music lists for this year. Many of the names on the music list are recognizable and some might even be deserving this recognition, but come on… Soulja Boy as the #1 most creative person in the industry simply because he is a shameless self-promoter and used Myspace and YouTube to promote his “Superman Dance” and ultimately launch a career. Ridiculous! There are no doubt some folks on the list (read: Tim Westergren, Alex Patsavas, and Gregg Gillis (Girltalk) who no-doubt deserve to be there, but I think they are stretching it a bit with Soulja Boy and Pharrell.

Creativity in the music business means coming up with new ideas. Changing the way people think and changing consumer and fan habits. Shameless self-promotion is a great thing and these folks are rewarded for all of their hard work in album sales, sold out concerts and endorsement deals. It does not, however qualify as creativity and I don’t think it should be rewarded as such.

Therefore- I am generating my own addendum to this list. People/groups/companies who really and truly ARE creative. Who have ACTUALLY pushed the envelope. Added to this list should be (in no particular order):

Gerd Leonhard
Radiohead
Spotify
Slacker
Jim Griffin

I am sure I missed a few, but these at least round out that list and make up for the idiocy of adding Hip Hop stars to a list of industry creative powerhouses.

Evan Roth’s “Intellectual Property A$$hole Competition”

This is AWESOME!

I just happened across this site and quite obviously, the title sucked me in. Evan Roth, self-proclaimed Bad Ass Mother Fucker is an American artist based out of Hong Kong. His bio states that he has interests in technology, tools of empowerment, open source and popular culture (definately someone I would like to have a beer with). Coolest of all, he is the number one result from a “bad ass mother fucker” google search. Impressive as I would have surely thought it would have been Samuel Jackson or this

So onto the competition. Evan has staged a competition to see who will deliver a cease and desist quicker… an artist who uses pop culture to become abundantly wealthy, or the Associated Press- who claims to own the copyright on the photo (of our president). To fuel the fire, Evan has painted canvas versions of BOTH the inFamous “Hope” poster and the actual picture and is now selling them on his site. I cannot wait to see what the outcome of this is…

Below is a link to the blog as well as the text from the “contest.”

http://evan-roth.com/

Intellectual Property Asshole Competition: OBEY vs AP

Thanks go to Evan for stirring it up!! At the very least, one could say he is “ballsy.”

Orchestral composition VS Band composition… what’s a writer to do?

Ever wonder about how composers feel about band music??  Well, read this from John Mackey:

“If you’re a composer who grew up wanting to write orchestra music, and you listened to Barber rather than Grainger, you probably start with the attitude that you should be writing orchestra music, and band somehow isn’t the goal. So, you marry Orchestra. Orchestra is hot. Okay, maybe not hot, but at least she’s the kind of hot that you know you should like. At the very least, she’s very pretty. And she’s really, really smart, and speaks, like, seven languages, and she knew everybody (but she only ever wants to talk about Beethoven). But you quickly realize that Orchestra thinks she’s better than you, and she acts like every minute she spends with you is come kind of charity work. You get her gifts, and shower her with attention, but you soon realize that she doesn’t appreciate you at all, and she’s neglectful, and at worst, abusive.

And then one day, you meet Band at a party.

“What do you do?” she asks. “Um, I’m a composer,” you reply, expecting little reaction, but Band lights up and exclaims, “oh my God, that’s HOT! Do you have any music I can play? The newer, the better! Let me get you a drink!”

Band is loud. She’s not quite as pretty as Orchestra, and she’s a bit, shall we say, bigger-boned, but she has that truly “hot” aspect to her that Orchestra never had. And most importantly, Band loves what you do. Whereas it was like pulling teeth to get Orchestra to look at your new music (and if she looked, she was generally not impressed, often comparing you unfavorably to one of her many ex’s — like Dvorak), Band thinks it’s awesome. Band tells you things like “you’re special and perfect and I’ll appreciate you and your music like Orchestra never has, and never will.”

What is Composer supposed to do?! Did I mention how loud and boisterous Band is? (Let’s say she’s a screamer. Totally your type.) You have a blast when you’re with her, and your friends agree that she’s a lot cooler than Orchestra, and they see how she treats you much, much better. How can Composer not be expected to stray?

Luckily for Composer, he figured this out around the age of 30, and not much, much later. He just feels bad for all of the other Composers who haven’t yet caught on and left their dysfuncional, abusive relationships.”

John’s great works can be heard on a number of my Naxos Wind Band Classics recordings…  He also has a great blog that you ought to visit…

Remix: the Movie…

Nashville Film Festival brought some very interesting films to the Music City…  Opening night brought about appearances from the likes of William Shatner, Vincent D’On0frio, Sheryl Crow,William Lee Golden from the Oakridge boys, Mayor Karl Dean, and many others.  Although many great films were involved, I must say that one film had a real impact on me.

RiP: a Remix Manifesto is the story of Girl Talk, Lawrence Lessig and the changing culture of shared music, copyright law, fair use and usage of music that benefits artists…  In short the gray copyright law is taken to task with this great cinematic piece… best of all IT IS AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR FREE VIEWING, REMIXING, ETC!

I urge anyone interested in this subjectmatter to take a look at this film… it is both entertaining and informative… I am so glad it is available for online viewing…

Viva la Girl Talk

How big is your social media footprint… how much is too much?

Greetings friends.  As I sit here writing this, I am juggling.  Not juggling chainsaws, knives, or anything else tangible— but juggling my many faces in the “blogosphere” , “social networks”, “inter-webs”… whathaveyou.    I am doing this because I feel that it is important for not only my social life, but for MY brand.  My brand is an identity based on my outide-looking-in image which is an amalgamation of Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, my blog, Delicious, Linked In and I am sure a few I have forgotten.  Of course we all know this is important… CNN and Fox both tell us so… but how do these resources become such a part of who we are? and How do they help us in the “real world?”

In my case, I mention my own brand.  The truth is, everything today is about brand whether it’s your own, your company’s, or an alter-ego brand such as my friend’s “fat kid at camp” moniker.  It is all about that image and everything that surrounds it.  This means in order to be truly engaged, you have to Twitter, be on Facebook, Myspace, blogs, etc.  Here is where it gets really fun/tricky though.  In order to truly be a part of the global conversation you have to be on these various networks, but your message must be original (not contrived).  Classic Marketing 1.0 techniques will not gain you traction in this world.  Marketing in social media is all about creating a conversation with your consumer.  It is about the human side of marketing.

While this works for our personal, corporate and alter-ego brands— one of the venues this type of social marketing really applies itself is in the marketing of bands. The catalyst for this post happens to be the great post  I read this morning on “Hit Singularity” .  This is a great overview of free, easy social networking that can really make a difference.

10 Fast and Free Strategies To Market Your Band (Without Resorting To Spamming People On Myspace)

This is probably one of the most complete descriptions I have seen thus-far in the social-media-as-promotion movement.  Short of writing a book on it like Barack 2.0, this is short, sweet and to the point.  The fact remains that in order to succeed in the virtual world, you must have a strong footprint.  Following the points mentioned in the blog above will help you to create that footprint.

Yo Ho, Yo Ho a Pirate’s Life for me (not really)

AAARGH!

So just in case you have been under a rock for the last 5 days, the ruling is in… the founders of Pirate Bay have been found guilty in a Swedish court of law.  They have all been sentenced to one year in prison and will have to pay approximately $3 Million in damages (after the appeals process- if the ruling stands).

So what now?

The facilitators have been stopped, but what does that mean for all of the users (Pirates) populating Pirate Bay?  What does this mean for the bay?  Will it suddenly dry up?  No.  In a word… No.  This really means nothing.  The Swedish courts have placed their finger in the dyke… they have stopped the spillage for a moment, but the flood waters will remain.  The Pirate Bay remains active… servers housed safely outside of Sweden… and the pirates sail on.

There is a lot of debate going on over whether the founders of TPB were injustly convicted… whether the ISPs should be held responsible as well.  I think there are a lot of people at fault here including all named previously and in some way, I would love to see them held responsible.  However, I am a realist.  I understand that the times are changing and our industry needs to find better ways of making a living (outside of suing).  Ultimately,  the results of the pending appeals will leave a legacy of rulings that will affect the way our courts view file sharing for years to come.  The next few years will no doubt be an interesting lot…  time will tell.

As a sideline to this story, there has been a recent study stating that “pirates” are 10 times more likely to buy online music than law-abiding non-pirates.  The number of participants in the study was rather small (less than2000), but I find it quite interesting and wonder if this is in fact the way it is… according to the comments below the story- the pirates doubt it as well.

stealing intellectual property has never been so easy

Music Pirate

Last week i was introduced to a couple of websites that are disturbingly good at what they do. Someone innocently emailed them to an industry email list i am on asking for people’s thoughts on their legality. I commented first and was the recipient of a hellstorm of comments from people defending these website’s existence.

The websites: TuneNabber.com and ClipNabber.com are just what they sound like. Tune Nabber allows a user to enter the URL of any streaming audio/video content and “nabbs” it by making a MP3 copy of the audio and making it available for download on your computer. Clip Nabber does the same thing except it actually copies the entire video clip and makes it availablefor download to your computer.

All of my conventional wisdom tells me that both of these are taking content placed in a fixed broadcast format and changing the formatof that content, thus violating the rights of the content owner. Well, my esteemed brethren simply blew up on me when I made the statement “To me, they are clearly facilitating copyright infringement.” Stating that these sites were no different from Tivo, tabbed browsing or even a browser’s “save image as” function in that they simply “time-shifted” the video and/or audio making it possible for a user to watch it at a later date.

I would be fascinated to hear what anyone else has to say on this subject. To me, although it seems like a black and white matter- I do realize that all of copyright land tends to stay in the gray.

Top 10 best ideas in Classical Music- a review

Sorry for the feast and famine blog posts, but I am especially motivated this week. I was delighted when a colleague sent me a link to a new classical music blog (well at least new to me).

This blog, “The Dutch Perspective” written by Marc Van Bree is a refreshing take on cultural affairs and PR from the perspective of a non-profit PR and social media specialist. Not only did the title of his latest blog post excite me, but the content was quite exciting as well. The title, “The ten best ideas in classical music online” says it all, but as I read his David Letterman top 10 list, I realized that I (moreover Naxos) have much to do with several of the initiatives mentioned in the list.

If you are curious about the whole list, please feel free to read it and Marc’s other posts here.

I will spare you the details and go into the movements and initiatives that I/we had something to do with.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra gives away memberships to Naxos Music Library with subscriptions to the new season

“The BSO enthusiastically proclaims “Imagine leaving a concert and wanting to go right home and hear your favorite parts of the music again and again…Well now you can!” on its Web site. And rightly so. This is a perfect example of a smart collaboration that adds value to the orchestra experience.” ## That’s right folks. We did it! We are partnering with not only the BSO, but a slew of other great Symphonies to offer the highly acclaimed Naxos Music Library as a value-add to season tickets purchases. The opportunity to work with these great orchestras offering this value for their subscribers has been a wonderful experience. Hopefully more will jump on board for next season!

Keeping Score / Beyond the Score

“Although they have distinct differences, I would put the San Francisco Symphony’s Keeping Score programs and the Chicago Symphony’s Beyond the Score programs in the same category of innovation. If it wasn’t for the negative connotations, I would be tempted to use the term “infotainment” to describe the presentations. Check them out and see how you would describe them.” ## While I have nothing to do with the beyond the score project (which I think is a phenomenal endeavor), I have worked with the good folks at the San Francisco Symphony on their initiative for a few years now providing licensed music for their educational CDs and am glad that their series is garnering recognition.

Classical music on Twitter (Toronto Symphony, Aspen Music Festival, London Symphony, Atlanta Symphony)

## Along with these great Symphonies, Naxos also has several Twitter accounts. We have found that these are a great way to connect with our customer base. In case you were wondering, you can follow the official Naxos Twitter account, Naxos Direct, Naxos Music Library account, or my personal account.

I think it’s pretty exciting that we are involved with 3 out of 10 of these initiatives. I enjoy being a part of a forward-thinking leader in the Classical Music World. That’s all for now.