Licensing
“It’s totally cool if I only use 00:30 seconds- that’s not infringement”
Aug 26th
This is a phrase I hear all too often. For some reason, this has been ingrained into our heads throughout the years… The idea that doing something wrong is fine if you do less of something that is wrong is preposterous to me. That is like thinking that speeding in your car is OK if you only go 10 miles over the limit rather than 15… speeding is speeding and copyright infringement is copyright infringement.
The proper legal term for this is “de minimis” use. Or in the long form latin, “de minimis non curat lex” -meaning the law does not care about trivial things. This is in fact a common defense to a law suit (much like it’s more overused big brother Fair Use). This is not a RIGHT… but a DEFENSE. There is a big difference in these two words.
De Minimis VS Infringement
photocopying a cartoon and putting it on the fridge = de minimis
photocopying a cartoon and placing it in an advertisement or displaying it publicly even in a very trivial way= infringement
So how does this apply to musical recordings…? The fact is, the de minimis rule does NOT apply to sound recordings. As decided by the Sixth Circuit court of appeals in Bridgeport Music Inc. VS Dimension Films. The use of any part of a sound recording in sampling or otherwise is infringement. Whether you agree or not, this is in fact the law now.
For more information on this and other topics in copyright infringement check out this page
Bottom line is- if you are going to use music in any length, way , or form- Pay the owner of the intellectual property.
What is Sound Exchange?
Dec 1st
Very good question. Most of us know Sound Exchange is the digital PRO created to deal with royalties generated over the internet and through digital music devices, however it is still quite vague to a vast majority of the musicians and writers what EXACTLY Sound Exchange does.
Thanks to Youtube, these questions can now be answered in 2:26 .
Enjoy
Billboard Hollywood Film and TV Conference
Oct 31st
Well I just returned from the Billboard Hollywood Film and TV conference in LA. Boy let me tell you… this was a conference room full of naysayers. At a time when there are more opportunities for music… how is it that we can’t seem to correctly monetize it? This article I found on twitter points to many of the concerns happening at present in the industry. Shrinking budgets and growing costs are making breaking into the film world even more difficult than it has been in the past. It seems that when we as property owners give one concession price-wise… the studios begin to think this is going to be the modus operandi for remainder of their deals…
As an interesting contrast to this, we at Naxos are actually doing quite well in the licensing game. I attribute most of this to the fact that we are incredibly diversified in the licensing business. I feel we are lucky to have intellectual property that bodes well in so many different areas. Perhaps this is the silver lining to having such a niche product… after all Classical Music is not for everyone… But there IS a market for it. and I am thankful for that.
While there were many panels and events surrounding the conference.. several stick out to me as being the most valuable for my conference experience. Notably, the Music Supervisor Roundtable- the “State of the Union” , the Thursday keynote featuring Sasha Baron Cohen and his brother/composer Erran Baron Cohen, the behind the scenes look at “Glee” and last but not least, the “Music for Commercials and Beyond” panel featuring the creatives behind such popular commercials as the United Airlines, talking babies, and milk rock opera. <vids below>
Suprisingly the Baron Cohen’s were quite interesting. Erran actually is a classically trained trumpet player and composer and composes all of the music for his esteemed brother’s films. I never began to think that they actually gave a damn about the music in their productions- but it actually has quite a bit of bearing on their productions. This to me is a great thing!
Sasha Baron Cohen and Brother
The” Glee” panel was equally interesting as it addressed the marketing challenges of creating the series. Imagine taking the greatest rock songs ever written and then trying to convince the publisher that it is a good idea that you arrange it for show choir and put it on Fox. This is the challenge they faced at the inception of the series… Once they got the series running- the apparent crossover appeal of this music was realized when they began seeing massive single sales after each night’s episode. The theme song this week was RIAA gold certified and this is without any “real” record promotion. Their complete album drops in three weeks and they expect it to be a top 10 seller quickly! This is a great example of cross promotion between TV and the record industry. This to me is a huge success story.
Glee Panel- Lea Michelle
Of course one cannot go to the Billboard Conference without matriculating to the Hunnypot party. This year’s party was no disappointment. Once again at the “Heights” club on Hollywood Boulevard, PJ Bloom and his band of wild misfits brought tons of great bands, djs and networking with the creme de la creme of the film music industry. Great times were had by all and the party was rocking properly when “The Crystal Method” took the state at 11:00. From then on- they rocked my face off with some of the rawest beats I have heard in years. They made me miss and appreciate my old friend, Electronic Music… once again.
Crystal Method
All in All, this was a great experience once again. Every year, I find that I meet more creatives and find more connections in the vast film industry. This is definately a conference to visit if you are interested at breaking into this industry. Contacts abound.
New Developments
Jul 28th
It has been a busy summer! I have enjoyed my fair share of boating trips, business travel and just plain summer fun. While I have been hard at work and play, I have also been working on a few things in the interwebs.
So for my 9-5 (more like 6:30am – 11:00pm) I have been tossing around the idea of starting a licensing-centric blog. DUH- I already have one of those- but this would be a more refined, professional concoction of randomness than the fine blog you are currently reading. This would be a kinder, gentler blog. (well, right now- it’s more like a blog-ette) This blog would be centered on the licensing of music… specifically Classical music, but not confined to the genre specifically. There will ultimately be a great deal of cross-posting as many of the topics I cover there will be of interest to Is This Binding. Plus I have high hopes that having another presence in the blogosphere will help drive traffic to my other muse, NaxosLicensing.com . that site is still under construction- but will ultimately be a one-stop destination for licensing Classical, World and Jazz music for film, TV, advertising, etc.
I am also quite proud to say that the Naxos Music Library- the product for which I was originally hired at Naxos has now officially come of age. In just 5 years it now features more than 500,000 tracks (that’s a HALF MILLION- people!!!) of Classical, Jazz, Folk, World, Jazz, and Rock music… a virtual college music library/public library music collection! In that time- we have also managed to make sure that this service has matriculated to the very top research institutions in the world! Basically every major University you can name is a subscriber and a great deal of public libraries are as well. It is now utilized in more than 28 different countries! <proud papa moment> If you havent ever checked it out- be sure to go take a look… there is free trial access available… take it for a test-drive.
Ok- that’s all for now… Til next time
Royalty Free Music VS Classical Cues
Jun 22nd
(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!
Evan Roth’s “Intellectual Property A$$hole Competition”
May 26th
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/
Who is the bigger intellectual property asshole? Is it the artist who has amassed a small fortune based on "appropriation" yet still sends cease and desist letters to other artists for appropriating his work? Or is it the largest (and only) US based nationally-oriented news service which fails to recognize "fair use" even when it literally stares them in the face? I have created hand painted canvases of Shepard Fairy's Obama Hope poster, and Mannie Garcia's Associated Press photograph and put them for sale on my website here and here. ..... stay tuned for updates on the winner.
(For those unfamiliar with the Shepard Fairy / Associated Press intellectual property battle over the Obama Hope poster, here is a good place to start.) (via 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.”
Remix: the Movie…
Apr 29th
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
Yo Ho, Yo Ho a Pirate’s Life for me (not really)
Apr 20th
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
Apr 7th
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
Mar 26th
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.