MUSIC LAW: CONTRACTS AND MUSIC DEALS
| Music Law • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 < • > |
How to Make it in the Music Business
File Sharing
is not theft.
DRM TECHNOLOGY & THE LAW
Standard English Language
vs Technical Language
The Economy of Ideas A Framework for Patents and Copyrights in the Digital Age. (Everything you know about intellectual property is wrong. By John Perry Barlow Cognitive Dissident, EFF Co-Founder, and Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet& Society. John Perry Vice President, MBS Comedy Development
Different Kinds of Licensing Rights
Licensing Children’s Music for Television
Process of licensing the music to Fox Television. No agents, no libraries, not even any existing relationships to leverage. Just a response with a You Tube link, verification of ownership, contracts, attorney’s review, signatures, FTP files, and it’s on. Indeed, the playing field is leveled. What a great time to be an independent musician!
CopyLeft THE CREATIVE COMMONS
Open Audio License
Q U O T E D
"The good news is that you guys have managed to buy every major legislative body in the planet, but you know the problem is, the bad news is that you're up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter than you are and will be alive when you are dead, and has historical forces on its side, and is using its technological acumen very adeptly to ward off all of your efforts of control and you're gonna lose that one. I mean you're fifty-five years old and these kids are seventeen and they're just smarter than you are. So you're gonna lose that one. But the good news is you guys are mean sons of bitches and you've been figuring out ways to rip off audiences and artists for centuries really, and all you gotta do is get outta bed a little earlier in the morning for a spell and you'll find new ways of doing this. I have every faith in you and you should give yourselves a little credit, instead of howling that you're going to be victimized. It's not like you to be victimized."
Watch Video - EFF Founder and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow who delivers a razor-wire bouquet to Motion Picture Association of America President Dan Glickman. Glickman gives the company/industry line equating sharing music with stealing which it is not! Barlow will impress you because instead of being indoctrinated to said line, he's thinking about the issues. Be sure to stay to the end, it will be worth your while.
Shutting down sites. Now that makes just about as good business sense as suing your customers. Yeah, that worked. Have CD sales gone up? Has file-trading gone down? NO! Everybody who wants to go into business, make a deal. So you're not locked into one company's future. So said company doesn't become bigger and more powerful than you are. The Net landscape is still changing. As if MySpace isn't going to be eclipsed by whatever comes next.
DON'T sue. Don't seek legislation. Come up with pragmatic licensing situations NOW! Get paid NOW, before most of these sites GO UNDER!
Fair Use - Public Domain - Resources - Copyright - Copyleft - Commons
What is art?
Duchamp said he made the first one, the bicycle wheel, just because it was fun to spin the wheel around. But when you exhibit it, when you put it into an attention field called "art," it becomes a catalyst. You must look at it differently. Yes, we should indeed pay more attention to the utilitarian world, savor its beauty as beauty. But when you find yourself gazing at it worshipfully, Duchamp turns around and says, "It's just a bicycle wheel, you silly jerk." The final result is to make us oscillate back and forth between the physical world, stuff, and how we think about stuff. It makes us look at our own patterns of attention and the varieties of "seriousness" we construct atop them.
Global digital music sales triple to US$1.1 billion in 2005 as new market takes shape.
RADIO GOING TO THE WEB CNET, 18 October 2004 Under the $1.7 billion agreement, the 12,000 member Radio stations of the RMLC will be allowed to broadcast songs simultaneously over the Internet and over the airwaves. A deal between the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) and the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC) promises to bring a much broader selection of music to Web radio. ASCAP's music library comprises 7.5 million copyrighted titles. The deal retroactively covers licensing fees back to 2001 and establishes a fee structure through 2009, replacing a system of fees based on station revenues. ASCAP noted that the agreement also avoids potentially expensive litigation between the two organizations. Vincent Candilora, ASCAP's director of licensing, said of the deal that it "indicates the true economic value of our members' music to the radio industry" and said he was pleased to provide ASCAP members with income "that they can count on well into the future." See if SOUNDEXCHANGE owes you any money.
Robinson-Patman Act
passed by the U.S. Congress in 1936 to supplement the Clayton Antitrust Act. The act, advanced by Congressman Wright Patman, forbade any person or firm engaged in interstate commerce to discriminate in price to different purchasers of the same commodity when the effect would be to lessen competition or to create a monopoly. Sometimes called the Anti-Chain-Store Act, this act was directed at protecting the independent retailer from chain-store competition, but it was also strongly supported by wholesalers eager to prevent large chain stores from buying directly from the manufacturers for lower prices.
MUSIC CONTRACTS: WHO MAKES MONEY ON TAXED MEDIA?
Simon Higgs http://www.higgs.com/ Wed, 08 May 2002 Like blank cassettes or MiniDisks or DAT tapes The Audio Home Recording Act already levies 2% of the manufacturers sales price as a fee to you. 4% is set aside for non-featured artists, of the remainder 40% for the featured artist and 60% for the labels
[1]. Every CD recorder has a $2.00 surcharge built into the price that goes directly to the RIAA. The jury is still out on whether any artists have actually received royalties from this tax. But, go back to hard media and look at what type of tangible form the copyrights are actually protecting.
"Mechanical" royalties are collected by Harry Fox (a subsidiary of National Music Publishers' Association) for content distributed on physical media (records, tapes, CDs and computer chips).
"Public Performance" royalties are collected by ASCAP, BMI, SESAC (etc.) for content distributed via radio airplay, broadcast and cable television, live, and on the Internet (this is also known as "webcasting").
Now, of course, the Internet has created a territorial overlap. When you download material that is still in a fixed tangible form (i.e. an audio data file), copyright law indicates that it should still be protected by a mechanical royalty as the consumer copies the audio file to a similar tangible form (an audio CD or by copying an MP3 to an MP3 player). When you download material that is streamed in a similar manner to radio (i.e. "webcasting"), copyright law indicates that this is the same as a "public performance", and should be protected by a public performance royalty. But on the Internet, Harry Fox collects "streaming" royalties, and ASCAP/ BMI etc. collect "mechanical" royalties. Are you confused yet? A little tip, the key word for webcasting is "non-interactive" services. If your service is interactive, then you're supposedly back to a fixed-form mechanical license. And you'd better comply with the DCMA or you're going to jail.
We have another group of problems. The royalty tracking companies that have emerged over the last five years only track streaming downloads. They don't all track file downloads (those pesky tangible fixed-form audio files the record industry manufactures on CDs by the truckload). These royalty audit systems are not designed to track comprehensive downloads of an artists catalog, only files served by streaming servers or "internet radio". I asked one vendor why, and they apparently have been given no incentive to do this by the performing rights organizations. After all, ASCAP and BMI both benefit from being able to enter the Internet streaming revenue er.. stream.
The recording industry wants to use this technology to enforce royalties on Internet Radio (because it can), without properly addressing file download royalties. Lawsuits against MP3.com, Napster, Music City, et al, only try to stop downloads from occurring, but do not properly address download royalties. Their attempts are similar to using your pinky to plug a "leaky crack running the length of the Hoover Dam".
Meanwhile, the artist is left exposed and unrepresented. One one hand, the RIAA has sued anyone in their path, while the FTC has sued the RIAA membership for collusion and price fixing[2]. On the other hand the RIAA continue to amend distribution rules to exclude the artist. Companies such as Napster and MP 3.Com can't join RIAA because of the lawsuits brought by RIAA. That excludes the 91,000 artists distributed by MP3.com (74,000)[3] and Napster (17,000)[4]. None of these artists are being served by the RIAA membership whose rights the RIAA claims to protect.
According to Negativland, the RIAA have also taken upon the multiple roles of police, judge, jury, and executioner by destroying, without due process, original masters merely suspected of copyright infringement [5]. In this case, it is when a manufacturing plant merely suspects that samples used on an otherwise original recording have not been cleared. Efforts to suppress the manufacture of works protected as fair use under copyright law is seen by some to constitute prior restraint.[6]
Artist Courtney Love issued a letter to the music industry explaining that until recently, Congress believed that the RIAA spoke for recording artists, and not a trade group that is paid for by record companies to represent their interests.
AFM & AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund Music Royalties: Does anyone owe you money?
Works For Hire - RIAA-sponsored "technical amendment" to a Congressional bill makes recorded music "works for hire" under the 1978 US Copyright Act.
WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANIZATION GENEVA - TCPA is the technological realization of the concepts embodied in the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT), which only came into effect this past May 20th 2002 (with little public notice, of course). The WPPT declares an unprecedented "moral right" of authors to control public uses of their works. That's the game plan.
Grey Album is Album of the Year 2004
Grey Album is illegal. Because of current copyright law, You are not allowed to buy a copy of the the best album of the year because of copyright law. Is copyright law promoting art? Meet Dangermouse, the most sought-after producer in the world right now, producer of the legendary Grey Album and Gorillaz Demon Days LP. Dangermouse tells us his story, from working in a London pub producing bootlegs in his spare time, to becoming the first artist to have a UK number 1 on download sales alone.
- How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work
- Compulsory License For Making and Distributing Phonorecords
- Royalties and statements of account under compulsory license
- Checklists of Required Information
- Mechanical Copyright Royalty Rates
- Get a UPC Barcode - about UPC Barcodes
- WHAT A CD NEEDS About ISRC Codes
Statutory Royalty Rates - The current (2004) statutory rate for royalties is 8.5¢ for every copy sold if the playing time for the song is under five minutes. If the playing time for the song is longer than five minutes, the rate is 1.65¢ per minute, rounding up to the next minute.
The publisher may tell you to that they don't deal with compulsories, and that you should contact the Harry Fox Agency. But they may be unaware that the Harry Fox Agency does not currently handle compulsory licenses for individual artists distributing downloads ("DPDs"). Remember the law is on your side. You are entitled to a compulsory license by law. You have permission - (a compulsory license) - as soon as you send the notice, described above, to the proper publisher.
Royalty fight clouds music subscription 2005
Webcasting Royalty Rates Set--For Now 2002
Royalty Statements - Paying Royalties
How much do you get paid when your song is streamed?
A.
Downloads/streams/sales pay only a couple tenths of a penny.
Q. Are all of these subject to the 9cent compulsory?
A. NO
CopyRight Issues: Use of early recordings for documentary video
Music encompasses a number of different licensing rights. Bob Rice AchieveGlobal
Music encompasses a number of different licensing rights. The good news is that procedures and policies for obtaining rights to use a musical composition are well established. It is also usually clear who owns the rights being sought. The bad news is that you normally must negotiate with several different parties to obtain all needed rights to use music for something other than personal PRIVATE listening.
One exclusive right of the owner of a musical composition is to control public performances.
17 U.S.C. ? 106(4). A classroom setting is, for all practical purposes, considered public performance. You must get permission, and usually pay a fee, to use music in the classroom.
Two pieces of advice. Refuse to listen to the well-meaning but misguided folks who will tell you that you won't get caught and it's no big deal. Maybe you won't and maybe it isn't, but it is at a minimum an issue of ethics. Our company faced this same dilemma. We bought the rights to a collection for use by our trainers in class. The music works great, and we stay legal.
Although we turned to a production house for the music (rather high-priced for an individual), you can purchase the rights to music created especially for the classroom at reasonable cost.
Can you just please explain why I can't just put up a website with guitar tabulature?
2006 licensing rights is the democratization of the music world. Podcasters say these free-use networks have accelerated a new way of thinking -- an online infrastructure that allows bands to build their name from the ground up. Between bloggers, live radio streams, MySpace and podcasts, a band now has dozens of avenues -- outside of traditional record companies -- to develop a global fan base. What once was a hierarchy of record studios and radio stations has been flattened by a revolution of online forces which continue to redefine the model of the music industry by the month, the week and the day. The success of MySpace has encouraged the expansion of such blogs as Music For Robots (music.for-robots.com), and My Old Kentucky Blog (myoldkyhome.blogspot.com), where communities of tens of thousands now share their new favorite tunes and bands. It also led to such streaming online radio alternatives as Live365.com, Pandora.com and LAUNCHcast (music.launch.com), which allow users to customize their own personal radio station. An endless catalogue of podcasts -- today there are around 5,000 music-only podcasts -- have, for many listeners, taken the place of radio entirely. PitchForkMedia.com what has been created through this emerging network of music fans is an entirely new system of "taste makers" -- influential voices which were once found only on radio stations and in entertainment publications -- and a new philosophy behind the marketing, promotion and distribution of music. Late last year, organizations such as the Independent Online Distribution Alliance and its counterparts offered a solution to the final hurdle hindering podcasts: the legal issues surrounding a song's royalty fees and copyright protections. By bringing hundreds of independent record labels together, and having them approve their bands' music for free-use purposes, IODA launched a service it calls PROMONET, which distributes thousands of free tracks to approved podcasters every day. Podcasters must mention the band's name, and report back on how well the track plays with its audience. According to Tim Mitchell, IODA's vice president of marketing and business development, and Dave Warner, the creator and host of the weekly podcast Dave's Lounge, services such as PROMONET -- and others like the Podsafe Music Network -- create a win-win situation. Podcasters get new music. Bands get access to more potential fans, and information about those fans. Audiences get to hear the hot new thing.