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MUSIC LAW: CONTRACTS AND MUSIC DEALS

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"Ya know? not a day goes by without somebody's paradigm being shifted." ~ sa

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."
EFF Founder and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow delivers a razor-wire bouquet to Motion Picture Association of America President Dan Glickman. Click on the link just under the picture of Glickman and Barlow to watch the video.  Glickman gives the company/industry line.  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!

CopyLeft

Music Business

What is art?  Excerpt from pages 42-54 of The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information by Richard A. Lanham, published by the University of Chicago Press. 2006 by The University of Chicago.
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.
That oscillation constitutes a serious lesson about seriousness. But it does not constitute great art, if we think of art as composed of stuff shaped into beauty, as forming part of a goods economy. In this industrial framework, Duchamp is the charlatan some have taken him for. But if you are willing to put him into an attention economy rather than a goods economy, let him work in attention, not in stuff, then things look different. Duchamp, as few before him, knew how to catalyze human attention in the most economical way possible. The disproportion between his oeuvre, the physical stuff he left behind, and his reputation can be explained in no other way. If we are looking for economists of attention, he provides a good place to start, an excellent lesson in efficiency. Musicians Give away product / music to purchase attention. in an information economy, the real scarce commodity will always be human attention and that attracting that attention will be the necessary precondition of social change. And the real source of wealth. Warhol the
commercial artist, Warhol the painter, Warhol the filmmaker, Warhol the writer, Warhol the collector, Warhol the philosopher, and, superlatively and climactically, Warhol the celebrity: all these roles float on a sea of commentary, nowadays mostly hagiographical. Let's try, as a perspective by incongruity, to describe Andy Warhol as an economist, an economist of attention. And perhaps the perspective would not in fact seem so incongruous to him. Here's what he said about the relation of art to business: "Business art is the step that comes after Art.

It was his life's work to illustrate the paradoxical relationship of stuff and attention. Let's summarize the rules of attention-economy art as Andy practiced them:

My work has no future at all. I know that.
A few years. Of course my things will mean nothing."

BOB LEFSETZ - How you break a band? Word of mouth.  Not via top-down carpet bombing. If something is good, EVERYBODY in the target demo is aware of it momentarily via txt, IM, old-fashioned e-mail, pitchforkmedia.com, or stereogum or hypemachine or some music blog. MOST PEOPLE STILL FIND OUT ABOUT THE BAND ORGANICALLY! Ever since the advent of overhype, with MTV, band careers have become ever more brief.  Only the oldsters, who developed organically, when you couldn't get on television on a regular basis, can tour a decade after they emerged, never mind three or four.
It is the Web’s ability to create a brand at breakneck speed. Let's begin where everybody else does, MySpace. Once again, MYSPACE DOES NOT BREAK ACTS!  Most people never look at the homepage.  What MySpace does is give you a place to listen to the MUSIC of acts.  Usurping the need for a record company.  For FREE, you can have your music hosted.  Where not only "friends' can check it out, but professionals too.
Viral Marketing: You can build a buzz.  If you're GOOD!  Most bands on MySpace are bad.  But now EVERYBODY expects EVERY ACT to allow their music to be heard on MySpace!  Were the major labels here first?  No, they're begrudgingly following along. Terrestrial radio is still number one.  But the savvy, the FANS, they're constantly surfing and discovering.  Which is why acts should have their music available in blogs, given away free EVERYWHERE!  Because if the tastemakers have it, they can spread the word.  You need a huge touring and radio presence. An act with a profile should be ITS OWN label. Watch the P2P figures of Eric Garland and BigChampagne. [1]

Orientation:
Learned lessons from 1970's Midnight Movie Theaters - Financial Success found by John Waters with Pink Flamingo's, The Wailers, Jimmy Cliff with The Harder They Come, Rocky Horror Picture Show.
All found their audience, their culture, people believed in it, supported it, and - ! - it was all done through word of mouth.
Lesson: People will spread it around and support you if you are in the right place at the right time with the right sound.

1) How to make it in the Music Business
It's about dedication, it's about no fallback position. Your music has to sell you.  Plain and simple Great music sells you.
- Read "The Tipping Point" for instruction (and buy Don Passman's "All You Need To Know About The Music Business" too, if you haven't read it, you're operating with one hand behind your back). 
- Don't sign with a major label unless you write the kind of music that's played on Top Forty radio.
- Start reading hitsdailydouble.com and learn what Top Forty radio is.  Look at the "Billboard" charts. 
- If you're a sensitive singer/songwriter, your odds of making it on KIIS in L.A. are just about nil.  Oh, it can HAPPEN, but at WHAT COST?
-  Are you into the money or the artistry?  If the latter, beware of signing with a major label.  Their paradigm ONLY works if they can get you on Top Forty radio and television.  If you don't listen to these stations or watch those channels do you want to appear on them?  And, signing to a major is like being a member of a Mafia family.  You can't say no.  You've got to play ball, do what they say, or you're dead.
If you're pretty, if you have a good voice (although with auto-tune this is hardly necessary anymore), if you want to party at discos with Paris Hilton and you're NOT signed to a major label, you're missing the boat.  This is what the majors do.  Massage you into a product, fodder for the machine.  They like it best when THEY'RE the artist and you just play along.
If you're a rapper...  you BELONG on the major label.  Hopefully with someone who'll put other rappers on your tracks to help break you.
But, if you're an artist who doesn't fit the Top Forty radio paradigm ABSOLUTELY DO NOT SIGN WITH A MAJOR!  You won't have success and you'll soon be at a day job.  I know, I know, you can't pay the rent.  You want the advance.  Sorry, if you can't find a way to make it all work now, you're never going to succeed big time.  It's a HARD LIFE for a musical artist.  It's ALL ABOUT THE STRUGGLE!  Work that day job.  Make that music.  And play live EVERYWHERE! That's the indie label paradigm.  Free music on the Web and live performance.
As for the indie label
Sure, for discs make a deal.  But get a good lawyer.  Own your masters.  Have a brief license period.  DON'T GIVE SOMEONE CONTROL FOR ALMOST NO MONEY!  If they want all the rights for no bread you don't want to be in business with them.   Believe me, if they want you badly enough, they'll make a deal on your terms.
But better yet...  Don't sign with ANYBODY!  Don't even worry about making a deal with iTunes.  Just give the music away on your Website and build community. You've got to get your music to connectors, TASTEMAKERS!  But now, on the Web, EVERYBODY'S A TASTEMAKER!  Give away MP3s on your Website and TELL people they're free to email / IM / burn / exchange them.  Say they've got PERMISSION!
Put a feedback e-mail address on your site.  And answer EACH AND EVERY LETTER!  If you don't have time to do this, you're not gonna make it!  Play Live, with passion, play like you mean it. After you start getting some traction, focus on the sound.  Buy better equipment. Give away and sell stuff at EVERY GIG! Stive to be a professional. Build your community, build your fanbase they will pay you for your music. It's about slow and steady. You've got to want it more than anything.  You've got to be willing to sacrifice relationships, real estate, remuneration, all in the desire to MAKE IT!
I hate to tell you, but the more people who hear the music, who have the MP3s, the MORE CDs you're going to sell.  I know, it's counterintuitive, but it's fact. 
On a 99 cent download the artist doesn't even make a nickel.  Sale by track will not prevail in the future.  It's economic suicide.  You can only profit by selling the bundle.  But, since Apple came up with a solution which the labels authorized, and what a story THAT is, just speak with Roger Ames and ask what it took to get Universal on board, it's the only real game in town.
"The Chat Room".  About fifty or sixty heavies get together twice a year for a debate of the major issues in the music business.  Tomorrow, with Richard as moderator, I'm debating John Kennedy, head of IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry).  Go to http://www.ifpi.org/ to brush up on the organization. Roger Ames said The record companies DON'T pay royalties anymore. Robert Lee told us in the firm's office that you can't even negotiate a record contract anymore.  It's take it or leave it. And it turns out the MMF is just joining with the publishers in the tribunal as to digital payments.  So, there's no big money involved for attorneys.  God, if it goes public, if the world hears that artists only make 4 1/2p per 79p download...this is the labels' worst nightmare.  And I agree with Tony Wilson, there should be no public performance fee for selling a digital download, but it turns out that's the LAW, and the publishers are scraping to get a fair share, especially since the majors want a REDUCTION!  From 8.25% to 6%!
Furthermore, I heard the inside story on the Robbie Williams deal.  Turns out under British tax law they can write off the FULL VALUE of the deal in the year it's inked.  And then the revenues are booked as profit when they finally come in.
If you've got a story to tell, make it all one song.  Or, explain it on your Website.  Tell people how to sequence the downloads.  Or maybe, ask THEM how they sequence the downloads and what the result means to them.  If the medium affects the art, the Internet is about collaboration, get the listener INVOLVED, don't dictate to him.
Make a ton of music.  Put it up on your Website constantly.  So people will go back and LOOK for it.  Don't tour over five months a year, so you have TIME to relax and get inspired and continue to write, which is what you're truly about, being an artist.  Establish a relationship with the fan, an ongoing one, not a static one.  And know that if someone is into you, they'll want everything you ever did.  Which is why I comb the P2P services for live tracks by my favorite acts.  THIS is the passion we need.  Not fat cats lamenting the passage of the old days eliminating all the soul from the enterprise.  Music is dope.  Sell it that way.  Get people hooked so they won't let go.

The Future of Digital Music Is Microsoft. Music is just a pawn in their game. - PDF

 

Modern Marketing - Your most important team member is your Webmaster

Most marketing is done to intermediaries.  Radio stations, television, radio shows.  Whereas today it's about establishing a direct relationship with your FANS!  Via your Website. Five Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make
You should have an update on your Website EVERY DAY!  You should have a message board.  You should have free music, whether streaming or downloadable, hopefully all downloadable, but at least recorded streamed and live downloadable.  And you should retrieve mailing addresses.  This is the ultimate goal of your Website, to establish a PERMANENT relationship.
This is not like fan clubs of yore.  You don't want to charge people.  And it's not like the fan clubs of today, wherein you pay for the privilege of buying supposedly good tickets.  Rather this is about cementing a bond with your fans, making sure they never leave you.
Imagine a marriage wherein the husband never talked to the wife.  Where she saw him on TV and in Best Buy, but never felt any personal contact.  Well, that relationship wouldn't last too long.  Best to make regular contact.  PERSONAL contact.
The days of artists being superior is over.  Stardom is something completely different.  Oh, don't pay attention to the one hit wonders hyped in the media.  In their case, it's about making fun of them.  Even if they've had more than one hit.  People might like Christina Aguilera's music, but they laugh at her implants and chicken legs.  But if each and every one felt connected with the real her, it would be different.
Go to see one of those bands who survive on the road.  Over by the merch table, there's a clipboard, garnering e-mail addresses, for their mailing list.  Which is why, after the hits dry up, if they come at all, these bands can still work.  They've established a club, a cult.  And EVERYBODY wants to be a member of the group, feel like an insider.  Your job is to make them one.
Don't make your site pretty, make it a fount of information.  Somewhere people can find out EVERYTHING about you.  And want to come back to to find out more.  A place where they can not only meet you, but OTHER fans.  Community is key.  Everybody's looking for like-minded people.  For friends, for love relationships.  An artist's Website is a much better place to start than match.com or craigslist.org.
Your site should have minimal Flash work.  No entrance page.  It should be UTILITARIAN!  As in USABLE!  You should be THRILLED that anybody comes at all, and if they do, you want them to feel welcome.  You don't want them to have to go through so many pages, waiting forever for them to load, that they get frustrated, so they never come back.
But the ultimate goal of your Website is to garner contacts.  To get the name of every fan you have.  So you can e-mail him or her and tell them you've got a new record, that you're playing in their town.
Forget those scrolls of tour dates on television.  Even radio announcements.  Most of the people who hear them could give a shit about the act.  It's about reaching those who DO care, directly.  This is what the Web affords. The Long Tail
Cement and serve this relationship. Read Chris Anderson. If you do it right, you'll never have to get a day job.

January 04, 2007 Year-end music stats

6/21//06 Assistant Law Professor Asian American Junichi Smeitsu has a summer gig being the Dixie Chicks' Blogger

Global digital music sales triple to US$1.1 billion in 2005 as new market takes shape.

 

What percentage of Barnum's shows were in theaters and what percentage in tents? 
The uncle of one of my clients, a country singer whose name I forget, sold so many records for RCA that during the depths of the depression the company gave him five gold RCA dogs listening to a big-horned record player.  How did he pull it off?  He realized that he could put on tent shows for a fraction of the price of those in theaters and auditoriums.  Folks needed entertainment, and they needed it on the cheap.  That's what he provided  for them.  This star of the 30s whose name is now forgotten hired a Dutch kid as one of his advance men a person who would go to a town as much  as a month in advance and start banging the gong for the upcoming event, getting it into newspapers, putting up posters, starting word of mouth, and coming up with every press stunt he and the home office could think of to weave the event as lumpily and bumpily as possible (so it would stick out) into the community's span of attention. The Dutch advance man later renamed himself Colonel Tom Parker. ~Howard Bloom

The MP3 Model Statement of Roger McGuinn Songwriter and Musician Formerly with The Byrds on “ The Future of Digital Music: Is There an Upside to Downloading?”

 

 

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.

Music | Music Deal, Contract Law

 

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.

FROM CDBABY.COM How to Legally Sell Downloads of Cover Songs - DEREK SEVERS

CDbaby is wonderful: "If you have recorded a cover version of someone else's song, and you plan to make that recording available over the Internet, the following information applies to you. You must follow these steps BEFORE you make your recording available for distribution to the public! Learn how to obtain a compulsory license to digitally distribute cover songs over the Internet to end users in the United States. If you record a cover version of a song, (meaning your performance of a song that has been released in the U.S. with consent of the copyright owner), you are entitled by law to release your recording commercially, and the owner of the copyright to the song cannot prevent you from doing so. The Copyright Act provides for what is called a "Compulsory License", which means that if you follow the steps set forth by statute, you can distribute your recording of that song on a CD or over the internet." SELL YOUR MUSIC and get ADVICE also see INDIE - what is that? Video

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.

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?

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.

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.

Bob_Dylan <> what is art <> digital rights mgmt. <> Woodie Guthrie

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