Dance Music Business Resource

NYT: Going, Going ... But Not Yet Gone

Since 2003, at least 80 records stores have closed in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

New York Times

Sports is not art : Specimen 0843 (SportsTrax)

Saturday, April 26, 2008 / 8 pm
Specimen 0843 (SportsTrax)

In 1997, the Motorola and Stats Corporations made a pager-type device called SportsTrax, which displayed score updates of US live sports games. A conflict arose when the NBA claimed that Motorola and Stats were not entitled to use the score data. During the court case NBA v. Motorola and STATS, Inc., the judges stated that “professional basketball games are not original works of authorship protected by copyright.” Sports games are considered accumulations of facts (nature) and are not afforded copyright protection unless they are fixed in a tangible medium of expression (culture). Under the title Specimen 0843, Agency brings together an assembly of performers, legal scholars, athletes, and economists to explore questions of copyright, originality, and authorship, and shows what sports can tell us about art. Kobe Matthys is artist and founder of Agency. He conducts longterm research on the practice of reappropriation and the public domain. Agency, founded in 1992, has for several years been preoccupied with “quasi-things”—things that have uncertain status and sit at the bifurcation of “nature” and “culture.”

Mime Centrum Berlin, Schönhauser Allee 73, 10437 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, U2, S8/S85/S41/S42 Schönhauser Allee

Admission 3,- €

Some advanced software based compositions completely do away with the concept of authorship and wander in to the area of data mapping. As artists we know how irrelevant this old style copyright law is. But I think we should not forget that copyright law is also a wonderful achievement for artists : it gives us the protection over our creations that is already granted (by common sense and convention) to physical objects. I'm not of the opinion that we should pirate everything, sneer at the RIAA (although they are worth sneering at) and go running off into a "data wants to be free" future.

Energy would be better spent devising a clever new income stream.

ASCAP attacks

ASCAP demands $1000 from a small non-profit art gallery in Baltimore.

Actually, it wasn't really a concert; it was more of a performance-art piece by Lee Connah involving "old recycled objects" and the playing of vintage vinyl records.

ASCAP demands big money from a mostly world music non-ASCAP club. But the club gets caught playing a Madonna record one night and ... pays up.

And as usual, all the money that ASCAP takes in it gives to artists that show up on commercial radio. Its a mob racket. They collect from every coffee house and club and they give all of that money to commercial radio artists.

In Europe clubs will allow you to submit a playlist and distributes accordingly. Especially for festivals, so I have heard, its a good idea to submit that playlist because not a lot of other people are bothering. If you played all your own stuff, you will get paid.

There should be a system whereby artists and venues can pledge that there is no ASCAP/BMI music being played. ASCAP was formed as an artists organization, a new one is required to protect us all from ASCAP. The problem is that a DJ may not think about it and slip some remix or pop hit in (even as a joke).


Good article, worth a read.

You only get money from ASCAP when your song is sampled. If you're getting airplay on commercial radio, you'll probably be sampled, maybe quite a lot. If you're not getting airplay on commercial radio, the odds of never getting sampled is pretty high. If you are an independent artist, the odds of being on commercial radio tend toward zero.

Imeem Acquires Snocap

You know I've never sold a single track through SNOCAP. Founded by Mr. Napster (who has now moved onto his new startup, a WOW social networking site), SNOCAP has been "struggling" for a minute. It seems nobody on Myspace actually buys any of those tracks. In a world of information overload, who has time to listen to all of these things, let alone buy any of them ?

Imeem I quite like. They use advertising income to pay off the labels. Apparently there is some SNOCAP fingerprinting technology that will help them in their tracking.

WMG: 7.29 -1.45 (-16.59%) - Warner Music Group Corp.

Wow, Warner's stock has gone down 73% in the last 18 months !

Today, Feb 6th 2008 they just plummeted 16% due to reporting losses.

Of all the majors, I always liked Warner's the most. During the grunge years they didn't seem to interfere with the artist's choices of covers or track selection. Indie labels always get real involved and tell the artist what to do. The majors at that time knew to let those crazy kids do what they do best.

Harry Fox Agency HFA - mechanical licenses for cover songs

"Songfile" can be used by musicians who plan to make and distribute 2,500 copies or less of their recordings to obtain the necessary licenses for cover versions of songs. Licenses can be obtained for CDs, cassettes, LPs, or permanent digital downloads (DPDs).

Customers can create an account with the Songfile service, search HFA’s catalog of almost 1.9 million songs, and complete their mechanical licensing transaction in minutes. Royalties are calculated at the statutory mechanical rate (currently 9.1¢ per copy for songs 5 minutes or less in length, or 1.75¢ per minute (or fraction thereof) per copy, for songs over 5 minutes). There is also a nominal processing fee ($13-15) on each song licensed.

via http://www.filmmusicmag.com/news/Harry-Fox-Agency-Upgrades-Online-Mechanic...

qtrax tries it again : ad supported legal p2p

This is a model that I suggested and supported many years ago. There are many hurdles. Qtrax is having a go at it now.

Its a windows/(mac-coming march 18th) P2P application with a built in web browser. It only shows files from labels that qtrax has licensing agreements with. Initially it uses the Gnutella network. It converts the files into an proprietary audio format 'MPQ', adds a windows DRM layer and plays the music only from within the application. It counts the number of track plays, shows ads to earn revenue and pays the artists royalties.

Sounds like I won't be using it.

Last.fm Launches Largest Global Free-On-Demand Music Platform

At the same time, Last.fm is launching an unprecedented "Artist Royalty" arrangement, whereby those artists not signed with a label who choose to upload their music to Last.fm will receive payment, directly from Last.fm, every time one of their tracks is played.

Glad to hear it: our friends at Last.fm are doing quite well. btw. I wouldn't say "unprecedented" because Imeem already does this royalty sharing. So does Napster actually. I make small steady royalty money from Napster, but its not a free service.

And there are a few video sites that do it. But maybe they don't call them "royalties".

Jamaica: vinyl is done

Great article in the guardian.

The key selectors have all switched to CD. The classic 7" vinyl market was primarily for US/European/Japanese collectors. The locals don't buy vinyl. Many tracks never got pressed to vinyl anyway.

"The reduction in vinyl production in the West Indies has dramatically affected the way I access music," explains the legendary DJ - or selector - David Rodigan, host of the weekly Rodigan's Reggae show on London's Kiss 100 FM. "In a nutshell, vinyl has been eliminated by the people who play the music to the public. The key players - and by that I mean the sound system selectors that people go to see every weekend, who can make or break a song - are no longer dealing with it in any shape or form and have all switched to CD. Now if someone wants to send me a song, they just email it to me as an MP3. This process has been gradual, but it's now absolute."

In other news, the Riddim album is dead. Thank god fi' dat. I always found those really boring. But it seems the music producers earn their main money through those. They often had to pay artists (vocalists) to voice their riddims. The artists still make as much money as they ever did due to cutting dubs for sound systems (again, many of them in US/EU/JP). Oh, and charging outrageous amounts for live shows.

"It's got to the point that when producers say that a song has been released in Jamaica, they don't actually mean that it's been pressed. They just mean that it's being played. In fact, a vast amount of music never sees a conventional release at all now.

I too have been getting all of my JA fix through the p2p networks. You just type in 'riddim' as a search and get everything pretty up to date.

77Klash was telling us some things about how the musician/producers have been getting screwed for years. He is an artist as well as a producer (big success in 2007 with Swarm riddim).

The article ends on a positive note, pointing out that few scenes in the world are as creative and as dynamic as JA. I agree.

Vinyl distributors closing left and right

Syntax (10 years)
Unique Distribution
Watts
TRC

Hausmusik (15 years) ! home of Rhythm & Sound, Chain Reaction

Amato (20/20 Vision, Border Community, Bpitch, Crosstown Rebels, Dubsided, Kompakt, Kill The DJ, Playhouse, Poker Flat, Rong, and Stomp) ,

Intergroove



I live in Berlin and I keep talking to labels who want to press my stuff on vinyl. "We simply must do it on vinyl, its the best sound" they say. And I'm thinking ... can't we just get it on Beatport ? Times have changed.

I'm actually amazed that this many record stores and vinyl distributors kept in business as long as they did. Mostly they did because they loved doing it and they sacrificed to keep going. If it was simple economics they would have closed up long ago.

Germany - ISP cannot supply access data to the music industry

The new law on data retention requires telecommunication companies to store all telephone and Internet connection information for six months starting on 1 January, and to make this data available to the prosecutor's office upon request (to assist in the prosecution of terrorists). The music industry, backed by a number of political figures, had demanded access to this data to help pursue its claims for compensation against pirates. (Justice Minister) Zypries (SPD) rejected their demands. "The demarcation lines here are quite clear," she told Focus.

deutsch: http://www.heise.de/ct/hintergrund/meldung/99806

Apple Launching Record Label With Jay-Z

Nice one Jay.

David Byrne ; the end of the age of repetition

David Byrne, as intelligent as he ever was:

Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. Epic songs and ballads, troubadours, courtly entertainments, church music, shamanic chants, pub sing-alongs, ceremonial music, military music, dance music — it was pretty much all tied to specific social functions.

This point is also brought up really well in Atalli's Noise. The recording age was an odd thing. It was this bizarre separation of the original social musical event into a sound recording and a promotion event. Recordings became icons in themselves and something we got really into producing as objects.

But at first it was seen as very strange and the live musicians only thought of it as a way to attract people to come here them play.

So again we are changing to something else; leaving the age of Repetition. Which is why we have to stop thinking of recordings as holy artifacts, because that age is waning.

Byrne lists the options:

1. 360 : the artist is a brand; the label is involved with every aspect and with all money streams

2. traditional manufacturing and distribution deal : the label makes CDs/records. The artist gets maybe 10%. Lots of costs to pay for. Label retains copyright and control over promotion (or fails to promote, or even fails to release as it sees fit).

3. License deal : artist lets label produce record for a specific period in a specific market. The label is unlikely to invest a lot in long term promotion.

4. Simple profit sharing : many DJ type labels work this way. This involves a lot of trust. Label is unlikely to do much promotion.

5. Manufacturing and distribution : label is strictly involved in P&D. Artist gets all money, does all promotion.

6. Self distributed : artist runs own label and does all sales directly at shows or online.

Vinyl will outlive the CD

Matador and other labels include coupons in record packaging that can be used to download MP3 versions of the songs. Matador's Patrick Amory called the coupon program "hugely popular."

Numark sold more than 100,000 turntables in 2004.

Pressing plants are said to be ramping up. But its still very small boutique stuff, let's be fair.

The fact is, that the infrastructure needed to cut masters and replicate copies is falling apart. There are NO replacement parts available for the lathes, cutter heads, presses, injection molding equipment, etc. And if that is not a tall enough hurtle, we face another. The quality of newly produced vinyl is, and I am being kind, inconsistent. - joepalm, in the comments

Personally I think that the path is forward: get rid of CDs and let's move onto 24/96. A format with such high definition that no-one would dare to try to squeeze the mastering into the top %0.5 because it would make them sound insecure.

imeem

Rather than insist on a high per-song royalty and a load of antipiracy strictures, these deals let imeem's users freely share their copyrighted songs. That's because the labels don't make their money off the music itself, but by getting a cut of the advertising that imeem drums up for the site. Imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell says that roughly half of its revenue goes back to the content owners, on a pro rata basis. The more times a label's songs are played, the more they get paid.

I've been going to imeem for a while now. I quite like it. Lots of interesting communities like kuduro on there. I never noticed or figured out what their business model was.