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 ...

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"We're not going to continue signing artists for recorded music revenue only," Bronfman said during a conference call with Wall Street analysts. What I keep saying to all of my indie label friends : Indie labels also have to give up on just being labels. It doesn't work. The artists (especially more successful DJs) are making lots of touring money, but they never consider sharing that with the label. So the only model that is working is that where the ...

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CD sales have collapsed. Live shows, touring and merchandise income are robust. Prices for concerts are way up. Elton John charged a record $690 for top seats in Las Vegas. Gerd Leonhard, a music business consultant, predicts that by 2010, recorded music sales will make up only 30 per cent of a successful label's revenues. The rest will be generated by artists' extra-musical brand extensions. Like those $20 T-shirts. "Record sales as we know them are in long-term decline," says ...

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In the UK you may not DJ in public using an mp3 even if you bought the original vinyl record. You need to get a license to permit the copy to be used in a performance setting. DigitalDJ and PPL will sell you this license. If a copy of a sound recording is made in order to play that sound recording in public, PPL controls the relevant copying rights and so can grant you a licence to ensure that your ...

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From an old Wired interview with the recently deceased Peter Drucker : We have to rethink the whole concept of intellectual property, which was focused on the printed word. Perhaps within a few decades, the distinction between electronic transmissions and the printed word will have disappeared. The only solution may be a universal licensing system. Where you basically become a subscriber, and where it is taken for granted that everything that is published is reproduced. In other words, if you ...

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