Salt Pepper Ketchoop For Here Or To Go?

ArsTechnica has a piece today on Pandora’s support of the Performance Rights Act. 

Radio has ramped up its opposition to the act,  claiming that the act will cost thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue.  Somewhat ironically, the site also claims that the act will hurt music diversity on the radio. 

Um…?

• NARAS lived up to expectations by failing to remain relevant and rewarding the most commercially successful/ elder statesmen rather than those making waves.  No disrespect to Robert Plant but everyone surprised by his win just needs to think back to Herbie Hancock last year.  Burning Spear winning the reggae category really gets on my nerves.  Did anyone actually listen to that album?  Also Daft Punk winning best dance record for a song released in 2001 is another testament.  Oh well, whatever.
• Total music shutting down comes as no surprise to me.  Listening to the European CEO of Nokia try to spin it and explain how comes with music works differently on friday was pretty humorous though.  Sorry Rick Rubin,  but streaming music is not the way to save the industry.  The internet is not ubiquitous enough to benefit from a cloud based music library system, and there’s no value in letting someone else curate your music library.  Seeking alternative revenue streams and letting big business pay while the consumers get a free ride is probably the most viable option at this point.  Chris Anderson talks about it here in detail.  I’m extremely excited for his new book that comes out in the spring.  The Long Tail was a good jumping off point but the theory is much more evolved at this point.
• Speaking of alternative revenue streams, the ticketmaster/livenation deal is kind of the defintion of “getting it” when it comes to making money off of music.  Antitrust suits are probably in the works as we speak, but when you look beyond the venue/artist monopoly and actually examine how diversified the two companies involved actually are, you’ll see that they’re poised to thrive in this new economy while many others flounder.
• Neil Portnow’s speech always makes me laugh but this year’s was above and beyond hilarious.  Neil, please leave the co-opting of Obamamania to Pepsi.  Secretary of the arts is an old argument that holds no water.  However, props for mentioning the performance royalties for radio thing.  Great to see that gaining momentum.

After the Youtube debacle, Rolling stone is reporting that Google is pulling posts containing copyrighted tracks from people’s Blogger pages without warning. Classy move. WMG’s stock is way up, but instinct tells me there’s no way it’s staying that way.

The public performance rights bill i wrote about here was introduced into congress last week. Choice quotes include ” Our ignorance of intellectual property rights on this issue is a worldwide embarrassment and it must end now,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), a co-sponsor of the House bill.”

Calling it a “record label bailout” is tacky and embarassing to all involved, though.

more here

Last week, youtube decided to mute user created videos that feature copyrighted music.  For now, the only videos affected are those including music owned by Warner, but more are sure to follow.  Needless to say, this created a deluge of angry anime fans, guitar hero players, and preteens recreating the dances from music videos in their bedrooms. While some have opted to voice their disdain via youtube-embedded letters to WMG (pictured at left).  Others appear to have already figured out a workaround. 
Youtube’s proprietary system seems to be matching the copyrighted songs’ waveforms with the waveforms in the background of each video.  In order to counteract this, video uploaders have begun to modify the pitch and tempo of the songs posted in their videos in order to skirt the search.  Pretty crafty if you ask me.  Pretty foolish at the same time on behalf of the bigwigs though.  I can totally understand youtube wanting to cover their ass with regards to any copyright infringement claim from the labels but this scattershot approach to hindering creativity and alienating your consumer base doesn’t strike me as the best move for the already sputtering labels.  Warner, there’s a reason your stock is trading at $2.  Stop pissing off the people that support your artists.  Figure out a way to add value and encourage interactivity.  There’s only so many things you can monetize in the modern digital world.  Deal with it.

  Technorati Tags: youtube, warner, muting, copyright, law

This article over at Variety clued me in to one of the more sensible things that the RIAA has done lately.  They’re finally pushing congress hard for a uniform public performance royalty from radio stations.  The bill was originally introduced backed in December of 2007 and Passed the House Judiciary Committee back in June but seems to have stalled around the time of that whole economic crisis thing.  Pfft.  Hit the jump for a bunch of background and analysis on what’s going on.

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