The Silly People

So, apparently about a year after Qtrax announced that it had deals with all the major labels, it has launched. For those who do not know (or totally forgot - like me) Qtrax promises to make music from the major labels available for free on it's Gnutella based P2P service. The model is supported by ads on the site. In theory, this sounds like a great idea - use P2P, the way most people aquire music, and make music available for the price that people want to pay for it - nothing. Unfortunately, the scheme is crippled by an excessive DRM scheme.

The problem with any service like this is IT CANNOT COMPETE WITH FREE, EASILY AVAILABLE MUSIC. The model presented in regular P2P services and Torrents is king - all the music you ever want for free. In my opinion, you cannot make a model where you "sell" digital music - it is not profitable or sustainable when people have the options of open P2P and Torrent.

This is crazy!

This is insane - look at the Billboard top 200 right now - the first three albums are Now 30, The Hannah Montana Soundtrack, and the Twilight Soundtrack. This is the first time I ever have seen this - collections of SINGLES getting the top slots on the Billboard charts. It's not ALBUMS it's singles. Evidence that a pick and choose approach to music is seriously taking hold - I would attribute this to the rise of iTunes. But anyway, I consider this highly unusual and quite revolutionary. The artist now has a much different type of freedom on how they release music.

Reading Material

In addition to sitting around, I have been catching up on my Internet browsing, and here are some interesting links I have come across... (I will probably discuss them more over the course of the week)

http://www.againstmonopoly.org/ - a group of writers who share their opinions on how intellectual property laws are misused

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/can-labels-still-sell-recorded-music.ars?utm_source=microblogging&utm_medium=pingfm&utm_term=Main%20Account&utm_campaign=microblogging - an article on what some consider the future of the music industry, a compulsory "music tax"

http://www.utterli.com/ - a strange video message based social networking system...?

http://www.othermusic.com/perl-bin/OM/index.cgi?ID=2585534.25538 - a cool brick and mortar record store in NYC that I'm going to have to visit soon

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html - a fantastic description of the "long tail" theory that everyone seems to be talking about

http://app.synclive.com/ - a very cool looking web service for the streaming of live concerts - you can stream your own concerts here!

http://www.atomkeep.com/ - a website that claims to be able to keep all of your social networking profiles/pages synced

Happy reading!

(picture courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/0olong/)

Down with copyright laws?

This segment on the Colbert Report really got me thinking about copyright openness and how I feel about the restrictions music artists place on their work.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Lawrence Lessig

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I subsequently went to Lessig's website (http://www.lessig.org/blog/) and downloaded his books as pdfs (for free). I have not read through them yet - I have skimmed them quickly though - but I have come to agree with him: our current copyright system is too restrictive. Now I'm not sure what the best solution is (though I am confident there is a problem). Creative Commons licensing seems to be heading in the right direction (http://creativecommons.org/), and many well known artists (in many different fields; music, photography, journalism, writing) are endorsing this direction by licensing their art with CC.

Now what reminded me about Lessig's segment on the Report was this page:
http://thru-you.com/#/videos/1/

The above link displays one man's amazing artistic combination of many Youtube videos all chopped up and sequenced together to make an entirely new product. Under traditional copyright, this type of thing would be walking a fine line between copyright infringement lawsuits and fair use.

In a digital age where people access the collective knowledge of the whole human population on their cell phones, a more uninhibited flow of information should be encouraged. Now, as a musician myself I understand the desire to protect copyright, and I also understand that music as a profession inherently requires the exchange of money. How should we progress in order that information can flow, creativity is encouraged - not stifled, and people can enjoy the creativity of others without worrying about being sued by the very people they admire?

I really don't know. But I know there needs to be changes made.

Teenagers!

I'm standig in the music conservatory lobby, tyuping this on the public computer because I just read somehting in sound on sound that I thought really deserved to be spread as quickly as possible. Teenagers are the focus of all of the pop music industry! How did I miss that? Really, this is a problem, at least in my mind. How do you market to a group of consumers who do not have credit cards? They also have this obsession with sticking it to the man - a concept that potentially leads to piracy.

Hmm... this is a tough question, especially when they are becoming aware and resitant to traditional marketing (as major labels have discovered). I'm not claiming to have an answer to this dilemma, but I did figure that it was worth repeating to interested individuals.

Sticking it to the Man

For those who are unaware, which would be most people who do not have a strange nerdy obsession with all things music business, there is a very interesting lawsuit currently in development. Ars Technica has a very good rundown of the story here. But for those not inclined to read the whole thing right now I'll give a very quick summary.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has a recent history of bringing very intimidating lawsuits against people accused of illegally obtaining music from the Internet. These lawsuits often involve people who have been accused of downloading only a few songs/files. Frequently those accused will settle out of court for large sums of money in order to avoid the potential for multi-million dollar penalties in court.

The way the RIAA goes about this comes off to many people as a disproportionately large response to the crime (if they even call it that) being committed. The tactics they use also seem to have questionable legal grounding and limited morality.

Finally, they wound up in a situation where someone decided to fight back in an unconventional way. Joel Tenenbaum got in touch with Prof. Charles Nesson from Harvard law school and secured his legal council. Nesson got his graduate students involved and now we have a whole new ball game.

Nesson and the rest of his legal team are seeking permission to stream hearings and legal proceedings over the Internet. They also are bringing a counter-suit against the RIAA claiming that their tactics are actually unconstitutional.

As we step into a new environment where intellectual property and copyright laws are questioned by the consumer and musicians seek new methods of marketing and distribution, a case like this that throws into question the legality of a group that publicly appears to represent the record industry, and hints at coming change.

The general population has for a large part abandoned the old system of CDs and brick and mortar stores in favor of instant access to almost infinite music, and now the legality of practices of those trying to maintain the old system is questioned.

Though I will not venture a guess at the future, this lawsuit certainly could effect it greatly.