The human rights of artists is a different concept from intellectual property rights, such as copyright. Intellectual property rights are created by national laws, and the human rights of artists are recognized as the fundamental rights of all persons by all of the central human rights documents to which hundreds of countries have agreed. These rights resonate in a […]

We all know that YouTube pays the lowest royalty rate and has the least transparent royalty statements of any digital service. Due to really bad advice, artists and labels have been driving traffic to YouTube essentially for free and marketers misread the direction of this traffic in forming the belief that hits need YouTube.  Actually, […]

Originally posted on The Trichordist:
Required reading regarding Larry Lessig’s pitch to help Kim Dotcom… The second thing about Lessig’s declaration that jumps out is an apparent contradiction between Lessig and Dotcom’s defense team regarding the applicability of the DMCA safe harbors to Megaupload. In the white paper, Dotcom’s defense team says Even if the…

ARTHUR Let’s get back to justice…what is justice?  What is the intention of justice? The intention of justice is to see that the guilty people are proven guilty and that the innocent are freed.  Simple isn’t it?  Only it’s not that simple. From …And Justice for All, written by Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson. There […]

An eagle eyed MTP reader (Michael Eames of PEN Music Group) noticed an odd and recent change in logo at the MIC Coalition, Google and Pandora’s soul-crushing trillion dollar coalition with the National Association of Broadcasters to grind artists even further into the dirt than these corporate behemoths already have.  You’ll recall that the the […]

Americans are freedom loving people, and nothing says freedom like getting away with it. From Long, Long Time by Guy Forsyth If you read nothing else this weekend, read former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s New York Times op-ed “Big Tech has Become Way Too Powerful.”  (Which was evidently originally posted under the title “Big […]

A conference has to make a buck, you know?  We all understand that, and the Americana Music Conference is no exception.  The conference that is attached to the Americana Music Awards is a stalwart in our business and has managed to maintain its true authenticity for a very long time.  We appreciate the sponsors who […]

What’s the point of having good metadata and rights information for licensing?  It should be to actually know who owns a song and who owns recordings of the song so you can get permission and pay for usage or block it. However, as we have seen with the disasters of Google Books and YouTube ContentID, […]

This is a pretty funny spoof of both “Girls” and “Silicon Valley”.  Spoiler alert–the part at the end where the ensemble encourages you to subscribe so they can get to 10,000 subscribers and get the YouTube studios for free?  That’s not a joke.  Even though it’s the funniest part of the bit.  I wonder if […]

[Here’s a blast from the past on a bad idea that just won’t die.  Digital Music News has a story today about Verizon offering to pay “the music industry” $1 a month for each Internet subscriber, an idea that was floated by Berkman Center professor, ivory tower music rethinker and Lawrence Lester Lessig buddy Terry […]