Today is the 50th anniversary of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermon at the National Cathedral now titled “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution”. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today. In a sense it is a triple revolution: that is, a […]
In another odd twist in the 60,000,000-plus “mass NOI” debacle, a five second search of the SX Works NOI Lookup database reveals that Spotify, Google, Pandora and other services can’t seem to locate Aerosmith songwriters like Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, not to mention their co-writers like long-time Bryan Adams collaborator Jim Vallence. [Aside from […]
Is Spotify’s unusual “DPO” approach and bizarre $132 selling price simply a way for insiders to short the stock? See SPOT run! Run SPOT run! Here’s an interesting anecdote about that imminent Spotify stock offering. Remember, Spotify is rumored to price at $132 per share based on private market trades (on a split adjusted basis, […]
The 2nd Draft of Music Modernization Act 3/22/18 was released publicly today. We are reviewing and will post comments in the coming days. The first thing I noticed is that the tragic demonstration of the raw lobbying power of Big Tech: The litigation reach back safe harbor seems to still be in there which is designed to […]
Originally posted on The Trichordist: Rates are “all in” at source. Calculations based on royalty statements from a catalogue of 1500 titles 2014. Exception is Pandora which was calculated from 2nd quarter 2015 statements (higher than 2014). In the fight for fair pay artists are not at war with the Internet or really even… via Can […]
Marc Hogan, Senior Staff Writer at Pitchfork, takes a detailed and objective look at the Music Modernization Act and makes some critical recommendations for amendments to the MMA. This is a must-read for all songwriters wanting to better understand the nuances of the legislation.
Google, Amazon and Spotify cannot locate John Lennon and Paul McCartney to serve a compulsory license notice.
I was fortunate to moderate an excellent panel at the SXSW Continuing Legal Education seminar this week. Our topic was “The Future of Mechanical Licensing in the U.S.” Little did we know when the panel was booked in September that this would be such a hot topic following the introduction of the deeply controversial Music […]
Spotify and other services may be selling bootlegs of Aaliayah’s recordings and the Copyright Office may be allowing all of them to “license” her songs, too.
Unfortunately, the controversial Music Modernization Act creates a quasi-governmental organization with no oversight, and that has weak and punitive audit clauses for songwriters. We are told that songwriters should appreciate what they’re given because they never had audit rights under the current statutory license. Of course, if you run the risk of being financially punished if you exercise a right, that’s not much of a right at all. So let’s not do the usual two steps forward, three steps back.
Music Technology Policy 
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