Category Archives: Piracy

A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Unsung Heroes

Nothing Is Guaranteed and Nothing Is Certain

There is a post over at Seth Godin’s blog called “Borrowed Time”.

It goes like this;

All of us are on borrowed time. There are no refunds and there are no guarantees.

At some point, the only time you’ll have to worry about is the time you’ve wasted.

Life is short and a career in music is even shorter and a career at the top of the charts is even shorter than a career in music. There is no safety net and no guaranteed wage or income.

For every person who works what is known as a 9 to 5 job, they could have a job today and not tomorrow. For every person who is a casual, they could be called in to work today and not again for weeks. For every person who embarks on a trip some will return and others will not return. For every artist who writes a song, they could get paid for it or they could not.

Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing is certain.

Jon Bon Jovi was happy living a life in the 90’s from the royalties and advance payments he received from his 80’s output, along with “Keep The Faith” and “These Days”. Then Napster came and blew up the monopoly the record labels had on the distribution. Suddenly the band Bon Jovi from 2000 and onwards became a different beast, releasing music almost yearly and touring constantly.

If you are a musician, you could slog it out for years and get no commercial reward. But you would get the joy of creating and playing. These days, you could spend years building an online presence and it does not equate to dollars in the bank account when your music comes out. No one knows why, things become successful and no one knows why, things don’t become successful.

Vito Bratta was asked to write hits for the follow up to “Pride” and he didn’t know what the record label rep meant. As far as Bratta was concerned, he wrote songs and if any of them became hits, great, if they didn’t, still great.

So don’t develop a mindset which tries to create something that you think people would like. Create something that is true to you. And if the first attempt fails, try again and again.

If you look at music history, the 25 million selling “Black” album was created the same way that every other Metallica album was created up to that point, James and Lars would take all the demo ideas everyone had, go away to one of their houses and piece together the songs. The album then goes nuclear worldwide and the band is writing songs with all the members in the room and Kirk is doing rhythms on the album.

The “Load” and “Reload” albums have beautiful moments and a more swingy kind of groove based on Hetfields love of Corrosion of Conformity. Hetfield and the other guys in Metallica created albums true to themselves. And even though the band was accused of further selling out, they never catered to anyone except themselves, which is so evident on “St Anger” and then their new take on an old sound with “Death Magnetic” and “Hardwired To Self-Destruct”.

So don’t waste time thinking about what people would like and what people would expect, be productive and do what you want. Take the risks and see what happens. You might fail, you might succeed and you will learn. And remember nothing is guaranteed.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy

Under My Copyright

I haven’t done one of these Copyright posts for a while because there has been too much information going around and I couldn’t decide what to write about. Like GNR suing an hardcore fan for leaking demos of “Chinese Democracy” or Kate Perry being accused of copying an artist that no one has heard off.

But then Public Domain 2020 happened and suddenly I was interested in Copyright stories again.

So I started with something close to home.

Australia was once on the US watchlist for countries who consumed content illegally. So the US government pressured our government to get tough on illegal downloads. But everyone just kept on saying, offer enough legal alternatives at the right price and people will take it up. So is it any real surprise that Australians are now taking up these legal options.

Remember that Copyright was created for the artists to have an incentive to create more works. According to Blink-182s Tom DeLonge, this means selling your publishing rights to a corporation for a hefty fee. Of course he’s not the only one. All of our favorite and popular artists have done it. This one is strange because DeLonge even said “he now has an incentive to create more”. And I’m thinking, really.

But the best one is The Rolling Stones along with Abkco Music and Records, dropping 75 rare recordings onto YouTube, hours before they were going to enter the Public Domain in Europe. Actually it was Abkco that uploaded them to YouTube.

And just in case people tried to copy the recordings, Abkco added a dial-tone to obscure the sound and after 24 hours moved the recordings from the public site to a private, invite-only site.

Basically if Abkco didn’t release the recordings within 50 years after they were made, they would lose the copyright. The Beatles and Bob Dylan have done something similar in the past. And if a YouTube post is deemed eligible as a release then Abkco’s copyright term will last until the end of 2089. I guess Abkco has an incentive to create. There’s nothing better than a corporation have the copyrights of a song for 120 years.

And you know the saying if you have a hit expect a writ. Miley Cyrus released a song called “We Can’t Stop” and it went to Number 2 on the charts. It was kept out of number 1 by “Blurred Lines” from Robin Thicke.

Both songs got served with writs and have settled. Cyrus settled before it went to verdict and Thicke at trial with the Gaye family.

The song that was number 3 on the charts better watch out. Someone is after them.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy

Getting Paid

I’m seeing news articles that Spotify’s payment rate is declining.

But there never was a set payment rate per stream. It was always based on your streams in a pool of streams and what percentage you take in the pool of streams based on countries and the pool of money of available to be paid out and your percentage stake in those monies.

Yep it sounds simple, but it’s creative accounting at its best and the music industry is well known for it.

However there is an argument that with Spotify’s subscribers growing, the payments to artists for the same amount of streams they had in previous years is lower. A normal person would assume that a growing membership, would mean more money in the pool and that would mean a higher payment for the same amount of streams.

As much as I am a fan of Spotify and streaming services in general, all of these organizations also deal in the murky world of creative accounting like the labels.

And Spotify should be worried.

Their business model is based on licensing agreements. Like Netflix’s original business model. But Netflix started doing original content over 10 years ago. Spotify hasn’t.

Because Netflix knew that the companies they license content from, will form their own streaming service one day. In this case, Disney created Disney TV. And I reckon the labels are watching this with interest. If it works out okay for Disney TV, and the costs are low to host a steaming service, then the labels will consider their own streaming service. It’s just a matter of time.

So imagine a world with Universal deciding to do the same as Disney.

Because the labels never cared that people accessed the music of their artists illegally. They used that as part of their PR, to show that they cared about their artists and to get politicians to pass laws to protect their businesses.

What the labels really cared about was losing control of the distribution and the gatekeeper monopoly they had for so long.

So if the labels go into their own streaming offering, they will get back control of the distribution and a sort of monopoly again. And the only way for Spotify to exist if this happens, is to become a label themselves and pay people to generate content instead of paying organizations to access content.

Spotify might not pay artists what they think they should be paid but at least they are getting paid because Spotify has to pay based on the agreements they have with the labels and the legislation in place around royalty rates. If the label and the publishers keep the monies, then the artist has to negotiate a better deal when they sign up for that initial advance payment.

But once the distribution goes back under the labels control, good luck in getting paid because the labels will get all creative and will work out that the artist owes them money instead. And if the labels do work out that there are payments due to the artists, then those payments are based on the contract artists sign with the label.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories, Piracy

Listening Habits

It’s a tough crazy world.

Artists spend their blood, sweat and tears into their new product and no one seems to be paying attention.

How can they, with all the music coming out.

For 2019, I listened to 5,783 different songs on Spotify. To put that number into context that is roughly 16 different songs, each day, for 365 days. In the old vinyl LP days of 8 songs each, this would be two albums every day of different artists.

Streaming allows this diverse listening experience and for the fan, this is a good thing.

It’s also a good solution compared to peer to peer downloading. But people complain about the payments they receive, however there is no denying that streaming services have put some serious money back into the recording industry.

Prior to Spotify, the recording labels got nothing. And it’s a shame that those same labels don’t funnel those monies back to their artists. Because if wasn’t for the artists, the recording labels would not be in the position of power to negotiate anything. And if it wasn’t for the artists forming connections with people, then the labels would have no business model.

If you take streaming services out of the industry, people will not start buying CD’s again en masse.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

The Power Of The Record Labels

It’s 1992.

Hard rock bands are becoming too generic and soulless, especially the newer breed from 1989 and onwards. The fans are looking for something new, but they still have their taste buds all over the hard rock/metal distorted cream.

Meanwhile, the labels are signing Seattle bands, left, right and centre, while they start dropping hard rock bands left, right and centre. Not only could the labels make an artist famous, they could also make an artist destitute. And back then, without the money and power of the label behind an artist, an artist would go unnoticed.

The power the record labels had to kill careers or to destroy styles of music.

So the artist would sign a deal and get a small royalty payment from the label. Today the artists would still sign a deal because they see the label as their ticket to riches, but instead the artists are now complaining of the low royalty payment of streaming services, but it is still the label keeping the lion share.

In other words, you give to get.

You give your rights to the label in order to get a chance at fame and riches. And there’s no use yelling at streaming services. They are not record labels, they are technology companies, using music to influence culture and grow their brand. Once their brand is big enough, they will do away with music.

Because seriously, which company wants to pay billions in licensing and be constantly in the courts?  

HBO paid billions in licensing, until it got to a stage where it was unfeasible and they had to start creating their own content. Netflix at first had only licensed content. And like HBO they saw that it was unfeasible, so they started investing in creating their own, and slowly doing away with the licensing.

Now, more than any time in modern recording history, an artist can do it themselves. They can record cheaply, distribute and get paid. So artists should build their own leverage and then they can decide what is next.

But we have lived in a world where the labels have controlled the narrative for way too long and MTV made everyone think that if they learnt how to play an instrument they will be rich and famous. The majority still hold this view and the minority that don’t, are the ones making it.

People talk up Record Day sales like they matter, when only the label is winning, while digital distribution can offer an artist new audiences in places where brick-and-mortar stores would be impossible or unsustainable, like foreign countries or rural areas. The end result is growth across the board. Nowadays it’s about reaching as many people as possible and eventually the money will flow in if you do it right. That should have been the role of the labels but instead it’s up to the techies.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

The More Things Stay The Same

Back in 1999, the record labels argued that they lost billions of dollars due to file sharing via Napster. They came up with this figure by saying that one file shared is the same as one lost sale. 20 years later, they are still exaggerating the same BS. And politicians get lobbied hard and suddenly there is legislation to support the record labels business models.

As internet speeds got faster, file sharing then started on movies and TV shows. Suddenly, politicians had even more money thrown at them to pass legislation from the movie studios. In democratic lands, ISP’s are forced to censor the internet, courtesy of the movie studios and music labels, which is no different to what dictatorship governments carry out on a daily basis. And when ISP’s don’t censor the internet, the movie studios and music labels take them to court for facilitating piracy. And while this is happening at the hands of the entertainment industry, the government themselves are stifling free speech by raiding the homes of reporters or by keeping eyes on the public through surveillance. ISP’s are also meant to store text messages, phone calls, web searches and tower pings on its customers.

So much for trusting the good guys.

Meanwhile, the music labels today are raking in billions courtesy of streaming (which started off as a legal alternative to peer to peer file sharing, which brought in $0). This shows, that if people are offered a legal alternative at a price which is right, they will take the legal option.

And those streaming billions were not there in the past. It took a tech company to create this revenue stream, while the record labels (the ones who should have been doing this) decided that the only way they could make money again is to get laws passed to protect old business sales model instead of innovating.

And an artist wants to have a label deal.

Why?

The labels don’t care about you and all they want is to lock up your copyright forever, because without the rights of songs, the labels have no power and if they have no power they cannot negotiate these huge licensing deals with streaming platforms.

Even the movie studios like Disney lobbied hard for laws to get passed to protect their old business models. Then Netflix, Hulu, HBO and Amazon came out with streaming services and brought in billions of dollars that were not there before. And now Disney is entering the streaming market. Enforcement doesn’t work but better legal alternatives do.

And the record labels still complain at the price of streaming. They reckon Spotify should charge more and also do away with the free tier, but are too gutless to bring out their own streaming platform and charge the money that they believe customers should pay. So they bash on Spotify or YouTube or Pandora.

And when politicians leave office, they get a nice cushy job for the very firms that lobbied them hard to introduce legislation in their favour. And this happens in democracy, which brings to mind the “One” video clip from Metallica and the scenes from the movie, “Johnny Got His Gun”.

Little Kid – When it comes my turn, will you want me to go?

Father – For democracy, any man would give his only begotten son.

We might want to re-think what the hell we are fighting for.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories, Piracy

Stranger Things And Netflix

I’m late in watching S3. But once I started I couldn’t turn it off until I finished it. Like a good LP from back in the day.

The Duffer Brothers are like rock stars. Three albums (seasons) in and people are still tuning in.

And their label, Netflix, refused to play the same old “ad-supported, release in dribs and drabs game”, so they created a new game that looked a lot like the recorded long players game from the music business.

Release everything on one day like an LP and see what sticks and for how long. People hate waiting and TV guide viewing is finished. For those who lived through the 80s, the TV guide was the most popular magazine going around.

If it’s good, people will still be tuning in months later. If it’s not good, don’t worry, Netflix will have another different show out in a week.

And isn’t it funny how the recorded music business has become a hits business, with artists expected to release a track each week like the old traditional TV show game, while the TV shows on streaming services are getting released like an album, all at once.

And that was Napster’s magic. Get the tracks we want without paying for the overpriced CD we didn’t want.

And I don’t want the days of the video shop to return. They didn’t always have what I wanted because someone else rented it and if I did get it a few days or weeks later, the tape had been chewed. And if I didn’t return the movie in time, well there was this thing called late fees. So as soon as people got the option to buy the product at a reasonable price, the video rental store became challenged. Then came peer to peer downloads and suddenly the video rental store is really challenged.

Don’t believe those stories that piracy hurts creators?

It’s the best time to be a creator right now as streaming services, cable channels and traditional TV outlets are all throwing money to get content. Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Disney and Apple are all vying for people’s subscriptions.

And it happened because of peer to peer downloading. It made people realize it’s time to change the way they do things.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity

Gaming The System

If there is demand for an artists music then why aren’t the artists servicing the demand.

Because there are people putting up bootleg and demo recordings of popular artists on digital services and making money from it in the process. In some cases they even uploading fake recordings which somehow manage to get onto the artists homepage.

Actually that homepage part crap needs to be sorted by Apple and Spotify quickly because how the fuck can you fuck that up. Too much reliance on algorithms and not enough human eyes and ears.

I got a song in my Spotify Release Radar from Tommy Lee and instead of seeing the aged, white tattooed T-Bone, I see a young black rapper. Same deal with names like Dio, Ratt, Rush, Badlands, UFO, Keel, Vandenberg, Cinderella, Icon, KISS and Journey.

The process to game the system is simply.

You just set up an account with a digital distribution company and start releasing music.

Now these distribution companies are set up for independent artists to release music. But we have bullshit artists using it to game the system and fuck it up for legitimate independent artists.

And the digital distribution companies do have fraud prevention methods but people who are gaming the system are just getting smarter than the algorithms coded by people who are not as smart as the con artists.

One fraudulent leaker earned $60K in royalties by putting unreleased tracks from a popular artist on their Spotify and Apple Music accounts.

What the fuck were the artists record labels reps doing?

Didn’t they see these unreleased songs go up.

I guess not because, they were too busy fighting stream ripping sits, pirate sites, website blocking and anything else that involves censorship of the Net instead of developing artists and taking care of their artists and paying them on time and fairly.

The way the payments work for is that Spotify or Apple or Pandora will pay the digital distributor royalties for the artists. This normally happens three months after. So for royalties earned in January, the payments to the distributor happen in March/April.

And then the distributor will hold these payments as they “clear” the royalties from being free of any copyright claims. This takes another three months.

So for a fraudulent uploader to earn $60K, it means many people were asleep at the wheel.

And legitimate independent artists get punished even further as they wait over six months for a royalty payment. All because people want to game the system and the system has too many people asleep at the wheel.

Read this article over at Pitchfork.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

The Billions Artists Don’t Get But Should

This is the world that the artists have created when they signed away their masters and Copyrights to a record label. And for this tragedy to be fixed, the artists need to understand that it starts with them.

The labels have been the recording music gatekeepers for decades and they had full control to sign artists to contracts with less favourable terms.

In the process, the labels amassed a catalogue of music which gave them negotiating power at the table and when it came to take overs or selling off parts of the label, these profitable back catalogues bring in a lot of money.

French entertainment giant Vivendi owns Universal Music Group (UMG). Now Chinese tech company Tencent is looking at a 10% stake in UMG worth up to $3.6 billion dollars. The worth of that stake is because of the artists and the works UMG holds on behalf of the artists; works which they more or less paid a pittance for and works which have probably really recouped 100 times over.

How much of those billions would go back to the artists?

But hey, artists instead are forming a lobby group to fight against the tech lobby groups in the U.S. Because the distributor is now a problem. This is the same as the artists forming a lobby group in the past to fight against the truck drivers and the record stores.

I’m all for more power to the artist. It’s the artist that creates the song which connects with audiences and makes dollars. But for the artist to also have a fair say, they need to lobby hard against their employers (if they have a label deal) and the publishers, because these organisations make billions from the deals they organise with streaming companies and by selling off their small stake in the company.

And going back to the Music Artists Coalition (MAC), which also includes high profile managers, I don’t see how they will advocate for the 98% of artists doing it tough, when they represent the 2%.

But it’s a start.

Will MAC get back the masters from the labels. Oh, wait, most of those masters got destroyed in a Universal Warehouse fire.

We’ll lucky for the Public, that there is a copy of the music online. Otherwise, the tunes would be lost forever, in peoples records collections, which either end up in the trash or in a second hand book shop.

Because the labels don’t really care about this history. If they did, they would have stored the masters better, in a climate controlled room instead of a basic warehouse and they would have stored the back-ups at a different location instead of the same building.

All the labels care about is the free Spotify and YouTube users and those users who “stream rip”.

The labels (with their lobby groups) have court granted blocking on their side in most countries, so visits to sites like The Pirate Bay have reduced. However, fans of music just use YouTube and the free tier of Spotify to access music (which are both legal) and the labels don’t like it, because they are unable to find a way to convert the users of the free tiers to paying subscribers, especially in Italy.

So in this case, the labels cant increase the price to access music because people are not paying the current price as it is. So the price needs to come down. But the labels don’t want that. The option they want is to cut off the free-tiers, however this will just drive people back to the pirate sites.

And if the price to stream in Italy comes down, the record labels need to be reasonable here and still pay the artists their fair share, but we know that the words fair and reasonable are not associated with the labels.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy

Compensating Artists

Social media connects artists to fans. And that is a good thing.

The issue is that a lot of artists use social media as a one way street to market themselves and push their product. But for people to invest in you, you need to connect with them, and there are artists who do it better than others.

Dee Snider comes to mind immediately as one who does a great job connecting with fans. Dave Mustaine and Sebastian Bach do a good job as well, while Robb Flynn and Nikki Sixx do a fantastic job. Another artist who has two way comms going is Corey Taylor. There are a lot more, I know and I follow quite a few.

A simple question from a Depressed Reds Fan user account to Corey Taylor on Twitter got me interested;

“Just curious, where does the main source of income come from? I’d assume touring and merchandise, but I really don’t know.”

Corey Taylor responded with the following;

“We HAVE to tour. It’s the only way we can make a living. Merch helps, but the merch companies make the lion’s share. Streaming is pricing artists – old AND new – out of careers.”

Another user “Rock Feed” added that;

“People have this idea that bands are filthy rich. Royalties are so low for bands once all the suits get their take.”

And this started a conversation from the fans about what they try to do as consumers to make it profitable for the artist they support to earn a decent wage and continue creating music.

But, in order to fix the argument about streaming payments or digital payments or how the artist can be compensated, there needs to be a line drawn in the sand, because it is NOT THE CONSUMERS FAULT.

As consumers, we stream, we buy, we go to the shows, we buy the merch and we buy the collector’s edition.

How much more can the consumer do?

Of course, according to the record labels, we should pay more for streaming. Because if we did, more royalties would go to the artists which is all BS. The royalties going to the artist would be the same regardless of what the streaming rate is.

What about the record labels paying more to the artists in royalties?

Then you have the government controlling the rate of payments, which means, music doesn’t operate in a free market, instead it operates in a government granted monopoly.

And Publishers make billions for doing really nothing and pay out nothing because hey, it’s the consumers fault and the streaming companies fault according to them.

Other posts from other artists got screen shotted and re-tweeted.

James Blunt said he got paid 00.0004499368 pounds per stream. Beers are on him. Another user jumped on that and did the math that 1,000,000 streams of a song = 440 pounds. And when you split that amongst band members it doesn’t add up to a lot.

Another user called Source Code tweeted that they read;

“The Who back in the 70’s started a tour 40K in debt. They had a very successful time but afterwards the band were told they were still 40K in debt. It wasn’t the drinking or smashing up equipment that cost them, it was the anonymous greedy suits stealing.”

Corey Taylor re-added that;

“Musicians are LITERALLY the last to be paid”.

And that is true.

Artists are paid once all the expenses are paid. That advance payment has to be recouped. Studio time and promotion needs to be recouped. Legal needs to be paid and Management needs to be paid. Somewhere in between, the digital service provider takes up to 30% of the royalty paid. The label takes the rest and then distributes what the contact states to the artist. Then you have the publishers. Same deal there. The digital service provider takes up to 30% and the publisher takes the rest, distributing the money according to the contract they have with the artist. If the artist sells vinyl and product, they get a higher rate once the monies are recouped.

You know when you see articles like Steve Perry signing a publishing agreement or Nikki Sixx signing a publishing agreement and you can interchange any other artist who has a valuable back catalogue into the phrase.

Well, those artists don’t sign those agreements and get nothing in return. Obviously they are in a position of power to sign an agreement to their terms and get a favourable royalty rate, but there will be rules that the publisher would pay up front an advance fee and recoup that fee over the term.  

And when artists go out on tour and depending on their pull, they even scalp their own tickets to make more money on the show, because why should the booking agent, the venue, the parking stations and the food places make more than the artist. It’s wrong but legal.

Phil Labonte from All That Remains posted that their biggest song has 67 million views on YouTube and they have over 1.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify but see nothing from it.

Phil further mentioned that the band ends up making between 10 to 15% of gross on a tour. Then they need to split that amount 5 ways and pay their taxes. Once that is don’t, they can start paying their bills.

Bigger bands, will take an upfront payment and then negotiate this per show split afterwards.

But for a smaller band, if they have a show that has 1000 people at $20 a ticket, then that is $20,000 in gross earnings. Based on Phil’s numbers, the band stands to make between $2K to $3K for the show. Split 5 ways, it’s $400 to $600 per person. Play 20 shows and if you get the same crowds, then that’s $8K to $12K per person. Gross. Then tax.

And by the end of all the conversations, the artists didn’t care how people got the music, they just wanted to be compensated.

But music operates in a government granted bubble, and not a free market price, so the prices set are relient on Copyright rules (created by the Government) to make up the difference.

Artists tried “pay as you want” bundles (which is a way to test what the free market would pay for your work) and I don’t see too many of those bundles on offer today.

And there was two way communications between Corey and fans, who said, that since Corey plays music in a genre which isn’t popular, how can he expect to make coin on royalties to which Corey replied back with that he doesn’t believe that is the case, as all of the shows sell out and the genre is popular to the masses.

Its back to the same old argument; metal fans don’t stream as much as pop fans. And as an artist, do you want your fans to buy your album or stream it or both.

The best part of all of the conversations was the comment from Corey which said;

“As long as the RECORD LABELS get THEIR money, they don’t CARE if the ARTIST gets paid at ALL. Or who plays their music – unless it’s a critic on YouTube, THEN THEY’RE UP IN ARMS.”

So much truth there. The bottom line is this; the Record Labels own a stake in Spotify. And they own this stake, because they had negotiating power from all the Copyrights they held, who really should be owned by the artists.

Did anyone notice that Tool recently entered the world of streaming?

And they would have done it on their terms, and their own rate. And they will be well compensated.

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