Recording Industry Dumb and Dumber – The Sequel

So the Recording Industry in Australia is welcoming new anti-piracy legislation. High fives all around for site blocking laws. Add to those Recording Industry high fives, Movie industry high fives and any other legacy content owner.

The question I have is this;

With site blocking now becoming law, what does the Recording Industry believe would happen to their businesses profits?
Would people suddenly return to buying CD’s?
Would people suddenly buy an expensive Foxtel subscription to watch ten episodes of “Game of Thrones”?
Would people who normally don’t go to the movies, suddenly start going to the movies?
Would people suddenly go out and buy books, or e-books?

Site blocking laws are designed to stop people from accessing websites that film, TV and music companies say are hosting their content without permission. Surely, our government officials would have looked at the U.K before deciding if site-blocking was the right way forward.

In the UK, The Pirate Bay has been blocked since 2012 however people have found ways to get around that block. Even though site blocking laws exist in the U.K, sales of music are still declining. However, if the industry puts more emphasis into their streaming business, then some different results could appear. Lucky for the U.K, they have a lot of popular artists right now and these artists are really pushing the streaming side of their music.

So in return the U.K have more people streaming more music than ever before. By 2019, streaming is expected to account for 49 per cent of music revenue in the U.K, compared to 22 per cent in 2014.

Digital music downloading (both legal and illegal) is a thing of the past. It’s history. Why would we want to pay for an mp3, when the history of music is at our fingertips with streaming and we, the fans, like it.

It’s easy and uncomplicated.

So since streaming is king, can someone tell me why we need the Entertainment Industries going to the courts to block websites based on their own evidence?

I think the catch-cry put out by the government is “the laws will protect the viability and success of creative industries while restricting the profitability of sites that facilitate piracy.”

Yep, Mr Government, as long as you and your financiers know what that means, it’s okay, we believe the shit you say.

I would be interested to see the model they used to show how the laws would protect the creative industries especially since Australia is a huge market for DVD and Blu-ray sales.

How can the entertainment industries explain the HUGE profits they get from DVD/Blu-ray sales in Australia?

Let’s use Game Of Thrones.

The TV show is hidden behind an expensive Pay-tv paywall in Australia. The actual subscriber numbers for that Pay-tv provider are lower than the sale numbers of the DVD/Blu-ray season releases.

Where did all of these extra fans come from?

The content owners need to be talking about lowering their licensing fees so that the monthly streaming plans are cheaper and that all content is available in the one place.

I have a Netflix subscription and a Spotify subscription.

The content industries should be pushing more people to these services. In return, the money pie will get bigger. It’s simply economics. These industries cannot pretend anymore that the old business models are coming back.

Let’s use Game of Thrones for another example.

If HBO wants to stamp out piracy, ensure that the show is available to everyone globally from the one HBO source.

Not from a reseller.

HBO makes, it, so they should sell it, to the people who want to watch it, when they want to watch it. I cannot for the life of me understand why people need to pay another company who paid HBO a fee to re-broadcast it. It’s a business model that is doomed.

Why do you think Netflix started to make their own TV shows?

Hell, why do you think HBO started their own TV shows? Remember, HBO was once a Home Box Office re-broadcaster.

Because re-broadcasting is not a viable business models. Same deal for music streaming services.

Expect Spotify to start to sign bands and really shake up the streaming world.

Stupidity Incorporated

Stupidity just doesn’t seem to go away these days. Last month the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) promoted it’s World Intellectual Property Day with a slogan from a Bob Marley and the Wailers song called “Get Up, Stand Up”. WIPO’s theme was “Get Up, Stand Up. For Music”.

Did you know that a judge ruled against Bob Marley’s heirs a few years who sought to regain control of Marley’s copyrights from Universal Music claiming that Marley wrote the song as a work made for hire and thus Universal could keep the copyright, and not give it back to the Marley Estate.

Now “work for hire” means that an artist was commissioned to write a song to the exact specifications of the record label. Wikipedia states “work for hire” in the following way;

A work made for hire is a work created by an employee as part of his or her job, or a work created on behalf of a client where all parties agree in writing to the WFH designation.

I can’t believe how a judge would seriously believe that the record label at the time “Island Records” would have given the song titles to Bob Marley and told him the theme of what the song should be about.

Anyone involved in music knows too well that is not the case for at all. “Get Up, Stand Up” was written after Marley toured Haiti and the poverty that he was confronted with in that country.

As the Techdirt article points out, you have an organisation so dumb and out of touch with culture that it using a song from an artist that has been hijacked by the corporations who push for stronger copyright enforcement.

As far as I’m concerned, Bob Marley’s copyright MUST be in the Public Domain upon death. The public is meant to be the beneficiaries here, not the heirs and not the record labels.

Which brings me to the “Stairway To Heaven” court case.

You see I am not a fan of the heirs of an artist inheriting the copyrights of the artist once they die and I am definitely not a fan of the heirs of an artist suing others for money. We can all hear that Jimmy Page lifted the riff from the Spirit track “Taurus” and to be honest made a better derivative version of the Spirit track. For whatever reasons Spirit guitarist Randy California was cool with it and nothing happened. However the heirs are now challenging that.

What a sad state it is when a court has to decide on this and whichever way the court rules, the court is putting out the idea that one track is so original and the other is not. As a musician, trust me when I say that no song or riff is created in a vacuum. Each piece of music that comes out is a sum of our influences.

One final thing to add to my rant. When can the artists get it right when it comes to the music industry and recording industry references. Check out this quote from Ron Bumblefoot, the current guitarist in Guns N’ Roses.

”The music industry started to see their customers as their enemies and everybody suffered for it. Congratulations record industry – you’ve made a mess and you still don’t know how to clean it up.”

I always state over and over again, that the music industry is not the recording industry. They are two different entities. You see, the music industry didn’t see their customers as enemies, nor did they sue them, it was the recording industry that did that.

Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Copyright, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Time Machine

Since I did my left knee I have been in bit of a slump. At first I thought it was some minor bruising and tissue swelling. I was getting better and within 2 weeks of the injury I was walking properly. There was still some tenderness however it didn’t concern me. During that period I also had an MRI.

Then I got the results.

Basically I have a complete tear of the ACL and a partial tear of the MCL.

Now I was very surprised at the mess in my left knee that the MRI showed. I was feeling better and even contemplating playing sport again.

The Doctor was very surprised to see me walking unassisted and pain-free. According to the Doc, I should have been in a bit of a bother.

The weird thing is that after the Doctor told me the results guess what started to happen.

I started to limp.

Isn’t it amazing how the mind processes information. Prior to knowing how unstable my left knee really is, I was walking fine and contemplating returning to the soccer field on the weekend.

After I was told the MRI results on Wednesday my mind became fearful that if I tried to walk properly I was doing more damage to my left knee and I started to limp.

So here I am bumming my way through the days. I always turn to music in days like these. At the moment I am trying to find some new band that I haven’t heard off that just blows me away.

I listened to “Issa” (Finnish female rock goddess) new album “Crossfire”. It’s actually her third album and it did nothing for me.

I listened to “We Are Harlots” self titled debut. For those that don’t know they are the hard rock super group formed by ex Asking Alexandria vocalist Danny Worsnop and ex Sebastian Bach guitarist Jeff George. I enjoyed three songs in “Someday”, “Never Turn Back” and “Love For The Night”. The sad thing is that those songs are not the ones out there promoting the album.

Then I listened to an album from a Swedish band called “Dirty Passion”. It did nothing for me. So I moved on.

I took in new albums from “The Poodles”, “Kid Rock” “Scorpions” and “Gun” in a marathon four-hour session.

Does anyone have four hours to spend to listen to music these days? It’s not like the days of old when you kick back with the record and the album sleeve and just take it all in.

The Poodles “Devil In The Details” album was a surprise and an enjoyable listen, however nothing memorable stood out.

Kid Rock had one great song in the title track “First Kiss” and that was it.

The concept behind Scorpions “Return To Forever” is brilliant. Going back to outtakes from their most successful commercial period (1980 to 1990) and re-freshening those outtakes into songs is a great way to pay homage to the past.

Musically it is a good album.

The origins behind the songs that I have read in interviews and on Wikipedia is brilliant story telling. That is what we love as fans of entertainment, the story, the narrative. The “Return To Forever” album is an enjoyable listen however it doesn’t have that X-Factor song that makes me want to go back. The closest they got to it is the song “We Built This House”.

For Gun, I think I had certain expectations for their “Frantic” album and at this point in time it didn’t live up to those expectations, which is okay as their first three albums “Taking On The World”, “Gallus” and “Swagger” are classics to me.

So I went back listening to some W.A.S.P from their Eighties days. I took in the self titled debut, “The Last Command”, “Inside The Electric Circus” and “The Headless Children”. I’m a huge fan of Blackie Lawless and that eighties period was also a very creative one for him.

Then I wrote some tunes in my studio. “Revolution In Black” is a cross between the AC/DC blues groove and the era of “You Cant Stop Rock N Roll” from Twisted Sister. Lyrically the song deals with growing up listening to metal music and wearing my black metal t shirts. In the end that is what we are, a REVOLUTION IN BLACK.

For “The World We Live In” my wife has been listening to a lot of the pop songs out on the charts and I noticed that they all follow the basic Em, C, G, D chord progression. Of course some songs are in different keys, however the progression is the same. For example, if the key was in B minor, then the progression would be Bm, G, D, A. If the song was in A minor, the progression would be Am, F, C, G.

Look at the list below and it just goes to show that music is all about the influence and re-using what came before;

One Republic – If I Lose Myself – 41,323,341 views on YouTube.
One Republic – Apologise – 100,377,441 views on YouTube.
Maroon 5 – Daylight – 17,539,902 views on YouTube.
The Script – Hall of Fame – 174,512,128 views on YouTube.
Imagine Dragons – It’s Time – 121,828,132 views on YouTube.
Bastille – Pompeii – 205,301,496 views on YouTube.
Passanger – Let Her Go – 588,321,169 views on YouTube.
Avicii – Wake Me Up – 597,531,921 views on YouTube for the official video. 221,445,894 views for the lyric video.
Keith Urban – You’ll Think Of Me – 1,581,515 views of the official video. 9,834,735 views of a fan made lyric video.
John Legend – All Of Me – 450,748,280 views on YouTube.
Bon Jovi – It’s My Life – 202,924,429 views on YouTube.
The Cranberries – Zombie – 219,952,452 views on YouTube.
Smashing Pumpkins – Disarm – 6,586,181 views on YouTube.

Looking at the above list, think of the dollars those songs have generated for artists and labels alike just by using the same chord progression. Hell, look at the YouTube view count for each song. Any artist would kill to have stats like that.

In a nutshell that is what “The World We Live In” is all about, a common chord progression with an uncommon vocal melody.

Then I went and listened to the new Halestorm album, “Into The Wild Life” (I have it ordered via Amazon and I came across a pirated copy, so I couldn’t wait to sink my ears into it). Lzzy Hale is a powerful leader and what a great voice. Emotional and yet aggressive. The band rocks hard when they need too and they can tone it back or pop it up when they need to.

Then I cranked the “Crooked Doors” album from Royal Thunder and I was BLOWN away. I listened to the opening track “Time Machine” over and over again. The albums tone, feel and emotion just resonated with me and the mood I was in.

The whole melodic guitar section from about 4.35 with the vocals layered over it is brilliant.

I know nothing about them.

It never used to be this way. We would get the scorched earth marketing push, the press interviews and the magazine articles written by the PR company.

Like Halestorm, Royal Thunder is fronted by a powerful female voice however both bands operate in two vastly different places when it comes to the commercial tree. Mlny Parsonz is a force to be reckoned with. When she sings, you can hear the years of vocal damage in her voice. And that is the uniqueness which makes her vocal style special.

Add to that the brilliant guitar playing from her husband Josh Weaver and you have a formidable songwriting team.

And suddenly I wish I was in the time machine, going back to that moment in time and not making some of the mistakes I made.

The Copyright Pension/Annuity

When I started to write my own songs back in the late Eighties, copyright was not even in my mindset. You see, when you start to do something creative you do it because there is a sense of fulfillment and a desire to create.

From my own experiences, I never sat down with my guitar and said to myself, “Gee, lucky for me, there is a copyright law in place that lasts my whole lifetime, plus another seventy years after I die, to give me an incentive to create”.

Those kinds of thoughts never enter the mindset.

Which brings me to today and how the very nature of what Copyright is has been hijacked by large corporations and greedy next of kins.

The whole “Blurred Lines” case is a joke. For the record, it is a crap song that made a lot of cash. So what we have is a jury deciding if a song sounds similar to another song and for them to decide that it does sound similar, it more or less indirectly infers that Marvin Gaye was so original that his song “Got To Give It Up” came out of some celestial vacuumed place that only Marvin Gaye had access to. However, everyone knows that is not the case. All artists are the sum of their influences.

And what a said state of affairs for Copyright. You have the heirs of Marvin Gaye, who haven’t contributed anything to the arts and are living off the proceeds of a stupid law that extends Copyright 70 plus years after death. There are millions upon millions of songs out there that sound similar, however once a song makes some serious cash, the knives come out.

What I took out of the court case and what bodes well for music in general is the amount of money the track made.

$5.6 million in profits went to Robin Thicke while $5.2 million to Pharrell Williams, $700,000 to the other writer T.I. and the rest of the $16.7 million in overall profits went to the record companies Interscope, UMG Distribution and Star Trak. Since Napster, we have been hearing the same rhetoric from the recording industry and out of touch artists.

Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley are renowned for their viewpoints on rock being dead and piracy killing off any chance a new artist has of making some money. Scott Ian wanted to disconnect people from the Internet. Nuclear Blast want to shakedown people who downloaded the music from “All Shall Perish”.

Meanwhile the record labels kept the propaganda machine going that they just can’t make any money because of piracy. So here is just one song that has made close to $17 million dollars in profits. One song, remember that.

So it goes back to the same old saying, create something that people gravitate too and watch it make you money. There is a shitload of money out there if artists can create a great song that people gravitate to.

Actually speaking of plagiarism, listen to the “Funky Town” vocal melody and then listen to the verse vocal melody in Kiss’s “Lick It Up”. They are identical. Hell, the whole “Sonic Highways” album from Foo Fighters is a case of influences. Same goes for the whole “Hail To The King” album from Avenged Sevenfold. Let’s add “Kill Em All” from Metallica which was more or less a rip off the NWOBHM movement. Subsequent Metallica songs afterwards would further borrow from other cult/unknown artists.

Recently Five Finger Death Punch lifted “The Ultimate Sin” verse vocal melody and used it for the “Lift Me Up” verse. Dave Mustaine did the same both musically and vocally by lifting “Children Of The Grave” and using it for “Kingmaker.”

Thank god that Dave Grohl, A7X, Five Finger Death Punch, Dave Mustaine or Metallica didn’t decide to let a Marvin Gaye song influence them, otherwise they would be in the courts as the well.

I think it is pretty safe to say a lot of songs sound the same regardless of genre. I see it more as a tribute than a rip off and to be honest in no way does the new composition take away from the original. For example, there is no way that “Something From Nothing” from the Foo Fighters takes away from Dio’s “Holy Diver”.

But when you have a whole copyright industry that makes money of the works created by others, you get a lot of bullshit happening, especially when a song makes a lot of money.

Don’t You Just Love What Copyright Has Become?

Remember the original intention of Copyright was to promote learning. It was conceived that if creators of works would have a 14 year monopoly on their creations (with the option to renew for another 14 years provided they were still alive), they had enough incentives to create new works and when the copyright expired on their older works, they would fall into the public domain so that others can use and build on these older works.

200 plus years later, we have a lot of stupidity around in the name of Copyright.

A German based association called, Total Wipes Music Group is using Google’s anti-piracy system to censor everything it doesn’t like. Read the article and be amazed at how Copyright is abused. In order to stop the infringement on an album they own the copyright for, Total Wipes Music Group tried to censor a legitimate article on how to download anonymously. Since then, they have targeted legitimate articles from the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF), AVG, Dropbox and Opera, just to name a few. And guess what, not one of those sites listed contained any infringing links or even mentioned the music that Total Wipes Music Group administers or holds the copyrights to. What Total Wipes attempted to do was to censor legitimate articles that provided users with information on downloading and anonymous VPN’s under the disguise of Copyright.

And the laughable thing is that the Group is now claiming that it was a bug in their automated takedown system. Well, I guess that bug just keeps on resurfacing each year.

Don’t you just love what copyright has become?

Then you have a powerful organisation like the MPAA trying to censor a website called Open Culture. Open Culture offers Public Domain movies however according to a takedown notice that the MPAA sent to Google, Open Culture’s list of 700 free public domain movies contains copyright infringing material.

Remember that Copyright’s intent was to promote learning and this was done by ensuring that each country has a rich public domain. Well it looks like in the U.S, the rich wealthy copyright monopolies want to control that as well and put those works back under Copyright protection.

Don’t you just love what copyright has become?

Remember the good old days when the copyright monopolies lobbied hard against radio, television, the introduction of blank cassette tapes and those advertisements that “Home Taping Is Killing the Music Business”, then blank CD’s, then mp3’s and piracy sites. They did that all in the name of the artist. That same artist that they exploited and signed to a deal that was stacked in the favour of the record label.

It’s pretty easy to read between the lines and see that the record labels and their lobby groups did all of this lobbying to protect their business models and to ensure that their copyright monopoly remains in place. And this leads to more lobby groups that want to have a say.

Now we have the Grammy Creators Alliance. On the face of it, they proclaim that they are backed by artists like Steven Tyler and their intention is to lobby Spotify, so that Spotify pays them fairly for their works. However, the organisation is run by agents and managers whose only interest is securing a big pay-day for themselves. Hell, these types of people don’t even create anything of value that people consume, however they now have a voice on copyright disputes because they have money behind them to give them that voice.

For the record Spotify does pay fairly to the Copyright Holders of the works. So maybe this new Alliance should lobby their record label to pay them fairly.

Don’t you just love what copyright has become?

And then on certain occasions you have some excellent innovation that happens when people don’t allow Copyright to influence their creations. iFlix is another torrent client that streams any magnet link in an instant. It’s easy to use, it’s available on Android and it uses material that has been infringed on.

It’s created by a Romanian software engineer. Romania is one of the poorer countries in the EU and it also has the highest rates of software piracy. And from all of this piracy, you wouldn’t believe what happened. It made Romania a powerhouse in software development. Romania now has the most techies in Europe. Google and Microsoft employ a lot of IT workers from Romania. All of this was made possible by infringing on the rights of others.

And going back to iFlix, the ecosystem all came about because the developer was hired to offer a service to parents to watch their kindergarten kids on their mobile.

The Great Copyright Hijack

Copyright in its first incarnation via the “Statute of Anne” and the “Copyright Act of 1790” stated that the objective of copyright was to “encourage learning” and this was to be achieved by securing authors the “sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending” the copies of their “maps, charts, and books” for a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14 year term should the copyright holder still be alive.

So think about what the intent of Copyright was. It was to ENCOURAGE LEARNING.

So fast forward 200 plus years and Copyright has a very different meaning. The encourage learning part is gone, replaced by massive expansions of copyright terms.

Finally, copyright law has become a money-making scheme that only benefits the large corporations that have a copyright monopoly. It’s become worlds apart from its original intention.

For a lot of people copyright law relates to the fact that they shouldn’t download movies or music without paying for it.

But what people fail to understand is that copyright reaches into everything we do. Copyright now is NOT about encouraging learning, but about locking up learning.

Copryight law is all about censorship. You know the one I am talking about, when a company/person with some wealth, issues a takedown claim to another entity that is not so powerful/wealthy to remove content they don’t like.

I am sure by now everyone has probably heard about the YouTube video of a cat purring being taken down by a Copyright Claim from music publisher EMI and collecting society PRS for Music. This is silly for a whole lot of reasons. First, EMI and PRS for Music use automated take downs, so there is no human involvement. Second, YouTube’s Content ID algorithm is obviously flawed as it thinks that a cat purring links back to a recorded song. Third, the YouTube user has been punished for doing nothing wrong.

REDDIT REJECTS COPYRIGHT CLAIMS – this is when an entity fights back and actually investigates the claims made against it. As mentioned above, corporations with money use automated take down systems and a lot of the sites that get hit with these take down requests comply without investigating the merits of the claim.

However Reddit doesn’t take the takedown requests as gospel. They actually investigate and determine if the takedown requests have merit. And WordPress, which hosts this blog is by far the best at handing and investigating take down requests.

COPYRIGHT CLAIMS OVERREACH – this is what happens when a powerful entity censors the speech of others. They look silly and they hurt their reputation.

Remember when Nuclear Blast via a Panama-based copyright troll called World Digital Rights went after people (maybe fans/maybe not) of metal band “All Shall Perish” back in 2012. Well the band wasn’t happy about their label going after people who could be “All Shall Perish” fans and guess what happened afterwards.

Vocalist Eddie Hermida departed to join Suicide Silence. Guitarist Ben Orum became a family man. Co-Guitarist Francesco Artusato was involved with another project called “Devil You Know”. Drummer Adam Pierce joined “Emmure” and at this point in time he is listed as Emmure’s drummer on their Facebook page and also listed as the “All Shall Perish” drummer on their Wikipedia page. That just left bassist Mike Tiner as the only member that didn’t have anything on.

The whole Metallica vs Napster focused on Copyright Infringement however what did that really mean. Metallica at the time already had a handsome deal in place where they would lease their shares in the songs copyright to a corporation for a nice upfront payment. Hell, Sammy Hagar paid for his divorce by putting three new songs on a Greatest Hits package and selling the copyrights of those new songs for a nice fee.

So going back to Metallica, who was really hurt when their music was infringed on. It definitely wasn’t Metallica. And if we had the original terms of 14 years, plus 14 years renewal “Kill Em All” and “Ride The Lightning” would now be Copyright free and in the Public Domain.

And that my friends is the great Copyright hijack.

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

Saints (Winners) and Sinners (Losers)

WINNER
Machine Head are doing the opposite of what all the other bands are doing. Playing smaller venues, selling them out and doing “An Evening With..” extravaganza. The prices of tickets are affordable and not extravagant. This is one band that realizes their niche place in the metal music business and they play to their core audience, the Headcases.

In Robb Flynn, they have one of the best frontmen in thrash/metal circles that is not afraid to take a stance on an issue. He speaks to his core audience via his journals. He controls his own narrative and not the press, which is the downfall of a lot of other artists.

Flynn, along with Monte Conner from Nuclear Blast have realized that music is all about the souvenirs. The “Killers and Kings” single release for Record Store Day with the four different tarot covers proved once again that if people believe in the artists, they will spend their money. Machine Head weren’t selling music, they were selling collectibles. I purchased all four and I still haven’t opened them.

WINNER
Megadeth. As a guitarist I didn’t really dig Broderick’s uninspired lead breaks so I am pretty happy that he has left. Just because a person is super technical it doesn’t mean they are good songwriters. Seriously put those lead breaks up against the jazzy shred work of Chris Poland, the neo – classical shred metal of Marty Friedman, the tasteful phrasing of Al Pitrelli and the pentatonic chaos of Dave Mustaine and you will see where Broderick stacks up. Drummers are plentiful so I am sure that Megadeth will have no issues here finding one that will suit.

LOSERS
Chris Broderick and Shaun Drover.

The history of guitarists and drummers that have departed Megadeth is vast. The real good ones have had stellar careers pre and post Megadeth. Marty Friedman had a fan base before he joined and then he became a Japanese musical icon post Megadeth. Al Pitrelli also had an established fan base prior to joining and he was already in demand as a session guy and touring guitarist for various projects. Chris Poland did “Damn The Machine” which was an unbelievable album/band that wasn’t embraced by the waves of change that happened to metal in 1993 and Poland’s instrumental album “Return To Metalopolis” was also a favourite back in the day.

WINNER
Streaming. Fans of music didn’t care at all that The Pirate Bay got raided or that Kickass Torrents got taken down. Those raids/takedowns are all pure PR stunts by the associations and a waste of money/legal resources because copyright for the last 15 years has been hijacked and used purely for criminal pursuits and nothing to do with aiding the artist.

LOSERS
Artists and entities that compare the streaming dollars earned today to those pre 1999 sales dollars without understanding that streaming is all about scale. The more people using the platform, the higher the payments will be in the future. But no one can look that far, when everyone thinks about “right now”. The ones complaining about streaming royalties just don’t have enough fans interested in listening to their music consistently.

WINNER
Slash. He has shown that he is more Guns N Roses than Axl Rose is. His output has been solid via his many projects, like Slash’s Snakepit, Velvet Revolver, Slash (the guest vocalist album) and now Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators. He is doing what every other musician should be doing, which is releasing product and touring.

LOSER
Duff McKagan. His views on piracy/copyright infringement are restricting him from doing what he needs to do, which is, to create music.

WINNER
Dee Snider. His views on Doug Aldrich are spot on.

LOSER
Doug Aldrich. He’s a good guitar player but nowhere in the league of the Eighties guitarist he was competing against when he was with “Lion”. For the years he has been involved in music, there is not one definitive song/riff that can be attributed to Doug Aldrich.

WINNER
Data. The era of feeling it or rorting the charts is over. It’s all about the fans and what they listen too.

LOSER
Sales. Just because Spotify is killing off piracy, it doesn’t mean that people will start to buy physical CD’s, vinyls or pay to download MP3’s again. Seriously there is a lot of rubbish reporting out there stating something like “sales are worse now since Spotify has entered the market”. Well, hello genius, Spotify and streaming for that matter are also competing with sales.

WINNER
George Lynch. He realizes it’s all about the music and without making new music, he has no career. That’s why people come back. Lynch Mob, his solo career, KXM, Sweet and Lynch and now the announcement of a new project called “The Infidels” which is another pseudo-supergroup.

LOSER
Don Dokken. Without the involvement of Lynch and Pilson in the songwriting department, the band Dokken is a shadow of its former self.

WINNER
Indegoot Entertainment. They have a roster of bands that make up a very large portion of the U.S Hard Rock market, that have proven to be consistent sellers in a recorded music sales market that is contracting instead of expanding. Shinedown, In This Moment, Halestorm, Chevelle, Adelitas Way, Black Stone Cherry, Theory of A Deadman and Story of The Year.

Rock is far from dead when you have rock artists like these. And with a good roster of talent comes power on the live circuit. That is why Indegoot is a winner.

LOSER
Any metal or rock band that is spending months upon months creating their new album and being out of the public consciousness. The modern way is to be in our head space every day. If an artist today takes a break then they are on their way to being forgotten. And you don’t want to be in the news if it is not about your music. No one can forget what their core business is.

Slipknot took almost seven years to release their new album, only to have “The Devil In I” rack up 9.6 million streams. What about the other songs?

Yngwie Malmsteen has delivered a lot of dud albums in the last ten years and he still takes his time before issuing the next one.

WHY?

You would think after one crap album, he would get going with delivering a better song quickly to make amends. Malmsteen can be doing much more to keep in touch with his fan base which doesn’t revolve around issuing ten to twelve songs every two years under his own name.

Take a leaf out of George Lynch’s or Michael Sweets or Marc Tremonit’s or Russell Allen’s playbook.

WINNER
Kevin Churko. Everyone wants to work with him. He is the modern-day version of Tom Werman or Keith Olsen. Five Finger Death Punch, In This Moment, Hellyeah, Papa Roach are all bands that have used the might Churko as producer and on some occasions as songwriter. If you want to use sales as a statistic of reach, then bands produced by Kevin Churko are some of the best sellers in the genre.

LOSER
EVH.

My EVH Peavey 5150 Combo that I purchased back in 1995 is still my favourite amp to record with. So it is a shame that the greatest and most innovative guitarist cannot get it together to deliver new music worthy of his stature. Reading Sammy Hagar’s bio recently cemented my views on EVH who has become a person that is so out of touch with reality and a victim of his own vices. His future without any doubt is with Sammy Hagar as the front man.
WINNER
Allen Kovac’s move from management to the label business has paid off. Eleven Seven Music is another label doing their bit in bringing hard rock back to the masses. Artists involve Hellyeah, Mötley Crüe, Papa Roach, Pop Evil, Sixx:A.M, Nothing More, Art Of Dying, Apocalyptica, Escape The Fate and Drowning Pool.

LOSER
AC/DC without Malcolm Young have lost their foundation. Don’t get me wrong, I love AC/DC and always will. They will make a killing on the live circuit however no one cares for their new music. On top of all that their views about withholding their music from certain digital outlets (while it is available for free on pirate sites) shows how out of touch they are. They are leaving money on the table.

WINNER
Marc Tremonti. He showed the world that he was the brains and driving force behind Creed. He kept his career going with Alter Bridge. He started his own solo band. He went away and mastered the art of shred. His PRS guitars are state of the art and brilliant to play. Trust me on that one as I have one. The PRS through the 5150 is the perfect sound for me.

LOSER
Metallica. They are trying to replicate the corporate deals of U2 and the product saturation of Kiss. This in turn leaves the hard-core fan base squeamish. Meanwhile it has been seven years since they released “Death Magnetic” and music is the very reason why Metallica is in the powerful position they are in right now. However it seems they have forgotten that part of their career. “Lords Of Summer” will most probably be turned into a totally different song however if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t bode well for Metallica as they sit down to write the next album.

Copyright!! Whose Right Really Is It?

My Google Alert on Copyright has been in overdrive over the last three weeks over Copyright news items. While I was reading through some of the articles, a persistent theme was present throughout.

Who really owns the rights to songs when government granted monopolies have hijacked the very definition of what copyright is?

First off, we have an entity called Zenbu Magazines Inc. that has filed a whole suite of cases against Apple, Sony, Google and Rdio over their streaming services. The crux of the argument is the same as the Sirius XM Radio case, over pre-1972 recordings and the royalties attached to those recordings.

The cases filed by Zenbu Magazines Inc., states that all of the services mentioned have been making money off of pre-1972 music recordings without paying any royalties to the owners of the original recordings.

Let’s get one thing clear here first.

Zenbu owns the copyrights to a lot of the songs in question. Sometime ago they would have paid a fee to the artists in question so that they could hold the rights. One of the songs in questions is a song called “Sin City” by the band The Flying Burrito Brothers. The song came out in 1969 on their album “The Gilded Palace of Sin”.

The song is written by Gram Parsons (who died in 1973) and Chris Hillman (who is born in 1944 and still alive today). Now the consensus for pre-1972 recordings was this;

The songwriters get paid from sales and public performances of the song.
The performers however get paid only from sales.

The issue today is if the performers of the song have a right to be paid for the public performance of those sound recordings.

So why is this such a big issue right now and not in the past.

The pre-1972 rule wasn’t an issue because terrestrial radio broadcasters are exempt from paying performance royalties on all sound recordings, no matter when they those sound recordings are made. The viewpoint held is that the recording artists would receive a lot of exposure from airplay and that exposure would then translate into sales.

But people are just not buying pieces of vinyl and plastic anymore to hear music that they like and what we have is a lot of financially challenged business models of these government granted monopolies.

What copyright has actually done in this case is give power to an entity that has NOT CREATED anything and with that power they are shaking down companies who provide a service to music consumers. This is a far cry from copyrights explicit purpose of granting the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution, usually for a limited time, with the intention of enabling the creator to receive compensation for their intellectual effort.

And if anyone is thinking that the streaming companies should just pay up extra royalties to the performers of the songs of pre_1972 recordings (keeping in mind that the songwriters are getting paid), due to the mess of copyright regarding pre-1972 sound recordings, each streaming company would have to individually work out a deal with each copyright owner.

The streaming companies are all about scale. They are all about the MACRO so I don’t expect them to get all down and dirty and into the micro.

Then there is another case that went to the federal courts. This one is about a recent song from 1993 called “Whoomp! (There It Is)” and boy is this one is interesting.

In 1993, Cecil Glenn and Steven James wrote and produced the song. They also entered into an agreement with Bellmark Records. At the time, Alvertis Isbell was the president of Bellmark Records. Bellmark Records primary business model is all about owning sound recordings. However by 1997, Bellmark Records filed for bankruptcy and all of its assets were purchased by DM Records for a fee.

The copyrights of the songs owed by Bellmark Recordings would be assumed to be part of the assets purchased by DM Records. So of course, DM Records went on to monetize the copyright of the song “Whoomp”. Meanwhile, the masters of the song are owned by the writers of the song, Cecil Glenn and Steven James.

Sound confusing. It sure is. But read on.

To understand how fucked up this is, you need to go back to 1977, when Isbell Alvert formed his own music publishing company called Alvert Music. It is that company, Alvert Music that then filed a copyright infringement case against DM Records in 2002 (5 years after Bellmark Records went bankrupt) to have the courts declare that Alvert Music, not DM Records is the rightful owner of Bellmark Records assets and also the rightful owner of the composition copyright for “Whoomp”.

When the case went to trial, Isbell mentioned that the agreement he had with the songwriters of the songs transferred 50% of the songs copyright to Alvert Music. DM Records argued that Bellmark Records was the only assignee as the agreement was made between Bellmark Records and the songwriters.

And in December 2014, the Courts agreed that Alvertis Isbell owned the copyright and that DM Records was liable for copyright infringement.

So what assets did DM Records actually buy in 1997 for that $160,000 it gave to Bellmark Records?

Anyway in this instance we have the actual SONGWRITERS signing away a large percentage to another ENTITY. That entity goes bust, however the owner of that entity also owned another entity and he used that other entity to sue the new owner (which we will call the NEW ENTITY) for Copyright Infringement. It sure sounds like a lot of ENTITIES at play in lieu of creators.

So I looked up the meaning of copyright again in the dictionary.

the exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material.

I would assume that the ORIGINATOR means the creator of the works.

Wikipedia has the following;

Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country, that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution, usually for a limited time, with the intention of enabling the creator to receive compensation for their intellectual effort.

There is that word again.

CREATOR.

So what the hell happened to COPYRIGHT to allow people who didn’t create anything the right to shakedown and sue others. What the hell happened to COPYRIGHT when the courts decided who has the right.

Copyright Stupidity Again And Again

Remember the days of going into a restaurant or a pub/bar and hearing live music. Depending on the venue and what they offered, in most of the cases the bands would play cover songs. Well those venues are drying up faster today than the lands starved of rain.

You see when you have a law that gives power to organisations that contribute nothing creatively to the arts, however their whole business model is based around the arts, you get some nasty juju going down.

The music licensing agencies are financially challenged. Their whole business model was based on radio plays and sales. So when the Record Labels controlled the gates, the music licensing agencies smiled all the way to the bank. However, when that gate was blown open by Napster, then P2P, then the iTunes store and now streaming, the monies coming in to these agencies started to dry up.

So these agencies decided to diversify (and I use that world with a lot of sarcasm). Their diversification efforts involved shaking down venues that provided a live music service to the community and getting them to pay extortion like amounts if the bands played cover songs.

It has been happening for the last five years.

Does anyone think that the monies that BMI (one of the music licensing agencies involved in these shakedowns) collects from these venues would end up going back to the artists that had their songs supposedly “infringed on”.

Or what about the monies that Universal is aiming to collect from companies that offer care packages for prisoners. For those that don’t know, Universal Music has filed a complaint against companies selling “care packages which contain mix tapes” for families to send to prisoners.

Is it another shakedown attempt to extort money from companies or a sincere attempt to compensate their artists?

Asking an owner of an establishment to pay three sets of license fees just to allow local bands to perform is always going to end with the owner ending live music at their venue. Especially the smaller venues.

It’s simply bully tactics by an agency and Copyright Laws allow it to be a bully. Of course those Copyright Laws got re-written by the large associations like the RIAA and the MPAA over the last 60 years to ensure that laws kept the balance of power on their side.

BMI says that it’s songwriters and composers deserve compensation for their creative works.

So they view the collection of licensing fees from venues that are of zero risk to the music industry as crucial. But what they are actually doing is harming the music industry.

Does anyone seriously believe that Diamond Head was compensated when Metallica performed their songs at venues prior to being signed? I have bootlegs of shows from Motley Crue, Poison and Ratt before they were signed. A decent amount of cover songs are performed at the gigs and there is no way that the songwriters got compensated back then for these performances. The licensing agencies didn’t give a shit about venues at that point in time.

But now they do and the law allows them to do what they do. Just because it is law it doesn’t mean the practice is acceptable. Copyright Law is stacked in favour of the monopolies. Hell, they had a big hand in ensuring that it was re-written to keep that power in tact. So what we have are a bunch of government granted monopolies that contribute nothing to the arts, but have a large say in the arts.

That is why organisations like Rightscorp come to be. Again they contribute nothing to the arts. They are copyright trolls sent in to shakedown people. There is no other word to describe their business models.

But we still get the same bullshit from these agencies and associations that the world needs stronger copyright.

What the world needs is sensible copyright.

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

Seriously… Ray Luzier

Isn’t it time that the argument stops being about what has been lost to what can be gained when it comes to copyright infringement/piracy.

Seriously I am disappointed from artists in the metal and rock genres that talk shit like this. It started with Lars Ulrich and Napster. It continued with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley talking crap. Scott Ian got in on the act. Yngwie Malmsteen and Joe Lynn Turner also had their views and now we have Ray Luzier.

Lets play a little game.

Who can name a song that Ray Luzier wrote? Does anyone know who Ray Luzier is?

I am pretty sure that no one can name one song that he has written of the top of their heads. So why is he given time to make uninformed comments.

He ripped on a fan of Army Of Anyone because he turned up with a burnt CD of the “Army Of Anyone” album and asked it to be signed. Any artists that equates a fan listening to their music as a lost sale should not be in the music business at all. So Ray starts to have a go at the fan because he didn’t have ten bucks to spend on a CD. He accused him of stealing it.

Does Ray even know the definition of stealing?

It means to take (the property of another) without right or permission.

Music is not property, however the CD that the music is on is property. So Ray is accusing a fan of stealing his CD. But wait a second, the kid turned up with a blank CD, that had music copied on it from a friend. It wasn’t Ray’s actual CD and the music on the burnt CD had not been stolen, because the “Army Of Anyone” catalogue is available for purchase and for streaming everywhere. It still could be available in brick and mortar shops (depending if they have old copies lying around because I can’t see many people clamouring to order it)

So what is it Ray.

Stealing or Copyright infringement. And I am sure that Ray Luzier was an angel who never ever got a copy of another bands music on a cassette tape. He must have had so much disposable income in the Eighties that he purchased the originals all the time.

But this is his best quote. “Someone’s gotta do something — put a chip in there where you can’t duplicate it. You know what I mean?!”

So at first he is having a bitch at people infringing on the music he is involved with and now he also wants is to punish the real fans that purchase the CD by not allowing them to media shift it to their mp3 player.

I think that Ray should read up a bit on the Sony BMG Rootkit scandal first. Sony tried to be that someone who tried to do something. What they did was that when a music disc was inserted into a computer, it installed software illegally (and in the background without the user knowing) that ended up creating vulnerabilities in the computer operating system which was then exploited by malware.

This attempt of DRM by Sony led to public outcry, government investigations and class-action lawsuits. DVD manufacturers also tried this and guess what happened. A kid in a bedroom created a program to circumvent the DRM on DVD’s.

Does Ray even know that Amazon has an AutoRip feature. So when a person buys a CD from Amazon, they get an AutoRip of it from download. Does Ray even know that all Pledge Music campaigns perks come with a digital copy of the album.

Seriously dude, I have the “KXM” CD because I am a George Lynch fan. I haven’t played it again after giving it around 20 plus spins. I have listened to the “Army Of Anyone” CD. I got a ripped copy as well from a friend who is a die-hard Stone Temple Pilots fan. It became a coffee coaster after the initial listen.

But Ray seems to fail to see that people still buy albums that they like, along with streaming albums that they like.

Five Finger Death Punch at the moment have combined sales of over 800,000 copies in the US of their “Wrong Side Of Heaven/Righteous Side Of Hell” releases. At the rate they are going, each album will be certified Gold in the U.S. All of their previous albums have been certified Gold in the U.S and again, they are still selling so expect them to pass Platinum in the years to come.

Shinedown, Avenged Sevenfold and Volbeat are bands that are also selling albums week in/week out.

All of the above bands have double-digit numbers on Spotify plus sold out shows at the box office.

So I think its time that the misinformed musicians stop ripping on their fans and start connecting with them. We are the ones that sustain you and if you choose to not be in music anymore because someone is downloading your music, then be gone because you are in the game for the wrong reasons.

Another will come and take your place that doesn’t think of money, because money was always a by-product of the music. It never was THE PRODUCT.

ONE FINAL NOTE: A local retailer in Australia called JB HI-FI is having a deal going on that is marketed as 3 for $10. I was in there on Friday to buy a Halo game for my kids and I thought I would spend 5 minutes to go through the various boxes to see if there was anything that I liked.

I found “Megadeth – Ruse In Peace Live” on Blu-Ray, “Megadeth – Countdown To Extinction Deluxe 20th Anniversary Boxed CD” ( I already own the 92 release CD along with the 2004 remastered/remixed edition bonus tracks edition, so this is the third time I have purchased this album) and a band that I have heard of in name only called “The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus” just so I could round out the $10 deal.

Today I went to another JB Hi-Fi store about 30 minutes away and they didn’t have those albums as part of their deal. And I was curious as to why. So I found them in the metal section and I took note of the prices.

MEGADETH – Rust In Peace (BluRay) was selling for $27.99

MEGADETH – Countdown To Extinction (20th Anniversary Edition) was selling for $28.99.

THE RED JUMPSUIT APPARATUS – Lonely Road was selling for $18.99

Now for the math. I picked up all three for $10 at one store, however 30 minutes away in another store if I wanted to pick up those three albums I would have had to pay $75.97.

ONE FINAL NOTE II: Today I picked up a “Rush Greatest Hits CD”, “Killers – Battleborn” and Guns N Roses – “Chinese Democracy.” The Gunners purchase was purely to add to the CD collection so that Gunners discography looks complete.

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