Tag Archives: create

Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity

So Many Different Arguments Over One Word

Copyright like streaming is an argument that is loaded with emotion instead of facts.

Copyright supporters will argue that copyright is tied to creativity while culture supporters will argue that copyright makes culture disappear and the Public Domain supporters will argue that Copyright has been hijacked by corporations that seek to lock up culture in order to preserve profits. On top of all that you also have the PIRACY argument which in a nutshell is really copyright infringement and finally you have the issue when songs start to sound similar, the songwriters go to war with each other over plagiarism, which somehow gets linked back to the copyright.

So many different arguments over one word. COPYRIGHT.

What is true is that Copyright is MEANT to be the piece of legislation that encourages creativity. However, copyright as it currently stands does everything in its power to oppose creativity.

In a nutshell all humans create and we do that without any thoughts of copyright. We don’t wake up in the morning and say, “Gee, thanks to Copyright, I can now create”. We wake up, with an idea in our heads and we get to work on fleshing it out, be it a story or a song or a script or a play or a piece of art.

And that is how it is has always been. Humans create because they want to.

“We always say that the copyright system supports creativity and artists. But copyright’s foundation is about the allocation of economic rights that are bought and sold. It’s a system that’s built on money.”

That is what copyright is today, a monopoly system controlled by corporations and the argument that these corporations push forward with is that “stronger copyright is needed to encourage creativity”. That is why so many works are locked up by these organisations that control the copyrights. That is why they get laws retroactively passed to stop works from falling into the Public Domain.

The whole British Invasion happened because those artists built on the works of the artists that came before them. By doing so, a whole cultural movement happened and the world as it was known changed forever.

Did you know that Sony (who is one of the Corporations that scream for stronger copyright) is now getting sued by musicians for using 10 to 15 seconds of their music without a proper license in “The Interview”.

But with everything that involves money, Sony will pay up to make it go away and then claim it back on their various insurances for the mistakes. But the point is, it shows that everyone infringes on Copyright all the time. It could be intentional or unintentional.

And this happens a lot because copyright is broken. If you need further proof that the true purpose of copyright has been hijacked, then look no further than the various biopics that are getting made.

The Jimi Hendrix biopic does not have any original Hendrix music. The Bon Scott biopic is going down the same boat. For both of these, the heirs of the artists used copyright as blackmail to get the biopic creators to change their story because they didn’t like the way the creators depicted the musical heroes. Very similar to how Judas Priest pulled out of the Rock Star movie when they didn’t like the way the script was heading. By pulling out as consultants they also refused to license their music as well.

We also have a new film about Martin Luther King that has his heirs refusing to allow the filmmakers to use his speech. However in this instance, the heirs didn’t count on the filmmaker being so savvy. What the filmmaker did was create a derivative version of the speech that has the same effect but uses totally different words.

And the reason why the heirs refused permission is money. King’s heirs want as much as they can get for it and Copyright law allows them to do it. What we have here is an Estate that contributes nothing creatively however they do their best at stopping other creations from happening unless they get paid. So can someone please tell me how Copyright is promoting creativity in this instance?

The deeper issue here is that Copyright lasts way too long. The speeches occurred over 50 years ago and Copyright was not designed to provide an income to the heirs of the creator.

Copyright was always meant to provide an income to the creator themselves which very often was not the case. George Clinton the grandfather of funk was in a lengthy court battle with Bridgeport Music who owned the rights of his most popular songs. John Fogerty got sued by his ex-label boss from the CCR days. Both of those artists signed deals without fully understanding what they signed away. And guess what. They still kept on creating regardless of how they were getting blindsided and shafted by the creative accounting of the record labels.

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

Music Lives Because Of Sharing and Copying

We all want to first and foremost SHARE something. If you go to Facebook, people are sharing their day and their lives. Go to any internet page and you will see people sharing photos, writings, music, opinions, stories, etc. And all the things that we share are all free. We do it for free.

However, the recording industry will say that artists cannot survive without being paid. What the recording industry is saying is that the recording industry cannot survive if they are not getting paid. Artists NEED to create. And there are artists who WANT to make money from those creations. And a few of them actually CAN make money from their creations.

As always, there are lots of bands created every day. Only a few survive. Only a few of them make enough money to live. And only a very little few of them make a lot of money. That has always been the same. We know of Motley Crue, but how many bands were there in L.A at the time? How many of them have we never heard of? We know of Metallica, but how many bands were there in San Francisco at the time? How many of them have we never heard of? We know of Accept and Bonfire from Germany, but how many bands were there in Germany at the time? How many of them have we never heard of? Get my point.

The difference now is that musicians can reach many more people and they don’t need a whole industry for that, and the industry is frightened about it.

Music will always exist along with people’s need to share it. The fact that we have music alive today is because it was shared and copied from day dot.

Music is about beauty and beauty has no real set price. For super fans, that beauty could be worth thousands of dollars in music, merch and concert purchases. For others, the beauty could be worth a few dollars and for others that beauty could be worth just the enjoyment.

If we listen to a song and we like it, we will listen to more songs. We could purchase a CD, we could download an album, we could purchase a ticket to a show or a T-shirt. Hell, we could even fan fund the next recording. That is how the fans build social communities around their favourite acts. They chat about them to another person. Then they share the music that they love. And once upon a time, there was no law forbidding this. Information was exchanged freely. However when the entertainment industry kept on growing, and when they kept on getting the governments to pass laws to give the industry a monopoly, that is when the repression began.

I bet no one has heard about Paulo Coelho. He is one of the best-selling authors and a few years back he decided to create “The Pirate Coelho”, an non-official fan page that allows people to download the full texts of his books in different languages. And guess what happened. He started selling more books now than ever. Guess you need to balls to try something that is unknown.

In bands, this is a difficult card to play because band members very rarely see eye to eye, so as soon as something goes astray there will be one band member that will start throwing the blame at another band member.

 

 

 

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

Thinking Out Loud About Music

MUSIC OVER MONEY

Everybody wants to get paid. But if money is your primary desire, you’re not an artist.

First and foremost an artists want to create and have their creations experienced by as large an audience as possible. There is a local Australian artist called Ricki-Lee Coulter who is in the pop market game. She has spent the last two years making her fourth album. This process has involved her funding a three-month stint in New York to work with American songwriters and producers, paying rent there as well as back in Australia. Then there was a self-funded trip to LA to work with more American writers, aware of the need for an ‘international’ sound to compete on radio. Then she flew an LA-based writer called Brian Lee to Australia for a ten-day workshop to co-write three songs. She paid for his flights and accommodation. And this is how she sums it up;

“Over the last ten years if I added it all up I could have totally bought a really nice house with what I’ve spent on my career. But sitting in a big house with empty dreams? I’d always be wanting more. I always pay for my songwriting trips overseas. I don’t want to be reliant on anybody or answer to anyone. I want to have the freedom to do things the way I want, not the way someone else does because they’re paying for it. I don’t want to take away from the support I get from my record label, but if I want something I want it. Sometimes it’s me that has to suck it up and pay for it and that’s fine, because I don’t want to have any regrets. Record labels aren’t an endless source of money. I’m lucky with the opportunities I’ve been given and I’m not left wanting. But if I wanted to be a billionaire I wouldn’t be doing music in Australia. There’s plenty of other jobs where you can work as hard as you do in music and make a whole lot more money. But I don’t do it for dollars and cents, it’s who I am. I’d feel empty if I didn’t do it.”

If you are not investing in yourself how do you expect others to do so.

CREATE

An artist creates constantly. That’s their job. You’ve got to keep doing it because you love it. You need to be trying to create something that connects all by itself and you have the fans spreading its greatness, not some marketing campaign.

TRUTH

How many Googles are there? How many Apples are there? How many Facebooks are there or Amazons?

The answer is ONE Major player. So why do you think that musical fans have time for thousands of bands.

POINT OF VIEW

Robb Flynn puts it out there with his journals and it is a great way to keep in touch with the fan base. It is him also creating art. His recounting of the “Through The Ashes Of Empires” album making off was brilliant.

LIKES vs MUSIC

Keep the likes for social media. They have nothing to do with music. Music has an edge and as an artist if you rub off all of those rough edges that make you unique, then no one will care about you.

CHANGE

People will try to change you. There are a million ways to screw an artist financially and career wise. Don’t change.

ONE TO MANY

The tech game is all about how can I go from one to many. In other words how can I produce something so good that it sells itself.  It used to be the musical game however it hasn’t been that way in a long while. You will never make money from recordings if you don’t have hit songs. I don’t mean a Billboard Number 1 style of hit,I mean a Paranoid, Live Wire, Holy Diver, Lick It Up, Darkness Within style of hit. Apple as we know it today was built upon the iPod. That was their hit.

VINYL/CD’s

It’s a niche market selling these musical artifacts. Now, more than ever before, your success depends upon your music. The traditional recording sales revenue may have tanked, that does not mean new opportunities have not arisen.

STREAMING

Streaming is just too easy, and on streaming services everything is available. You need great music to rise above.

TOURING

Recordings keep your career alive. Spend too much time on the road or leave large gaps in your recorded output then you are moving in the direction or being irrelevant.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy

Eastern Europe

News in relation to piracy crackdown measures has been down the rounds a fair bit. In Australia, the Government is looking at a range of measures that range from cracking down on individuals to a graduated response scheme. Meanwhile the ACCC (which is a consumer advocacy group) believes that the government should do more to do away with the Australian Tax that leads to price discrimination.

Then you have the Expendables 3 leak way before it’s box office debut. And the results are in after its box office takings and they are not good. Is piracy to blame for these takings? One side of the debate will say yes while another will say no.

Then you have the Russian Government taking down sites that it deems breaks the laws without any due process and the majority of US studios taking to court the Russian version of Facebook for piracy.

I am doing the rounds of Eastern Europe at the moment and I can tell you first hand that piracy is king. Each street stall or shop deals with pirated goods. I walked into a CD shop and all of the CDs and DVDs were copies made from illegal downloads. I walk into any clothing shop and I am greeted with gear from Adidas, Nike, Puma or any other reputable product. And while the owner tells me they are the real deal you don’t have to be a scientist to work out that they are forgeries.

But in all of this piracy, 40,000 people turned up to watch a Serbian singer name Ceca in Ohrid on 1st August. In all of this piracy, Metallica constantly tours Eastern Europe, selling thousands upon thousands of concert tickets in areas where actual sales of recorded music is non-existent. Iron Maiden is another band that is king of Eastern Europe.

Then you notice that each house has cable TV and that a lot of the people don’t even pay for it. Yep, most of them are cord cutting into a legit box and running a cable into their apartment, unit or house. And while Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are kings in English-speaking countries, they do not even rate a mention in Eastern Europe. They are just not part of the conversation.

Yet with all of this piracy going on in Eastern Europe it still hasn’t dented the people’s will to create new product. Movies, music and TV shows are still being made at a high rate. There are so many good and talented artists doing the rounds in Eastern Europe and they do it because they love to create and perform. The aspect of being rich and famous doesn’t even come into the conversation.

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

Create The Undeniable Song – It Will Sell

I am listening to “Are You Gonna Go My Way” today, the third studio album by American rock musician Lenny Kravitz, released in 1993.

It’s funny that after all this time I still like only 3 songs from the CD, which are “Believe”, “Sister” and “Are You Gonna Go My Way” in that order. There is also a track called “All My Life” that appeared on some bonus CD’s or as a B-side that is also up there. However, to hear all of the songs mentioned, I had to purchase the record label “promotional tool”; the good ol’ expensive CD.

That is why the album went multi-platinum everywhere.

Consumers of music had to purchase 10 to 14 songs, just to hear 4 to 5 songs. Of course we could have purchased the singles, however at $7 a single (that was the price in 1993), why spend $14 on two songs, when for $20 (on sale) or $27 (as a new release) you could buy the album.

I actually purchased the album for the song “Believe”. That is a great song and a dead sit hit in my book. When that lead break cuts in at the end, along with the strings, it’s goose bumps all the way.

The album went Gold (U.S) in May, 1993, three months after its release. By June, 1993, it was certified Platinum (U.S). By January, 1995, it was certified 2x Multi-Platinum. If you look at Kravitz’s most recent certification, it is for a single. How times have changed?

I don’t want to pay for a batch of songs I don’t like anymore. I didn’t used to be this way. I lived for music.

Misguided people think that piracy ruined the recorded business. What they don’t realize is that most people didn’t want the album/CD. People wanted that unique track. When the CD came and the record labels started charging us a fortune for it, albums suddenly became very long.

Instead of getting 35 to 45 minutes of music every year, we started to get 50 to 70 minutes of music every two to three years.

So the recording business saw the large profit margins and just kept on marching along with the overpriced CD’s business model, using MTV to push and promote the artists. So when people got the option to download, to cherry pick what they wanted to hear, a whole new market place was born.

We didn’t have to pay attention to what the major labels pushed on us anymore or any other label for that matter, because we started to have options. Today, we have options galore. That is why there will not be any super stars like there used to be. Competition in the market place diluted the record sales.

When I see artists like Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich complaining about Spotify, I just shake my head. Thom and Nigel have to be real damn great just to have a little bit more than a tiny audience today. The old paradigm of fans purchasing CD’s that had a lot of filler because very little content was available is over.

To stand out today, artists like Thom and Nigel have got to be incredible. Protest The Hero went via Indiegogo to raise funds for “Volition”. Their goal was $125K and they ended up getting over $341,146 USD from a fan base of 8361 fans. I gave $50. A small audience that was happy to spend money.

The report from the “London School of Economics” called “Copyright & Creation: A Case for Promoting Inclusive Online Sharing” hits the nail on the head. Online piracy is not hurting the music industry. It has put a dent in recorded music sales, however that was inevitable with the shift in technology, the over saturated marketplace and the years of fan abuse by pushing overpriced CD’s. It’s simple economics. There is so much supply and the fans of music demand only what is great.

There is an argument from certain song writers that since people began downloading music without paying, royalties for them have dried up. Some have even had to take full-time jobs. Big deal is what I say. If you are a songwriter, then write more songs and better ones. Copyright was never designed to be a pension fund.

The bottom line is this – if the artist creates that undeniable song, they will have no problems selling it. The song will sell itself. I parted with $27 back in 1993 for the song “Believe.”

Looking at all the certifications around the world from the industry bodies, one thing is certain. The singles are dominating. So all those metal and rock bands spending years and dollars on a long player are doing it wrong.

Even Metallica now, have single Platinum certifications from songs that were released on their first five albums.

The following songs were given a GOLD certification by the RIAA (U.S) on December 13, 2012.

  • For Whom The Bell Tolls
  • Fade To Black
  • The Unforgiven
  • Master Of Puppets
  • Nothing Else Matters
  • One
  • Enter Sandman (was also given a Platinum certification for both digital and physical singles)
  • The Day That Never Comes
  • Until It Sleeps

Five albums are presented in the above list that ranges from 1983 to 2008.

We don’t need new laws to provide better protection for artist copyright. We need artists to create great tracks. We need laws that reduce copyright and puts the focus back on the Public Domain.

We don’t need to encourage internet service providers to make their customers do the right thing. We need to give customers a reason to buy.

If the customers have that reason, then they will buy.

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