Since I worked in intellectual property for about three years, one of the biggest debates that is interesting me right now regarding the future of the music industry is copyright, and the arguments for eliminating it, or at least reinventing it in Congress. As an original composer I see the advantage of having copyright protection and rely on it to make sure that I have a level of assurance that I will have control over my own pieces of work.On the other side, I work with a lot of hip hop producers and see how in general they are scalping tracks from other musicians all the time, and rarely are giving proper credit or compensation – however this is how the hip hop community works. When I’ve approached some underground hip hop producers about properly clearing the rights to use the clips and songs on their tracks, they always point out that it is expensive, confusing, and difficult to go through. I can see an advantage to presenting more lax copyrights, or at least an easier way for people to license tracks from a copyright holder without so much hassle, which means the copyright-holders will be compensated for the usage of their tracks, but the whole process should be streamlined.
This would be in line with something like the ‘voluntary Collective Licensing’ idea – which just makes it easier for people to license material from artists. (http://www.eff.org/wp/better-way-forward-voluntary-collective-licensing-music-file-sharing) Even though the voluntary collective licensing idea doesn’t involve copyright directly, the idea that it compiles things into a simpler administrative system and streamlines things seems extremely important to pursue, especially in this digital age.
Aside from streamlining the process of licensing music from copyright holders, I find the whole movement of creative commons extremely interesting, since it places the copyright holder in control of how they present their works to the public.
Hidden value: I can see how a creative commons license can be helpful to an artist who is trying to get exposure and share their art with a community. Seeing examples like Metric (which sold stems for their songs for $2.00, and then encouraged people to remix the tracks), is a great example of the hidden value of the power of more ‘lax’ copyrights in general. With the Metric example, within four weeks about 12,000 remixes were floating around, and all of them were essentially ‘free’ advertising for the band Metric. It would be difficult to quantify how well this would convert over to people actually purchasing Metric albums or if those people exposed to the remixes would actually be more inclined to purchase tickets to see them live – however just getting the name out there is still of value to the band (even without a direct monetizing value.)
One thing that worries me about the situation with copyrights is how it will effect musicians who are not in bands, for example, film scorers, composers, and commercial jingle writers. A huge part of the value of the work they do is the exclusivity of it for their clients (at least for film scorers and their relationship with a film studio, or commercial TV/Radio jingle writers); and if copyright becomes too lax, or too easy for people to utilize the piece of music for their own projects (non-profit and profitable projects) without the permission of the artist, the exclusivity is jeopardized, and definitely devalues the music itself. Why would a film studio pay for the exclusivity of a track or piece of music if the artist themselves can’t even guarantee that the piece of music won’t show up somewhere else?
-Andrew D.B. Joslyn
1 comment:
Nice work. Hip Hop has turned the context in which all these copyright laws were written upside down. But Hip Hop gets bitten right back by their hand in the revolution. See the money that isn't in Hip Hop that was there in the 1990s - from 'mix tapes' to commercial CD sales.
Samples are a great way to step to the level of giants, and there is artist merit in remixing and interpolating, etc. But is Kanye a genius or this revolutionary artists for sampling Daft Punk - or just the only brotha' who could afford to do it?
But there is a way for everyone to win on sampling - which again is just different from how the law was intended to protect the creator (and let's not even get into Classical composers who sampled & remixed - or just plain lifted entire sections of music). The creative commons option definitely exhibits a lot of wisdom and thought into commercially navigating ways to protecte & promote your music in the 21st century. Because if the tree falls and nobody hears it, who cares if you were completely protected by the Library of Congress. I've yet to do the Creative Commons thang' but I'm certainly looking into it. And it many ways it illustrates how I'd actually want to operate, even if I really don't want to let out that long of a leash legally. Keep it comin' with these articles...
Can you please post a quick article on how it actually works with publishing when someone licenses your music - such as when a company approaches a band directly, or when a company has a 50/50 non exclusive licensing deal. That's really relevant for indie bands like us that are beginning to score increasingly better deals.
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