Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Ted Cohen is considered a visionary in music and technology, and I agree. After all, he played an important role in devising the licensing agreements that helped create the Rhapsody subscription service and the iTunes Music Store. He got started in computing in 1979 with an Atari 800 (“8K of memory tricked out to 48K”) and has embraced technological advancements ever since.

He was in Artist Development at Warner Bros. Records in the late ’70s and early ’80s, working with Prince, the Pretenders, Talking Heads, Fleetwood Mac, the Ramones, and many others. He moved on to become Sr. VP of Digital Development & Distribution for EMI Music.

Today, he is managing partner of TAG Strategic, a digital entertainment consulting firm working with emerging businesses and multinational companies. Current and former clients include Hello Music, Amazon, Emblaze Mobile, Microsoft, StreamJam, Verizon, SanDisk, Motorola and UK Trade & Investment.

Ted Cohen is also an optimist. “I think the future of music looks pretty bright,” he said recently, making it the underlying theme of his keynote address at the SESAC conference held at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles. In fact, he had many fascinating and very upbeat points to make about the music business in general and indie artist opportunities in particular.

In his hour-long presentation for the performing rights organization, Cohen took listeners on a quick rollercoaster ride of all aspects of the music business. At the start, he put today’s situation in perspective: “This is the first time in history where a working business model was replaced by people just saying ‘I’ll take something for free.’ We have moved from an era of consumer empowerment to an era of consumer entitlement,” and he got to the bottom line right away: “What we have to do is figure out how to monetize consumer behavior. It’s not about devaluation of music; it’s about the re-valuation of music. We just need to find the monetary sweet spot the public wants.”

Part of the solution may result from changing mindsets. One of his suggestions is to stop calling music “content.” He feels this term is misguided. “We experience music, we don’t consume it. If we consumed it, something would come out the other end.”

Another part of the solution is to recognize and embrace change. “Here’s the old way things happened in the music business. . . ”

Old Way:
* Write great songs
* Record in expensive studio
* Release album
* Release single
* Hire promotion
* Buy ad in Rolling Stone
* Make expensive music video
* Hit the road with tour support
* Schedule in-store performances
* Do some TV appearances

“Now, the only thing that is still on the list is the first one. . . .”

New Way:
* Write great songs
* Record at home
* Social networking for distribution and marketing
* Collect e-mail addresses & connect with people
* Make Flip video or phone-cam video

“Ten years ago, distribution was king. Now, distribution is trivial. Anyone can get it.
Today, it’s all about getting people’s attention. The trick is ‘rising above the noise’.”

In this century, everyone has access to music. The idea, according to Cohen, is to make certain that passive fans become active participants. That’s what makes social media networks more important for getting music out to people.

Cohen is also upbeat about “New revenue streams: pay per play, pay per view, subscription services, ad-supported music, brand-subsidized music — there are a lot of ways to go.”

He is especially keen on subscription services for music. “I like the subscription model, where you pay a flat fee each month and get all the music you want.” He calls music subscription “a lean-back experience” because the music is available when desired and you need do so very little to have access to millions of songs. “This is a recurring revenue stream for artists and music publishers,” he notes. Additionally, “Subscription encourages listening to more songs, the ‘deep cuts’ on an album, and it lead to listeners finding new songs.”

The subscription model in the midst of the new ubiquitous distribution approach means “There is no need to record an entire album. If you have three great songs, create the three-songs and put them online. It’s whatever you want to do. There’s no longer a reason to get 12 songs together, get them to a label and wait months for them to hit stores.”

Cohen has never lost his love for music. “The freshness of music today is what’s most appealing to me,” he has said. “If I’m listening to a lot of indie music that’s been delivered digitally, then a lot of it is very fresh – 20 to 30 days old at most. It’s exciting.”

A big issue with all the access to music is filtering. There are firms that attempt to search for music you like, but perhaps the best filters are other listeners. “Most people I know aren’t sharing files, they’re sharing playlists,” Cohen points out. It’s not that the algorithms don’t work. Cohen’s firm works with Hello Music and he’s happy to discuss companies like Echo Nest. Many of these firms “combine algorithms and social behavior – what kind of music do your friends like, what’s happening on the music blogs, and so on. The problem with algorithms is that they search for and find similarity. They don’t find uniqueness. If something is truly unique, it’s not matched to anything.”

Cohen is pleased that much of today’s technology is going to bring music to us wherever we want it. He speaks of “The Connected Home” and “The Connected Auto” and is eager to embrace the new methodology of distribution and communication.

At one point in his presentation, he recommended a book called “Ruling the Waves” (“Ruling the Waves: From the Compass to the Internet, a History of Business and Politics along the Technological Frontier” by Debora L. Spar). Cohen mentioned one example from the book, the way radio was as much of a “wild west” scene as much of today’s internet usage and payment battles. “Back when radio was new, you could have three stations broadcasting on the same frequency.” The result was chaos, “and nobody could be heard.” But with FCC regulation, each broadcaster gets assigned a specific frequency “and now all three broadcasters can do business and the
public is served.”

I checked out Spar’s book and found a relevant passage: “Governments provide the property rights that entrepreneurs eventually want, the legal stability that commerce craves, and the stability that society demands. For in the end, even pirates and pioneers want order. Once they have staked out their claim or claimed their loot, they want someone else to protect it. And that someone is usually the state.”

Hearing Cohen’s views on music, technology, rules, and breaking out of conventional approaches was a unique, exciting and valuable experience. I recommend watching for interviews, speeches and position papers from him. If he’s an example of “an old record company guy,” as one person described him, I wish there were a lot more of them.

Article Copr. © 2010 John Scott G.

Music Industry Newswire – COLUMN: Ambrose Bierce began his “Devil’s Dictionary” in an 1881 newspaper column. His definitions were sometimes funny. For example, he defined rum as “fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.”

Many of Bierce’s ideas hold true today, such as his definition of an idiot as “a member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.” Perhaps best of all is his description of a corporation as “an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”

With a tip of the hat to Bierce, I have some new definitions that affect everyone in the music business:

copyleft
-verb

1. To baffle or bewilder.
2. To make less clear; to make more indistinct.
3. To confound.
4. To associate by mistake.
5. To fail to distinguish between two opposing viewpoints.
6. To mix-up, disorder, or combine in mistaken ways.

Example: “False statements and angry charges tend to copyleft the issue of copyright, which is the goal of those seeking to erode the laws protecting intellectual property.”

Synonyms: confuse, mystify, nonplus, disconcert

(Also: copylefted, copylefting, copyleftation, copyleftatory)

crecom
-noun

1. Stupid person; a fool.
2. An imbecile, moron or half-wit.

Synonyms: idiot, fool, cretin, patsy

EFFuscate
-verb

1. To make a situation bewildering or mystifying.
2. To muddy the waters; to deliberately make something obscure, opaque or unclear by adding unneeded data.
3. To make an issue overly complicated so as to hinder intelligent discussion.

Example: “Nefarious groups always attempt to EFFuscate the public’s view of the law with extraneous information.”

Synonyms: obfuscate, muddle, perplex, befuddle, cloud the issue

(Also: EFFuscator, EFFuscates; EFFuscation -noun)

fanning
-noun

1. Someone who takes advantage of any opportunity to achieve an end with no regard for principles or consequences of the means.
2. One who puts expediency above morality.
3. The act of adapting actions or decisions to convenience while sacrificing ethical principles.

Example: “Seeing the opportunity to deprive others of their rights, the fanning moved forward without a care in the world.”

Synonym: opportunist

(Also: fanningistic)

lessig
-noun

1. Someone whose words do not match his or her actions.
2. A person who pretends to have virtues, beliefs or principles.
3. Someone whose private life, opinions, or statements are contradicted by his or her public life, opinions or statements.
4. Pretending to have desirable or publicly-approved attitudes.

Example: “The smug professor was a lessig for urging the destruction of copyright while publishing books protected by copyright.”

Example: “It is lessigocrisy to erode copyright laws after accepting money from corporations which would profit from such an occurrence.”

Synonyms: hypocrite, charlatan, cheat, con artist, deceiver, fraud, mountebank

(Also: lessigocrisy, lessigocrisies)

pubnoledge
-verb

1. To mislead or create a false appearance.
2. To hide or mask the real nature of something.

Example: “The organization led the gullible to false conclusions by pubnoledging and prevarication.”

Synonyms: dissemble, feign, sham, pretend, misrepresent

Who’s Who
Note: names have been unchanged to identify the guilty.

Copyleft is a clever play on the term “copyright” but that’s where the wit ends since it is just a scheme to create confusion about intellectual property rights. There are provisions in current copyright law that offer the same protection and flexibility in licensing as the permits cobbled together by these groups. Some of the people involved in the copyleft movement are undoubtedly well-meaning but they are simply dupes of large corporations seeking to undermine existing copyright provisions which date all the way back to their being mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.

Creative Commons is an organization with a communal and wholesome-sounding name that masks its true purpose of undermining copyright law and eroding the protections it offers to creators. Basically, they offer licenses for people to copy and distribute work using vague descriptions, hazy legal clauses and HTML tags. Everything they offer is available under current copyright law, so the end result is confusion, making their efforts superfluous and disingenuous. The corporations funding Creative Commons seek to avoid paying the price for infringing on your copyrighted material.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is also is funded by corporations interested in escaping penalties for copyright infringement, most notably technology firms who benefit from your purchases of computers, electronic gadgets, stereo systems or Internet access. Their goal is to create and spread a culture of misinformation that erodes the rights of creators in every aspect of law and digital communication. To see why they do this, just follow the money. Without content such as music, films, books, photos, news stories, articles, poems and the many other copyrightable forms of expression, Internet access is empty while computers and gadgets are mere shells of metal and plastic. What’s an iPod without music? A hi-def display without movies? Internet access without news, information and art? Worthless. The high and enduring value of the copyrightable works of expression is what gives the gadgets value in the first place and gives you – the consumer – urgent reason to purchase them. With press releases, white papers, action alerts, and legal filings, the EFF chips away at the rights of songwriters and music publishers. The EFF is the leading organization in spreading Internet-related disinformation.

Shawn Fanning is a perfect illustration of someone who was educated far beyond his ability to act morally. In 1998, he unleashed the blatantly illegal Napster. In a notable example of failing upward, he went on to head SnoCap, an attempt to foster “legal filesharing.” After raising $25,000,000, the firm was sold to iMeem, reportedly for less than five million dollars. News Corp’s MySpace eventually bought iMeem but long after Fanning had left to head ThreeSF and its Rupture video game service. Both were acquired by Electronic Arts, which now employs Fanning, presumably with lots of people keeping an eye on him.

Lawrence Lessig is a highly-paid professor and lecturer who eloquently argues against the rights of songwriters, authors and creators to earn a living from their work. He has thus far dedicated his life to destroying the principle and practice of copyright, yet his own books are all protected by copyright and are all offered for sale in physical and online stores.

Public Knowledge is a group funded by corporations interested in creating complete digital copies of millions of published works without any say of the rightsholders. As the Copyright Alliance puts it, they seek to “dramatically reduce copyright owners’ abilities to exercise their rights of reproduction, distribution, public performance, and the creation of derivative works. This would harm not only creators but the U.S. economy, exports, employment, and culture.” As such, PK and others of their ilk are decidedly unpatriotic.

Article is Copr. © 2010 by John Scott G.

Music Industry Newswire Update: As a long time supporter and customer of Open Labs (see my reviews of the Neko TSE and XXL models on this site), I was surprised, like many, to see the notice of auction for OL’s assets and IP announced July 30, 2010. Rather than jump in and comment on the potential demise of the company, or erroneously rant that “Windows might be the cause of its demise because Mac has been hitting a home run” (what a crock of sh*t), I waited patiently for an official statement from the company, past/future owners as to the status.

Over the past week, a number of speculations, crazy stories, “we won’t miss them” comments from non-customers (=trolls), and mean-spirited comments about company exec Victor Wong being injured in a balcony collapse filled the blogosphere in the circles that follow electronic music instruments. I found the comment that somehow the “old” company over-spending on facilities to meet with clients in the music business was the cause of the financial crises, and then somehow the financial crises of the company had something to do with Wong and more than 20 other party guests being injured. Really?

Other folks sent me personal messages like, “If you only knew the REAL story of Open Labs,” as if there were some deep dark insider story of devil worship and pimping going on in addition to building music instruments. All small companies have unique interpersonal situations, working conditions, management shake-ups, and staff migrations. One blogger wrote that the products need to be cheaper, made in America, and with free lifetime support. Of course this was one of the people who wanted to take up 10 hours of phone support time on stuff he should have looked up himself, but then complains when he can’t get instant tech support on why his monitor doesn’t change resolutions properly (um, try using the video control panel?). Sheesh. The vitriol from so many was really a surprise to me. Certainly there are people out there who “hate” the products they don’t use, and others who complain about their waitress not bringing them lemon in their tea (“you never asked for lemon, sir”), but really amazing how abusive and violent some of these people write about a company simply having some hiccups in a tough economy.

All of this hullabaloo started from the classified in the Texas newspaper:
Original auction announcement in the Statesman: NOTICE OF PUBLIC SALE OPEN LABS, INC. MUSIC PRODUCTION EQUIP. Notice is hereby given that substantially all of the assets of Open Labs, Inc. will be sold at a public foreclosure sale to be held at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, August 4, 2010, at the offices of Open Labs, Inc., located at 3701 Drosset Drive, Suite 150, Austin, Texas 78744. The assets of Open Labs, Inc. consist primarily of the patents, trademarks, copyrights, and other IP associated with the following Open Labs products: NeKo XXL 61-Key Music Production Stations, NeKo QX6 61-Key Music Production Stations, MiKo LXD 37-key Music Production Stations, MiKo QC6 37- key Music Production Stations, DBeat Mobile Music Production Stations, SoundSlate Rack Units, SoundSlate FW Rack Units, Open RiFF 2.0 Software, MimiK Software, and other Open Labs products. The assets to be sold also include furniture and equipment, office supplies, artwork, and musical collectibles. For more info, contact Greg Young, Okin Adams & Kilmer LLP, 7004 Bee Cave, Bldg 1,Ste 110, Austin, TX, 78746, 512-681-3732.

Generally the comments from those who said they were in the know was that the bank and/or investors who had put up money one year ago wanted their money, and when the one year payment was due, the money wasn’t there and so they put the assets and IP (intellectual property) up for auction to recoup their investment. Unofficial statements after the Aug. 4 auction in Texas, indicated that some of the existing staff/owners bought back the IP with the help of new money, and this new group makes up the de facto “new ownership” and everything is moving forward.

In fact, customers were receiving product all week, warranty work was being performed, tech guru Michael Corley was helping customers who didn’t want to read the manual (“RTFM”) or understand which jack on the back was for MIDI, and which was for a mic (seriously, some of the wing-nuts in the OL forum make me want to cry as to the future of the music business; and go ahead, call me a cry-baby troll-boy and I’ll kick YOUR ass).

Late Friday night (Aug. 6), a statement was finally posted on the Open Labs website, which reads as follows, and so far is the only truly official statement regarding the whole issue:

“Thank you for being a customer of Open Labs products. As you probably heard, there are new owners of Open Labs. The primary reason we acquired the assets was the outstanding relationship that the artists and producers had with the old company.

The Open Labs Team and Owners.”

Here’s hoping the “new” company returns to full power, and has shiny new gear to demo at the upcoming January NAMM show. I truly think they have a unique product, and the deliverables are more than the sum of their parts.

Editor’s Note: updated 1:35pm PDT to correct typo of the auction announcement from June 30 to July 30, 2010.

Music Industry Newswire – COLUMN: Music revenue is poised to reverse a decade-long descent. Yes, you read that correctly. Despite all the dire news stories of the past several years, there are reasons for optimism in the music business. Slowly, inexorably, the economic picture is going to begin improving for artists, songwriters, publishers, distributors and record labels.

Admittedly, difficulties abound. There are still many nefarious organizations and rogue portions of the population seeking to destroy copyright and erode royalty rates. So far, the fight continues against them, but while creators are still able to earn money from their copyrighted works, this is an ongoing battle that must be waged.

Liars, mountebanks and thieves do keep attacking us, yet songwriters and music publishers still receive performing rights payments from ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC; mechanical royalties; online payments from SoundExchange; licensing to film, TV, commercials; legal downloads; streaming; and more.

In fact, in the new 6th edition of “Music, Money and Success” (Schirmer), authors Jeffrey Brabec and Todd Brabec present a list of music income sources that includes 66 categories, “ranging from all of the traditional media to music in videogames, apps, electronic greeting cards, downloads and streams, interactive dolls and toys, celestial jukeboxes and more,” Todd Brabec points out. Some of these revenue sources have very small royalty rates, but that will change over time.

In the Cloud & In Your Phone
Meanwhile, there is a lot of speculation about cloud-based sites. “Apple will soon make use of the technology they obtained when they bought Lala.com” is a phrase I hear in many places. Revenue from something like that could be quite a boost for an industry that has taken it on the chin in the last decade.

In addition, the use of music and film in mobile communications is set to exponentially expand as the telecoms offer 4th generation (4G) phones, and while statutory rates have not been established in the mobile2mobile marketplace, there is already a move to develop fee structures to assure payment to copyright holders.

Keeping Track
Once we clear away the fallout from the theft sites and the insidious corporate apologists who attack copyright at every turn, we return to an issue that has been at the heart of the record industry since, well, since the start of the record industry: how to track sales and divide up the money.

By all accounts, iTunes gives a very good accounting of download sales, but to receive your share you may have to go through a third party such as a record label or a firm like TuneCore. Record companies have control of the balance sheet for physical sales unless and until individual artists have a way to see the data.

Missed Payments
Payments for music broadcasts on TV have traditionally relied on data from cue sheets, but these are notoriously inaccurate. As one music royalty consultant put it, “Payments in many areas can range from ‘correct’ to ‘best guess’ to the CPA version of ‘WTF?’”

For music and movie files sent illegally via computer, the ISPs (Internet service providers) are sheltered from prosecution because of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). This is something that must be changed in the future, but for now, owners of music, films, literature and art can only petition Congress to remove the “safe harbor provision” (which is Title II of the DMCA, by the way).

Still, there are signs that a change is coming. In fact, music sales, broadcasts, file transfers, and streams may all be tracked automatically within a few years’ time. Several companies are moving forward in this area, usually using one of two methods: digital watermarking or digital fingerprinting.

Watermarking and Fingerprinting
Here’s a quick look at the difference. In watermarking, an inaudible identifying code is embedded into a music master. “Digital watermarking works with still images, audio, and video content,” writes Bill Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies and author of “Content Identification Technologies.”

Rosenblatt also notes that watermarking “involves modifying the ‘noise’ portion of the content in a file so that it contains some data, called the payload, in such a way that the user’s perception of the content is not impaired.”

Watermarking is helping musicians, songwriters, music publishers, and distributors of motion pictures. Members of the Digital Watermarking Alliance include aquaMobile, Civolution, Digimarc, ISAN-IA, MarkAny, Media Science International, Université catholique de Louvain, Verance, and Verimatrix.

By contrast, fingerprinting involves simply analyzing what might be called the sonic DNA of a song. Included in this audio analysis are tempo, frequency, average power in each frequency band, and acoustic resonances. Rosenblatt again: “The basic idea of fingerprinting is to examine a file, compute its fingerprint as a set of numbers, and look them up in a database of fingerprint values to determine the identity of the content.”

Audio fingerprinting is less vulnerable to attacks and distortions than watermarking, according to Pedro Cano in his study, “Content-Based Audio Search.” He goes on to reconfirm that fingerprinting “requires no modification of the audio content.”

Not DRM
Some people hear the words “watermarking” and “fingerprinting” and immediately
think of the DRM fiasco of several years ago, but there is a very real difference.

“Traditional DRM prohibited content from being used on certain players or devices,” states Hunter Williams, Senior Vice President, Strategic Development/Distribution & Research Operations at SESAC. “What we are trying to do here is to track content as it moves freely through various modes of commerce and media formats. Rather than prohibiting, we are trying to enable the use of content while helping rights holders make informed decisions as to how to best monetize that content.”

Mediaguide’s Lubin agrees: “Mediaguide’s implementation of watermarking services is not analogous to a DRM process. We strictly provide watermarking for airplay monitoring services.”

TuneSat’s Chris Woods, EVP and Chief Operations Officer, echoes that view: “TuneSat is not a DRM encoder. We do not restrict content usage or imbed unique identifiers into audio files. TuneSat is an independent data provider that facilitates the monetization of our clients content by providing near realtime performance data.”

Music lovers need not fear DRM from fingerprinting or watermarking technology.

TuneSat
Back at the turn of the century, a service called Shazam was using audio fingerprinting for song identification through cell phones. Today, technology from that firm are with TuneSat, and as of this writing they monitor 110 national network TV broadcasters in the US and 65 TV channels in the UK, Germany, France and Italy.

“The keys to TuneSat’s success reside in our proprietary technology as well as the ability to detect music in a ‘dirty audio’ broadcast environment,” states Woods. “Even when you have music that is mixed in with or buried under a voice over, sound effects, or ambient noise, TuneSat will detect the song. The music might even be imperceptible to the listener and TuneSat can recognize it and report on it,” Woods added.

If TuneSat has the reference file of your music on their computer servers, they can detect the use of it after only about three-to-five seconds’ playing time, even in a scene with dialog, explosions, wind blasts, and so on.

Nielsen BDS
Yes, this is the same Nielsen organization as in television ratings and Billboard magazine charts featured. Also using a fingerprinting approach, BDS monitors more than two thousand radio stations (terrestrial and satellite) as well as music video channels throughout the USA, Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico.

SESAC began working with BDS in 1994 to track Latin music, and then expanded their association two years later to include all music formats. While relying on BDS to track songs on radio, SESAC recently signed TuneSat to monitor music on television broadcasts.

“SESAC has been using watermarking in conjunction with fingerprinting since 1998, first through our relationship with Aris, which later became Verance, and now through Ruby DS,” states Williams. Ruby DS (the DS stands for DigSound) is a web-based system for watermarked files from a firm called Activated Content. “We continue to support the idea that an all-encompassing tracking solution will involve a combination of fingerprinting and watermarking technologies,” Williams adds.

Landmark Digital BlueArrow
Owned by BMI, Landmark Digital has developed an audio fingerprinting system called BlueArrow and is employing it for radio, TV (terrestrial, cable and satellite), and the Internet. They are also using it to monitor mobile uses of music, although it is not yet clear how BMI writers and publishers are to collect from this.

MediaGuide
Founded by ASCAP and ConneXus Corporation, Mediaguide combines proprietary digital fingerprinting and watermarking technology to monitor and measure music and advertising airplay on more than 2500 commercial, non-commercial and college radio stations.

“Mediaguide is at the forefront of offering a hybrid approach to monitoring radio,” states Steve Lubin, CEO, MediaGuide. “We developed this methodology to serve the differing requirements of our customer base that includes record labels, music publishers, production music companies, artists, advertisers, media buyers and broadcasters.”

According to the firm, they are tracking nearly three hundred million song and advertising detections each year.

Interaction Needed
Thus far, no one wants explain why these services are not recognizing the data gleaned from each other’s monitoring. Still, the very fact that we are getting closer to full-time tracking of music use is great news for every songwriter and music publisher.

The Future
While looking back at music revenues for the past decade-and-a-half is depressing, try looking in the other direction. If you look forward, there are new opportunities for copyright owners practically everywhere. Factor in the growing movement towards needed enforcement of intellectual property rights and the ability to have real-time 24/7 monitoring of music use, and you begin to see a very pleasing picture.

“Content owners will continue to look to tracking technologies like TuneSat to protect and monetize their assets,” Woods states. “This will be critical to their survival in a rapidly evolving digital environment,” he adds.

With the spread of digital fingerprinting, the establishment of rates for mobile use of copyrighted content, and a minor amendment to Title II of the DMCA, the motion picture business will avoid disaster and the entire music industry will be flourishing.

For more information:

www.activatedcontent.com

www.bdsonline.com

www.digitalwatermarkingalliance.org

www.landmarkdigital.com

www.mediaguide.com

www.tunesat.com or www.wearelistening.com .

EDITOR’S NOTE: updated 11:15am PDT, to correct sentence, changing word executives to technology, as so: “Today, technology from that firm are with TuneSat….”

Music Industry Newswire – COLUMN: Reading recent posts by music industry analysts Bob Lefsetz and Paul Resnikoff, you might think the entire concert part of the music industry has gone down the tubes. This is not to imply that the contents of the Lefsetz Letter and Digital Music News are not fair, it’s just that the comments from their thousands of readers often tend to emphasize the more eyebrow-raising situations, which is to say the horror stories of unsold seats and canceled dates.

Still, it is fascinating to go to the links provided by Lefsetz and visit the interactive seating charts for Live Nation shows. While some acts and touring events are doing well, there are some surprises involving ticket price reductions (and even some giveaways).

Let me admit right up front that the touring side of the business is not an area of expertise for me. Both of my alter ego creations at Golosio Publishing, the artists known as The G-Man and Jonny Harmonic, are studio-only entities. Two other frequent collaborators, James Sotelo and the Bella Swan Bass Society, also tend to stay in the studio, with only occasional live dates. DJ Insane regularly tours, but he’s in the EU and that’s a whole other conversation.

The only writers at Golosio who are regularly out on the road performing live are Scott Joss and Doug Colosio, the fiddle player and keyboardist for Merle Haggard’s band, The Strangers. In fact, as this is being written, they are on stage or on the way to being on stage.

Yet all the talk about the state of today’s concert business got me intrigued. So, just out of curiosity, I started poking around online to see about purchasing concert tickets for upcoming dates for Merle Haggard.

I checked four shows at three venues: Casino Rama in Toronto (2 nights), The National theater in Richmond, VA, and the MSU Riley Center in Meridian, MS. According to the online sales sites, one show had four seats left; the next had twelve seats left; the next had twenty-three seats left; and the next had six seats left. At one of the shows, the only tickets were for standing room. In other words, these shows were, for all practical purposes, sold out.

Haggard has recently released “I Am What I Am” on Vanguard Records, and reviews have been strong, especially for “I’ve Seen It Go Away,” “Pretty When It’s New,” and the one Doug, Scott and I helped co-write, “Bad Actor.” But despite the songs being compared to some of Merle’s best, and to Buck Owens’ classics (and even to Shakespeare, in the case of “Bad Actor”), country radio is ignoring the tracks.

It seems that radio has pretty much turned away from real country music, instead favoring the studio-heavy layered guitars and synths that you find in pop music. The sound of real musicians playing together on “I Am What I Am” is, for the most part, being kept off the airwaves.

Yet that real sound of real musicians is exactly what you get in concert, and so Merle is doing good business without the promotional punch of radio airplay.

Of course, like Lefsetz points out, if you make good music, target your audience and book the right-sized venues, you will do just fine on the road.

COLUMN: “Why make music?” The question was full of disdain and contempt. Spit out at me by a distant relative, it was insulting as well as irritating. While my girlfriend at the time instantly responded “Why not?” all I could think of in reply was “It increases beauty in the world, something that is not true of your existence.” (Yes, I can be rude, but in my defense, I try to be rude only in retaliation rather than with preemptive strikes.)

Still, the query does kind of hover in the atmosphere like fumes from a high school science lab experiment, mocking and challenging composers and performers alike. “Why make music?” Well, okay, here’s a way to approach it: You could just as easily ask: why make anything?

Artists are compelled to create. They still need to eat, have a place to sleep, and get around the town from time to time, but let’s face it:

Writers write.
Singers sing.
Actors act.
Sculptors sculpt.
Dancers dance.

(There is no need to list every artistic discipline, and we will be avoiding things like “artists art” or “poets poe.”)

Yet despite being driven from an inner fire, too many creative people are not focused on the core value of their calling. Large numbers of folks involved in music act as if their job description or their style of music is of primary importance, and I do not believe that is the case.

The Suits vs. the Creatives
Many people know me as head of a music publishing company. The fact that I also compose music and write songs apparently doesn’t matter to some of those folks because they will always consider me “a suit.” Admittedly, it probably doesn’t help that I write about issues of copyright and intellectual property; and I often quote Frank Zappa’s observation that “There is more business than music in the music business.”

But look, only the business side of the industry is concerned with genre classifications, job descriptions, style categorizations, and contractual agreements. You can keep that aspect of your work compartmentalized and let your muse range free whenever you feel like it. I know this for a fact because one day I’m executing Single Song Agreements with the attendant Assignments of Copyright while the next day I am tweaking the beats in songs by Jonny Harmonic or the Bella Swan Bass Society.

This is not a put-down of the paperwork part my life. I am happy to be the biz guy as well as a songwriter. After all, this involves exercising both halves of the brain. I think. But while business people can devise inventive solutions to many challenges, the creator of a song is operating on a spiritual plane that is both rarefied and exalted. And only those people with music in their DNA can really make glorious noises.

In Focus or Fuzzy?
I attend events and programs by the California Copyright Conference, the National Association of Record Industry Professionals, the Association of Independent Music Publishers, the Production Music Association, and the National Music Publishers Association. In so doing, I meet a lot of musicians and music business people. I have to say that the biz folks seem more focused on their goals and objectives. They’re not necessarily happier, but they achieve more success.

The musicians, by contrast, often appear disorganized and dizzy (myself included). Yet there are joys to be found in song creation that go beyond success. If only there was a way to fuse the two outcomes. It got me to thinking about process and psychology. (Stay with me on this.)

Most people in most industries talk about their work from five different standpoints: Who, What, Where, When, and How. Only as a last resort to they talk about the Why. Let me give you some examples.

“I’m Moneesha and I’m in the music business,” they might say, or “My name is Ryker and I am a musician.” This is the Who (not the group, guys). Next, they might get a bit more specific with something like “I’m a bass guitarist” or “I am a songwriter.” That is the What. Next comes something like “We’re gigging all over Southern California.” The Where. They plug a gig or two. That’s the When (mixed with a little Where).

You will sometimes hear a lot about the How: “We’re a rock band that mixes African rhythms with hummable melodies.” Or “I am a songwriter who works in electronica and country.” (Yeah, that’s me again.)

Why, Why, Why
Very rarely does anybody get to the Why. Yet this is the core, the roots, the heart of the matter. Why you do something may be the defining element of your actions. Consider the profound difference between these two statements:

(1)
“I am a songwriter who works in electronica and country.”

(2)
“I want to share the emotions of love, life, spirit, and the rapture of being alive, and I am doing it through the infinite magic of song.”

Both statements are true. Both statements are valid descriptions of John Scott G, writer geek and music publishing guy. But only the second statement tells you why I do what I do. “I want to share the emotions of love, life, spirit, and the rapture of being alive, and I am doing it through the infinite magic of song.” That is my Why. That is my reason for staying alive. That is my reason for rolling out of bed each morning.

That is what provides the fuel that drives me down the road of existence — and it’s the reason I enjoy the trip!

Another statement that resonates within me is this one: “I am sharing songs that make every hair on your body stand at attention and make your body quake.” That’s the stuff of life for me. I am only concerned with the What and the How and the rest because of the Why.

Your Reason
Perhaps music (or art or poetry or dance) is in your DNA. Look inside and determine your reason for being. What is your Why? Answer that. Follow that. Work for that.

And the universe will open up to you.

COLUMN: Since I started managing a music publishing company, many songwriters, singers, bands, managers and composers have sent me e-mails asking about decisions they need to make in their careers. One of the most common questions is “Should I sign a non-exclusive agreement with a library that wants to re-title my songs?”

If I give them the honest answer (“No”), they keep coming back to me with reasons why they were hoping my reply would be yes.

Tempted
Sure, it sounds like a tempting idea. First, there’s the ego-boost of someone saying they want your music. Next, there’s the tantalizing idea that your tracks are going to be made available to motion pictures, television, advertising agencies, and the marketing departments of major corporations. And while the library takes a hefty percentage of the deals, fifty percent of something is better than a hundred percent of nothing.

Plus, it seems like the non-exclusive re-titling library (NERL) is going to be doing the legwork of the business. Their pitch makes it appear that they will be doing the sales presentations and conducting the business negotiations that are necessary to get your music licensed. Besides, with the sales and administrative aspects being handled by someone else, you are free to create more music. What writer wouldn’t want that?

Musicians are also enticed by the promise that “you retain complete ownership of the copyright of your song.”

The capper is the statement that you are being offered a “non-exclusive deal,” leaving you free to negotiate your own movie or television placement, recording contracts, or cover recordings by other artists.

Marketplace Realities
Let’s deal with the alluring offers one at a time. First, there’s that boost to your self-esteem. If you’re being offered a deal, even a bad one, it means someone thinks your work has value in the marketplace. That’s a good thing. Just don’t be fooled into taking the bad deal simply because your heart is all a-flutter.

Next, keep in mind that the act of “pitching your songs” means different things to different people. To you, it means someone is constantly contacting music supervisors, producers, managers, sound editors, etc. on behalf of your compositions and your recordings. To a legitimate music library, that might be the case (allowing for the fact that they may represent scores of recordings in many genres). But to many of the NERLs, you may just be a line-item entry in their books. Your songs are no more than a few listings in their ledger, not valued contributions from a respected creator. Your songs could be dumped onto a hard drive with no other effort applied to your work.

“It’s a numbers game,” one NERL employee told me on condition of anonymity. “We want to offer a million inexpensive songs to a hundred thousand potential music clients for ten thousand presentations in hopes of making a thousand placements a month. We won’t make a lot on each one but we are aiming at getting a lot of ‘em.” Another NERL worker admitted that “we want to underbid everyone else out there, just to get the placements.”

Finally, let’s deal with your ownership of your song and the non-exclusive nature of the contract. Yes, you still hold the copyright. But you are authorizing them to administer the retitled work, which may not even be recognized by the courts (see below). If by “non-exclusive” they mean you can make similar deals with other NERLs, things can get really messy because your compositions are now competing with themselves from multiple sources and probably at multiple rates.

PMA
The PMA (Production Music Association), recognizing the importance of this issue, devoted an entire program to it. Moderating the panel was Randy Wachtler, president of 615 Music, and he guided the audience through every possible drawback to the practice of non-exclusive re-titling. Lest you think the deck was stacked against the NERLs, Wachtler said at the start of the presentation, “We invited several re-titling organizations to take part in this panel but no one took us up on that.”

A Matter of Money
Ron Mendelsohn, President of Megatrax, made several excellent points, including some that are in an article (“Should You Sign with a Non-Excusive Retitled Library?”) posted online and on the PMA site.

Mendelsohn notes that a big problem occurs when “multiple parties are claiming ownership in the same work.” There is an economic drawback when two or more firms claim rights to the same song and engage in a downward bidding cycle to obtain a placement. “This practice only serves to further erode sync fees and devalue music in an already hypercompetitive marketplace.”

Attorney Cheryl Hodgson presented a number of reasons to avoid these kinds of contractual arrangements. “Copyrights are based on the composition and the sound recording, not on the title,” she notes. “If there are performances on the sound recording that have not been transferred to the licensor, there is some legal question about these firms even having a right to license the retitled version of a composition and master. There is also he issue of whether the song has been previously licensed and if so on what terms? Those who have previously transferred rights in a previous contract may or may not have rights left to grant to another company.” In another area of monetary concern, she points out that “Non-exclusive licenses may not be recognized by performance rights organizations.”

Adam Taylor, president of APM, concurs, and then goes further: “There is another important point that many writers overlook and that is that non-exclusive retitling can foul up global rights. This can lead to confusion in the marketplace as well as loss of income.” To put it formally, “Non-exclusive retitled catalogs miss out on significant revenue streams related to international distribution,” Mendelsohn writes.

In addition, Taylor points out, “The non-exclusive license means you’re not going to be able to sue for copyright infringement if that issue arises.”

Clients for Your Music
Catherine Farley is Director of Music Licensing for Disney ABC Television Group and she has seen a number of claims resulting from non-exclusive retitled works. “Disputes over rights in this area could potentially hold up distribution of an entire program,” she notes, “so there is a lot at stake.” The Disney TV solution is to attempt to avoid these companies altogether. “Our preference is to not deal with companies representing non-exclusive music.”

If you love music and live in the Los Angeles area, you probably remember Alicen Schneider from when she was a DJ on the ultra-hip college station, KXLU-FM. Today, she is the co-head of the music department for NBC Universal Television. She also serves as music supervisor for numerous shows currently airing. She joins Farley in relating difficulties in dealing with retitled non-exclusive music catalogs. “I tend to stay away from them,” she states. “We’ve had issues in too many cases and it’s getting to be a mess.”

Change in the Industry
Music libraries that join the PMA are informed of the organization’s official opposition to the practice of retitling non-exclusive music tracks. At least one PMA member used to offer those types of agreements but has now stopped doing so.

Keatly Haldeman, CEO of pigFACTORY, wrote me about it: “We began working with artists under agreements like this about five years ago when the practice was widespread and industry-standard. At the time, Pump Audio was dominating the marketplace and all music in their catalog was under agreements like this.”

Over time, pigFACTORY came to the conclusion that “this practice has negative effects for the company, the artist and the industry as a whole. We stopped issuing any contracts to artists under these terms about two years ago and have largely purged the catalog of any music represented under these terms.” Having recently become a member of the Production Music Association, Haldeman states “We firmly believe that the PMA is taking the correct stance against this issue.”

What’s in a Name?
I remember the brouhaha over Pump Audio but I never did quite get the re-titling thing except when releasing an instrumental version of a song that was originally recorded with lyrics. But the lure of the NERL is unmistakable and people keep pressuring me to tell them everything is okay with these contracts. One way I’ve found to slow them down is by asking them to imagine the following conversation between a songwriter and one of these retitling firms:

“Bob, we love your material! We’d like to offer you a non-exclusive contract. Meanwhile, we’ll re-title this song to ‘Like a Stone That’s Rolling’ and that song to ‘Forever Youngish’ and this one here to ‘I’ll Be Your Baby This Evening’ and that one to ‘Blow in the Wind,’ and this song to ‘Knocking on the Door of Heaven,’ and that song to ‘Times They Are For a Change’ — hey, kind of prophetic, don’t you think, Bobby?! Okay, just sign here.”

Litany of Potential Problems
Towards the end of Mendelsohn’s article, he offers an imposing list of difficulties facing the artist who is talked into a retitling arrangement with non-exclusive representation. The litany includes: devaluing of your music, potential litigation, ownership disputes, lower potential for income, and the risk of being added to a “do not use” list by motion picture and television music supervisors.

Audio Fingerprinting
One member of the panel was from a company representing an important change in the tracking of music, and not just in the area of production music. Chris Woods is executive vice president and chief operating officer of TuneSat, one of the leading firms in audio fingerprinting.

Unlike watermarking, fingerprinting does not embed an external file into the master recording. TuneSat uses a passive technology that analyzes a music track to ” find the DNA of each piece of music,” Woods says. Once a song is analyzed by TuneSat, it can be automatically recognized when broadcast. “Our goal for TuneSat is to set the standard for accountability and transparency for all rights holders with regards to music tracking, reporting, and distribution, and to do this on a global basis,” states Woods.

Audio fingerprinting may have profoundly positive implications regarding future revenue streams for composers. Many of my colleagues are excited that TuneSat is already working with Universal Music Publishing Group and SESAC to monitor music performances in broadcast television. But audio fingerprinting is going to increase difficulties for those involved with retitled non-exclusive works. You can see the problem that will crop up when the audio fingerprint of “Song Number One” is tracked by TuneSat but the payment is sought by the non-exclusive libraries claiming rights to “Song Number One,” “Song One,” “Song the First,” and “Number One Song.”

Bottom Line
The final observation belongs to Cheryl Hodgson, whose law practice focuses on the registration, licensing and enforcement of agreements pertaining to trademark and copyright properties. At one point near the end of the panel presentation, the question was raised, “Until audio fingerprinting is the norm, how can all these potential problems be resolved?” All eyes turned to Hodgson. She smiled and said, “That’s why there are attorneys.”

For the full text of Ron Mendelsohn’s article, click here:

app.e2ma.net/campaign/27456.af55d60b404c79870d1c9931918a94fc

or:
bit.ly/cVl003 (short version of link to the long URL above).

COLUMN: There may be a world of money waiting for songwriters, publishers and performers, but collecting the revenue internationally can be perplexing. It is so complicated, in fact, that the California Copyright Conference (CCC) dedicated one of their monthly programs to the topic.

The CCC panel called “Music Rights: A Global Perspective” touched on some of the important issues facing songwriters and music publishers. As a result, many people I contacted wanted to delve deeper into what might be called the international musical monetary fund. Let’s take a look at a few of the issues.

Neighboring Rights
This term has a specific meaning in the music industry, although the basic concept refers to rights held by one person simply because of rights held by another. In music, for example, the owner of a song is the copyright holder, but the performer enjoys rights, too. The performer’s rights are somewhat in conjunction with the copyright owner, hence the term “neighboring.”

For many in the United States, this concept seems new, but neighboring rights were enacted after 1996 and then amended to the Copyright Act.

Dennis R. Sinnott of Christel Music says the term refers to “the rights created by performers, producers, broadcasters, and anyone else (other than the composer and or lyricist of a song), who takes part in transmitting and or performing a work to the public.”

Getting right to the bottom line is Gino Olivieri, President of Premier Muzik International Corporation, who states that “Neighboring Rights are the rights of performers and makers of sound recordings to be paid fairly for the broadcast and public performance of their works.”

Which brings us to a controversial proposal here in the U.S…

Performance Rights Act
This is “a proposed update to American Copyright law,” notes Jeannine Coppola of law firm Wahab & Medenica. The law “has long exempted terrestrial radio from paying royalties to performers, even though satellite and digital stations have been required to do so for several years now.”

By enacting the Performance Rights Act, Coppola points out that “American performers would also be entitled to royalties overseas, where currently they do not benefit from their songs being played on international airwaves.”

Basically, if we in the U.S. do not pay performers for broadcast performances, then many foreign countries will not pay, either. In other words, in addition to the fairness of the Performance Rights Act, there is also a global imperative.

The possibility of passing the Performance Rights Act is enticing to many. “Obviously, a new source of income is created for artists and record companies (as well as background singers and musicians) that did not previously exist,” notes Steve Winogradsky, an attorney with Winogradsky/Sobel in Los Angeles.

“How much income will be generated will be determined once the bill is passed,” Winogradsky continues. “A possible downside is that the license fees paid to the performing rights societies — ASCAP, BMI and SESAC — for writers and publishers may decline as a result.”

Is that a real possibility? “The legislation is drafted so that there is supposed to be no negative impact on those license fees but market conditions might affect the future negotiations stations have with those parties,” Winogradsky adds.

Still, there is optimism from many quarters: “It is exciting that terrestrial radio broadcasts in the United States may begin to generate sound recording performance royalties for artists and record companies, and that this may unlock a whole new stream of reciprocal income from abroad,” states Cedar Boschan, a partner in the auditing firm Hurewitz Boschan & Co.”

Olivieri is perhaps even more optimistic: “The results of this act will benefit publishers, performers and labels around the world.” He notes that “the influx of world royalties coming into the USA will surely multiply substantially. Being on the same reciprocal royalty scale as major territories of the world would be beneficial to everyone.”

A question that arises from songwriters in North America is: “Doesn’t my PRO collect for me?” ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and SOCAN are responsible for administering the rights of composers, authors and music publishers; however, there are also Neighboring Rights Agencies which are responsible for administering the rights of performers and master owners of sound recordings.

Pan-European Licensing
For years, music licensing in Europe has meant interacting with country after country and with a large number of agencies. Creating a uniform approach called pan-European licensing is a goal of many throughout the EU (European Union) and the rest of the world.

Boschan says “The time has come for publishers to consider whether a pan-European licensing initiative – such as the UK’s Independent Music Publishers’ European Licensing (‘IMPEL’) initiative – will help increase licensing and collections of such digital royalties,” further noting that “Many American publishers have difficulty collecting download, streaming and mobile royalties from all European territories.”

Obviously, music publishers are encouraged by this, and so are artists and songwriters. Anand Bhatt, an artist with Sonic Wave International, welcomes pan-Euro licensing: “If the costs aren’t high, it sounds like an effective and efficient model! Europe is a great consumer of music. The tastes of music buyers in Europe aren’t as dependent on what’s piped through major media as we are in the States. They’re much better at thinking for themselves, and therefore make more eclectic choices more often. If European licensing were more streamlined for the licensee I can foresee it being profitable for the industry as a whole.”

Christel Music’s Sinnott adds “GEMA (the German performing and mechanical collection society) and the United Kingdom’s MCPS-PRS alliance formed CELAS GmbH – creating a license program for online and mobile use in Europe which appears to be doing well. I believe BMI has agreements with certain societies for Pan-European licensing.”

Emerging Markets
For a long time, the concept of copyright protection of intellectual property was unknown in many parts of the world. Today, however, there are some glimmers of hope. “It will be interesting to see the impact of new copyright laws in China and India,” Cedar Boschan notes, “and to see whether Nokia’s Comes With Music will be as successful in Asia as it has in Latin America.”

Boschan continues: “You can’t ignore the trend of increasing revenues from Russia, the Middle East and developing countries in Latin America and Asia, particularly as mobile phones saturate these markets. However, whether U.S. publishers own repertoire that will be in high demand is another story. Publishers must adapt to changes in music consumption in order to do well in our global marketplace.”

How do people collect in emerging markets such as China and Brazil? “We are all having issues with China,” Gino Olivieri says, “as it does not have a copyright system and we are all awaiting the day it will join with the rest of the major territories of the world. Brazil and many other countries in South America do have a great marketplace, although they are just recently coming into the world of paying sizeable royalties to foreigners.”

Premier Muzik International, for example, attempts to sign directly to the main society in each foreign territory and collects for their members. In other situations, they use agents or satellite partners. “Publishers and performers need to understand one golden rule when it comes to collecting around the world,” Olivieri points out. “You get what you pay for. In other words, it’s important to understand that if you want good service and transparent accounting, you will end up paying for this service.”

Tracking Your Music
When your music is broadcast somewhere around the world, are you being paid? Often, the answer is no. This is partly due to some of the challenges mentioned in this article, but it also has to do with the fact that there is no uniform digital “fingerprint” method for tracking the use of music.

Christian Sarrazin, VP of Industry Relations and Strategic Intelligence for SOCAN, notes that “Data management has become a central issue for music and other cultural industries in this digital age. What is being used by what user, who owns what, and what to pay to whom – these are questions in rights management that are increasingly difficult to answer in an effective and satisfactory way.”

The use of music has grown exponentially because of the Internet and the spread of mobile devices. How can songwriters and publishers get a handle on the music that is flowing across all these portals? “Collective Societies are doing their part in standardizing processes,” Sarrazin states. He points to “a unique identifier for musical works – the International Standard Work Code (ISWC)” and “the establishment of an e-commerce infrastructure that works for music through the Digital Data Exchange initiative (DDEX).”

Let’s hope that is just the start of advancements in this area. For too long, creators of art and music have been financially raked over the coals when it comes to being compensated for their work.

Steps You Should Take
Steve Winogradsky says “For any publisher, having good representation in foreign territories is crucial.” But how should an independent music publisher in the USA proceed globally? “Having sub-publishers is important,” Winogradsky continues, “because the policies and activities in each country are very different and having a local representative act on your behalf can make a big difference in the timeliness and amount of royalties collected as well as the protection and enforcement of your copyright in that territory.”

Gino Olivieri adds “You would be surprised to hear that many will say, ‘Oh I am part of ASCAP or BMI’ and insist they will get the mechanicals collected by them. The truth here is that if a publisher does not have a local sub-publisher in a territory where his copyrights are being aired/performed, then that money will eventually be either lost or go into that infamous black box. A good publisher will always opt to have representation in territories where his repertoire is being aired/performed UNLESS they are directly signed to each society around the world.”

Contacts for this article:
California Copyright Conference
www.theccc.org
Christel Music
www.ChristelMusic.com
Hurewitz Boschan & Co.
www.royaltyauditors.com
Premier Muzik International
www.premiermuzik.com
Sonic Wave International
www.sonicwaveintl.com
SOCAN
www.socan.ca
Winogradsky/Sobel
www.winogradskysobel.com

Disclosure: Scott G. is on the advisory board for the CCC.

COLUMN: There was a strange shift in the cosmos in 1999. “That’s when ‘mp3′ first overtook ‘sex’ as the top search term on Yahoo,” notes Tim Quirk of Rhapsody. And why was that change taking place? Because there was “a new piece of software written by a college kid in Boston that let people copy one another’s music collections without paying,” notes Rick Karr of National Public Radio.

He refers, of course, to Napster. Or “Nabster,” as many of my friends called it back then. Facilitating theft of other people’s property is still a big problem, one that might not go away until Internet service providers act like responsible businesses rather than like mob go-betweens.

Still, there has been some progress in the past decade. Many websites that used to make money from theft have gone out of business or become legitimate. But what got me thinking about the ten-year roller coaster ride for musicians and songwriters was picking up a copy of “Internet Audio,” published July, 2000, by Mix Magazine.

I am not by nature a hoarder, but when I straightened the Golosio studio bookshelves, there it was, mixed in with our recording gear manuals. And what a fascinating find. The blurbs on the cover promise irresistible insight and analysis: “Understanding the NEW Music Business,” “The Professional’s Guide to Getting Your Sounds Online,” and this enticing banner: “Movers and Shakers, Webcasting, Hot Products.”

20/20 VISION
Hindsight is 20/20, so I am not going to make fun of the contents of this decade-old mag. Well, okay, I am going to make a little fun, but later. First, let’s look at something pertinent:

Sarah Jones’ “From the Editor” piece introduces the publication by noting “never has the audio community been bombarded with such a range of technical advances — new formats, new applications — so fast.” It’s a statement that editors have been making ever since. Hell, I almost began this article with that same point. In a volatile field that has undergone a myriad of change, it’s amazing how often Jones got the right people to discuss the right topics.

STORIES
The articles in the magazine are intriguing. For example, Paul Verna’s “Where Does the Song Go?” looks at the ways music distribution got scrambled by the ‘Net. Now covering digital media and entertainment at eMarketer.com, Verna then held positions at Billboard and Mix. In his 4-page essay, he noted that “the Web has leveled the technological playing field among labels, retailers, e-tailers, artists and bedroom entrepreneurs.”

Among his other observations is this gem: “The Internet has also accelerated the pace of business to such a point that companies appear and disappear like actors on a stage, and new business models can pop up overnight.”

DONE AND GONE
Speaking of companies that disappear. . . One of the short items in a section called iCandy is “Build Your Own E-Label With ByteAudio,” which sounds interesting, but if you go to the site today, you’ll find the domain is for sale. Under “Movers and Shakers” is a short blurb on Jimmy Iovine and Doug Morris and their then-new and phony-hip farmclub.com — which no longer exists.

There was also a nice interview with a co-owner of spinART records, which claimed to be the first label to offer its whole catalog for paid downloads. But it, too, is gone.

The article on Webcasting is interesting except for what happens when you try to check out the companies featured in the story: www.com (kaput); radioelectronica.com (‘bye-’bye); HOB Digital (pffffft); and Digital Club Network (defunct).

There’s a nicely written (by Tom Kenny) piece about putting sounds online. Unfortunately, the people interviewed in the article were from Sonicopia, which no longer exists. So there is a real groan when you reach the end of the piece: “For more information, check out their ‘sonification tutorial’ at www.sonicopia.com.” No can do.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE. . .
. . . the more they stay the same. Randy Wachtler, the head of 615 Music, is quoted in a story called “Production Music: License, Click, Download!” by David John Farinella. Wachtler, a member of the PMA (Production Music Association), is a strong supporter of technology to help songwriters and music publishers.

In the article, he makes an excellent point about digital watermarking allowing musicians’ work to be automatically tracked. “The problem is all the big libraries like us knew that our stuff was used all over the networks and in all kinds of productions for a lot of years, but it’s up to somebody in an edit bay to fill out a cue sheet and it rarely happens.” Wachtler went on to note that “digital watermarking with a computer that will do the detection will take the problem away.” Would that were so!

The industry has let us all down in this regard. I heard Wachtler and others speak at a PMA meeting a few months ago and virtually the same point was made. I don’t mean to play the blame game, but here’s a shout at ASCAP, BMI and SESAC to get moving because I don’t want to be writing about this stalled situation a few years from now.

ADS AND HYPE
The first ad in the issue is a 2-page spread with a now-humorous headline, “Mackie’s new standalone 24-track digital disk recorder works with any analog or digital mixer…and records over 90 minutes on each affordable M-90 pull-out cartridge!” Ah, that takes you back, doesn’t it?

A few pages later in the issue is a full-page ad for digibid.com, which called itself “The Equipment Liquidation Channel” and “The Leading Marketplace for Professional Audio Tools.” Nice idea, but it no longer exists.

You might also get a kick out of the full-page ad for Rocket Network, which boasts that it “takes audio production beyond the boundaries of studio walls, making connections that let you work with anyone, anywhere, anytime…like global multi-track.” Great idea, but the world moved on to other suppliers, apparently. A search engine inquiry reveals a story from 2001 that states “Rocket Network Receives $9.3 Million in Investment” and ties in Cisco Systems, Vulcan Ventures and Weston Presidio Fund Global Production Network. The ad itself boasts nifty logos from Digidesign, Euphonix, Gvox, Steinberg, and emagic (which is now some sort of mortgage company).

Three different full-page ads tout a lot of wonderful things at digitalmedianet.com but unfortunately what you find at that site bears no relation to what was being marketed in those ads.

Then there’s the ad for ConnectSound.com, where you can “buy audio equipment and get great service.” Well, now you can’t.

There are also full-page ads for: the PARIS digital audio workstation from E-MU / Ensoniq (E-MU is still around but not the others); MusicPortalPro.com (not there); and the Expression Center for New Media with its “Education for Digital Visual Media and Sound Arts” directing readers to www.xnewmedia.com (it’s now gone, although Ex’pressions is still around at www.expression.edu).

PREDICTIONS, 2000
One of the stories in the magazine is entitled “The Internet in 2005,” a look ahead by Oliver Masciarotte, a consultant, writer and engineer with impressive technical credentials, having worked at Lexicon, Neotek, ADS, and Criteria Recording. He currently runs Seneschal Consulting (www.seneschal.net).

He made several upbeat observations in the 2000 article and was kind enough to assess them today. Here are his views, both Then and Now:

2000:
FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) “This maturation of all-optical network backbones with 10-Gigabet connections to the edge of the Internet will make real-time communication of high-fidelity, multichannel audio and production metadata affordable to small businesses.”
2010:
FTTH: “Available now. It will fundamentally change the way we all do business. Cable is inherently restricted in many ways (let’s not even talk about net neutrality) while pure IP WANs are not.”

2000:
“The holy grail of my early days in digital multimedia, full motion video (FMV), will migrate from local optical disc playback, first via Internet-delivered store-and-forward technologies to on-demand streaming.”
2010:
“FMV is available now. The future will see the decline of optical disc carriers for consumer distribution, along with widespread adoption of high resolution, file-based music distribution.”

2000:
“Storage, asset management and other application service providers will ease the burden of keeping your business running, cushioning that demand for storage while providing reliable off-site archiving and automatic creation of custom metadata.”
2010:
“ASP: Available now (again). After the dotbomb, most Application Service Providers (ASPs) and Storage Service Providers (SSPs) went belly up. However, a few managed to stay solvent and now, with heavyweights like Amazon moshing in the “Cloud Computing” pit, it seems like cloud services are here to stay…If only vendor lock-in and security concerns can be addressed!”

2000:
“VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) that provide secure LAN-like connections over the Internet will become commonplace.”
2010:
“VPNs: Available now. Both Win7 and Mac OS have excellent VPN services built in.”

2000:
“I hope to see self-configuring, self-healing software that draws replacement RNA from the manufacturer’s server.”
2010:
“Self-configuring: Not yet but, vendors everywhere have realized that UX (User eXperience) matters! Heck, even Microsoft is starting to ‘get’ it, though it seems that Blaise Aguera y Arcas and his team are the only Microsofties that have a creative bone in their bodies. As a result, all kinds of software is becoming increasingly easy to use. As to self-healing, that’s also slowly moving out of the lab. ZSF, Sun’s advanced file system, is a good example. Be patient, my son.”

If you are in contact with Oliver Masciarotte at Seneschal Consulting, be sure to let him know that his prognosticating was pretty damn good!

PREDICTIONS, 2010
And where will we be ten years from now? “I will make a prediction,” states Rhapsody’s Tim Quirk. “Music as a service is what the average person will take for granted 10 years from now. The question, and this is where the hope comes in, is whether it will be unlicensed services that aren’t compensating anybody, or whether they will be licensed services that somehow people are paying money. You know, paying a monthly subscription fee to Rhapsody is one way. Paying a little bit extra to your ISP for the right to not get sued when you’re downloading music off of peer-to-peer services is another way.”

Not to be outdone, Masciarotte also weighs in on the future: “Where we will be in 2020? Look for nearly ‘ubiquitous computing.’ The appliances we all carry in our pocket will provide all of our casual data processing needs, for communication, entertainment, and business.”

What will this mean for each of us: “Self-configuring mesh networks, full color, high rate, low power reflective displays and kinetic energy harvesting will mean that you’ll be able to use these gadgets anytime, most anywhere, without recharging,” Masciarotte points out, adding, “Standards for augmented reality and an increased use of refined artificial intelligence will mean that your pocket comp will act as your (very) personal secretary, personal shopper, and gofer, taking on all the mundane tasks we now do ourselves.”

Quite a lot of forecasting, but Masciarotte isn’t through. He also predicts that “Much of the low expectation/low performance functions now served by standalone applications will migrate to The Cloud, leaving ‘desktop computing’ to the really heavy computational lifting, where realtime performance and exceptional results outweigh cost of entry.”

Thanks, Oliver. I’m looking forward to the future. Again.

Article is Copr. © 2010 by Music Industry Newswire and John Scott G, The G-Man. Unauthorized republication prohibited without permission. To subscribe via RSS to the G-Man’s column, CLICK HERE.

COLUMN: One of the more interesting tidbits I’ve run across this week, was the rumor of a new product from venerable synth builder Tom Oberheim. He apparently told a person that a new “Two-voice” model would be in the works for later this year, possibly Sept. 2010 (as reported on the Moog forum). Basically, this would likely be a rebirth of the classic two module, plus sequencer, plus keyboard SEM-based setup (or the “TVS”).

The two-voice is famous because it sounded amazing, and because, when you blended the two SEM modules (Tom began shipping the MIDI version of his new retro relaunched SEM module this month, www.tomoberheim.com/), you’d have a lovely four oscillator sound, plus each voice module runs independently. Cost would likely be in the $2700 range (guess) with a 16-step sequencer vs. the old TVS 8-step. Sign me up when it’s on the launch pad, Tom!

Roger Linn – Linn Drum II
Also something I ran across and which I’ve been following for quite some time is the Roger Linn “Linn Drum II” project (originally called the Boomchik, and which was to be co-designed with Dave Smith, and be an analog/digital hybrid, possibly with a one-voice analog synth ala the Mopho built in). It now appears, based on Roger’s most recent site posting (www.rogerlinndesign.com/), that the original joint-development version is now dead. Roger still plans to create a Linn Drum II, and he had this comment: “I recognize that this product has been in development for a while now. However, the fun for me in designing a product is to try to implement it in a new way that surprises and delights, and for better or worse I tend to take my time getting the details right. Thanks for your patience.”

It’s likely true that a complex instrument which contained the best of the MPC-3000/60, a modern analog click-thunk-whap style drum beat box, and a single voice Mopho-style analog synth, with sophisticated control of external devices, is probably an expensive niche product. I would have bought one, but that’s me. Since the majority of folks can’t tell the difference between a true analog blip box and a sampled one, using all samples makes sense, perhaps with analog filters. Having an onboard analog synth would be nice, but again, the virtual analogs are really good at doing bass sounds, and the MPC-5000 would be cheaper (and it’s not exactly flying off the shelves). So, a new digital drum box with Roger’s unique bent on sequencing, and the long-ways pad layout of the Linn 9000 vs the 4×4 grid, would be most welcome.

I actually preferred the 18-pad layout of the Linn 9000 (3 long rows of 8), along with the mixing/tuning sliders for each pad, and the single assignable (default to hi-hat) slider. A modern version of the Linn 9000 would be awesome! (Anecdote: my band mate, Rick Kleffel, at the time the 9000 came out, wrote the instruction manual for the 9000.)

Cheap Trick Isn’t Dead
For some reason I hadn’t been looking for Cheap Trick and the other day had a bee in my bonnet to look around iTunes, and found a very cool charity one-night-only concert where they do the Sgt. Pepper album. Good stuff. This led me to discovering their 2009 album “The Latest,” which I’m listening to now. Nice to hear some new electronica sounds at the start of the first track, “Sleep Forever” (sounding very much like a patch from Omnisphere or similar). Songs like “When the Lights Are Out” are very much classic Trick. If you like the guys, you should definitely check it out. They still rock it, even if it sounds like a bit of Auto-tune is creeping in a few places (my apologies if I am mistaken), plenty of melodies, and nice chord changes, harmonies, and a very comfortable level of experience is evident in all the tracks. Nice change, too, if you’re a bit tired of all the downer-pop-rock bands that sound alike right now.

Nik Kershaw Unplugged
Speaking of music from ’80s era folk, I’m a big fan of singer/guitarist Nik Kershaw, and he has an all-acoustic album on iTunes (et al), called “No Frills – Solo Acoustic.” If you like Kershaw, you’ll dig this album as it lets you revisit the songs without the sometimes dated production values of the original albums. I can sing along with all the tracks, but then I’m a fan.

No Flash on iPad 3G – Do I care?
Generally after two weeks with the iPad 3G+WiFi I haven’t really missed Flash capability (big hoopla in media about Apple not wanting to include Adobe Flash Support in their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad line), except a couple of places. One of my fave music magazines Sound on Sound has a new mobile portal, but it doesn’t seem to work with the iPad, which is too bad. I really like PCWorld and MACworld using the slooooow Zinio reader. But Sound on Sound appears to use something like Flash or Adobe Air. I also ran into one site which had charts showing relative speeds of the new Intel processors that needed Flash to show the dynamic bar charts. But that’s about it (oh, and I think the CBS TV website for watching TV on the go).

Waiting on the hexacore Mac Pro!
I’ve been pondering going “back to Mac” for music, and using Logic Pro 9 for my DAW, now that it supports 64-bit (and loads of RAM). I had been pricing a dual Quad Xeon Mac Pro with 32GB of RAM, but then I realized with the new socket compatible 6-core Xeons now on the market, this would be the inevitable “coming soon product refresh” for the Apple tower desktop pro model. Apple uses a custom version of the Xeon chips, slightly different from the off-the-shelf OEM version, and hence not likely to be hamstrung by the current shortage in the market relative to the i7 chips. Also on tap, according to various Mac rumor sites, is a new 27-inch LED based LCD “Cinema display” which will basically prove a cheaper updated replacement for the 30-inch CFL model which is very long in the tooth now. Why wait for hexacore? Apple tries to hit certain price points with all their gear, and generally the NEW version of a product refresh is offered at the same or near price, but with updated kit. SO, it’s potentially doable for Apple to offer a dual 6-core (12-cores, 24 threads!!), machine for near the same cost as the current dual quad model. I am seriously drooling over the potential of 12 cores, 24 threads, and 64GB of RAM (which is doable with this great memory kit from OWC: eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/85MP3S8M64GK/ .). Va va voom!!!

No 64-bit for You Open Labs Faithful!
I was a bit disappointed with Open Labs new “Gen6″ product line up announced this week, as the new keyboard virtual instrument workstations still don’t support 64-bit. It’s clear that OL is in that unenviable spot where the music software market for Windows 64-bit hasn’t quite caught up to the fact that Windows 7 64-bit does NOT suck, and that many of the most popular pro virtual instruments (the Open Labs reason for being, for some of us), like Omnisphere, EastWest PLAY, Toontrack Superior Drummer, are all serious RAM hogs (not a bad thing, they simply are powerful products). So, the Gen6 models have Windows 7 32-bit, so touch panel support is improved, and now support the smokin’ fast Intel Core i5 processors (which are way the hell faster than the prior generation Core 2 Quad) but you’re still limited to about 3.4GB of RAM. With my current Gen5 NeKo XXL, I can kill my system by loading up Sonar Producer Edition 8.5, big instance of Superior Drummer, and then load up the latest Omnisphere … watch the screen refresh slooooow to 20 seconds to update the screen when opening a window. Seriously. The problem is that most of the kit included with the Open Labs hardware isn’t yet ready for 64-bit, which includes the DAW, drums, virtual instruments, Pro Tools LE, etc. So, it’s a weird thing, if you have a Gen4, it might be time to upgrade, but if you have a Gen5, likely not. Them’s my two cents.

Article is Copr. © 2010 Christopher Simmons – all rights reserved.

That’s it for this time out. I’ve gone back to writing this column as I have not had the braincells this year to write a series of discrete articles on all the things I have been into and out-to. The return of a regular “column” like this will let me keep you informed of cool sh*t going on, without having to wait for a rainy day. :-)

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