With a history of knee-jerk reactions and paranoia over new technology, record labels are the last place you’d expect to find an innovative approach to music distribution. But that’s just what one music industry insider laid out in a keynote address at last week’s Digital Music Forum East.
Jim Griffin will be running a new non-profit project called Choruss. Simply put, its purpose is to figure out how to make money licensing music.
Griffin’s experience in the recording industry includes founding the technology group at Geffen Records in the mid-90s.
Before you shake your head about yet another clueless music industry executive claiming to have solved the digital distribution problem it’s worth paying attention to what he’s saying. Much of it is a message we’ve heard many times, just never from the labels.
“Music’s greatest financial power is its ability to draw a crowd,” said Griffin, “not our ability to control its quantity.”
More importantly, he admitted “We do not pretend to know the answers, but we are certain that now is the time for experimentation and learning cannot come fast enough.”
Result for: music licensing
The popular indie band MGMT has accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his party of using one of their songs without proper compensation and has threatened to sue the President if the situation is not rectified.
Sarkozy’s party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) confirmed that they paid a €53 fee to France’s music licensing body, but lawyers for the band say the compensation is not enough to cover the amount of times the song has been used, especially on the Web.
The party also admitted to using the track, “Kids” during the national congress speech in January as well as in two online videos and in a few political ads. The politicians offered to give the band €1 for copyright infringement.
Band lawyer Isabelle Wekstein has declined the offer and called it ‘insulting.’
“This offer is disrespectful of the rights of artists and authors. It is insulting,” said Wekstein. “We are dealing with acts of counterfeiting, an infringement of intellectual property.”
Noting the irony of the party’s actions, Wekstein added: “It seems that those who led the charge against Internet users are not the most respectful of copyright.”
The UMP has been pushing hard for a ‘three strikes law’ that would banish pirates from the Internet after two ignored warnings. French legislators are currently readying the 3 strikes legislation for final vote.
Result for: music licensing
YouTube has announced a music licensing deal with the independent music licensing agency Rumblefish that will allow the video sharing site’s users to add Rumblefish content to their videos, for free.
“Using our AudioSwap tool, you can now easily add pre-approved Rumblefish music, or selections from our already extensive catalog of music, to your new or existing videos,” YouTube writes.
AudioSwap has been around since February 2007 and has a lot of pre-approved copyrighted material.
Rumblefish currently has a library of 25,000 songs but YouTube did not add how many songs would be available initially.
