The much-debated Digital Economy Bill was yesterday ratified by the House Of Lords, to squeals of dissaproval from those worst hit by the bill’s contents. The “3 strikes” proposal at the centre of the bill will mean that repeated copyright infringers will have their internet connection disabled or slowed down, but other sections, such as Clause 17, which would have given ministers power to tear up current UK copyright law, have had their range diminished by the Lords.
ISP TalkTalk were among those to protest the ratification of the bill; their Director of Strategy and Regulation, Andrew Heaney said in the Guardian:
“The digital economy bill proposals create a new and unfair duty on broadband customers… It asks them to implement complex and expensive security measures on their connections to make it more difficult for their neighbours and others to use their connection for copyright infringement. The bill reverses the core principles of natural justice by requiring customers to prove their innocence.”
The bill will not pass into UK law until it has been passed by both the House Of Commons [who will doubtless chew it up a bit more before it hits the real world] and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth – whose approval is usually a matter of protocol, but who knows; she might be a big fan of bit torrent sites… Her Navy is bigger than any pirate’s.
In a flurry of activity over the week, Sellaband was attacked by pundits for failing to help Public Enemy fund a new album, put its site offline for ‘maintenance’, declared bankruptcy, was bought out, bailed out and replaced its CEO with the German entrepreneur heading up the purchase of the business.
Johan Vosmeijer (left) stepped down as Chief Exec yesterday, ceding the big chair to Michael Bogatzi (right), with a post on their blog saying that he’d been right all along, despite the difficulties his site has had:
There is no doubt in my mind that ‘crowdfunding’, as they call it, is a blessing for artists in the 21st century and that this concept has the potential to cure what’s been ailing the traditional music industry for so long. SellaBand is and will always be the first of its kind. I am proud to have been part of this very exciting journey from day one and because SellaBand will always be dear to me, I will stay active as a ‘Believer’ on the website and have offered to be on stand-by in case my assistance is needed. I am also very excited to announce that the man who has been standing side by side with me in those past 4 years, Dagmar Heijmans, will continue to be part of the new team and will work closely together with Michael Bogatzki, the new CEO of SellaBand GmbH.
All in all, today is a day of joy. Some other time perhaps, I will take a moment to look back and share my story with the outside world. Right now I only want to look ahead and hope you will all join me in giving the new team a warm welcome and find out what bright future still lies ahead for SellaBand.
Avoiding bankruptcy must be a pretty big relief… Bogatzki was similarly positive but more terse.
Dear Artists and Believers
We will continue to advance this fantastic platform while acting in the spirit of the SellaBand community and its founders. We are thankful for the exceptional work of Johan Vosmeijer and his team.
Starting from today we proceed with this unique concept and maximize the potential of SellaBand with the trust and faith of all Artists and Believers. In personal I am proud to be part of this idea and I am aware of my responsibility for done work and successes. I will take care about the community and spirit of sellaband.com with your help and confidence.
Seth Godin is a marketing guru and a regular feature on the panels at music industry exhibitions. In this in-depth interview he chats to Music Marketing’s David Hooper about the seismic changes that are happening in the music industry, and how you as a musician can best place yourself in the digital market.
From the luxurious position of having a major label deal with his main band, Blink 182, singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge can afford to experiment with his other project, Angels And Airwaves. The band are releasing their third album, imaginitively entitled “Love”, without the support of a label. The first two A&A albums were put out through Geffen, and sold in the hundreds of thousands, but “Love” will be offered as a free download, with premium versions comprising extra tracks and bonus material available to buy. The band will also be touring and selling $6.95 a month ‘memberships’ on their website. The hope is that these and other efforts will compensate for the recording and promotion costs of the album. DeLonge told Billboard in an interview that they’re hoping to get 20 million downloads of the album, and that:
“If only 5% of that 20 million came back and interacted with the Modlife platform that powers our Web site, the revenue would far exceed anything we’d make from a major label, in any way, shape or form,”
In this blogger’s opinion a 5% response rate is very optimistic, but it’s great to see bands pioneering different propositions in the modern digital-heavy marketplace. Presumably the album won’t be available on iTunes, or any of the other music stores RouteNote distributes to, which will mean that a lot of music users will not be able to access it through their normal channels, a closing of avenues which may cost a lot to replace in terms of product awareness.
How much sample makes a cover? Some of the biggest selling rap songs do little more than add lyrics to great songs someone else has written. I don’t want to detract from the achievments of the superbly successful rap artists in this playlist, success is hard to argue with. On the contrary, it’s just interesting to hear the songs that they’ve given a second shot at the charts.
Head over to the Midem blog and watch an interview in which Ed O’Brien discusses how they made a success of releasing ‘In Rainbows’ independently of any record labels, and what that success meant for their band.As one of the most important ‘game changing’ releases of recent years it’s interesting to hear O’Brien tell the big labels to sit up and take notice. Of course Radiohead had the benefits of already having been made famous working with record labels (XL, TBD, Parlophone, Capitol), and the novelty and notoriety of being one of the first big acts to give their music away, but there are lessons to be learnt.
On Tuesday, M.I.A. tweeted a link to a music video without explanation, and the press (don’t make me say Blogosphere) jumped on it, full of speculation about what it could possibly be. Oddly, it turned out to be a new song called “Space Odyssey” that’ll be on her forthcoming album.
No big surprises, really. Every album release seems to be preceded by more or less official leaks these days, so why was thins one paid so much attention? It came on the back of some controversial statements that MIA made against the New York Times’ recommendation of holidays in Sri Lanka (where she’s concerned about civil violence), and it had both the seal of official approval and the element of mystery to it, to encourage speculation and conversation.
Replicating this buildup of momentum is possible even on a smaller scale. Any glimmer of notoriety for your band that can be tied into a current issue and subverted to your own purposes. Try and tie these things in to the release of your own new bit of hot content and you should see interest snowballing; people love following links, and the more meat you can put around an issue, the deeper people will explore it.
Not satisfied with signing up it’s music and video content to the most successful US video streaming website of 2009, Vevo, WMG has done a deal with internet TV streaming site Hulu for access to the same content.
The agreement brings an artist-focused online video experience that features music videos, artist interviews, live concerts and rare behind the scenes footage from WMG’s world-renowned artists and labels including Atlantic Records, Rhino Records and Warner Bros. Records.
This is a pretty agressive drive towards monetising WMG’s content online, and a sign the big 4 are beginning to adapt and respond to the loss of physical sales and the rise of file sharing, instead of just digging their heels in and waiting for the courts to prosecute a solution for them.
Internet radio has had a couple of boosts recently, first the deals that Pandora struck with Ford and Pioneer to get their service into thousands of car dashboards, and now web radio/streaming service Jelligettingfunding from a group of tech savvy investors including Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, Zappos.com COO Alfred Lin and Apollo Group founder Peter Sperling. Jelli streams music online through its own ’stations’ 24/7, and already has content deals in place with a large number of FM and AM stations, mostly through a partnership with Triton Digital, whose air-transmitted station affiliations leading into 2010 now exceed 5,000 – up 50 percent from a year ago. Jelli’s system allows users to upvote or downvote songs on a particular channel, the most popular of which get onto the playlist and go out in real time. This has been proven to work on the web, and now Jelli are taking over slots on air stations, such as San Francisco’s 105.3 fm. Users do have to be logged in to vote on tracks though, so if you’re in the car listening you need to have someone to put your votes in using your iPhone…
Live Nation’s shareholder’s have voted to approve the merger between their company and Ticketmaster. You can read the SEC filing here – the news was at first positively recieved, but now indications are that the stock market is going slightly cold on the two closely linked companies, with a 2% fall yesterday.
The much-debated Digital Economy Bill was yesterday ratified by the House Of Lords, to squeals of dissaproval from those worst hit by the bill’s contents. The “3 strikes” proposal at the centre of the bill will mean that repeated copyright infringers will have their internet connection disabled or slowed down, but other sections, such as Clause 17, which would have given ministers power to tear up current UK copyright law, have had their range diminished by the Lords.
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