We’re drinking, my friend, to the end of a brief episode / Make it one for my baby, and one more for the road. ~ Johnny Mercer
Brian Bergeron was the man who first brought to my attention the horrible contest Capitol and Coldplay put together, which I wrote about here and here. Seems fitting that he’d be the one to close this chapter as well.
To recap, Capitol Records hosted a contest with Live Nation, where bands could submit videos for the chance to open for Coldplay. Turns out, some serious terms and conditions were burried in the fine print. Entering gave Capitol a total royalty-free license to use the entry song for any reason, and the exclusive option of give a contestant a record contract, the terms of which were not negotiable, and quite tilted towards Capitol (even moreso than a standard, first-record contract from a major label). The prize for all of this? 20 minutes of play, with no guarantees that the artist would play in any place of prominence, either physically on the stage or any decent time slot. Payment for this barely would cover the costs of preparing for an arena gig.
While the winning conditions have yet to change, after a couple days of complaints from a variety of places, the terms and conditions changed to remove most of these aforementioned traps. I was cautious at best with these results, however. I stressed that this is an indicator that Capitol wasn’t going to play nice in this contest, although I did applaud them for responding to popular concerns. Many artists, including my friend Brian, took this change as a chance to submit their stuff and see how they could do.
Turns out, my suspicions of Capitol were well founded. Brian reports that the finalists were selected from the contest before the submission period had even ended, effectively ending the contest for all but the finalists.
I spent yesterday with the band working in Haverhill, MA to throw together a video for the Coldplay opener contest. It looks like they had straightened the rules out and made it fair for the competitors. We scrambled to track an entire song and take plenty of video footage and I spent a few hours with Bob today going over the material and putting together a power-packed four-and-a-half minutes. I committed a full day to make sure this would get done in time.
I should learn to expect this kind of thing from these competitions, however…I logged on my computer to submit it to the contest (entries clos’e at midnight tonight) to discover that the winning videos have all ready been CHOSEN. This is BEFORE the entry period is over and once again, the music industry has acted in an irresponsible and unreliable way.
It takes an extra special sort of gall to put forth a Faustian contest - luring artists with promises of equal chances and big exposure and then stealing the very songs artists live and die with under fine print in back pages of the contest site - and then go forth an not even abscribe to the rules you made in the first place. It’s like challenging a person to a game of Calvinball, clubbing them in the knees, and when they still beat you in a race claiming that “first is the worst and second is the best.”
I see no reason why Capitol, Live Nation, and WFNX felt the need to break the rules here. Perhaps this is a small thing to complain about, but the wanton mistreatment of artists throughout this whole contest is another painful example of how much of this industry is forcing itself into a cutthroat, business-driven “us vs. them” market, and how little is the cooperation of all to bring out the best this very music world has to offer. It’s a sad example of how far from music companies like Capitol Records have gone. I hope Johnny Mercer can’t see his company now.
In spite of this, there are silver linings to be had. I’m nearly certain the nominated bands did nothing wrong and had nothing to do with this strange breaking of the rules. I wish the best for all of them. The contest will bring popularity to some Boston-scene bands, and the rising tide will raise all boats. Second, and closer to Brian’s story, he did put together a solid video showcasing a new song of his. According to the blog, he’ll be back in the studio in August, which is most exciting. I’ve been listening to and performing with Brian for nearly five years, and it’s wonderful to watch an already-unique style such as his mature and grow with the help of a full band. Here’s their submission:
I predict this is the last I will write about this particular situation. I hope Brian’s video helps bring it full circle: back to the music; back to the dream. Mountains like the music industry aren’t scaled through contests and sweepstakes. Most certainly, luck plays a role, but so does the support of fans. Support artists like Brian and all the others entering this contest. Let’s show Capitol we don’t need their graces and large stages to find the next big band. Indeed, we’ll know about them long before they ever come aware.
(Note: This is a continuation of the story started here, and has a followup here.)
Once again, thanks to B-Money for bringing this to my attention.
I can’t be sure if this is due to the ever-growing fan backlash thanks to the various Coldplay message boards (some of which linked here too - thanks!), or pressure from Coldplay, or the sudden wakeup from Capitol, but this morning the terms and conditions page for the opening for Coldplay contest I wrote about two days ago are all changed. Let’s take my previous points of contention and see where they are now. Here are the new rules for reference. I had the good sense to archive the page this time around as well - I wish I did last time, too. Read the rest of this entry »
Hey everybody - thanks for waiting, and happy Canada Day. Everyone may remember the War of 1812 and the only invasion onto the continental US soil by another nation’s army (Canadians, as a British colony), but did you know we also fought between Maine and New Brunswick in the Aroostook War in 1838? It was a bloodless war, so I guess no harm, no foul - and I’d forgive Canada on behalf of Americans everywhere, but I’m not altogether certain if my family had moved to Massachusetts from Newfoundland yet, so it’s entirely possible it should be me asking forgiveness of my neighbors. Be it as it may, Canada runs deep in my blood and I hope you can take some time to hug-a-Canuck today.
I’m going to do a quick news brain dump for now, and get into some more quality writing a little later today. Here’s some of the stuff I missed while spending time with some of my favorite people up on Mount Desert Island (the land mass with an identity crisis):
As a followup to what I wrote in early June, the House Subcommittee on the Courts, Internet, and Intellectual Property approved the Performance Rights Act on Thursday. The act requires radio stations to pay royalties on sound recordings as well as compositions, as does webcasting since 2007’s Copyright Board ruling. Reactions abound from the ruling from the two major parties involved, musicFIRST and the National Association of Broadcasters, and analysis from Coolfer and Ars Technica, where Nate Anderson does an excellent job laying out the issues and showing how the merits of the cases are obscured by strange lobbying and PR tactics.
Alex Leavitt, a young man I met at Berkman@10, delved into ethnomusicology on Friday with an analysis of enka music mixed with hip-hop. Enka was a popular early-20th-century form of pop music, best known in the US for its frequent inclusion in Tarantino films. It’s an interesting case of East mixing with West, then mixing again, such as what you see in Ghanaian Highlife (and more recently, Hiplife) music. Both enka and Highlife are favorites of mine, and on this balmy humid Boston day Nigeria Special! is one of the only things keeping me cool.
Public Knowledge signals the importance of today (aside from this being Canada Day and all) as the first day in which Copyright claimants can register online, with a reduced fee. PK is well-known for their backing of the current Orphan Works bill, which inverses my opinion of the aforementioned Performance Rights bill - whereas the latter represents an issue I typically oppose but can appreciate the compromise in the details, the current Orphan Works bill represents an issue I usually support (that is, letting unrepresented works pass into the public domain) that loses my support in the details. Be that as it may, Alex Curtis does a great job showing how an online copyright registry can be opened up with a little API love to help users navigate the records easier.
Copyright guru William Patry put on his Constitutional scholar cap on Friday and drew some fascinating parallels between the DC Handgun decision and Constitutional interpretation of Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 - the sentence that gave us copyright. His point, and I heartily agree with him, is to cast serious doubt in the majority’s opinion of dismissing the first part of the Second Ammendment (”Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State,”) as a mere prefatory clause, and cutting to the second part (“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”) as the actual “right.” It’s dense and referential reading, but shows quite cleanly that if we are to agree with Scalia that this first part was just fluff, it would be the first time we ever regarded any part of the Constitution as prefatory.
Aquarium Drunkard gives us their take on a curious release from this year that seems to be slipping under the radar: Stax Does the Beatles. Included in their assessment is a curious anecdote: Did you know the Beatles were originally slated to record Revolver at Stax, but for security reasons the band opted to stay at Abbey Road in London?
I recently reconnected with an old friend and performing buddy Brian Bergeron. He informed me of his blog, which is now added to the blogroll on right. Today’s post is a deeply personal and excellent read about how the slumping economy is impacting street performers like Brian, who you can see frequently up at Faneuil Hall. Brian also fed me a story that I’ll be writing about a little later as well. Stay tuned.
Vacation plans take me up to Bar Harbor this weekend, leaving in an a couple of hours. You won’t see much on the blog until perhaps Sunday night. Until then, stay classy everybody. I’ll leave you with an apropos track by the Mountain Goats.
As I mentioned last week, along with Public Knowledge, Digital Media Insider, and BoingBoing, the Associated Press created incredibly strange, highly unwanted, and potentially superseded by law “quotation licenses” for their content, as a way to make money off of what should simply be a case of fair use. Worse than that, they reserve the right to revoke the licenses if they don’t approve of the use, creating a horrible chilling effect on the free press that Nielsen Hayden illustrates quite well. This week we’ve also seen it come out that the group the AP claimed (and New York Times repeated) to have been negotiating with on behalf of the blogosphere, the Media Bloggers Association, has not met with the AP, nor do they claim to represent the entire blogging world.
My supreme disappointment with an organization I used to hold fairly dear has already manifested itself in a couple rants here. Last night I decided to do something a little more snarky about it:
Announcing The First Four Words, a website which will give you the first four words off of the top AP story once or twice a day. I would give you the full headline, naturally, but that would cost me $12.50, and I’d rather spend that money on some used records and a slice of pizza.
(This is a followup to my earlier post, Devo Sues McDonalds. Read there to get up to speed on the case.)
A couple people asked me what I thought of the second half of Devo’s argument, that the McDonalds toy plays a Devo-esque song. A few in more devout Devo circles (see what I did there?) claim the song the toy plays is a lot like the theme Devo did for the movie Dr. Detroit. Here are the clips. You be the judge.
Devo - Dr. Detroit:
The McDonald’s toy “New Wave Nigel” (thanks to Club Devo for the clip)
I’m not a court musicologist, but I’d say Devo better stick to their other arguments.
I was planning on writing something about the now-famous MPAA amicus brief filed in Capitol v. Thomas, but I was waiting for a certain much more respected thinker to go first, William Patry. He has made his statement, so here’s my repost and followup.
For those unfamiliar, let me bring you up to speed: The case of Capitol v. Thomas is probably the largest of the volley of lawsuits filed by the RIAA; it is the only one to be brought to a jury trial. The judge presiding on the case asked for briefs from interested parties after he mistakenly advised the jury that the defendant merely had to have the files on her computer for infringement to occur (this, known as Jury Instruction No. 15, is the famous “making available” question that I wrote about here, here, and here back in April). The MPAA, on the very last day briefs were accepted, filed a brief which stated the following:
The fundamental issue raised by Jury Instruction No. 15 is whether the Copyright Act renders such conduct (the unauthorized making available of copyrighted works over a P2P network) unlawful, as that instruction states, or whether such conduct is unlawful only if “actual distribution has been shown” — which, as MPAA understands it, means the copyright owner must provide direct proof that specific individuals downloaded specific works the defendant made available. It is often very difficult, and in some cases impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandibly, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement. Mandating that proof could have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances.
It’s a sad and compelling story, no doubt, but consider the last line of the statement. They try and slip something by that must be (and has been) met with a good deal of resistance. In this sentence, “[m]andating that proof” is a subtle way of saying “insisting on innocence until guilt is proven.” The MPAA is trying to argue that they do not need to actually catch someone in order to collect on a lawsuit. We as a country have more than a little pride in that peculiar tenant of our legal system, and the MPAA cannot take that away even if the cost is infringement.
More to the point, US law explicitly states what rights a copyright holder has (reproduction, distribution, derivative works, and so on) and “making available” isn’t one of them. The brief goes on from here to talk of world treaties and obligations, all surrounding the notion that making available is (or should be) sufficient to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars from single mothers in Brainerd, Minnesota (cue Fargo reference about “settling it here… in Brainerd.”).
Too bad for the MPAA that this is not how our law works, and it’s here that copyright sage William Patry begins his systematic disintegration of the MPAA’s arguments. You can read his post here.
According to Patry, much can be read into the fact that the MPAA leads their brief with an international argument. This shows that they think their domestic argument for “making available” is weak. To address this, Patry notes that the 1996 WIPO treaty (like most international treaties) draws copyright protection in broad strokes, and leaves it to the nations to determine the what’s and how’s of copyright. The MPAA presents no evidence that (1) “making available” is a guaranteed right to all treaty members or (2) WIPO does not require actual infringement to go after infringers. They are tying to draw a specificity into WIPO where no such specificity exists. While some partner countries may protect a creator’s right to make their works available, the US does not, and all countries rely on actual and not potential infringement. Central to their second (domestic) argument is the 1804 Supreme Court case of Murray v. The Charming Betsy, which only applies if the statue is ambiguous. The law is specific, but limited. The MPAA seems to miss that point, or gets it and is leading the court astray. Regardless, I hope the court realizes this deliberate attempt to drastically redraw the bounds of the law, and doesn’t play ball.
I want to end the night with an exclusive recording done by three of my best friends. Two of my bandmates, friends, and nearly newlyweds - Jackie and Stacey - have rocked my radio shows for years with their ambient noise experiments and general comedy fun. Last week they wrote a straight-up pop song (kinda), recorded by dear friend and Sitcom Mom Bethany. Here’s the result:
The name of the track is “Green Vinyl Shoes (Walking Down Beacon Street On A Cold Autumn Day With My Love On My Mind)” it hits a really lovely Moldy Peaches sort of aesthetic, which is wonderful for these too (and Bethany’s fandom of the band comes through quite well in her production). Hope you enjoy.
any price grants the download of the entire album as high-quality 320kbps mp3s. $5 or more adds the options of FLAC files, plus a one-file seamless mix of the album. $10 or more includes all of the above + a packaged CD. (when it becomes available)
Thanks to Paste for the tip! Excited to hear how sales go off of this - and signal your support of the new model by buying it today!
