+1 on that. It’s such a drag, too. How many times would I sit at the studio thinking, jeez, if someone pulls this iLok from the back of the Mac, I won’t be able to pull up any of the mixes…How much are those licenses worth NOW?
Then the software companies started doing subscription rates…FOR STUFF I ALREADY BOUGHT! You guys HAVE my money, going back how long?
Don’t get me started, because I think the real dot.CON is the DMCA “safe harbor” provision. That framework worked for the late 90’s, but it ceased to hold water REAL fast, and empires were built on the race to the bottom that it started. Then look up “Lenz vs. Universal” and realize that THAT’S current legal precedent. Thank you, Ninth Circuit – right in the neighborhood of the tech companies – no bias at all, right? If you ever want a good laugh, I’ll show you some of the YouTube items on my BMI royalty statements. If it’s a “free market,” can BMI and ASCAP negotiate a better rate on behalf of rights holders? Or does the legal climate and precedent mean they have to take what they can get? Think about it: they didn’t “free the music;” they kneecapped the system so they could sell it out the back door at fire sale rates, and, who cares, because they saw that within 10 years (from the Lenz decision), the entire history of recorded music would be uploaded, and “safe harbor” meant that, as long as users did the uploading, they could sell ads on any song until the copyright owners of THAT SONG, who may or may not be 1) alive, 2) technically competent, 3) interested, since a lot of this doesn’t turn into “real money” until you get to a crazy “aggregate” kind of level…you get the drift…until the copyright owners say, “hey, WTF, that’s MY SONG, please take it down!” And when Google/YouTube becomes such a massive outlet that, you know, it’s getting investigated for monopoly, a copyright owner has a choice: kneel to the tech gods and present your work in exchange for whatever they feel like paying you, or try to make your mark in the public eye with one hand tied behind your back, so to speak.
(By the way, I am eternally suspicious about whether all of those uploaded songs are user-generated, or if there were some in-house batch uploads assigned to fictitious identities. I mean, albums all miraculously have clickable track timings, and singles always seem to have lyrics in the comments section, all in similar formats. And maybe you don’t know that the fact that an image plays back with the song makes it a “video” and not technically an audio copy of the song, so the legal rules applying to it are different. Maybe that’s why YouTube never did image-free radio…).
I’m ALL ABOUT the 20-year evolution from CD’s to streaming. I’m on another public forum speaking out about that going way back (2006 or so). I just think it was GROSSLY mishandled and cursed us with an economy that throws scraps to rights holders – and with streaming on demand being an end-game, an ideal delivery system, there is little or no chance that we can evolve our way out of it. We create (and have created) INCREDIBLE value for those companies. Google/YouTube’s market cap is 1.189 TRILLION dollars. How much of that is from perpetual ad revenue from people searching song after song after song? The CD-era record industry PEAKED at $11B/year – that is less than ONE PERCENT of that market cap (and there are other outlets too, like Spotify), and the record companies had entire departments dedicated to scouting and artist development. Is music not creating that kind of value now (or MORE!), or are the tech companies just taking the good stuff and giving us crumbs while saying, “heads we win, tails you lose?”
If they got the royalty rates right, it would fund an entire, vital ecosystem – you would see business people jumping into the fray, investing in and working out deals with promising artists (advances, artist development) in exchange for a piece of the VALUABLE action. Not like that approach ever got us anywhere, you know, from Elvis to Hendrix to U2 to Nirvana to Coldplay. Media incubators (production) with A&R staff with signing power (budgets!) should be the blueprint for the industry. Set the bar high, with expectations and rewards, and get producers to PRODUCE, managers to MANAGE, and push creatives to CREATE. Then see what happens…
Pretty sure I’d have remembered your chops though.