Owning Information and Terminating Debate
Music companies still don’t like people discussing music, it seems, and Google are a very dangerous company to give control of your information because they cannot be trusted.
Google have recently been deleting, wholesale, entire music blogs, representing years of work for no profit by people who are in some cases explicity operating one hundred percent within the law, and in other cases with the tacit approval of the music companies whose nuisance complaints under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have actually caused what tweeters are calling #musicblogocide2k10.
About six months ago, if you remember, the music companies started abusing the DMCA, using it in a frivolous, scattershot manner to harrass music blogs as a nuisance technique for disrupting independent music conversations. Effectively, they would make copyright complaints to blogs hosted on Google’s Blogger service under the DMCA, which pretty much obliges Blogger to delete the post in question, irrespective of the legality of the post in question.
After the resulting outcry amongst bloggers (whose writing is their intellectual property, remember) Google backed off slightly, insisting that they would simply revert accused posts to draft rather than delete them, and that they would start notifying bloggers when they removed their posts rather than simply deleting them and hoping writers would never notice. It still remained on record as a Terms of Service violation however, and now the inevitable has happened: some blogs with multiple complaints to their name have been dubbed repeat offenders and simply deleted.
Put that way it all sounds pretty tame, doesn’t it. It’s pretty clear that mp3 blogs operate in something of a legal grey area – some of the tracks we post are shared with the blessing, and even encouragement, of the copyright holders, some with their tacit if unwritten approval, and some directly against their wishes. Some offer downloads of full albums for free, and are completely illegal as well as being, as most bloggers would agree, very damaging to artists, labels and even bloggers themselves. Why is it an issue, then, after a legal complaint about an illegal act and with a record of repeatedly flaunting the law, if a writer is simply shut down? It’s not an issue, actually, for me, when put like that, but that is an almost totally inaccurate portrayal of the reality of the situation.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, simply, like much of the law being written in the heat of the copyright wars, is nothing more than a big stick for the entertainment corporations to beat people with whom they dislike, and has no relation to justice, fairness, or protection of copyright beyond the preservation of a very specific way of monetising it. More importantly, for some, it is quite simply rotten law – no more than a dictation taken by massively corrupt or woefully ignorant politicians at the command of a nervous and malevolent cartel.
Think that’s a bit rich? Well, when making a DMCA complaint there is no obligation to show that you own the copyright in question. There’s also no obligation to prove, beyond a ‘good faith’ statement that an actual infringement is taking place. If the actual host – in this case Google, even though often all they host is a link to the material in question – acts immediately to remove the article (not the link under dispute, the entire article) then they are immune from liability for the alleged infringement and immune from any liability for their actions if the claim turns out to be spurious.
In other words if you are Google and you have any questions, these are the answers. Why is it illegal? Because we say so. What if we disagree? Well if you obey then you are in the clear and if you don’t then we’ll take every single damn copyright infringement, or anything even vaguely close, on Blogger and probably YouTube as well and we’ll sue you for the whole bloody lot.
The results of this are even more ridiculous than you might expect. A small UK label sends a blogger an mp3 to help promote their site, but the US release of the same record might go through a larger label, who license it to their distribution partner, in whose Los Angeles office a placement student is given the tedious task of trawling the internet looking for copyright violations to crack down upon, spots one of the artists they’ve been assigned to police, and sees a pat on the head and a nice dog biscuit in his immediate future. And the article vanishes.
The above situation may sound ludicrous, and it is, but it is exactly what happened to Muruch last year, and that site is one of the oldest music blogs in existence and has always been one hundred percent legal – the only mp3s Vic posts are the ones sent to her by labels with their explicit permission to make them available for download from her site. But the confusion between copyright, performance rights, publishing rights and distribution rights, and between the global nature of the internet and the territorial nature of many of those deals, makes this situation far from as unusual as it should be; in fact it makes it almost inevitable.
The communication disconnects need not be within such a complex daisy chain, either. Last year, when I met with Sony in London, the young, forward-thinking people I spoke to were enthusiastic about courting music blogs, because they recognised that the network effect of sparking a bushfire in the blogosphere can easily exceed the benefits of getting a handful of articles in the mainstream music press. Bloggers aren’t taken all that seriously by labels like Sony, however, so these guys were relatively junior. So, never mind their chances of getting their own managers onside, according to them the legal departments in places like that are without fail the most resistant, backward, inflexible reactionaries you could hope to find, so they themselves might send an mp3 out to the blogs with the full blessing of their line manager, but once someone in legal finds it out there that won’t necessarily prevent a crackdown.
It’s such a mess at the moment that record labels’ attack dogs have even ended up biting their own tails. Hilariously, Sire Records recently had all their official music videos removed from YouTube because of a copyright complaint by their parent company, Warner Music. One of the complaints which sparked the recent blog deletions ended up being directed at the label’s own official blog for hosting their own official promo track.
So every single one of these fuck ups within the framework of an already ridiculous piece of law-making ends up on a blogger’s record as a violation of their Terms of Service. They can make a counter-claim, but they all go through a tiny, volunteer run company somewhat aptly named Chilling Effects (at least someone has a sense of humour), where the backlog is so severe as to have effectively made their job impossible. A blogger could sue of course, but I find it hard to imagine a twenty-year-old college student taking Warner Music to court over their butchered website.
And now the inevitable has started to happen. Blogs with multiple ToS violations on their records have started to be deleted. Google is already bickering with the major labels about music videos on YouTube, so presumably they are more worried about keeping them sweet at the moment than they are about music publications, even ones which represent five years of work for no monetary reward and operate entirely within the law. As an example, five-year-old music blog I Rock Cleveland has been entirely legal for the last two years, and contains not one single copyright violation, but has still been a victim of these frivolous attacks. Google clearly have no interest in establishing their veracity and yesterday simply deleted the site, along with several others.
Google themselves have made a weak statement about ToS violations and filing counter-claims, but it is difficult to take them seriously when actually making those counter-claims results in no more than being casually ignored. If you don’t believe me, here are are some of Dave from I Rock Cleveland’s attempts to get a response to the false claims filed against his site. Vic from Muruch very bravely fought this last year, despite the potentially disastrous financial consequences if she were deemed to be in the wrong, and she did finally get through, but it was a long and painful process, and she represents just one music blog. There are thousands.
So why is this happening? Well from Google’s point of view, they want to own all the information in the world, and they have far more important fish to fry, I should imagine, than music blogs. Or to put it another way, they simply do not care. One on side of this argument, as I would imagine they see it, is a handful of disgruntled music bloggers leaving their service to self-host using things like WordPress. On the other side they host an enormous amount of user-generated amateur content, from Blogger to YouTube to, in some senses, eBay, and under the terms of the DMCA they are not liable for damages for any of the infringements taking place across any of their various sites if they remove it immediately an accusation is made, whereas if they do not, they might well be liable for damages (which have been ludicrously punitive in past music industry cases) for the whole bloody lot. So despite the fact that music blogs represent some of their most popular sites (Gorilla vs Bear springs to mind) I’m sure they think it’s a shame, but it’s no big deal when compared to the potential and ill-defined consequences of swinging the other way.
The other reason it’s happening, of course, is that music companies are desperately afraid. They are kind of nervous about filesharing, but I think that is merely a symptom of a more deep-rooted and, ultimately, more dangerous ailment: they have lost their audience. And by lost I mean just that: misplaced – they don’t know where they’ve gone.
If you are massive label selling pop music in the United States, say, who are you trying to sell to? Commerical radio is all owned by ClearChannel and is a banal monoculture, not used as a place to find music, but more often consumed as no more than background noise. Music retail is so dead that the Billboard Chart basically represents no more than babysitting money spent by parents on behalf of their children in Walmart on the stuff like the Hannah Montana Soundtrack or NOW 56 compilations. Music magazines are all but extinct. Music television has been totally obliterated by the likes of American Idol. So who are they selling to?
Corporate money has gone to buy ads during X-Factor. The companies hoovering up that cash may be owned by the same corporations as the major labels in some cases, but I doubt that they’ve realised that they are in an either/or situation. Casual pop fans who use music as social glue do not need to buy their water-cooler pop from labels anymore because it is piped into their houses every evening on the television, and these people represent a massive, massive chunk of the market.
The people who are actually still spending money on music have all but deserted the mainstream channels like print and commercial radio because they simply are not catered for there. So the illegal downloaders are the only people left consistently spending money on musical products, but they are doing it through alternative and underground channels – through blogs, from independent labels, from merch desks at gigs and online. Because of their technological troglodytism and general fear of change, these are channels which tend to lead away from major labels not towards them.
So they have lost the determined spenders to the underground and the casual ones to other media, and they are now squabbling over the leftovers. They have either misplaced or actively driven away their market. The only place any music market still clearly exists in online, through podcasts and blogs and webzines. Look at the likes of Drowned in Sound, Pitchfork, Stereogum, and the general blogging diaspora – that’s the only really obvious place to find lots of people still willing to spend money on music. Unfortunately, this is not a conversation the entertainment companies control. These nodes may be becoming increasingly corporatised (DiS was very nearly bought out by BSkyB a year or two ago), but even Pitchfork, which is the biggest and most influential, is still a tiny little enterprise by anyone’s standards.
When people like Madonna release an album it is not unheard of for the handful of lucky, pre-selected reviewers to be huddled into a room, played the album once, not always in its entirety, and then sent away to write their words. Apart from the ridiculously superficial nature of any review written under those circumstances, it is also a very tightly controlled process – it seems almost military.
Compare that to how music is reviewed and brought to its audience today: it is a totally fragmented process. An album will be reviewed hundreds upon hundreds of times by almost anyone, and how the hell do you manage or hope to steer a process that splintered and vague? They have lost their market, they have lost their audience, they have lost control of the conversation itself and that is why they are so scared at the moment – it really is not just about filesharing.
My personal theory is that major labels hate blogs because they over-estimate our influence. The audience for music is spread very thinly these days, but it is at its most visible in and around the blogosphere. Blogs represent an obvious and easily indentifiable group of people who still spend a lot of money on music, but it is all too vague and unclear a picture for companies accustomed to having the channels of conversation as nailed down as they used to. So they are filing nuisance claims against blogs with no more goal than basic disruption. They want blogs to either go away, like the amateur ones will, or to do as they are told, as the more professional ones might.
Now, as applied to music blogs this all seems pretty inconsequential. Music, after all, is just entertainment. But this desperation to retain control of the conversation is not limited to music. The Associated Press recently announced plans to charge for the right to quote their articles. The writing is their intellectual property after all, so if you want to reproduce it, you should pay. This is utterly ridiculous, of course. Fair use is often cited as a justification for sharing a couple of mp3 files on music blogs, in order to facilitiate critical review. Basically, this is the artistic equivalent of a quotation – you cite an example in order to explain your argument.
Certainly in intellectual debates it is very difficult to argue against something if you can’t show people what it is you are disagreeing with, but the idea of charging to quote is basically a way of pricing people out of the discussion. How can an amateur possibly discuss politics online if they have to pay a few dollars for absolutely everything they quote? Those costs would become prohibitive very, very fast.
Think how simple it would be for someone to wage a nuisance campaign against people who are publically criticising or disagreeing with them if they could file a DMCA complaint against every quotation. And they can, remember. There’s no burden of proof and a legal pardon from facing the consequences if you’re in the wrong. All that is needed is the accusation. Homeopaths and Chiropractors already have a proud history of using this kind of digital vandalism to silence bloggers critical of their dangerous charlatanry. Censorship by threat and bullying, is routinely used as a way of silencing debate – and they’re just homeopaths defending their commercial interests, imagine if it was debate about the war in Iraq, or bank bailouts.
The law in this area has taken a very sinister turn – that of guilt by accusation, without the burden of either proof or indeed any kind of due process of law. This is not just about the nuisance of shutting down a few music blogs operating in a dubious legal grey area, this is purely and simply about consolidating power, and owning information. By removing due process from these areas and making them between an individual and their provider’s terms of service you are essentially privatising law enforcement, and putting its policing in the hands of powerful vested interests. What this does is effectively enshrine the concept that Might Makes Right in law, because by removing due process and abdicating any responsibility for enforcement, governments are effectively leaving us on our own to duke it out with massive conglomerates and their armies of lawyers. And who the fuck do you think is going to win that one?
my head hurts (granted it was already sore from trying the siphon it’s way through some European Economic Area type shite this morning), i just don’t get at what you’re saying?
we’re fucked? we’re not, cos we’re too small? people don’t understand blogs? everything is going to be ok cos it will all blow over?
I’m saying that blogging and the internet in general has basically spread fragmented debate on a great many topics and spread audiences very thinly over a large area.
This is upsetting people used to the previous, less scattered channels of communication which they were used to dealing with.
The tactics to regain control of these conversations are pretty mental, and have resulted in laws which are unjust, which are already being abused and which actually have some pretty worrying ramifications in a wider sense in the future, such as the concept of guilt by accusation, removed from due process of law.
Much shorter than the original, I must confess, but that about sums it up.
I think Mr. Chutney that you are absolutely right with his last paragraph. It seems like rights agreements are in such flux that there is no coherence at all. What’s more any contract that involves musicians, publishers or performers of any sort is being renegotiated with this issue in mind as we speak.
This means that hundreds of contracts are being produced a month, each with slightly different wording concerning online media, and google is scrambling to implement this with all the sense of a headless chicken.
The IP is the music files though, if you take down the entire site you are restricting freedom of speech which Yanks take v. seriously. Bloggers should get the civil rights crew on their side for a pro bono lawsuit.
“Bloggers ” though, is not a group. You guys need an organisation, paid for by minimal subs (£5 a yaer or summat) that can negotiate with companies on your behalf and a code to sign up to that is acceptable to the main players.
Of course, it all seems arther silly when you consider that next generation MP3s http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8478310.stm will to some extent address the issues that concern them. Come that time and the buggers will be BEGGING you to plug them on the site because they get that connection to the fan back that they have lost control of and have extra content to stimulate purchases.
Superb article. I was going to write something similar, but there’s no way I’ll manage anything half as good.
Another thought is that I’m finding I’m listening to less and less mainstream music (and I wasn’t exactly listening to a huge amount before); the quality of stuff from small and unsigned bands is getting much better. Is this the way music is going, back to the John Peel world of obscure bands and little labels making the best music around?
No, what Matthew is basically saying is that the accumlation of free speech and distribution of opinion and information on the blogoshpere has reached critical mass, and the sleeping dragon is now stirring.
The dragon, of course, in this case being the shadowy power-base that links governments, banks and the huge international corporations.
Knowledge is power, as the saying goes, and the boardrooms and cabinet offices of the developed world are quite content controlling the flow of knowledge to the general public in the manner they’ve become accustomed since the end of the second world war.
They have regarded the internet and blogosphere as an annoying, but insignificant and harmless leak in their plumbing, a mere drip-drip they’ve previously been tolerating. However, as pipes start bursting around the network and information is spraying out uncontrollably, they’re finally taking drastic, and inevtiably misguided, action.
The freedom of speech thing is a thorny issue though, because Google has no obligation to provide you with a platform for speech. It’s a commercial relationship governed by their T&Cs, so if they want to kick you out, they can.
The net result is very much a freedom of speech issue, but as this is a private contract between you and Google I don’t really have any idea how the laws governing free speech relate to that.
Stop posting stuff til I’ve finished typing my bit!
My comment is a reply to Chutters!
Wonderfully cynical as always Matthew
I pretty much agree with what you’re saying in general and definitely with the problems with incoherent laws on the subject (and new ones being formed behind closed doors with only the industry lobby groups invited – hello ACTA) – but not necessarily that this is about control of the conversation.
They want to find a place for themselves. The big media and publications would always have played nice with the labels about release dates, etc but with the wide spread of music bloggers – some will play nice on dates, some won’t, some will play nice on which mp3s to post, some won’t. The blogs audience is not affected by their relationship with the labels – at least until the DMCAs get bandied about. Big labels (or big corporations in general) don’t get social media – and to be honest a lot still stick their heads in the ground and hope they will still have a business when its all settled. All those Sony guys we met with have since left to do independent social media/PR – they have got rid of their staff that were interested in the debate.
Some labels haven’t changed their promo practices at all anyway – I got invited to just such a closed room listening session for a well known band’s new album last month. I won’t mention the band even though their music is utter tripe, but obviously I didn’t go
The big media and publications would always have played nice with the labels about release dates, etc but with the wide spread of music bloggers – some will play nice on dates, some won’t, some will play nice on which mp3s to post, some won’t.
Well that’s kinda what I mean by controlling the conversation. Previously, things went through such a limited number of channels that it was in everyone’s interests to cooperate. Nowadays that’s less the case, so all their little controlling tactics, like restricting access and so on, simply don’t work.
I don’t know whether they are trying to regain control of that though – they just want to be part of it. Yes they would like control, but I think appreciate that cat is out of the bag – they just want to make sure they have a part in the conversation.
Bloggers couldn’t care less about the majors and some avoid them with a passion – can’t be good when the shareholder’s see that. As you say – I think the power of blogs may be overstated – but it is easy to find.
As for freedom of speech – I wouldn’t say that’s really at issue here. People are entitled to freedom of speech (within certain limits), but they are not entitled to force another to provide services to enable them to speak freely.
Mrs. Toad, like Mrs. Toad-in-Law, comes at this from an unrelentingly practical side, and I think needs to be heeded. Google is a business and businesses sort the world into two types of things: Things that make them money, things that get in their way.
Everyone else in this discussion (artists, labels, engineers, produces) has a union, corporate representative and/or collective bargaining agreement. The problem with bloggers is that google can victimize one, and besides a few interesting articles on the BBC and The Guardian; much outrage on line and the generation of some bad will there are absolutely no consequences for them. Even the bad will gets forgotten until they re-offend. If they violate a contract then there are plenty of consequences for them on the other hand. So naturally they will steamroll bloggers for ever while it is the easy and profitable thing to do.
If bloggers had a collective bargaining agreement you could isolate the ones that break the law and rules of good conduct and make the well behaved blog a mainstream force to be reckoned with. This would place you squarely in the category of being a useful tool to the music industry, and a powerful cultural voice. It would make blogs less cool though.
Who starts it though? You would need a leader, and an initiator. Who will probably die in a plane crash under mysterious circumstances on to live on as a mater. I mean record labels can be really really evil…
I hadn’t seen Mrs Toad’s comment – oops.
Yeah the music file is the IP and removing any more is probably beyond the DMCA – but linking to copyrighted material still hasn’t been tried in court, so that also may be offending. That would be a ridiculous situation, but I really wouldn’t be surprised if it is somehow worked into ACTA.
I still don’t see this as a freedom of speech issue though. There might be a claim in the blogger’s IP of their writing – but that all depends on the Blogger ToS which I have no desire to trawl through right now.
The music bloggers that stick to the currently unwritten rules could band together and negotiate a license or similar and that would give us bargaining power. But – how would you get accepted into this group? Who would choose the acceptance requirements? Once these types of things are decided would that not remove part of the soul of what makes people like blogs? That they all are so different and anyone who loves music can start one? I feel we’ve had these discussions before…
If bloggers had a collective bargaining agreement you could isolate the ones that break the law and rules of good conduct and make the well behaved blog a mainstream force to be reckoned with.
Defeat The Man by becoming The Man, you mean?
Would you describe dancers as corporate? Or actors? These people have unions because if they didn’t they would be exploited. As individuals no one cares about them, but as a union companies are forced to.
My old union back in England did very little for me except provide a modest pension, protected me from being fired over refusing to put myself in physical danger, and guaranteed that I got payed extra if I worked over 10 hours a day, or didn’t get 8 hours between shifts. Hardly selling out. But the protection was there.
Excellent article mate. Sounds like you need a creative New York lawyer who believes in blogs and also knows a few things about Scottish music. Interesting….
Well so far I’ve been fine, but ScottishFriction was self-hosted and had their account terminated despite that. So the problems are mostly with Blogger at the moment, but they will move to WordPress, Tumblr and self-hosted sites soon enough I fear.
Ben – I was actually with Dylan on that one because unionising bloggers sounds a bit like herding cats to me, but when you put it that way it sounds way more persuasive.
Wow, thanks for the compliments. Muruch will be a decade old this summer (well, technically 11 yrs, but I didn’t start posting music on it until 2000), and sadly my time as the Blogger battle posterchild is its biggest claim to fame. ;p
I feel bad for those who have lost their blogs, but most of us saw this coming a year and a half ago. I’m a little surprised it took this long for it to happen. The fear of losing the entire site was my main motivation for moving, since not even my successful counter claim prevented Blogger from deleting another legal mp3 post.
In my case, it was an American label (Sugar Hill) who gave me permission to post their mp3. Their UK distributor is EMI, hired through the US licenser Welk. It’s EMI who submits lists of artists/songs they represent to IFPI, whose bot scours the net for said songs and automatically files claims with Google/Blogger (including the erroneous ones against me).
What is so maddening about this entire mess is that every actual human I talked to was sympathetic – Sugar Hill, Welk, Google/Blogger, EMI, and even the people at IFPI that my Sugar Hill contact spoke with would like to make things easier for legal bloggers like me to avoid being lumped in with the full album blogs. The problem lies in the sheer number of people, companies, and especially bots involved on their side and the countless blogs the bots have to sort through – most of which are illegal, so the bots can’t tell when an mp3 is posted with permission. Which, yeah, pretty much means bad news for all of us.
By the way, I’ve been told that copyright holders (who don’t use EMI as their distributor) can submit their permitted tracks to jeremy@ifpi.org to have them removed from their bot list. And I encourage all bloggers who have permitted mp3 posts/blogs deleted to file counter claims with Google to have your writing reinstated, then move to another host. And everyone should back up their writing, because no one is really safe anymore. Until the majority of music blogs only post authorized tracks or the labels/enforcement agencies come up with a way to filter out legal blogs, there’s not much else that can be done.
Would it be wrong to post ‘There’s Power in a Union’ by Billy Bragg. If you wrote to him I’m sure he’d give you permission.
[...] after the recent blogger uproar via Google’s Blogger platform (see here or here or here or here and finally here for some back story and insight/commentary). Well, lets “try” to put [...]
Ben – you put that rather well. But at the same time bloggers (in general) aren’t being employed by anyone and generally don’t want to be (or mayb that’s just me?!). They sit on the outside and comment.
The closest thing would be a union of journalists (the NUJ or similar) – but even then the union is there to protect the workers rights from the employer. Blogs are in general self-made/self-run so again it isn’t the same. Well, either that or I’m missing the point on unions and I would appreciate being brought up to speed.
you’ve outdone even yourself on this one Matthew. Great stuff
An excellent post – and I think what sums it up even more is Mrs. Toad’s comment that “[soon] the buggers will be BEGGING you to plug them on the site because they get that connection to the fan back that they have lost control of and have extra content to stimulate purchases.”
The thought of someone forcing you to listen to an album under controlled conditions is just laughable…well it would be if it wasn’t true. Would be interesting to know if this is what the artists are demanding or what their record companies are asking for. Hmm…
Sorry second paragraph should read:
“The thought of someone forcing you to listen to an album under controlled conditions is just laughable…well it would be if it wasn’t for the fact that it is actually true. Would be interesting to know if this is what the artists are demanding or what their record companies are asking for. Hmm… “
Forgetting that Unions are for people who work exlusively in one field, and that bloggers tend to work out of love in addition to another career is one of the more arseholish things I’ve done. I am very sorry.
I still believe some sort of organisation would be useful. Sadly, I have no idea how one would go about doing it.
I’ll be honest – I am SHOCKED that this is still happening after the LAST bloggergate in OctNov of 2008, when a bunch of us were having posts deleted, and a bunch of us moved to other platforms in disgust, myself included. Why the hell did ANYONE stay on blogger after that??? I hate to say it, but anyone who did not move at THAT time – especially “bigger” bloggers who lost out THIS time – may be more guilty of hubris than anything else.
No matter the ethics of reason for the thing, the laws were clear, and it was clear LAST time how they would push companies like Google to feel like they had no choice. The moral: If you’re going to operate in a legal grey area, do it ONLY with companies that are willing to support that grey area. Or don’t be shocked when you lose.
Enjoyed the post and all the serious stuff, but I’m really pleased that Sire still don’t know their arse from their elbow even after all these years.
Nicely put, Matthew. It’s a pity that those who enforce the “rules” don’t give even a fraction of your thought and attention to their actions. Why is it that the people who actually care about music are the ones forced to suffer.
Absolutely fucking wonderful article Matthew, well done.
Perhaps it’s gormless naivity on my part but I really never thought it would get to the point where blogs were being deleted. I’m glad I moved to WordPress when I did (my blog could well have been deleted), but I’m also afraid this might spread across all the major blog hosting services. Meh.
Just going through some of the links on the original post, and it is terrifying, isn’t it?
The major concern is that, currently, if you want to make a living from recorded music you’ve got to get in bed with one of the major conglomerates. Even if you’re signed to a nice home-spun hand-made label, you’re not going to shift enough units to afford to eat and clothe yourself without the promotion and distribution clout of one of the big boys.
Horrific state of affairs.
Oh, please not WordPress. I’ve been sitting pretty, thinking I was safe. I’ll be reviving my lacklustre backup practices now and will be religiously backing up every week. Hell, every day.
Very interesting article. I’ve no constructive suggestions, but just for the fuck of it, who feels like filing DMCA complaints against every post on google’s official blogs? Surely as good citizens of the web it’s up to us to alert those responsible to any potentially dodgy activities on their sites?
Nothing deep or meaningful to add. Just an acknowledgement of a fantastic post on an issue about which I feel hopelessly compromised.
I do like the AnotherDave’s suggestion for guerilla tactics!
He’s not just any AnotherDave, he’s The AnotherDave.
That indie labels engage with MP3 blogs as free marketing, while major labels see them as a threat speaks volumes for the quality for the respective products.
Major labels have always relied on hit singles to flog filler album tracks – give those tracks away and no one wants the album. Indie labels can give a track or two away and still expect to sell albums based on an expectation that the remaining tracks will be of a similar standard.
The majors going after music blogs is just another example of the industry eroding its core customer base. If a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs promoting new music are considered damaging to the industry, then maybe that ungrateful industry deserves to die. The rebirth can only be good for us all.
“If a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs promoting new music are considered damaging to the industry, then maybe that ungrateful industry deserves to die”
Damn straight.
Boyhowdy – you’re right, but I think it’s less to do with hubris than simple inertia, and complacency. Most bloggers I know basically just think that because they are generally trying to do a good thing, so they’ll probably be fine in the long run. Besides, the switch can be technically challenging. I lost months of archives a couple of years ago for just that reason – just not being technically capable enough.
Gary/Agnes – Whilst I agree with you, I don’t think it’s quite that simple. There is a vast spectrum of blogs out there, from ones who simply give away entire albums, to ones who only give away what they are specifically authorised to give away, and almost everything in between.
My own reviews are sometimes not explicitly legal, and even though I never post an album review before the release date, so I’m not giving away anything that isn’t generally out there, there will still be a few people out there who think that I am damaging their sales. Usually it’s more the businessmen than the artists, but it does happen.
So just because we have the right intentions, doesn’t mean we’re always in the right. I’ve even heard full album bloggers argue passionately that they’re getting people into new music and therefore helping the artists in question, despite the fact that they’re giving away their entire album for nothing. Being sincere isn’t the same as being right.
Having said that, Gary’s second paragraph is entirely right. A Britney Spears (or equivalent) album has almost always been a case of paying twelve quid for three songs which you can hear on the radio anyway, so in that sense they have a fucking cheek complaining that we’re the ones ripping anyone off.
I help run an independent label, so I’m writing from that perspective.
We really don’t have a problem with bloggers writing and sharing individual tracks on a release, as long as they use the “covermount” track we provide to everyone for free, or get permission from us to use another track. We do have a problem with bloggers posting entire albums and we file complaints against them with their hosting service provider.
We have our own semi-automated system (which I wrote myself) to deal with the actual takedown notices. It’s more expensive to do things this way, but using the automatic systems the IFPI and others have developed comes at a cost in terms of the relationship artists and labels have with the fans. I think the industry organisations like the IFPI and its members the BPI and RIAA are far too heavy-handed with fans and people, like bloggers, who have less traditional roles in the music business. Educating people about the difference between what a normal independent artist earns from their music, and what a major-label-manufactured “act” makes seems like the right approach. Let’s just say that almost of the artists on our label won’t be quitting their day jobs any time soon.
Over the past 15 years, a new generation of music fans has developed in an environment where music is omnipresent and seemingly free. Music is not given the same value that previous generations might have attributed to it, and it is now difficult to explain how those 15 years of “free” were actually paid for by the people who produce music.
Of course there are “bloggers” who produce no original content and share entire releases, often ahead of the official release date. I don’t think these bloggers are motivated by any (or much) genuine love of the music. I think their motivation is similar to that of the pirate/cracker BBS community in the computer software world–prestige and bragging rights–but these bloggers can’t even claim to be particularly clever since ripping a CD is not even remotely as difficult as overcoming copy protection on software.
I can see why the industry would see a blog that gives away whole albums as potentially damaging, and I think even those ardent defenders would have to concede that. I really wasn’t aware such things existed.
Generally speaking, music fans tend to take a chance and buy a new album after becoming familiar with one or two songs. Give them that album and you run the risk of them either not enjoying the rest, or worse, enjoying it and simply not bothering to pay for it.
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
I’d love to think that a far-sighted industry might see ‘singles’ as a free promotional item for an album. But then this is the industry that would rather sell us music videos – that staple of 80s TV – than allow them on YouTube.
Reading my last comment back, I’m pretty much stating the bleeding obvious. I’ll stop now.
If you’re re-hosting an MP3 sent from a label, artist, band, manager, or whoever claims that it is approved, throw up a copy of that claim alongside the MP3 file so that when your host shuts you down it is right there in your folder for them to see. That copy should be the entire email, which has the signature of the person giving permission, including their contact information. They are the party to whom questions are sent. But sadly, you are still the person who has to file the counter-notice with Chilling Effects.
As I’ve said over on the elbo.ws forum. This issue brings to light the contrast, once again, between major and indie labels. Now you see why we choose which to work with, it’s not always about the music
ARS Technica has a good ‘behind the scenes’ article on the Blogger takedown saga today:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/02/the-day-the-music-blogs-died-behind-googles-musicblogocide.ars
It’s interesting to note that one blog was targeted for posting ‘a newly released MP3 from The Twilight Sad which was available on both Stereogum and Pitchfork’. I should imagine the Twilight Sad are an act which has benefited immeasurably from the support of music blogs (not that I’m suggesting the band knew anything about this).
Great discussion here. And actually I think discussion is at the heart of a lot of this. What can happen between individual artists, or indie labels, and bloggers (who are sometimes even the same people) is conversation about the music, about what they would prefer and why. It might not always be amicable, even, but still it’s conversation which helps people learn about the social side of the music they make and love. That learning is good in itself, you learn who’s out there, you learn what kind of concerns there are. this is good for everyone, it’s good for music, it’s good for building shared knowledge and deepening individual knowledge, it’s good for society.
No huge corporation is interested in conversation, and they don’t have any concerns beyond profit in the short term. So a system set up to make things easier for them isn’t going to have to do with the social side of music unless they figure a way to profit from the social (i.e. interactive) part, rather than trying to stop the interactive stuff. Not sure what will make them choose to do that, although bad press and better laws might help.
Unions or organizing, whatever you want to call it, is one way to try to rebalance the battle of individuals & the social, against the big corporations.. If not a union per se, organization by community (creative community, cultural community, whatever) might get some traction, both in terms of public outcry, and since US copyright laws are not supposed to be pure trade policy.
Another tactic, suggested above, is to have more control over the actual data, the servers themselves, the, ahem, material component (can I call it the means of production, even if bloggers don’t necessarily see themselves as workers)? that way the battle could actually be about the value of what bloggers do, rather than google & Sony coming to a deal over our heads..
[...] I reported yesterday, the heated battle of music blogs and property rights has been rekindled. Song, by Toad put together a great article discussing the [...]
[...] http://songbytoad.com/2010/02/owning-information-and-terminating-debate/#comment-41555 [...]
[...] spectacular instance of platform failure can actually prove instructive. In addition to generating thoughtful takes and helpful hints, a number of afflicted blogs relocated to their own server space and others [...]
[...] I read a very interest post on Song By Toad and supplemented by another tale about how the attitude of major labels views blogs that summed up [...]