Label:Life

A federal appeals court ruled Friday the recording industry can’t force Internet providers to identify subscribers swapping music online, dramatically setting back the industry’s anti-piracy campaign.

The three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned a trial judge’s decision to enforce copyright subpoenas used by the recording industry. The subpoena power was established by a law passed before the explosive growth of swapping music online.

The ruling does not make it legal to distribute copyrighted music over the Internet, but it removes one of the most effective tools used by the recording industry to track such activity and sue downloaders.

The appeals court said the 1998 copyright law doesn’t cover popular file-sharing networks used by tens of millions of Americans to download songs. The law “betrays no awareness whatsoever that Internet users might be able directly to exchange files containing copyrighted works,” the court wrote.
[more @ www.abcnews.go.com]

The recording industry can still bring civil lawsuits against people who download music illegally, but Friday’s court ruling will make that more expensive and time-consuming.

A federal appeals court said Internet providers, such as Verizon, EarthLink and America Online, do not have to turn over the names of their customers when music companies serve them with a subpoena.

The industry had been relying on such subpoenas to find out the names of those they suspect of online music piracy. More than 300 lawsuits have already been filed against individuals, many of whom have settled for thousands of dollars.

Legal experts say the recording industry can still bring civil lawsuits against individuals, even without knowing their identity, by filing what is known as a “John Doe” lawsuit.

Under those guidelines, the industry’s lawyers could ask a judge for permission to send out subpoenas, legal experts said.

“That’s a time-consuming and fairly expensive process,” said Daniel Ballard, a Sacramento-based intellectual property attorney who represents an unidentified woman who had sought to block Verizon from releasing her identity to the recording industry. [more @ www.bayarea.com]

The Dutch Supreme Court on Friday threw out an attempt by a music copyright agency to put controls on popular Internet file-swapping software system Kazaa, a ruling that the music industry attacked as flawed.

The decision is a fresh blow to the media industry, which has fought to shut down file-sharing networks it says have created a massive black-market trade in free music, films and video games on the Internet.

“The victory by Kazaa creates an important precedent for the legality of peer-to-peer software, both in the European Union as elsewhere,” Kazaa’s lawyers Bird & Bird said in a statement.

The decision by the Dutch court, the highest European body yet to rule on file-sharing software, means that the developers of the software cannot be held liable for how individuals use it. It does not address issues over individuals’ use of such networks.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the music trade group representing independent and major music labels that include Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, BMG Entertainment, EMI Recorded Music and Universal Music Group, criticized the ruling as “one sided” and vowed to continue its legal crusade elsewhere. [more @ www.news.com]

American duo Michael Andrews and Gary Jules have become surprise winners in the race to top the Christmas pop charts with a haunting ballad from the cult film “Donnie Darko”.

The little-known Californian musicians took the coveted Christmas top spot on Sunday with “Mad World”, a reworked version of the 1980s song by Tears for Fears.

“It is just amazing,” Andrews told Reuters. “It confirms that people like a moment of peace once in a while”.

“I’m going to go home and celebrate with my girlfriend and then get back into rehearsals.”

A spokesman for the U.S. duo, who have been friends since they were 10, said they had sold 236,000 copies of “Mad World”, compared to 220,000 for rockers The Darkness, who took the number two spot with “Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End)”. [more @ www.reuters.co.uk]

While the country obsesses about the latest starlets on Pop Idol, away from the media spotlight a very different project is grooming stars of its own.

Tribal Tree is a not-for-profit agency that gives professional training and mentoring to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who display exceptional musical potential. The voluntary sector’s answer to Fame Academy has just scored its biggest success, with two major record labels bidding to sign one of its young artists for an album deal.

Ben Drew, aka Plan B, a 17-year-old rapper, singer and songwriter from east London, has come a long way since he joined Tribal Tree’s artist development program three years ago.

“He was like an uncut diamond,” says project director Kevin Osborne. “He was talented but undisciplined, and had an arrogant front that hid his vulnerability. The process of challenging him on a personal level has allowed us to get to the musician and develop his potential as a creative artist, but also as a young man.” [more @ www.guardian.co.uk]

One rarely read any discussion of music in the press this year that didn’t come cloaked in a context of crisis or urgency.

Seldom, it would appear, is music simply thought of or enjoyed as music anymore. It’s a commodity, a type of virtual contraband, the “sport” at the centre of cutthroat, Olympian competitions. Even the sense of community that a shared love of music is supposed to bring people has been supplanted by a pitched us-against-them mentality between the recording industry and the hordes of downloaders it longs to drag into court.

The music industry’s financial troubles, blamed — with good reason, admittedly, but not complete accuracy — on the file-sharing bogeyman and a generation of thankless teenagers who’ve never had to pay for their favourite tunes, are the stuff of almost daily headlines.

This is unlikely to change until the record companies adjust to the complicated reality not just of doing business in the digital age, but of trying to sell new music to baby boomers who spent the past 15 years replacing their extensive vinyl Beatles collection with CDs, and of trying to compete with the $90 PlayStation2 version of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and $14 movie tickets for a chunk of their traditional, younger audience’s limited income. Peddling DVD copies of The Moody Blues Live At Red Rocks and The Bee Gees: One Night Only to the middle-aged folks and pleading with youngsters to “keep music coming” on inserts tucked into the CDs they’re supposedly not buying anyway are stop-gap solutions, at best.

In any case, there was a run of stories this past week that signalled music will continue to figure heavily in the business pages in the new year.
[more @ www.toronto star.com]

[This is mainly an opinion piece but one that I agree with. Follow the link for an overview of current issues. -ED]

On the heels of the recently released, chart-topping Black Album by superstar rapper and hip-hop artist Jay-Z, Nokia will produce a special edition of the Nokia 3300 music phone called the Black Phone.

The Black Phone comes preloaded with the entire Black Album on a Multimedia Card for MP3 playback. Also exclusive to the Black Phone are Jay-Z True Tones (ring tones that sound like real music) and wallpapers. Registered owners of the Black Phone will receive weekly text messages and monthly voice messages from Jay-Z for a limited time.

“Technology now provides us with the opportunity to deliver music in new ways. The Black Phone is at the forefront of the future which includes buying music instantly and taking it with you wherever you go,” said Jay-Z. “Teaming with Nokia to develop the Black Phone provides me with a deeper connection to my fans through my music and mobile messaging.” [more @ www.mi2n.com]

[A refreshingly cynical piece from Nick Kent from Friday’s Guardian. Possibly rather bleak but salient nonetheless. -ED]
The best thing you can say about 2003 is that it’s almost over. Wherever you looked, the same ugly scenario played itself out: the world is still mostly at the mercy of right-wing spivs who control our so-called culture by publicly tarnishing the names of anyone daring to voice an intelligent alternative viewpoint, and privately supporting any oaf whose fame-seeking agenda doesn’t force his or her potential audience into thinking too deeply about anything.

The new heroes of today’s youth aren’t the heirs to John Lennon and Bob Dylan’s existentialist angst; they are more likely to be the clueless barbarians who turn up on MTV goon shows such as Jackass and Dirty Sanchez, boasting about giving their best mate a hernia and then braying like donkeys when a video of the incident is played. Rock music, previously a key form of expression for youthful discontent, has become diminished by this state of affairs. After all, what’s the point of spending all that time learning to play a musical instrument when you could just as easily nail down your 15 minutes of global infamy by diving naked into a septic tank, on film? [more @ www.guardian.co.uk]

Shared Media Licensing, Inc.’s Weed music distribution service has received a lot of attention lately from file sharing advocates who see it as an innovative solution to the problems of Internet file sharing. Weed lets fans share authorized music files without running afoul of the RIAA’s enforcers.
But Weed is also getting attention from independent music producers, who see Weed as a solution to one of the nagging problems of conventional music distribution: the high cost of pressing, distributing, and promoting CDs.

Weed files are specially-encoded Windows Media files that can be freely distributed on the Internet. When you receive a Weed file, you get 3 free plays before being asked to purchase it. If you buy it, 50% of each sale is credited to the artist—but the unique part is what happens to the other 50%. If you buy a Weed file and share it with someone else who buys it, you receive 20% of the purchase price as a payment for helping to distribute the file. The person who shared the file with you also gets 10%, and person who shared the file with that person gets 5%.

Instead of threatening to punish people who don’t respect artists’ rights, Weed rewards those who do.

Tom Keane, a Los Angeles keyboardist, producer and co-founder of label Diversified American Music, who has worked with Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand, Taylor Dane, Kenny Rogers and numerous others, feels that Weed can revolutionize the economics of the music industry. “A lot of great music that would never have a chance to be heard can now find its audience, thanks to Weed. With the new digital recording technology, great recordings don’t have to cost a lot to make. The biggest roadblock until now has been distribution cost, and Weed can largely eliminate that. Obviously, people want to share files, and we think Weed is the answer.”

Seattle’s Jack Endino, the internationally-recognized producer credited with discovering the rock group Nirvana, was one of the first to begin recommending Weed to the artists he works with. “Weed has solved the problem of Internet file sharing, and a brilliant solution it is, as it not only permits unlimited file sharing, it actually encourages it, and everyone gets paid…even the people sharing the files!” Jack continues, “More and more of the people I work with are putting their own CDs out…and they’re jumping on this idea. Usually just as they’re about to put some free MP3s on their website, they hear about Weed and think, wait a minute, this is way better! 3 Free Plays, and either people buy the file, or they go buy the CD. (And maybe there is no CD!)”

[This may not be THE answer to the file-sharing conundrum but we at YR think it is certainly on the right track and will follow its development with interest. -ED] [more @ www.businesswire.com]

So… we reach the final Label:Life of a year that has seen tremendous changes in our industry. The music business is currently in a state of flux, like a ‘snow scene’ paperweight that has been shaken and is yet to settle.

Whatever happens from now on, It is my view that we must embrace these changes in order to develop the best business models for the future, for all involved; Labels, Artists and music fans.

So, here’s looking forward to a prosperous new year and Happy holidays from all at YR.-ED