Music Industry 2.0
David sez, “Apparently, a company in Sweden is offering file-sharing insurance – they’ll pay your fines if you’re sued by the RIAA. The /. submitter translates the link as follows: ‘For a mere 140 SEK ($19 USD) per year, they will pay all your fines and give you a t-shirt if you get convicted for file sharing.’”
[Based on the odds this may not be as silly as it first seems – Ed]
A good (if a bit nerdy) look at how mastering compression on tracks these days is killing the quality of sound. Everyone wants to have the loudest tune on the radio to catch listeners attention at the expense of the sonic content.
A Spanish intellectual property law has finally banned unauthorized peer-to-peer file-sharing in Spain, making it a civil offense even to download content for personal use.
The legislation, approved by Congress on Thursday, toughens previous provisions. An early May circular from Spain’s fiscal general del estado, or chief prosecutor, allowed downloads for purely personal use.
A Muslim musician living in Britain said on Wednesday that two directors at his record label had threatened to resign if he released a new album describing suicide bombers and the West’s immorality.
The threat means Aki Nawaz, who was born in Pakistan but moved to Britain aged three, would have to distribute “All is War (The Benefits of G-Had)” independently, causing delays of around two weeks.
“It won’t get released on July 17th because of the other directors. I have to move it back two weeks,” he told Reuters.
Sanctuary, the world’s biggest independent music company, said trading in its recorded product division will be below previous expectations and it saw a loss in the current financial year to end-September.
“The group is likely to deliver a full-year EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) loss in the region of 17 million pounds to 22 million pounds,” the company said on Friday in a statement.
The owner of a record label is in a critical condition after being shot accidentally with an air rifle by her son.
Jill Sinclair, the businesswoman and film producer who set up ZTT Records with her husband, Trevor Horn, 23 years ago, was shot in the neck by her son Aaron who was playing with an air rifle in the garden of their home near Henley, Oxfordshire.
High Tech Soul is the first film to tackle the deep roots of techno and the culture of Detroit, its home. Seeking to answer the hows and whys of techno music and its evolution, the film also demonstrates the weird & wonderful effects it has had on its pioneers. Featuring in-depth interviews with many of the world’s most famous exponents of the artform, High Tech Soul is a treat for anyone who has ever been inspired by the genre or got down and shaken their stuff to it’s original sound.
From the riots of 1967 to the underground party scene of the late 80\’s, High Tech Soul invites its audience to take a walk around the globe and back to one of the most challenging cities in the world. Artists explain why Techno with its driving beats, abrasive tones, and resonating bass lines could not have come from anywhere else other than Detroit. Much like the city itself, techno is deprived and emotional yet continues to set trends around the world, touching lives no one could have ever imagined.
In a rare case of music retailer-turned-Internet pirate, the Virgin store chain in France said Tuesday that it had been found guilty of downloading and reselling a Madonna hit without permission.
The store’s online portal, virginmega.fr, was ordered by the Paris Tribunal de Commerce to pay €600,000, or $754,000, in damages for downloading the Madonna song “Hung Up” from a France Télécom Web site that had exclusive rights to distribute the song for one week.
“This is an amazing case of simple piracy by a respected company,” Hervé Payan, senior vice president for content partnership and service at France Télécom, said Tuesday. “Virgin behaved in a surreal manner by downloading the song, cracking protection measures and then selling it from their own Web site.”
For its part, Virgin said that it had the interests of digital music consumers at heart when it broke the exclusive arrangement.
Music minister Shaun Woodward has called on councils to avoid using the Licensing Act to impose heavy handed conditions which discourage venues from hosting live entertainment.
New guidelines to the act call on local authorities to consult local musicians and owners regularly. If they find the local music scene is suffering as a result of their interpretation of the act, then they must rethink their licensing policies.
US rapper Common is the latest addition to Europe’s largest anti-racist festival, Rise: London United, which takes place in Finsbury Park on Saturday July 8.
The Chicago artist is well known for his socially conscious hip-hop lyrics and has won much acclaim for his successful Kanye West-produced platinum sixth album ‘Be’.
He will join the broadest line-up yet assembled for the annual event, alongside Graham Coxon, The Wailers, Buzzcocks, The Duke Spirit, jazz legend Roy Ayers, and Sway, plus Killa Kela, DJ Kayper, MC Inja & Mentor Kolektiv on the main stage.
Rise is a free festival organised by London Mayor Ken Livingstone to combat racism and celebrate London’s diversity, in partnership with the National Assembly Against Racism and TUC South East Region (SERTUC).