WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Baltimore: "The Greatest City in America" (mp3s)

It's a city with 1000 slogans, but no defining song. Baltimore's bred and acted as a magnet for untraditional instrument builders, Wham City's Fort-Thunder-inspired transplants, and the Baltimore Club stylings of DJ Technics, Rod Lee and many more, as heard on television's The Wire.

What follows is an audio sampling of some of the many Baltimore artists who will be making their music available for free non-commercial use on WFMU's Free Music Archive. Afternoon Penis, The Agrarians, Arc and Sender, Dan Deacon, Double Dagger, Food for Animals, Fuzz Unlimited, Human Host, Lexie Mountain Boys, LO MOdA / Low Moda, Nautical Almanac, Newagehillbilly, Ponytail, Sejayno, Teeth Mountain, Jason Willett, and WZT Hearts. There are many more who we're hoping to get in touch with, and we welcome your ideas by email or comment.

Meat Beat Manifested

Everyone has seen a live visual presentation (i.e. Shakespeare in the Park), and everyone has heard a live audio presentation (i.e. WFMU).  And most people have seen a TV show or a movie (i.e. Beavis and Butt-Head, Baby Mama).  Some people have even been told they're being treated to an audiovisual presentation (i.e. Dark Side of the Moon Laser Light Shows). Until last week, I didn't think anyone had made an live audiovisual presentation that really truly was aural and visual at the same time, together.  Then I saw Meat Beat Manifesto on Saturday at the Highline Ballroom.

Zillion-dollar budgets can give electronic music performers like Daft Punk and Kraftwerk an edge in creating visceral visual thrills at their concerts - you can't really do much more for a techno fan than have real robots playing a concert.  But Meat Beat Manifesto has taken a well-worn and considerably less expensive approach - collaging video behind the performers onstage - and taken it to a new zenith of accomplishment in that medium.

Meat Beat mastermind Jack Dangers and Mark Pistel from the political hardcore band Consolidated stood onstage controlling the otherworldly jungle-dubstep-trance beats and squiggles, and at the far right live drummer Lynn Farmer kept incredible pace throughout the entire performance.  On the far left stood Ben Stokes, the visual programmer for the show, who's worked with everyone from Ministry to Public Enemy to Levi's.  He grabbed video samples of Captain Beefheart, old BBC Radiophonic Workshop-esque explanations of sonic technology, Dali's eye-cutting nightmare, The Invaders, Sammy Davis Jr., Harrison Ford as President James Marshall in Air Force One, Star Trek, Billie Holiday, and even Animal, playing in tandem with a live feed of the drummer.

Unlike so many other video shows, clips didn't just sit lay flat and stuttery in the background.  They were accompanied by audio, and were layered over existing beats, scratched, stretched, and re-sampled in a way that fit in with the theme of the song - video of nuclear bomb blasts dropped to the beat, sounds and videos of Rastas burning weed edged their way into a drugs song (well, at least the one that referenced them the most overtly).  Dangers and Stokes were always working together in the audiovisual realm, as well - you could almost imagine the behind-the-scenes dialogue:  "Jack, I've found about 15 clips of people falling from the tops of buildings, can we work the sound of them screaming into the set?" or "Ben, could you work on finding a video of James Brown playing this one sample I use in this song?" Magic like that doesn't just pop out of a video mixer, or an audio mixer for that matter.

The most impressive part about the whole thing was Meat Beat's mastery in weaving overt political commentary into the show. 

Ben Franklin Airbath: Philadelphia FMA sampler (mp3s)

Philadelphia's got a lot to be proud of. According to Philly Boy Roy, well there's hoagies, Rocky, Frank's Soda, them Eagles, Dead Milkmen, them Hooters, and laser GG Allin. With Mr. Ziegler's endorsements duly noted, what follows is a sampling - by no means comprehensive - of some of the other Philadelphia artists you'll be able to hear on WFMU's Free Music Archive.

Mp3s from Bad News Bats, Boogie Witch, Clockcleaner, Fursaxa, King Kong Ding Dong, Mincemeat or Tenspeed, Mountain High, The Original Sins, Phil Moore Browne, Sonic Liberation Front, The Strapping Fieldhands and Kurt Vile after the jump. Feel free to suggest more by email or in the comments.

The Married...With Children Theme Music is Wrong on Hulu

There I was just cruising Hulu to see how my dad's favorite television show holds up 15 years down the line.  Kelly is still hot, Bud is still a dick, Al is still stuck in the shoe store etc etc but THE FUCKING THEME MUSIC IS DIFFERENT!  It's supposed to be the VOCAL VERSION of "LOVE AND MARRIAGE" but now it's some goddamn terrible royalty-free bullshit MIDI instrumental impression of a song that might sound like "Love and Marriage" if you are Tiny James and had been stuck inside a Regular Size Vodka Peach for four days.

What the HELL??

Hello from Columbus, Ohio (mp3s)

The great state of Ohio has raised legends. Cleveland's known for hall-of-famers Pere Ubu and the Electric Eels. Dayton nurtured Kim Deal and Bob Pollard. And from its well-situated spot in between those two cities, the state capital of Columbus is starting to have some sort of cohesive musical identity thrust upon it. What with NME and MTV creaming on Times New Viking and Psychedelic Horseshit. Not to say it's undeserved - I think their excellent live sets in the WFMU studios (TNV) (PHS) are testament enough.

What follows is a sampling - by no means comprehensive - of some of the other Columbus musicians you'll be able to hear on WFMU's Free Music Archive. MP3's from The Guinea Worms, Necropolis, Tommy Jay's Tall Tales of Trauma, Mike Rep & the Quotas, Mors Ontologica, The Lindsay*, El Jesus de Magico, Ryan Jewell, and Sword Heaven after the jump. Feel free to suggest more in the comments.

People Like Us Retrospective Exhibition

WFMU's own sound/image/video collage mistress People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett) is being featured in a gallery exhibition next month. In case you weren't already aware, People Like Us is an amazing artist, DJ, and podcaster, sampling and reappropriating audio, music, film, television, found footage, and anything else she can get her hands on, resulting in surreal and sublime juxtapositions that bend one's perception of culture.

We Edit Life: a retrospective exhibition
alt.gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Opening Night: 15 May 2008, 6 - 8pm
Exhibition: 16 May - 12 July 2008

The exhibition will focus on the concept of collage, showing an edited selection of Vicki's work, including twenty album releases, numerous singles and remixes, live sets, seven films and over a hundred and fifty radio shows. Dr. Drew Daniel of Matmos even composed an essay for the the exhibition! On top of that, We Edit Life also marks the launch of a new compilation CD, "Smiling Through My Teeth," curated by People Like Us for the Sonic Arts Network.

People Like Us has previously shown work at Tate Modern, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It, as well as WFMU. In 2006, she was the first artist to be given unrestricted access to the entire BBC Archive, no small feat.

Links:
Do or DIY radio archives on WFMU

Do or DIY Podcast

Codpaste (with Ergo Phizmiz) archives

People Like Us back catalogue

People Like Us homepage

To Live and Shave In LA: Live WFMU Sessions Mashup

Tom Smith has been somewhat busy lately curating an obscene amount of home-made mashups on his To Live In Shave in L.A. blog (a recent fave: Sha-Na-Na Vs. Pulse Emitter); his latest (as of noon today, there could be about 45 more up there by this evening) blurs the lines of two actual TLASILA recorded performances here in the WFMU studios. I actually hosted them three times here; basically they love the carefully prepared braised pig belly and stuffed trotters I whip up in the FMU kitchen and just keep coming back. Tom
on the dastardly DNA scramble to celebrate our Free Music Archive project by distorting the mirror from within our own Moose Room:

To commemorate WFMU's selection of our September 5, 2006 studio session as part of their permanent Free Music Archive, I've thrown together a mashup EP of both TLASILA's '06 and 2007 visits to their august domain. Many thanks to Brian Turner and Jason Sigal, 'FMU's Licensing Director, for thinking of us...

Our 2006 session featured Ben Wolcott, Rat Bastard, Andrew W.K., Chris Grier, Don Fleming, Graham Moore, and me. The 2007 session was performed by Chris, Rat, Graham, Patrick Spurlock, former Peach of Immortality roustabout Mark Shellhaas, and erstwhile Ill Humor succubus Kelly Jamison. (Mark and Kelly perform under the sobriquet Truth Serum.) 

The link is here to the post, which includes the Rapidshare download.

The life and crimes of the music biz

"The life and crimes of the music biz," a lengthy indictment of the music industry, recently written by insider Simon Napier-Bell.

Reminiscent of Steve Albini's earlier "The problem with music."

(Thanks to Steve Fitch)

Radio News You Can't Use

Indecency resurfaces at the FCC
After taking a long break from making any indecency rulings, the FCC fined ABC networks $1.4 million for broadcasting images of an actress' butt in 2003. This is a curious move, considering that the commission's indecency policies been under scrutiny by the courts. Last year, a federal appeals court decided that the FCC's ever-morphing indecency standards were too nebulous, shooting down some of their rulings on fleeting expletives. As a nice little contrast, public TV stations in the Netherlands are planning to air Deep Throat, with a green light from the country's media minister.

Meanwhile, the FCC is making enemies in the cable industry as they plot out a way to force cable providers into offering a la carte programming. On the radio side of things, Prometheus Radio will convene in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 25 and 26, hoping to convince Congress to expand LPFM.

More on the fire at KOOP
Community radio station KOOP in Austin, TX was set on fire last month, and investigators have now tied the blaze to an arsonist DJ. Paul Feinstein poured gasoline over KOOP's equipment and set the station ablaze following an incident in which the music he had selected for the station's web-only programming was changed. (Freeform or burn?) The arson charges certainly bring new meaning to Feinstein's radio program, which was called "Mellow Down Easy."

Danger for CKMS in Waterloo, Ontario
30-year-old college and community station CKMS is in danger of losing funding thanks to a referendum on the student ballot. Some students are feeling alienated from CKMS, which is the oldest campus station in Canada. Voting ends on 2/14, and the station's fate will be assessed.

As usual, the RIAA has been making inflammatory claims again...

Now RIAA wants $1.5 million if you copy a CD

Nate Anderson @ ars technica writes:

Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. In the RIAA's perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendant $1.5 million if done willfully. Sound fair? Proportional? Necessary? Not really, but that doesn't mean it won't become law.

The change to statutory damages is contained in the PRO-IP Act that is currently up for consideration in Congress. We've reported on the bill before, noting that Google's top copyright lawyer (and the man who wrote a seven-volume treatise on the subject of copyright law), William Patry, called the bill the most "outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US."

The industries pushing it (music, especially) have an "unslakable lust for more and more rights, longer terms of protection, draconian criminal provisions, and civil damages that bear no resemblance to the damages suffered," he said.

Read full article @ ars technica

Radio News You Can't Use

LPFM, Media Consolidation, and Satellite Merger
A bill allowing for more LPFM licensees in the U.S. is headed for a full Senate vote soon. Current laws limit the numbers of low power FM stations allowed in an area to prevent interference with full-powered FM stations. While more LPFM stations will undoubtedly offer greater programming options to listeners, I can't help but wonder why community radio is being forced to inhabit the outer fringes of the public's spectrum. I suppose something is better than nothing.

After all the public hearings, outcry, and lobby dollars hard at work, the FCC finally decided vote on whether or not to relax media ownership rules. And then Congress got angry, telling the FCC that it was far too soon to make up their minds about the issue. Stay tuned...

As the satellite radio companies attempt to merge, costs and legal fees soar through the roof. Mel Karmazin admits to spending $1 million in photo-copying alone.

Digital Music News
This past month, Radiohead released the digital version of their latest album on a pay-what-you-will basis, prompting many philosophical discussions on the music industry's demise. Some Radiohead fans are now angry about the downloads being encoded at a "low" bit rate (160 kbps), even though most of these folks probably couldn't tell the difference between 160 and 320 kbps on their crappy computer speakers anyway.

Jammie Thomas, the woman who recently lost a court battle with the RIAA over file-sharing, is trying to raise funds to help pay the $220,000 she now owes the recording industry (or perhaps to pay her lawyer for an impending appeal). What better way to accomplish this than by hawking thong underwear emblazoned with a "Free Jammie" logo? (hey, it worked for Bronwyn!)

Radio News You Can't Use

Indecency Goes to Supreme Court
Tons of activity on the indecency front lately. Earlier this year, the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals slapped the FCC's wrist for their unclear broadcast indecency guidelines, and for applying those rules in an erratic manner when they suddenly took an about face on the issue of fleeting expletives. The FCC has appealed this decision to the Supreme Court, and because the commission's guidelines are so shaky, I can't see how any rational judge would not uphold the 2nd Circuit's decision. Then again, the Supremes recently put the smack down on Bong Hits 4 Jesus... Predictably, there has been a backlash to the 2nd Circuit's decision in Congress. The House recently introduced the "Protecting Children from Indecent Programming Act." Meanwhile, the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals is examining the 2004 Superbowl halftime fiasco (aka nipplegate); CBS is challenging the FCC's $550,000 fine. In the radio sector, Pacifica stations chose not to air a recording of Allen Ginsburg reading his landmark poem Howl, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the day a court ruled that the poem was not obscene. Fearing FCC indecency fines, the historic recording was webcast instead.

Performance Royalty Updates
Lately, the webcasting royalty negotiations have gone stale, with hardly even a rumor suggesting that any deals are close to being made for non-commercial webcasters. Meanwhile, there is talk of a performance royalty bill for broadcasters, and it could hit the Senate floor as soon as this month. For more on the recent discourse surrounding performance royalties, check out RAIN's coverage of the FMC Policy Summit, which I attended last month.

RIAA in Court
The RIAA's first filesharing trial hit a Minnesota courtroom this week, wherein a 30-year-old mother of two was accused by the RIAA (and 7 member record labels) of illegally distributing songs on the Kazaa filesharing network in 2005. The defendant was found guilty of copyright infringement, and must now pay $9,250 for each song that she made available via p2p ($222,000 total). You can read a play-by-play of how the trial went down right here. This woman clearly should have settled before she wasted money on a bad lawyer (who actually suggested to a jury of rational adults that his client was "victim of a zombie, a cracker, or a drone") who allowed her case to go to trial. An interesting side note: during the court proceedings, the RIAA admitted that its campaign against illegal downloading is costing them millions of dollars that are not recuperated by settlements.

Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit

The Future of Music Coalition is holding their annual Policy Summit at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. next week, as I mentioned previously. Not only will this be an amazing confluence of record labels, radio stations, webcasters, policymakers, academics, lawyers, and trade groups, but now a bunch of cool musicians are slated to speak as well (see the full list of panelists here).

Lady Miss Kier of Deee-lite will discuss sampling, Charles from the Wrens will tackle broadband policy/net neutrality, Franz from the Hold Steady will talk about the state of music retail, Jon and Nick from the Spinto Band are rounding up the DIY Music Licensing Panel, while Mac McCaughan from Merge/Superchunk and Bob Mould will chime in during FMC's State of the Union panel, kicking off the event on Monday, 9/17.

Peter Alyea from the Library of Congress is also on board to discuss a new toy called IRENE, a laser beam that scans the surface of old records, digitally mapping out the audio (and simultaneously editing out dust and scratches), without ever using a needle.

For a full schedule of panels and sessions, visit this page. Registration info here.

On the Death of the Music Industry

Some recent links of interest:

• Rick Rubin is hired to "save" Columbia Records from itself (NY Times article, requires login)
• Bob Lefsetz ain't buying the Rubin mythos (Lefsetz Letter: Part 1, Part 2)
• Hope for the industry? "Home-made, word-of-mouth" youtube mega hit orchestrated entirely by record label (WSJ article)
• KRS-One on the death of rap and the record industry (audio interview on the Megatron Don)
• Performance royalties vs. payola: radio stations and record labels scraping for survival (Washington Post article)
• It's now possible to wirelessly purchase music at Starbuck's using an iPod, yet impossible to stream internet radio on the device (Apple's announcement).
• Come to think of it, Starbuck's is now running a record label. Surely a sign of the apocalypse.

Thanks to Brian, Monica, Trent, and DJ/Rupture!

High Brow / High Concept Activities

As the dreaded end of summer approaches, NYC's glorious free outdoor shows begin to dry up, and we settle back into crummy weather/indoor activity mode. Use these final few weeks of summer to take one last carefree frolic on the beach, then check out some of these pre-fall happenings. Get out of the house now, before your Netflix turnaround becomes faster than an excursion from the sofa to your fridge.

High Brow Enrichment
Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit - Anyone interested in the ways music, technology, i.p. law, and policy simultaneously grind and slamdance together should head out to Washington, D.C. on Sept. 17-18. Hot button music industry issues like net neutrality, sampling, royalties, payola, social media, and the digital revolution will be discussed by panels of experts, regulators, and musicians (full schedule here). It's bound to be an interesting conference, but don't take it from me, I'm a geek when it comes to this stuff. Take it from someone much cooler: Ted Leo (MP3).

High Concept Outings
Rocks Off Boat Cruise - Rock concerts on a boat. Simple. Genius. With a seafaring schedule that includes Lee "Scratch" Perry, Kid Koala, Holly Golightly, Bit Shifter, and a Pink Floyd tribute band, what's not to love? I'm personally a fan of their unicorn-dolphin-rainbow logo and impeccable customer service (one show in particular is "SOLD THE FUCK OUT, BITCHES - Get your tix sooner next time").

Pickin' Pockets at the Atlantic Antic - Though it technically lies within the fall season, I'm still including Brooklyn's best street fair with my list of late summer activities, because hey, it's outdoors. Check it out on Sept. 30 from 10am-6pm, and be sure to swing by the WFMU table and allow us to shower you with public displays of freeform affection. Pony rides! Tube socks! Greasy sausage sandwiches!

Scavenger Hunt in Brooklyn, afterparty with free booze and Dan Deacon - Instead of dropping $300 to pass out from heatstroke and hallucinogen-induced constipation at Burning Man, spend Sunday, Sept. 2 (date has been postponed until sometime in Oct) searching the city for arcane objects and sites, as you compete for prizes with teams of other wired adventurers. Or just hang out for a few hours, then drink it up and snap your glowsticks to the happy, glitched-out sounds of Baltimore's Dan Deacon. More details and ticket info here.

For Those Missing the Dysfunctional Family Circus

Looks like Wayne Butane has taken to scrambling the visual medium with the same vigor as his famed audio cut-ups (and he's offering a lot of that too, not to mention some of his collected MP3s in case you really feel the need to hear a Mick Jagger/Sam Kinison duet on "Under My Thumb").

Wayne Butane on WFMU
A Very Special Wayne Butane Xmas (Excerpt) (MP3)

Radio News You Can't Use

Webcasting D-Day Approacheth
If you've had your ear to the web stream these past few months, you know that a serious threat to internet radio has cropped up. This March, the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) and SoundExchange came up with an unfair new royalty scheme for webcasters. These new rates are so enormous that many webcasters large and small, commercial and non-commercial, would have to pay royalty sums that surpass their entire annual revenues. SoundExchange and the CRB do not seem to view this as problematic to the industry, and have yet to offer a reasonable compromise to webcasters (though they have offered many unreasonable PR-driven "concessions").

The new rates are set to go into effect on July 15, and unless NPR's request for a stay is honored by the U.S. Court of Appeals, many internet radio stations may go out of business very soon. In fact, thousands of stations participated in a national day of protest against the new webcasting rates by going silent on 6/26. This prompted 350,000 listeners to put in calls of concern to their congressional representatives. WFMU chose to boycott all RIAA-registered music that day, and I've explained our position on the matter here.

There are bills in both the House and Senate for the Internet Radio Equality Act, which set a revenue-based royalty rate instead of the per-song per-listener model favored by the CRB and SoundExchange. Although the House Committee on Small Business led a discussion about the new webcasting rates last week (you can view the entire hearing here), many Congresspeople did not appear interested in intervening. Nevertheless, it may come down to Congressional action and legislation if SoundExchange doesn't negotiate a rational rate scheme before July 15. WFMU is encouraging listeners to call or write to their representatives in support of the Internet Radio Equality Act. You can get more information at savenetradio.org or by reading this recent L.A. Times debate between a webcaster and a SoundExchange rep.

The Lion Keeps His Rights

Hank Medress died the other day. He was 68, and he had lung cancer, and he used to sing with a doo-wop group called the Tokens, back in the 1950s and ‘60s. The Tokens had a huge hit with a song called “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in 1961, and then some more minor songs on the charts, and then Medress moved on to producing records for other groups like the Chiffons, and Tony Orlando and Dawn, and even David Johansen in his “Buster Poindexter” incarnation. The last thing Hank Medress was doing before he died was working as a consultant to Sound Exchange, which was described in his obituary as “a nonprofit group helping musicians collect royalties.”

That’s kind of ironic, because Medress got rich off royalties for “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” but the guy who actually wrote the song and recorded it in 1939, Solomon Linda, never got a penny of royalties in his life. Mr. Linda died in poverty, in segregated South Africa, in 1962, aware that his song—sung by some white guys from Brooklyn—was a worldwide hit. It’s only within the last few months that Linda’s daughters, who have also spent their lives in poverty, have settled a legal case for payment of a share of back royalties estimated to total some $15 million. I don’t know whether Hank Medress or Sound Exchange were involved in the settlement, but I kinda doubt it.

But maybe it was just that Solomon Linda was on Sound Exchange’s list of “Missing Artists.” This is a roster of people whose royalties can’t be paid because they’ve totally disappeared. For instance, Ted Nugent. God only knows what happened to him—he’s like the Judge Crater of pop music. And what happens to the royalties for these missing artists? Does Sound Exchange just keep them? If so, they’ll be keeping a lot more money once the new royalty rates for online streaming go into effect 0n July 15.

The whole RIAA/Sound Exchange royalty issue is pretty complicated, so rather than try to explain it here I’ll just refer you to Liz Berg’s post, below. Just be aware that this new, unilaterally declared royalty system is going to be especially punitive to listener-supported radio stations like us, WFMU, because although we’re not a commercial station, we’ll be charged commercial rates. So that’s why I’ll be boycotting RIAA/Sound Exchange music on my show this Friday, and many of our other DJs will be doing the same on their shows all this week.

Whimoweh, my ass.

National Day of Silence for Webcasters

Across the U.S. today, thousands of internet radio stations are observing a national Day of Silence to protest new webcasting rates set by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board. These new rates, which will go into effect on July 15 (and are retroactive to January 1, 2006), will drastically increase the royalties webcasters must pay to SoundExchange, an offshoot of the RIAA responsible for distributing this money to artists.

WFMU believes in compensating artists. We currently pay webcasting royalties to SoundExchange and will continue to do so, but we are protesting the new rate scheme for a number of reasons:

1. Under the new rates, non-commercial webcasters only get a break on the commercial royalty rate if they maintain small listenership numbers. In order to afford the astronomical new rates, WFMU may have to cap online listenership on our streams, limiting the exposure we give to independent artists by blocking our accessibility to music fans.

2. SoundExchange has not been dutifully distributing webcasting royalties to musicians, claiming on their website that they are unable to locate thousands of artists including Kraftwerk, The Replacements, Pizzicato Five, The Muffs, and even Warren G!

Instead of webcasting silence today, WFMU has decided to boycott all music that is registered with the RIAA and/or SoundExchange. Today, you will hear songs from live performances on WFMU, material from the public domain, orphaned works, music from bands and record labels that have signed a waiver releasing WFMU from SoundExchange's unreasonable royalty scheme, and music from artists that SoundExchange has neglected to pay.

We hope that this sends the message that WFMU is fully capable of airing great music that falls outside of the RIAA and SoundExchange's control.

If you would like to protest the new webcasting royalty rates, please call or write to your Representatives and Senators before July 15, and tell them to support the Internet Radio Equality Act (S. 1353 and HR. 2060). Visit SaveNetRadio.org for more information, including a quick way to look up contact info for your elected officials.

It Started With A Few Downloads...

Bruce Forest, an infamous internet pirate (but never charged), will finally be doing real time. But just as they got Al Capone on Tax Evasion charges, Bruce Forest will do five years for: blowing up toilets. (link)

Bruce was busted for lathering up port-o-potties with the flash powder Tannerite, stuff that explodes when shot with a bullet - or an m-4 assault rifle (Bruce’s gun o choice). (link)

Now, I am not claiming that the recording industry has anything to do with this ‘elder statesman of the darknet’ losing his shit (according to Bruce the Subutex he was given to beat his Hydrocodone addiction is what pushed him over the edge). In fact Bruce was actually more of a double agent, a pirate who also p2pd for the man (link). But perhaps, as this sordid tale making its way around the internets hints, the real gateway drug is Downloading.

Someone Tell Ted Nugent That The RIAA's Got His Cash

As the RIAA prepares to apply it's webcasting royalty rates to over-the-air broadcasters (link), all in the interest of putting more money on the hands of recording artists, it's fascinating to periodically check the list of artists that the RIAA simply can't locate: link.

Sound Exchange (the collection arm of the RIAA) prints a list of artists who can't be paid, because they can't be found! If they can't find them, they have no choice other than to pocket these artist's cash. And it's all legal.

Sound Exchange's "Unpaid Artist List" includes such recluses as Ted Nugent (for the Amboy Dukes), Kraftwerk, Kruder and Dorfmeister, Pizzicatto Five and The Dust Brothers, to name but a few. If only these artists could be located, then Sound Exchange could pay them their hard earned royalties! After all, this is exactly what Sound Exchange exists to do. What a shame that artists like Lene Lovich, X-Ray Spex and Rita Lee can't be found.

As the Sound Exchange website states: "If you know any of the featured artists contained on this list or have contact information for them, we would greatly appreciate it if you would notify them that SoundExchange is looking to pay them the royalties they are due."

Copyright Law explained by The Little Mermaid and Buzz Lightyear (video)

Using Disney characters to explain copyright law and related concepts such as public domain and fair use, Bucknell University professor Eric Faden produced this cartoon cut and paste masterpiece, A Fair(y) Use Tale. Poetic justice indeed, considering how Disney has tried slamming the copyright door shut behind itself, having built its own empire on the public domain fairy tales such as those used here.   

 

Thanks to KJ, boingboing, Belyaun and Stanford U.

Digital Techonology and IP Policy

Ok, now that 90% of you have tuned out of this post based on the title alone, I would now like to let the radio, webcasting, tech, and copyright geeks in on the dirt from a conference I attended in Washington, D.C. on May 2.

The Future of Music Coalition magically planned a meeting of the minds at exactly the right time in history, setting aside a day for webcasters, musicians, copyright lawyers, legislators, and performance rights organizations to engage in a civil discussion about contentious topics like net neutrality and the Copyright Royalty Board's webcasting rate hike. I observed some meaningful conversations between groups who have been at odds with each other, but I also witnessed the old guard struggling to come to terms with technologies that are at least a decade old. I came away from the meeting half hopeful about open lines of comminication between previously warring parties, and half convinced that current attempts to create meaningful laws for music technology and intellectual property are futile and doomed to failure in our rapidly morphing media environment.

But you can form your own conclusions. FMC has generously posted streaming video of their entire Technology and IP Policy Day, broken down into individual talks (click here for the schedule and video links). Below I've reposted direct video links to each talk:

Intro and Welcome by FMC's Kristin Thompson        
  Video: Windows Media  |  Real

Congressman Mike Doyle's (D-PA) Keynote
Refreshingly well-informed speech touching on net neutrality, webcasting royalties, and artist compensation.   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

Radio Waves
Webcasting royalties discussed by a panel including the CEO of Pandora, the Executive Director of Sound Exchange, an independent musician, and others, expertly moderated by FMC's Brian Zisk. This was the hot button session for me: the VP of XM shoots down Sound Exchange for claiming that airplay has no promotional value, the indie musician says that Pandora helps him sell music, and the CEO of Live 365 begs Sound Exchange to return his calls... How much sexier can it get?   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association's Address
The CEA sticks it to the RIAA for alienating customers and independent musicians.   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

Jenny Toomey Explains FMC's Rock the Net Campaign
   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

The Net Effect
Panel on net neutrality and how a tiered internet would hurt independent musicians.   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

David Carson of the U.S. Copyright Office
Learn what a digital phonorecord delivery is, and where downloads and audio streams fall under this definition. Kind of. Maybe. Ok, so I was kidding. But it is amusing (and sad) to know that the copyright office is well aware of the blunders and logistical roadblocks built into the DMCA.   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

Stocking the Celestial Jukebox
Licensing and artist compensation in the digital world, the effects of new tech products on musicians, and the need for copyright reform.   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

Radio News You Can't Use

Webcasting Royalty Battle Continues
Fierce opposition to the Copyright Royalty Board's controversial new rates for webcasting royalties has prompted the board to push their due date for payments forward from May 15 to July 15. Additional time for negotiations is a fantastic plan, provided that negotiating actually happens between the CRB, Sound Exchange, and webcasters. After attending the Future of Music Coalition's Technology and IP Policy Day yesterday and witnessing a board member of Sound Exchange claim that webcasting has no promotional value for artists, it is clear to me that fundamental differences in opinion (some may say reality) might derail any hope for progress. The CEO of Live 365 pleaded with Sound Exchange to return his phone calls, if that gives you any idea of how the discourse has derailed. Let's hope that everyone's lawyers play nice, otherwise companies like Pandora will disappear and non-commercial webcasters will be forced to remain tiny, lest they wish to be charged the same rates as commercial webcasters.

FCC Update
This month, the FCC finally released its highly anticipated report on TV violence (click here for the full report, PDF), which concludes that the commission should regulate violence on TV and provides evidence that violent programming is harmful to children. They use this as a justification to call for a-la-carte cable TV packages, something that the cable lobby is not happy about. Others are concerned that the FCC can't possibly come up with a good definition of what is "too violent" and what isn't, provided their notoriously unclear policies concerning indecency. The commission didn't even bother to come up with a definition of violence in their report, but asserted that they could definitely regulate it, whatever it is.

The FCC also headed to Tampa, FL, this month for another public hearing regarding media ownership. This meeting and similar hearings in other cities have demonstrated that the public is concerned about a lack of diversity, localism, and quality of their news and entertainment sources. The feds are reexamining the ownership rules that prevent one company from owning too many stations and/or newspapers in a given market, but with so many voices against consolidation on the record, Chairman Kevin Martin may find it difficult to justify any further loosening of the law.

Hope on the Hill for Internet Radio

Last month, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB, left) sent webcasters into panic mode, after deciding that webcasting royalties must be higher: astronomically higher. Ever since a group of technophobes composed the DMCA back in the late '90s, song royalties for webcasts have been treated differently than parallel royalties for over-the-air broadcasts.

Commercial webcasters pay a fee based on how many listeners hear a given song. Commercial broadcasters, in contrast, pay blanket royalty fees for over-the-air performance of songs based on the station's annual revenue. Why the double-standard? Because the internet is scary. And music licensing companies saw an opportunity.

Fortunately, the webcasting fees per song per listener were set at a somewhat reasonable rate until this year, so you didn't hear many complaints from commercial webcasters. Non-commercial webcasters, who by nature have a very different business model than for-profit companies, were allowed to pay a flat webcasting royalty fee (non-commercial broadcasters also pay lower over-the-air royalties).

The 2007 CRB scheme for webcasting royalties is different in a few ways:

1. The per-song per-listener fee for commercial webcasters is much higher, so much higher that for many companies, these royalties are actually higher than annual revenue.
2. Non-commercial webcasters are subject to commercial rates if they have a large audience.
3. These new fees are retroactive to January 2006.

These fee changes will essentially wipe out medium- and small-sized commercial webcasters, as well as larger non-commercial webcasters. Popular public station KCRW has already determined that they would owe more than $350,000 under these new rates.

With this new scheme, internet radio risks becoming a bunch of Emmis and Clear Channel giants, with only a few non-commercial little guys, forced to limit their audience or close shop. Just think of our brave new future where internet radio is even less diverse than what you can find on your FM dial. Blech.

Previously, I was confident that NPR's powerful lawyers would surely convince the CRB that applying commercial webcasting rates to non-commercial webcasters was absurd. Well, the bad news is they tried, and the CRB is standing firm on their new rate scheme.

The only hope left (aside from individual stations negotiating their own terms with record labels) is for an act of Congress to interfere. Thankfully, two congressmen introduced the "Internet Radio Equality Act" (H.R. 2060) to the House yesterday. The SaveNetRadio Coalition is recommending that citizens call up their congressperson, urging them to support this bill. They even provide an easy look-up page to find your rep's contact info, along with a few talking points so you can really get your point across to the intern who takes your call.