Today's post is by FMC intern Peter Haugen, who has a penetrating mind for all manner of speculative musical phenomenon!
It's Friday! Can't think of a better time to speculate on the future of. . . you guessed it.
While flying cars and jetpacks have yet to become a practical reality (but let's not give up hope!), a recent YouTube video serves as a reminder that, musically speaking, the future is closer than we think. If you haven't seen this video yet, try listening to the first two minutes with your eyes closed. read more
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve heard a lot of chatter about “breaking” new musical acts. The current bone of contention: can a truly DIY artist sell more than 10,000 albums? read more
We did it! Another amazing Future of Music Policy Summit is behind us, but we’ll always have the memories. This year’s conference — our eighth — was probably our best yet; if you were with us at Georgetown University in DC from Oct. 4-6, you definitely know what we’re talking about. Maybe you were one of the thousands of people who watched the live webcast? Either way, we thank you so much for participating in the event. Read on for some of the highlights, as well as a few other things we’ve been working on in our “spare time.”
1. Future of Music Policy Summit 2009: awesomeness roundup!
2. FMC, PBS’ Independent Lens & Community Cinema present COPYRIGHTCRIMINALS
3. Music 2.0 and the “29 Streams”
4. Big wins for Low Power FM
5. Performance Rights Act passes in Senate Committee
6. FMC’s Michael Bracy on NPR’s “Sound Opinions”
7. Still fighting for net neutrality
8. FMC, musicians and speech
9. Travel and appearances
10. SanFran MusicTech is back!
11. How are we doing?
One company that measures such stats says definitely.
While it may not seem like much of a surprise that web radio plays more artists than traditional broadcasters, new data supplied by streamSerf — a company that monitors and reports on music played on terrestrial and web radio — highlights a pretty big disparity. According to the company, last month American broadcast radio stations played 25,399 unique artists (this includes public radio stations) while Internet radio stations played 829,971 unique artists. We're no mathematicians, but apparently that's 32 times as much. read more
Today, (Oct 15, 2009), the Senate Judiciary Committee passed their version of the Performance Rights Act of 2009 in voice vote. This is an important step in ensuring that performers and sound copyright owners (usually the labels) are compensated when their music is played (or "performed") on over-the-air radio. read more
Yesterday, we told you a little bit about FMC's fight for artists' free speech and right to creative expression via a legal brief on the FCC's indecency policy. Well, we're at it again — this time in the form of FCC reply comments to a MusicFIRST petition originally filed with the Commission back in August. read more
Future of Music Coalition (FMC) respectfully submits these Reply Comments in the
above captioned proceeding regarding MusicFIRST?s Petition for a Declaratory Ruling
Regarding the Actions of Certain Radio Broadcasters in Opposition to the Performance
Rights Act.1 FMC has a long history of supporting the passage of legislation that would
establish a public performance right for sound recordings that would ensure that
performers are compensated when their work is played over the air, but more importantly
we are especially troubled by allegations that artists have been threatened with a loss of airplay as a result of their willingness to engage in a public policy debate. We appreciate the Commission?s attention to this important matter.
On one side, we have an entrenched and powerful industry, ominously suggesting that this new legislation will eliminate services, wreak hardship on the land, maybe even put folks out of business. On the other side, we find advocates for change arguing for a measure they view as lifesaving. And they’re damning the old guard for using scare tactics, brute muscle and misuse of the public trust to unfairly defend the status quo. . .
…The [Public Performance Right] bills under consideration in the House and Senate stipulate that the estimated 75 percent of U.S. stations that gross less than $1.25 million annually would pay “no more than $5,000 in performance royalties, and in many cases it would be a lot less than that,” says Casey Rae-Hunter, another advocate who works with the Future of Music Coalition. read more
On Friday, August 21, a New York federal appeals court ruled that a webcasting services that let listeners create taste-customizable "radio stations" (like Pandora) don't have to pay individual, per-song licensing fees to sound copyright holders (most often the labels). read more
