FutureBlog

Just Announced: Musicians Bringing Musicians Home VI

Casey — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:08:31 -0500

We’re incredibly excited about the latest Artist Activism Camp (our sixth!) and its live benefit concert finale, Musicians Bringing Musicians Home. This year’s event, which takes place at One Eye Jacks in New Orleans on Friday, March 26, 2010.

Joining FMC and Air Traffic Control this year are Ryan Dobrowski + Israel Nebeker (Blind Pilot), Rebecca Gates, Thao Nguyen (Thao with the Get Down Stay Down), Toshi Reagon, Matana Roberts, Jill Sobule, Jon Theodore (One Day As A Lion), New Orleans’ very own Bonerama and more.>

Musicians Bringing Musicians Home is the celebratory finale of our sixth three-day activist retreat, where artists from around the country come to talk about best practices for positive social change. Since the Gulf Storms of 2005 Artist Activism Camp has brought more than forty musicians from around the country to New Orleans to tour affected neighborhoods, visit with the city’s notable musicians and community leaders and participate in strategy sessions about integrating activism and philanthropy into their musical lives and careers. read more

FMC's Alex Maiolo talks Musicians and Health Insurance

Casey — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:49:11 -0500

Alex Maiolo has worked with The Future of Music Coalition for almost nine years, primarily focusing on the health insurance crisis as it relates to the working musician. In addition, Alex plays in various bands, including the psych-pop outfit Violet Vector & The Lovely Lovelies and ambient/clo-core staple Hi Fi Sky. He is a partner with an insurance agency in the Carrboro/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. Insurance as it relates to the artist, studio owner and musician is all part of a typical day’s tasks.

[Cross-posted at KnowtheMusicBiz.com]

You don’t have to be a news junkie to know that the health care debate has been heating up in recent months. With all of this back-and-forth, it’s easy to forget that this is about getting more people covered. And musicians are one portion of the American public that could definitely use some help.

My name is Alex Maiolo, and I’m the project manager for Future of Music Coalition’s Health Insurance Navigation Tool (or HINT, for short). I’m also a musician. Like everyone at FMC, I’ve seen too many of my peers have to deal with unforeseen health calamities without the benefit of insurance. read more

Even Better Than the Real Thing? Virtual Bands and the Future of Music

Casey — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:10:35 -0500

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.

OK, from an sonic standpoint there is nothing particularly revolutionary about it: a piano with some violin accompaniment. Then you open your eyes to see there is no one sitting behind the piano! Duped! Of course, player pianos date back to the late 19th century, but no one would ever confuse a piano roll with actual playing by Rachmaninoff. That is, until Zenph Sound Innovations came along and found a technological way to mimic the performance dynamics of this late maestro.

You gotta wonder far can this technology be taken. read more

Erin McKeown on the Public Performance Right

Casey — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:41:44 -0500

Intro by Michael Bracy, Policy Director, Future of Music Coalition

Image credit: Nancy Palmieri

Those who have followed FMC’s work over the past decade know that we’ve been strong supporters of establishing a public performance right for terrestrial radio. Why? Because compensating performing artists directly for the use of their work is simply the right thing to do. (Check out our Public Performance Right fact sheet to learn more.)

On March 3, I spent a couple of hours on Capitol Hill with one of our favorite artists, the wonderful and talented Erin McKeown. As luck had it, we were able to attend a news conference hosted by the MusicFIRST Coalition that featured Dionne Warwick and top leaders from the civil rights community, all of whom endorsed legislation for a public performance right.

We thought it would be great if Erin could weigh in on how she views the issue as a working musician. Take it away, Erin! read more

FMC Relaunches Musicians and Health Insurance Survey

Casey — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:48:57 -0500

It’s hard to believe that its been eight years since FMC’s original survey on musicians and health insurance. That oft-cited study, published in 2002, showed that 44 percent of working musicians did not have insurance. One of the barriers, besides cost, was that the topic is difficult to wrap your mind around. To help demystify the issue, we created the Health Insurance Navigation Tool (HINT) — a free program that offers jargon-free information to musicians seeking to learn more about their health insurance options.

Fast-forward to 2010: health care is now a matter of serious debate across the country. FMC has advocated for reform, and we’re still very much committed to arming musicians with information so they can make smart choices.

But we also want to know if anything has changed since our initial report. Which is why we’ve just relaunched the survey. read more

FMC at SXSW 2010!

Casey — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:00:59 -0500

Ah, South By Southwest. A whirlwind of live music, fascinating panels and tons of Tex-Mex. (We will not mention the booze. Oops, I guess we just did.)

For a decade, FMC has descended on not-so-sleepy Austin, Texas to participate in discussions about, well, the future of music, and hobnob with the incredible array of artists, managers, entrepreneurs, visionaries, media gurus, rabble-rousers and just about anyone else you can think of. Since we’re a musician-centric shop, you can usually find an FMC staffer playing a show or ten. read more

This year (March 17-21, 2010), we’ve got a ton of awesome stuff lined up. Read on for more details!

Talking Fair Use

Casey — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:06:59 -0500

You may recall our post from a while back about popular mashup artist Girl Talk, where we noted all the clearance and licensing hoops he’d have to jump through for his records to be 100 percent legal. Our takeaway? The current sample license clearance process is likely too time-consuming and cost-prohibitive for Girl Talk to make his art legit.

According to some press accounts, Girl Talk and his label, the aptly named Illegal Art, believe that his work is legal under the fair use principle — meaning, there’s exceptions within US copyright law that could protect him from being liable for infringement.

In the wake of major court rulings, there are those who have argued that current fair use exceptions aren’t enough to deal with the realities of our tech-driven, networked era. Some, in fact, suggest we need a legislative fix. read more

Conference Alert: Digital Music Forum East

Casey — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:13:20 -0500

A couple of quick questions:

First, what are you doing this Wednesday and Thursday? And secondly, do you live in / can you get to the Big Apple?

For those of who happen to be in the New York area (or who need a good reason to be in the New York area), should consider checking out the Digital Music Forum East. This conference, now in its 10th year, features folks from across the music biz spectrum, including label executives and CEOs, publishers, digital innovators, representatives from the gaming community, attorneys… and plenty of curious onlookers.

We like conferences — which is why put on our own three-day Future of Music Policy Summit every year — and this one definitely looks interesting. The latest Digital Music Forum East includes a plethora of buzz-worthy presentations, panels and keynotes about the state of digital music. For the moment, anyway — things have a tendency to move fast in the topsy-turvy world of technology and tunes. All the more reason to take a snapshot for posterity.

Space is limited; register here.

This Week in News

Casey — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:17:32 -0500

It’s been a while since we’ve done a news roundup. No, we weren’t saving it for a snowy day — we’ve had enough of those lately. At any rate, here’s a rundown of what’s been happening out there in the wide world of music.

Canada: Not Just For the Olympians

Canadian Music Week is a major event not just for our Northern neighbors, but for the rest of the world, too. It’s coming right up (March 10-14, Toronto), so make your plans now…
Official Site

Department of Justice Announces IP Task Force

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the formation of its Task Force on Intellectual Property on Friday, Feb 5. The Task Force was detailed by Attorney General Eric Holder from a snow-clogged Washington, DC. “The rise in intellectual property crime in the United States and abroad threatens not only our public safety but also our economic well being,” Holder stated.

Digital Music News

Google, FCC Look To Speed America’s Lagging Broadband

Two different U.S. broadband goals were laid out this month. The Federal Communications Commission chief called for connecting 100 million households at 100 megabits per second. But Google stole his thunder last week, promising to bring eye-popping speeds of 1 gigabit per second to thousands of Americans.

Bill Chappell, NPR

Musicians Union Launch ‘Music Supported Here’ Campaign

The Musicians’ Union (UK) has launched a new campaign called Music Supported Here, which aims to equip artists with the resources to communicate copyright issues to their fans, in a new bid to convince consumers that they might want to buy music rather than nick it off the internet.

TheCMU

But Is It Safe? ‘Womb Boxes’ Get Another Look…

Music is one of the joys of life, but should fetuses get a taste while still in the womb? Suddenly, a seemingly novel idea - pumping tunes and other sounds into the womb - is getting a second look. This is a trend that started in the pre-iPod 90s, though New York Post writers Don Kaplan and Brian Niemietz are now asking the right question. Namely, is any of this safe?

Digital Music News

The World at Your Fingertips: Bringing Broadband Home

Casey — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:22:24 -0500

Broadband. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that we think it’s pretty important. These days, you need access to the internet for pretty much everything from looking for a job to booking a plane ticket. Yet too many Americans lack a connection to this essential service.

High-speed internet is crucial to the music community, too — particularly artists who depend on the web to do everything from planning tours to selling music and merch to connecting with audiences directly. And fans use it to keep up on and spread the word about their favorite acts in real-time. For all these reasons and more, it’s clear that the future of music is online.

Expanding access to the most powerful communications tool of our time will help upcoming generations of artists participate in a legitimate digital music marketplace that rewards creators and fans. read more