[…] The suit doesn’t surprise Kembrew McLeod, associate professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa, and co-author, with economist and researcher Peter DiCola, of the book “Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling.” “‘Paul’s Boutique’ and other albums of that era are like ticking legal time bombs,” says McLeod, who also co-produced the acclaimed documentary “Copyright Criminals.” “For instance, in 2005, Run DMC was sued by the Knack for using ‘My Sharona’ for its song ‘It’s Tricky.’ And they were sued 20 years after the fact.” read more

The Future of Music Coalition, a Washington, DC-based advocacy group for musicians, has recently been releasing results of an extensive study of revenue sources for today’s musicians. The project, called Artist Revenue Streams, included an online survey of over 5000 musicians, as well as extensive case studies of nine working musicians. Five case studies have been released so far.[…]

Artists have always had a unique relationship with money. On one hand, the lack of it can be what holds them back from realizing their full creative potential. If art doesn’t pay the rent, a part-time job becomes a necessity. Before you know it, the part-time job becomes a full-time job, leaving little to no time for art. Sound familiar?

On the other hand lies the internal struggle of capitalizing on your creativity. For most artists, money isn’t the driving force behind creation ― it’s expression. But you know you have to eat, so you accept the “art as commerce” reality and just pray you don’t end up like KISS. Artists know they need money, but have a hard time accepting it, for fear that it will become the force that drives them. read more

When we interviewed Kristin Thomson back in October, the Future of Music Coalition was in the midst of a landmark research project designed to illuminate just how musicians make their livings in the 21st century. The earliest of those results have started to be published at money.futureofmusic.org, but Kristin Thomson and Erin Mckeown were kind enough to give us a walk through of some of their findings this morning. read more

[…] One of the more interesting bits of data presented during the panel had nothing to do with startups but should be looked at and analyzed more in depth. Kristin Thomson, an Artist Revenue Expert at the national nonprofit Future of Music Coalition, presented those in attendance with a new study that showed most artists earning over 100k a year counted their accountant, lawyer and webmaster as their three most important team members. This needs to be looked into further because as Thomson pointed out, there is no way of currently knowing if these artists have that level of success because of the accountant, or if they have an accountant because they have reached that level of success.