When FMC began in 2000, it was because we recognized that shifts brought on by technology would have a huge impact on the music community, and that policy decisions would play a major role on how musicians would make a living in the digital future. And, for the past ten years, we’ve fought to ensure that musicians have a voice in the debates that affect their livelihood, advocating for real change that benefits artists and not just traditional industry stakeholders.

From musicians’ right to expression to access to media like radio and the internet, FMC works to instill creators’ viewpoints into matters of public policy. You can help with this mission by donating today.

In just the last three months, we’ve worked to protect creative expression on the airwaves by filing briefs at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the FCC, fought to keep the internet a level playing field through testimony and filings at the FCC and our Rock the Net campaign, helped artists and managers through the health insurance maze with our Health Insurance Navigation Tool (HINT), and placed musicians front and center at our all-star Future of Music Policy Summit.

We’re building a musicians’ middle class, one step at a time. Now’s the time to support our work!

Please support our work with a tax-deductible donation in any amount. The future of music belongs to you, and you can help ensure it benefits artists and fans. Give today.

Who says there are no gigs in this economy? FMC is hiring for several positions, which you can read about in more detail here.

Executive Director
FMC is seeking an Executive Director, whose mandate is to lead the organization with FMC’s mission, vision, history and values as guides. We’re seeking candidates with a connection to the music community, with strong revenue generation and financial management experience to work with our senior management team to lead FMC into its second decade. Details.

International Fellow
FMC seeks fellows who work in 5+ month terms and help research and interview musicians and music business people from around the world. Duties include research on musicians, regions, businesses; logistics coordination for interviews and international trips; coordinating and organizing interview transcripts. Depending on skills, experience level, and needs of the project/timing, fellows may also conduct interviews and/or travel with team as road/logistics manager on a trip and/or participate in report writing. Details

Google Policy Fellow
FMC is seeking a Google Policy Fellow for Summer 2010. Google Fellows spend ten weeks working on policy issues critical to the future of the Internet and its users at one of of the host organizations, including FMC. This is a Washington, DC-based position. Check out our blog post for more information or visit the Google website to learn more about the fellowship program and how to apply. Applications are due December 28, 2009.

Interns
FMC is seeking three interns for Spring 2010 (January to May) and Summer 2010 (April to August); exact dates are flexible.

The Intern to the Communications Director will assist in the marketing, promotion and logistics of FMC’s campaigns and events; which often includes copyediting, assisting with the maintenance of social media, researching new press avenues and drafting the occasional blog post.

The Intern to the Events Organizer will assist with the logistics of FMC’s campaigns and events; which often includes editing video and audio for archives/YouTube/special projects, marketing and promotion, assisting with event-related data management, and researching panelists/sponsors/services.

The Intern to the Executive Director will spend much of their time conducting research regarding current events in the areas of our work, including tracking dockets at the FCC, reading industry publications and aiding in research of funding opportunities. Head here to learn more about the internships and how to apply.

On November 20, FMC’s Jean Cook spoke at a hearing on net neutrality that was held by the New York City Council’s Committee on Technology and Government. Jean was among several witnesses, including representatives from technology, the public interest, digital entertainment and the creative community. Her remarks demonstrated the importance of open internet structures to musicians.

The goal of the hearing was for the City Council Committee to decide whether to send a resolution to Congress in support of HR 3458 — the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 — as well as the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on net neutrality. Joining Jean on the panel were representatives from Media and Democracy Coalition (of which FMC is a member), Common Cause and the Entertainment Consumers Association. Discussion ranged from the democratic power of the internet to the entrepreneurship it inspires to the platform it provides for free expression. Jean spoke eloquently about how the internet has been an incredible boon to artists — especially those of the independent variety — who use the web to compete on an equal technological footing with the biggest companies.

Check out Jean’s testimony here and her post at SavetheInternet.com based on the testimony.

To learn more about net neutrality’s importance to the music community, visit Rock the Net.

Congrats to FMC co-founder and Technologies Director Brian Zisk for another smashing SanFran MusicTech Summit! The event, which brings together the brightest minds in music, technology and entrepreneurship, took place at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco on December 7.

The “series of tubes” were abuzz during the one-day convening, with media reports about the packed venue and newsworthy panels and presentations. FMC’s Jean Cook was in the house for a panel called “Snapshots - Sitting Down With Innovators,” which also included Constantine Roussos (Founder & CEO, .music), Steve Lampen (Belden Wiring, Multimedia Technology Manager), Sandy Pearlman (legendary producer; Schulich Distinguished Chair at McGill University; National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress; FMC advisory board) and Celia Hirschman (KCRW; One Little Indian; Downtown Marketing).

For more info and clips, head to http://sanfranmusictech.com or search the Twitter hash tag #sfmusictech. Then, stay tuned for the next event, sometime in 2010.

For the fifth year in a row, FMC will be curating a number of conversations at the annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference in New York City, January 8-12, 2010. Conference registrants can attend these sessions on the issues at the intersection of arts, technology and law; media, copyright and technology; and health insurance for creators. Register at http://www.apapconference.org/

On Saturday, January 9 from 3:00 – 3:50 PM, FMC’s Kristin Thomson will join attorney Brian Taylor Goldstein from FTM Arts Law for a roundtable called Arts/Tech/Law: Sound Advice on Navigating the New Creative Environment, where presenters and artists will discuss what tools are out there, what’s working (online and off), and how you can smartly navigate the new arts/tech/law landscape.

On Sunday, January 10, FMC’s Jean Cook and Kristin Thomson kick things off from 8:00 – 9:00 AM with our annual Media, Technology and Copyright Policy Roundup. We will review some of the most pressing policy issues for 2009, and discuss what media/copyright policies will be relevant for the creative community in 2010.

Alex Maiolo, from FMC’s HINT program, will also be the house on Sunday, January 10, running a clinic session about health insurance for musicians and the creative community. Registrants can learn about how health insurance for individuals and groups works, what to look for in a health plan, the pros and cons of health savings accounts and more.

You can check out the details about these panels — and more — on our website.

For more information about APAP, or to register for the conference, visit
http://www.apapconference.org/

We’re really excited that Tuesday, January 19, 2010 is the TV debut of the documentary COPYRIGHT CRIMINALS. We showed the film at the 2009 Future of Music Policy Summit, and it was a huge hit. Now that it’s on TV, why not host a viewing party at your house? Go ahead, whip up a Facebook event and make some eggnog!

COPYRIGHT CRIMINALS examines the creative and commercial value of musical sampling, including the related debates over artistic expression, copyright law, and money. Produced by University of Iowa professor Kembew McLeod and Benjamin Franzen, this documentary traces the rise of hip-hop from the urban streets of New York to its current status as a multibillion-dollar industry. Sampling, or riffing, is as old as music itself, but as technologies developed in the 1980s and 1990s that made it easier to sample existing sound recordings – and when record label company lawyers got involved – everything changed. Years before people started downloading music off the internet, hip-hop sampling sparked a debate about copyright, creativity and technological change, and the debate still rages today.

Check your local PBS listings for show times.

COPYRIGHT CRIMINALS trailer

And stay tuned for Creative License, a book by Kembrew and FMC’s former research director, Peter DiCola that includes interviews with nearly 100 participants in the sampling culture, and offers a thorough economic and legal analysis of the underpinnings of sampling. Look for it on Duke University Press in 2010.

’Tis the season… to make lists. Yeah, we know — you can’t open a magazine (or browser window) without someone telling you about the best this-or-thats of the year. Or the decade. That said, FMC staff are an interesting bunch, so we thought we’d share our faves of 2009 with you. Keep in mind can always email us yours or post ‘em to our blog. ’Cause we’ve decided that 2010 gonna be all about the conversation.

Chhaya Kapadia, Events Organizer
(in no particular order)

1. Summit 09
Very proud of this year’s Summit which was the biggest and bestest of FMC’s Summits (and my baby). Here’s just a few of the photos.

2. Family vacation in Morocco
Enjoyed every minute of the family, extended family, the Mediterranean, the swimming lessons, the beer-sneaking, the crazy driving, the excellent food, the story-telling, and the language lessons.

3. Inauguration
What is there to say? I had no idea that DC could party like that. I *earned* that cold I came down with afterward.

4. Sharon Jones at the 9:30 Club on May 9, 2009
My favorite live show of the year

5. Musicians Bringing Musicians Home V in New Orleans
These trips to New Orleans with artists are always a blast. Photos!

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Casey Rae-Hunter, Communications Director

1. Finally taking my honeymoon, two years late
Last December, my wife and I went to Jamaica for our belated honeymoon. Technically the trip was in 2008, but it sure got the new year off to a great start. Wish we were going back to close out 2009!

2. Live interviewing Dan Ek at Policy Summit
My coworkers have heard me blather endlessly about Spotify, so they know how exciting it was for me to talk to the digital music service’s founder Dan Ek as part of the “visionaries” programming at Summit ’09. I tried not to seem like too much of a fanboy, and I think I mostly succeeded.

3. The celestial jukebox
I finally got a Sonos system this year, after lusting after the wireless digital music setup for years. Now I’m streaming music like a madman all over my house — Rhapsody, Pandora, live web radio, my iTunes collection. It’s a great time to be a music junkie.

4. FMC’s new website
Sure, there are still a few things to sort out on the backend, but I’d been waiting for a new FMC website for what seemed like forever. Now that it’s here, I love it. So much more user-friendly and searchable. I like knowing that the stuff I post on our blog shows up on the front page of our site, too. No more burying content! www.futureofmusic.org

5. My latest record
This really isn’t a shameless plug, I swear. My studio “band” (which includes just me), The Contrarian, released an album inspired by the weird fiction of HP Lovecraft, called Eldrich Musicks. I won’t bore you with the details, but you can learn more here.

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Kristin Thomson, Education Director

5. Finishing another album
I’ve been in a band in Philly since about 1996 called Ken. We used to play out a lot more, but now that more band members have babies/children/jobs it’s limited to what we can pull off on our collective schedules. But there’s a strong Virgo streak running through the band, which means we’re very deadline oriented. So, we scheduled our record release party on Friday the 13th, 2009, and then got our album done in time. Silky Smooth Destruction.

4. FMC website overhaul
I’m going to second Casey and say how exciting it was to re-launch the FMC website in July 2009 as a more dynamic, relatable site with RSS feeds, and an embedded blog. With almost 1,000 pages of existing content, the overhaul took a long time and a lot of effort, but it was worth it. And look for even more improvements in 2010.

3. Bonerama + Nicole Atkins doing “When the Levee Breaks”
Have you ever heard Led Zeppelin with three trombones? Well, folks who attended the Bonerama show at the FMC Policy Summit heard that and so much more. How about “Kick out the Jams”, with Wayne Kramer from the MC5 on guitar? Or “Ohio” with Mike Mills from R.E.M. on the mic? This show, which also included guest appearances by Erin McKeown and Martin Perna, was an incredible highlight to an already over the top Policy Summit. Check out the photos here.

2. Levon Helms’ Midnight Ramble
January 10, 2009. My husband and I met some friends in the very quaint Kingston, NY on a Friday night. By Saturday night, it was dark and blizzardy, but we struck out for Levon Helms’ barn anyway, set on a rural road outside of Woodstock, NY. We crawled slowly through the snow, unable to see more than ten feet in front of us. As we turned down his driveway through the trees, we half-thought “what if it’s cancelled because of the weather?” but the lit-up barn appeared in front of us, surrounded by a flurry of snowflakes. Just like a postcard. It was an incredible night of music, with special guest Hubert Sumlin joining the Levon Helms Band. If you’ve never been to a ramble, I highly recommend it. Check out the 2009 list of shows!

1. Roots Picnic
The Roots are a phenomenal band, and their annual Roots Picnic down on Philly’s grungy waterfront gets better every year. 2009’s lineup included Antibalas, Black Keys, TV on the Radio, and Santigold, but it was the Roots and Antibalas backing up Public Enemy while they ripped through It Takes A Nation of Millions that was totally off the hook.

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Nicole Duffey, Operations Coordinator

1. Video Game: Plants VS Zombies
Simple is built to last, and Popcap is good at simple. PVZ is a tower defense game in which you landscape your back yard in order to prevent the zombie invasion from reaching your house and eating your brains. Every inch of it is dripping with style and humor. The play is easy to pick up but remains challenging play after play. I must have beat this game 5 times already, but still love playing it. They also get extra points for having a cameo from the Thriller zombies before all the MJ hoopla this year.

2. Music / TV show: “Glee” & Glee Soundtrack Vol 1
Yeah, yeah — it’s a pop culture sensation — whatevz. I grew up in the theatre and so this show has entertained the hell out of me on many levels.  Its highly stylized Technicolor realism is not unprecedented in TV (“Ugly Betty,” anyone?), but combining it with some of the tropes of musical theatre was an inspired move. Fast paced, high stakes, outrageous gags, more heart than the Care Bear Stare and best of all — those kids can SING! It’s rekindled my love of wallowing in the overblown glory of show tunes, and for that I am grateful.

3. Google Stuff: Tie Between Reader and Google Voice
I’m no jet setter, but having these tools to help manage life (see my blog addictions and voicemail) have really made a difference in 2009.

4. Favorite Celebrity Craft / Show Shwag: Matthew Sweet’s Pottery
I love pottery. It’s a sturdy and useful creative act and appeals to my sense of the practical. I love Matthew Sweet’s music (except his song “girlfriend” which has always offended my feminist sensibilities but is so catchy I forgive it… which offends me even more!) I love knowing that really talented people are creative in more than one medium. I also like cats, and Matthew uses a lot of cat motifs in his pottery work. At his show at the Birchmere (with Susannah Hoffs — it was great!) they were selling them as shwag after the show. So cool. Check it out

You can always contact us at suggestions [at] futureofmusic [dot] org if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Jean Cook
Michael Bracy
Walter McDonough
Brian Zisk
Kristin Thomson
Casey Rae-Hunter
Chhaya Kapadia
Nicole Duffey
Alex Maiolo