Want To Shake Down Cloud Music & Video Providers? Patent For Sale!

from the hop-to-it dept

When we talk about patent trolls, what many people don't recognize is how often many of these patents get passed around to and from different entities, often until someone sees an opportunity to force lots of companies into licenses, or to sue them. Failing that, many companies often feel compelled to buy ridiculously broad patents, just to keep themselves from being sued. Whole businesses have been built up around the practice of basically selling these patents, in which they more or less are selling people a right to shake down others. Except that kind of stuff rarely is talked about in the public. Michael Robertson, however, passed along an example of one that we thought might be worth exploring. An operation called Capital Legal Group is going around "shopping" an excessively broad "cloud storage patent" for sale, highlighting that it's already identified three infringers, with more expected soon.

I'm sure they reached out to Roberston, since he runs a cloud content service, though they certainly don't indicate if they think he's infringing directly. The full pitch is embedded below, but here are some highlights:

To date, we have identified three infringing systems. Claim charts are available upon execution of a confidentiality agreement. Because the market is growing, we anticipate more and more infringing systems to come on to the market regularly.

Translation: here's a chance to shake down lots of players, because it's a broad "cloud storage patent" that is going to cover all sorts of stuff that companies are going to be doing because it's basically describing how cloud services work. Of course, in a rational world, this would be evidence that the patent in question should never have been granted, as it was clearly a next obvious step in the advancement of the technology, rather than any sort of breakthrough that needed protection.

The patented technology is applicable to storing video, audio (e.g., music) and other digital objects in cloud storage. Thus, the patented technology is applicable to remote digital video recording (DVR) services and other such services wherein the user selects content (e.g., television show, radio shows, etc.) to record (at some point in the future) and the system records the selected content on a server which is accessible by the user, for example, via the Internet or a wireless network.

As indicated in the Wall Street Journal, "the global market for 'the cloud' is expected to soar in the next several years, but cloud computing isn't just for big businesses; consumers use it regularly too, for storage and productivity." As the need for audio and video storage increases, new players, such as Comcast, are now entering the market. Consequently, the offered portfolio provides a fantastic opportunity for significant revenue and/or increased market share to any buyer.

In other words, this patent is hella broad, and is going to cover something quite obvious (DVRs, but "on the internet"). That courts have started (finally) becoming suspect of patents that take something already known (a DVR) and just basically add "on the internet" to it, isn't mentioned in the sales pitch, of course. Later, the pitch document again highlights how ridiculously broad the patent is, by noting that it counts towards content accessed from any device, and this it's "critical to the future of audio and video distribution." This is, simply, nuts. What's described in the patent is no breakthrough or revolutionary step forward. It's just the basics for how a reasonable engineer would build such a service. Put 100 engineers in the room and ask them to build a remote DVR, and I bet most of them would "accidentally" infringe on this patent. That's not about copying the idea or "stealing" the idea. It's about a broad idea that is obvious, getting locked up in a patent so someone can cash in for not doing anything.

Oh yeah, did we mention the current patent holder isn't doing anything with it? Right:

The patents are not licensed and have never been litigated. The patents are not encumbered and the seller does not need a license back.

No license back means for all the talk of how critical and important this is, the "inventors" (and I use that word loosely) did absolutely nothing with it. And if it's never been licensed or litigated, that means there's no evidence that whatever's in the patent has ever even been seen by anyone doing work in this field, let alone used to further the market. Thus, the idea that these patents are "critical" to the market is flat out laughable.

The patent itself is 7,921,221, on a "Method and apparatus for obtaining digital objects in a communication network." Yeah, seriously. Surely something like that must have been filed back in the dark ages, right? Nope. 2008. Because back then, no one knew how to obtain digital objects in a communications network. This isn't innovation, this is a lottery ticket to shake down the companies who actually do innovate.

Filed Under: cloud, cloud music, cloud video, music, patents, video
Companies: capital legal group

Universal Music CEO: We're Not In This To Make Art

from the of-course-not dept

Whenever debates come up about disruptive innovation in the entertainment industry, the big record labels and big movie studios like to fall back on claiming that they (and often they alone) are the last vanguards protecting our culture. They talk about how, without greater copyright protections, their "art" may die off. But, of course, as most normal people recognize, the labels and the studios (and the RIAA and MPAA who represent them) are not representing art at all, but commerce -- and just a specific type of commerce. They represent the gatekeeper model, which makes less and less sense in a digital world where we need filters and enablers, not gatekeepers. But it's pretty rare for them to actually admit that, since their entire public persona and lobbying efforts are based on "we represent culture and art."

And then, finally, an exec speaks the truth. In a quite interesting New Yorker profile of Scooter Braun, the man who made Justin Bieber into Justin Bieber, Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group (the biggest of the record labels) explains why he named Braun the company's first technology "entrepreneur in residence" by admitting that "art" has nothing to do with Universal Music:

The company likes hits, the fans like hits, and that's what he's there to do--make hits. We're not in the art business.

It seems like people should remind him of this every time he or his lackeys claim they're defending art. Separately, the rest of the Braun profile is well worth reading. It highlights exactly what we've been saying for quite some time, that the real "business" these days is in finding other areas of the market you can build a business around -- areas that are made more valuable by digital content:

In the beleaguered music industry, few managers can afford to focus on just selling music anymore. When Braun met David Geffen, at a party a couple of years ago, he said that Geffen had one bit of advice for him: “Get out of the music business.” So Braun has been converting his twelve-person company, SB Projects, into a many-faceted organization: it now has film and TV arms (Braun recently sold a scripted show, and has reality shows in development), a publishing division, and a technology-investment unit, in addition to a label and a management company.

And how is he building up many of those other businesses? By leveraging the star power of Justin Bieber -- something that can't be "pirated" and which is a true scarcity that Braun can control:

His YouTube channel is approaching three billion views, and on Twitter, where he acquires a new follower every other second, a single tweet from him can mobilize his supporters to perform stunning feats: sell out Madison Square Garden in seconds, conjure a horde of three hundred thousand tweens in Mexico City, induce fans to buy a hundred and twenty million dollars worth of perfume (Bieber’s fragrance, Someday), or influence the conversation about world events—in March, Bieber’s tweets brought attention to the campaign to apprehend the Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony.

[....] Barry Lowenthal, the president of Media Kitchen, an ad agency that is promoting Bieber’s new fragrance, Girlfriend, told the Times that the reach of a Bieber dispatch across networks like Facebook and Twitter would cost ten million dollars to replicate through conventional advertising methods.

As the article really highlights, there are plenty of ways to make money in the business today -- but a lot of it isn't specifically about selling music. And while some people insist that's "selling out," Braun sees it differently:

"I don't think you're selling out by allowing the masses to love your art."

And the end result is what we've been saying all along. There's tons of opportunity in and around the music business if you're smart and you know how to build a good business around it. In fact, the market is growing, and Braun recognizes that:

"This isn't a dying business, this is a changing business," he told me. "CD sales have declined drastically, but the over-all business has grown: licensing, merchandising, digital sales."

It always seems that, in these discussions, there's often an implicit conflict between art and commerce, when there doesn't need to be. But if someone's defending commerce, it should be clear that's what they're defending, and they shouldn't try to confuse that by claiming that they're really defending art or culture. Art and culture will live on no matter what. Commerce will shift around to the markets most appropriate. Neither need defending on their own, as they seem to survive just fine. The only thing struggling is one particular sector of the entertainment industry which built a "hit driven" business based on being a gatekeeper. And now we live in a world where such gatekeepers aren't necessary, and businesses can be built in other ways.

Filed Under: art, business models, commerce, justin bieber, lucian grainge, music, record labels, scooter braun
Companies: universal music

Major Labels Claim Copyright Over Public Domain Songs; YouTube Punishes Musician

from the not-cool dept

We've talked in the past about how YouTube's ContentID system fails at fair use and the public domain -- whereby it is unable to distinguish public domain material. That has resulted in ridiculous situations, often where large companies with huge catalogs end up shutting down perfectly legal content. Sometimes it's crazy stuff like taking down a video because of birds chirping in the background, but other times it can result in public domain music being pulled down.

Musician Dave Colvin appears to be dealing with the latter, as he noted in a frustrated Facebook post about how the publishing arms of the major labels keep claiming copyright on public domain cover songs that he's been recording and posting to YouTube. The end result is that, even though all of these claims are bogus, YouTube is threatening to take away his ability to monetize his account, and have already disabled it on a public domain song.

I am fed up with YouTube. Several times I have provided evidence that my video "O Little Town of Bethlehem" is a Public Domain song and each time I get an email saying the song is owned by either Warner Chappell or UMPG or Sony. Now they have disabled my being able to earn any money for the number of times the video is viewed. We are only talking about pennies but no one "owns" a Public Domain song.

They now have threatened to totally disable my account from monetizing any of my videos because of multiple "false" claims of ownership. Since there is no way to speak to a human being directly, there will never be a way to convince them of the error of their ways....Fed up!

(And just to cut this argument off before it even begins: you can absolutely make money from public domain material, you just can't stop others from doing the same thing). Again, this isn't the first time we've seen this kind of thing, and it's a situation that YouTube really needs to figure out a solution to.

Filed Under: business models, contentid, copyfraud, dave colvin, monetization, music, public domain
Companies: google, sony music, universal music, warner chappell

Musician Chris Randall: Music Has No Monetary Value But The Connections It Forms Are Priceless

from the your-reputation-is-your-currency dept

Guitarist Chris Randall, formerly of Sister Machine Gun (and founder of Positron Records, along with running plug-in creator Audio Damage) has an epic post detailing his thoughts about the music business (and the recording industry) and the monumental changes it has gone through over the last decade. He pointedly declares that his post (in PDF form, due to limitations of his site) is not a manifiesto. Randall calls it "more of a mission statement, really," and it does exactly that, with many stops along the way.

The underlying current of the piece is that music (along with other forms of art) cannot honestly be discussed in terms of monetary value. The sale price of an mp3 or an album has very little to do with how the fans value the music. No one talks up how much they spent on something when discussing their connection with a band or singer. Instead, they talk about more ethereal concepts, like where they were when they first heard a certain track or who turned them on to a certain band. Randall gives a personal example, as seen through the artist's eyes:

The funny thing about music is that people can tie a certain song to a specific event in their life that occurred when they heard that song; the two become inseparable... I first noticed it in 2004, on the last real tour I did as a performing artist. The first day of the tour, I was in the audience waiting for the opening band to go on, and someone came up to me and said “it’s so cool you’re here! The first time I heard you was...” and then went on to describe a particular life experience that was occurring when he first heard a song I wrote. There were over sixty shows on that tour, and a night didn’t go by that I didn’t hear that speech, or a variation of it, at least once. It quickly became a running joke, The First Time I Heard You, and soon after that it became a conversation I dreaded. It was a heart-rending thing to hear, night after night, because I thought they were saying “you used to make things I liked. Now you don’t, but I’m here out of nostalgia.” It took an epiphany to realize that the First Time I Heard You conversation is is meant as a sincere form of flattery. “You are an ARTIST. You created something that MADE ME FEEL. This is IMPORTANT and I need to TELL YOU so you know that we have a CONNECTION.”

This led Randall to the following conclusion:

That epiphany, and a realization that the act of creation can and should be entirely decoupled from the business of commerce, is what I want to talk about. In fact, let's boil it down to a pithy aphorism: the coin of this realm is reputation, and our imagination is an ATM.

Many artists and (especially) artists' "representatives" have argued that the current market for all things artistic is unsustainable, a race for the bottom fueled by cheap technology and piracy. That their efforts have done little to reverse the process hasn't made them any happier and it certainly hasn't made their few, minimal attempts any smarter or any more effective. Randall went through the whole process as an artist, having the "rug yanked out from under him," and joining the chorus of disaffected artists cheering on the destruction of their former employers. This cheering, while admittedly fun, did little to actually change anything. Major labels kept acting like major labels, signing everyone they could talk into a contract. Meanwhile, the internet changed things for those wired into it, with little effect anywhere else:

There was a brief period where it was kind of fun to watch the entire music industry collapse in on itself, like a dying star. Can we get more of Metallica suing people for liking them, please? But Seans Fanning and Parker didn’t make Napster because they were moved by the plight of the working musician. They did it because they could, and the act itself, the act of petulant children bent on destruction, was nothing more than a path to greater things for them, increasing their reputations. The music industry, for its part, was eminently destroyable, as it had created an economy of artificial worth, by virtue of its “throw all the spaghetti at the wall and see which noodles stick” business model.

Napster effectively made music free, and yet, for several years, record labels continued to overspend and overvalue their own music:

That’s fine, and business is business, but the problem is that all those bands think they are special flowers (and the labels are in no small part enablers of this thinking; they spend a lot of time and effort making those artists feel like special flowers), and if their record cost $500,000 to make, then it is worth $500,000... Simple economics: a product’s worth is what someone will pay for it, for the most part, not what it cost to make. Hence the utterly false values ascribed to music today.

Plenty of new services have arrived which seem to push the "value" of music down even further. Lots of criticism has been leveled at Spotify for its "low" payouts. Artists have noticed that streaming services' per-play rates aren't going to be much help if you've sunk thousands of dollars into recording an album. This isn't the listening audience's fault, though. This is still just a matter of artists valuing their art above what the market will actually bear. Randall points out that, if anything, Spotify's per-play rates are too high, if compared to the public's valuation of the music in question:

Something happened to me a little while ago that makes me think the Spotify valuation is high, if we’re using currency as our means of valuation. SomeoneI know, who is in the military, was recently deployed to Iraq. While she was there, a friend of hers gave her a portable hard drive with 250,000 songs on it...

To her, this hard drive was “cool,” and furthermore “a neat present.” That it contained roughly 1/8th of all the commercial music ever recorded by Western civilization didn’t change the fact that, on a visceral level, the worth of it to her was essentially the cost-of-replacement of the physical drive itself, because she could always get another copy. If you want to affix an actual monetary value to music, that value is now, and ever was, a function of two things: the true cost of the medium it is stored on, and how easy that medium is to duplicate. The quarter million dollar fine the U.S. government could theoretically levy as punishment for copying that hard drive reflects the false economy the labels have created, not the actual value of the music itself.

To be clear, I am in no way implying that art doesn’t have intrinsic value. But that value is not quantifiable in dollars. If we extrapolate the cost of that hard drive to the individual songs, we can say that each song cost roughly 4/100th of a cent. While this is about 2/3 of the payment for a typical Spotify stream, the money went to the drive retailer and the manufacturer that made it, and none whatsoever went to any artist, publisher, or label.

So, if it can be argued that the monetary value of music is zero, how does any artist hope to make a living? Randall argues that the first step is to realize that music's power to create emotional experiences is "priceless" (in the good sense of the word) and work from there. The true potential lies in the connection, not the value ascribed to someone's songs by an outside force.

As an artist, if you choose to fight this battle over monetary value, know this: you will lose. That is a foregone conclusion. In fact, you have already lost. All of that nonsense with numbers and who’s getting paid and whether life is fair or not is all inside baseball, and the average person (the one ultimately footing the bills, it must be said) couldn’t give two shits. To them, pieces of art are tied to memories and experiences; they are either trying to recapture the emotions they felt when they first experienced the art in a particular context, or trying to create new emotions to go with new contexts. They are willing to spend a certain amount of money, for altruism’s sake, if it’s convenient.

This is where the artist needs to step in and connect. Not only are they fighting against a zero-dollar valuation, they're also competing for the hearts and minds of potential audience members (and customers) who are blessed with more choices than ever before. Barriers-to-entry are all but gone and the world is filled with people creating because they suddenly find that not only are the tools more powerful, but the options for dissemination are nearly endless. If you can get past the "valuation" issue, you can do great things, and quite possibly, make some money as well. But first you've got to do some letting go.

[I]n my honest assessment, the opportunities are far greater now, and the rewards as ample or perhaps even more so. It’s easy. Just forget about money. Seriously. Let it go. You’re not getting paid? Join the club. Robert Johnson and Scott Joplin were the founding members. Muddy Waters, HP Lovecraft, and Jackson Pollack each got an achievement award. David Crosby gets the Bad Life Decisions Honorable Mention. You’re in good company. You should be proud.

Randall points out that he's not trying to make the case that creating art in hopes of making a living is the wrong angle to take. As he says, there are still several creative people collecting paychecks, including session musicians, graphic designers and various positions in the game, computer and television industries. He also makes it very clear that he's not, for lack of a better term, One of Us. [broad emoticon wink at TD regulars]

Neither do I want to come off as a neck-bearded freetard. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are not many groups of people I disdain more than the Doctorow mashup crowd and their inspired thinking that art + art = better art, and everybody has the right, nay, the responsibility to make their own Mickey Mouse movies. If that’s the sort of thing that floats your boat, so be it, but on your head.

Randall offers this alternative plan for struggling artists: the currency of reputation. Build a solid one of those and people will throw money at you. He points out the astounding success of Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter project. Did she need all that she collected to move forward with her career? Very definitely, no. But people showed up in droves and helped her, as Randall puts it, "cash in some of that reputation for real-world money." The same thing for Penny Arcade, who "chose to cash in their reputation that they earned through years of slogging it in the trenches." Your first step as an artist is to start "banking" reputation.

These Reputation Credits, an arbitrary unit of my own devising, are a reflection of how earnest you are in tending your public-facing persona... [I]f you contribute to the human cultural experience, you do earn them, and the more you contribute (or, perhaps, the higher the quality of your contributions) the more you earn. You can then turn these in for real-world dividends that can, for instance, pay the rent or buy sushi.

And how, exactly does on do that? By utilizing these four steps, many of which echo a familiar mantra around these parts:

Make art.
Put it in front of as many people as possible.
Engage the resulting audience.
Repeat.

The more you do this, the better you’ll get at it, the more Rep Credits you’ll have, and the further they’ll go when you need to spend some of them. People want to be entertained. They’ll go all honey badger on some good entertainment. Give it to them, for fuck’s sake, and stop bitching about money. That’ll come in its own good time.

There's a ton of great writing and insight in Randall's wordbomb. (It runs over 4,400 words.) I encourage you to take a look at the whole thing. It's not often a musician will offer up this sort of clearly-laid-out perspective on the last decade+ of the music world.

Filed Under: chris randall, connections, future, music, sister machine gun, value

Where Do Teens Discover New Music? YouTube.

from the promoting-new-artists dept

As YouTube sits in the uncomfortable position of being absolutely loved by the general public, while also being accused by media labels of being an engine for piracy, while also being used by those same labels to try to get free money off the backs of their signed artists, we have long said that it can also serve as an amazing promotional tool to help new artists get discovered. And, as the next generation of music fans move into their teens, one study appears to demonstrate that point.

Via CNN, we learn that the new Nielson Music 360 report has found that YouTube is the primary method for discovering new music amongst teenagers today. While it may not be any great surprise that kids use the free service to find and/or listen to music, I think the report includes a couple of important notes worth elaborating upon. First, take a look at the difference between the generations of music fans:

Among all adults, radio remains the most popular tool, with 48 percent saying that's how they usually discover their new jams. But more teens, 64 percent, cited YouTube, the Web's leading video-sharing site, as a place where they listen to music. Followed by radio (56%), iTunes (53% ) and CDs (50%).

The popularity of YouTube is dramatically higher among teens than all adults. Only 7 percent of all respondents said they discover music most frequently through the site.

Again, probably not the kind of statistics you'd exactly consider jaw-dropping. But let's think about this for a moment. If the jump between those that utilize evil YouTube the most to discover new music (for which they'll potentially buy either music, concert tickets, etc.) is from 7% of the total population and 64% of the teenage population, that indicates to me that the real transition in how we discover new music as an entire population has only just begun. And, if the music labels want to continue to fight against YouTube rather than utilize it, they appear to be ill-prepared for what is a statistical tidal wave that these teenagers will represent when they become paying adults and have children of their own. Failing to embrace YouTube as a promotional tool and fighting against that kind of tsunami is akin to...well...fighting against a friggin' tsunami!

From the CNN article we also learn this:

Strangely, the report doesn't address teens' listening habits on music-streaming sites such as Pandora, Spotify or Grooveshark.

And that's a mistake. If YouTube is the trend for this generation of teenagers, there is a very real likelihood that the next trend is going to be either those music-streaming sites, or others very much like it. That is, of course, if the music labels don't continue to try to kill them as well. 

But the point remains: people will use new internet services to discover new music. This represents a boon for music as a whole, and could represent the same for the major labels, but only if they stop fighting the tide and instead ride the wave.

 

Filed Under: music, teens
Companies: youtube

Inexplicable: Jeff Price Pushed Out Of TuneCore, Despite Tremendous Success In Helping Artists

from the not-good-news-for-artists dept

We always talk about how various industries are changing such that gatekeepers are history and enablers are the future. One of the most impressive enablers around in the music industry has been TuneCore, a company built up over the last half-decade or so to provide artists with direct access to various digital distribution channels that were previously closed to them. TuneCore, co-founded and run by Jeff Price, had a singular vision of doing everything to make life better for musicians. They didn't take a cut of the royalties -- you just paid a flat-fee to use their service. They had very clear reporting and payments for artists -- basically the exact opposite of how major labels worked. Most recently, they set out to revolutionize the publishing business, and were well on their way towards that goal as well.

And, because of that, TuneCore, in many ways, surprised much of the industry while upending much of the industry. Many of the core functions that artists previously relied on labels for, TuneCore did better, in a more useful way, without asking the artists to hand over all their copyrights and 85% of their revenues. It became such a standard thing that almost every indie musician I spoke to used TuneCore, and many big-name musicians started moving in that direction as well.

The company was founded by Jeff Price, Peter Wells and Gary Burke a little over six years ago, and achieved some impressive things in that time. Jeff, as CEO, was pretty famous for his outspokenness -- and we've quoted him multiple times. He was certainly quick to point out all of the fallacies of the old RIAA way of doing business, which upset some of those legacy players, but it was clear from the beginning that what Jeff Price wanted most was to help artists. He, unlike so many, recognized the challenges and the opportunities musicians faced, and wanted to help get them past the challenges and reach the point of enjoying the opportunities.

I only met Jeff for the first time a few months ago, and saw him one more time after that, but he was one of those people that never seemed to stop focusing on a singular goal: making things better for artists, and helping them embrace what the internet enables. And from everything I've seen and heard, he was amazingly successful in doing so. Multiple artists I've talked to have spoken highly of TuneCore and what it enabled them to do. I didn't always agree with Jeff on everything (though I probably did more often than not), but even when we disagreed, it seemed to be over our interpretations of which way forward would actually be best for the artists themselves.

So I was surprised to find out that Jeff Price (and Peter Wells) have both been pushed out of TuneCore. I've spoken to a number of people associated with the company, and all of them are shocked and dismayed that Jeff and Peter are gone from the company. I've tried, multiple times, to get the main VC backing the company, Gill Cogan from Opus Capital, to comment on the situation, to no avail. But, many, many people stepped up to speak out strongly on Jeff's behalf. You can read Jeff's open letter linked above, in which he talks about all the company accomplished:

Under our tenure, TuneCore took significant market share away from the traditional major labels. As of July, 2012, TuneCore artists represent over 4% of all US gross digital music sales revenue and have sold over 610,000,000 units of music generating over $310,000,000 in gross music sales. More than four songs a second are sold on iTunes somewhere in the world by a TuneCore artist. Through the execution of the vision and the trust of the artist, TuneCore achieved about 40% of the market share of EMI and 25% of the market share of Universal in regards to digital music sales in the United States.

We were also able to attract artists across the spectrum: from emerging artists to the older legends and the new legends. Artists such as Drake, Soulja Boy, Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails, Zac Brown Band, Hoodie Allen, Civil Wars, Lecrea, Boyce Avenue, Kelly, Colt Ford, Ed Sheerhan, Alex Day, Aretha Franklin, Jay Z, Girl Talk, Blood On The Dancefloor, Jason Mraz, Nice Peter, Tiesto and hundreds of thousands more used TuneCore to place number one albums and songs on iTunes, Amazon and many other digital stores, breaking the control of the traditional industry while democratizing it.

I spoke to Jeff to get a bit more background. While no one is willing to say why or how Jeff and Peter got pushed out, it seems pretty clear that this was not what Jeff wanted -- and not what many people involved with TuneCore wanted. Jeff highlighted how everything he's done has been about focusing on the artist, and you can tell that he's worried that the company may no longer be able to do so (though, of course, he doesn't say that directly):

We started the company with a mission and philosophy to make the world a better place for artists. I believe the success TuneCore has had under our guidance is based on never losing sight of that mission and philosophy. Stay true to the DNA of the company and no matter how the market changes you can adapt with a rock solid foundation. As the Founder and CEO I tried hard to instill my beliefs and passion into every aspect of the company, to never let the employees or board of directors forget the mission, the "why" of TuneCore's existence. My hope is the philosophies, vision and mission statement that have allowed the company to succeed are so entrenched that it continues on the path created for it. Serve the musician. Thats how you, the artist, the shareholders, the digital music stores and the consumers win.

The challange becomes when a company loses that vision. Neither Peter or I are even remotely in the league of Apple or Steve Jobs, but you look at what happened to Apple when John Sculley came in as CEO. He changed the Apple vision from making "insanely great easy to use products" to one of "making money at any expense". When Jobs came back and reinstituted his vision Apple soared again. Its the vision that drives the success and revenue, not the other way around. We did everything we could to instill the vision as deeply as we could. We just hope it sticks.

I reached out to Peter, as well, who seems equally baffled by the situation, noting that the company had been doing great, hitting all of its goals (and more):

Astonishing success under the original regime, really--that's been TuneCore these last few months. We fulfilled our promise to create a Publishing side, with a new office in Burbank, CA, and it represents another revolution for artists, the next step along the path we started along when the company launched. Back in New York, things have been fantastic, up to and including a launch of the new look of the TuneCore home page, which Gary, Jeff and I helped shape and which I think is superb. This real success makes me all the more puzzled at very recent developments

Peter noted that he was saddened about losing his own job, but that his reaction to Jeff being pushed out was on another level altogether:

"Stunned" doesn't begin to describe it. Okay, so the company asked me to leave--I can accept that, I'm a founder at heart, the company is no longer a startup, perhaps it's time to move on. But Jeff is the heart and soul of TuneCore, and frankly, its brains. No one knows this space like he does, especially when it comes to publishing. I said earlier that TuneCore was having astonishing success--it is, and that's due to a lot of hard work from a lot of brilliant people (whom Jeff found and convinced to come on board). It's also due to Jeff's vision and leadership. Why on earth would Jeff be asked to leave? Why now, in the face of so many successes, and on the cusp of doing for publishing what he'd already proven he could do for distribution? It makes no sense.

I reached out to some others who were intimately involved with TuneCore from the early days onwards, and they too are somewhat shocked at this turn of events. One of the original advisors to the company, George Howard, who is an executive VP at Wolfgang's Vault, told me that Jeff was astoundingly good at accomplishing what he set out to do with TuneCore:

Jeff is one of the few people who has genuinely moved the business forward. So many people talk about what the business could/should/might be, but Jeff actually had a vision and brought it to fruition with his founding and running of TuneCore. That's the key: bringing something to fruition. Jeff actually gets things done - implementing a vision via his role as CEO. In so doing, he, by creating a system that provided access to thousands and thousands of musicians who had - prior to Jeff's implementation of a vision - been denied access by industry gatekeepers, undeniably changed the music business for the better.

Similarly, Dick Huey, a long-time music business insider, who was an early advisor to TuneCore, seemed equally surprised at the removal of Jeff, and reiterated some of the things he'd been able to accomplish in spite of all the odds:

TuneCore was all Jeff. I remember the dinner where he first ran the idea past me, along with the old company name. I thought the idea sounded radical (it was), I thought there was a fair chance it wouldn't work (I was wrong), and I knew I wanted to be involved as an advisor (I am). Jeff didn't doubt the idea from the outset, and since we started talking about this, I'm not sure I've met a more tireless leader who is more singularly focused on executing on his vision. I feel pretty strongly that Jeff came onto this concept in a moment in time, just at the outset of artists starting to realize that digital distribution could be for everyone, not just signed artists. And he executed, and built what I consider to be a successful, remarkable, and growing business. I believe there are few individuals who could have delivered on this business idea the way Jeff has done for TuneCore.

Huey also went to great lengths to highlight the many, many things that Jeff accomplished with TuneCore that most others wouldn't have bothered with, or wouldn't have even thought to bother with. He detailed how he got Apple to allow TuneCore to be a key entry point to the iTunes store for unsigned (and signed) artists, taking control from the gatekeepers. He talked about establishing better standards for reporting and payment. He talked about all of the many artists that TuneCore helped to be able to make a living.

When I asked Huey if he was comfortable with TuneCore without Jeff at the helm, he didn't hold back on his concerns:

I'm extremely concerned about the direction of the company without Jeff at the helm, as a shareholder in TuneCore, especially given the lack of information available about why he is no longer there. It should be clear from my responses to your questions that I consider Jeff Price to be the man who started or drove every major initiative at TuneCore of which I'm aware. I've heard no announcement of a new CEO, and I'm suspect that Jeff could even be properly replaced, given his unusual and unique combination of outspokenness, deep industry knowledge, wholehearted commitment to the company and to its staff. Jeff made you a believer, and even if you didn't believe, detractors largely respected his vision and commitment.

I've been interested in companies that help enable artists for a long time, and I've seen over and over again that these companies almost always succeed on the strength of their leadership -- a leadership that is committed to going to incredible (and seemingly impossible) lengths to actually help content creators, rather than feeding an old industry that looked to feed gatekeepers. I was surprised when I started to hear rumors of Jeff's ouster, and in talking to a bunch of folks, I've yet to find anyone who seems to think any of this makes sense.

I've spoken to some other people as well and may do some followup on this. In Jeff's open letter, he notes that he and Peter "look forward to continuing to change the industry on a global scale" and hints at something new coming soon. Peter, too, seemed eager to get started on something new, so I get the feeling this won't be the last we hear from the two of them, though I do wonder what will become of TuneCore without their leadership.

Filed Under: artists, distribution, jeff price, music, peter wells
Companies: tunecore

Brandon Boyd Of Incubus On The Future Of Music And Life Without A Label: 'It's A Really Cool Thing Because It Keeps Everyone On Their Toes'

from the it's-easier-to-move-forward-when-you're-already-looking-that-direction dept

Brandon Boyd has seen both ends of the music industry. With his band Incubus, Boyd rode possibly the last big wave (nu-metal) crafted by the labels. Now, faced with heading out label-less for the first time, Boyd has a refreshingly realistic outlook on the challenges he and his band face in the future.

We are, for the first time since 1996, we are free agents again. We're without a record label. So what we're kind of doing is trying to get our bearings as to what we should do next, just as a band but also as a band that is kind of off in new territory again.

Fortunately for Boyd, he's not completely unprepared for life without a label. During the shakeup at Epic Records and Sony's restructuring, Incubus sort of fell between the cracks and dealt with "a real lack of direction and leadership just when we needed it most." Surprisingly, Boyd isn't bitter about the experience and notes that it left the band free to start exploring other options, including put more effort towards connecting directly with their fans:

So it was hard and it was frustrating but it was also very telling for us and perhaps educational. Because what we were forced to do was we were forced into ingenuity. And so we came up with this idea to set up shop in this art gallery in Los Angeles and do the Incubus HQ and fly listeners in from different corners of the world and do these live broadcasts on the Internet. And so we started getting these ideas about subscription-based live concerts online and it ended up being a really scary and stressful project, but the fruits of it are still kind of revealing themselves.

We have this HQ box set that we're putting out and the DVD set comes out I think August 14 is the release date. There's like the superfan all six nights on DVD mixed in 5.1 with the CDs and pieces of canvases that people were drawing on in the room while we were playing music. Like I said, it's forced us to think outside of that normal music industry paradigm that we had gotten so accustomed to. And so in that sense the lack of attention from our record label and the end days of our record label relationship were really good and very beneficial for us as a band because it gave us a sense of what we might be doing in the coming years.

Living through massive disruption turns some artists into doomsayers who demand the world repent of its "sins" and return to the "Old Way." Boyd lived through the so-called Napster years and came up with a completely different conclusion: adapt or be left behind. The upside of the old way was nice:

Linkin Park and Incubus were two of the very few bands who kind of like got a gust of wind out of the old paradigm of the music industry. But like survived out of it. There are so many bands that, bands in a traditional sense, bands who write their own music, and perform their music, that didn't survive that transition. That fell by the wayside with the industry. So it’s been frightening to watch something that you for a very brief moment almost learned to rely on, because we learned the ins and outs of how the industry worked, you know you poured your heart out into making an album and then the label puts the record out and you go out on tour in support of the album, and we even started doing it in the van and trailer. We'd make a record and get in the van with our gear and the trailer and we'd drive ourselves around the country and sell albums and T-shirts out of the back of the trailer. That was sort of our education and then once things started going really well, thankfully, we got a sense of what it looks like when all of the, when the engine is nicely greased and things are working the way they're supposed to.

But when that way was no longer viable, Incubus moved on, rather than hold on to the way it used to be:

And then it's like the millennium turns and the technology changed. And all of that became old. It became an antiquated model. And it was frightening at first but I actually have come to appreciate it. I'm going to actually use the pun, a living thing. It's a living system. Our technologies are a living system just like we are and our communities as human beings, and for us to expect them to remain constant is really just quite foolish. I mean anybody that's going to come to rely on the way that our music consumption is looking now is going to have the same hard lesson in less time than you think. I think that the technology is going to shift probably sooner than any of us really realize. And that's a really cool thing, because it keeps everyone on their toes. It levels the playing field, too. It's allowing for a really wonderful democratization of the music writing process and the music presenting and performing process. So what it's doing is it's making us try harder and it's making us expect the best of ourselves and the people that we work with. You know, do more with less.

That's the way it works now if you're going to succeed. It's artists vs. limited attention and limited entertainment budgets. A connection is vital and a willingness to explore every option is nearly mandatory if you're going to get anywhere.

What's more amazing about these statements is there is no mention of the music industry's favorite villain, piracy. Boyd sees what the real issue is: disruption. And rather than wait for someone to "fix" the "problem," he's moving as fast as he can to stay ahead of the curve. He's not letting his situation be dictated by others and because of that, he's got a good chance to keep his creative career going.

I personally, when all is said and done, I really welcome these changes. And they excite me. And they scare me at the same time, but I'm choosing to focus on the excitement.

It is a scary time to be an artist. Nothing'is guaranteed. But it's also a time when the field is wide open and the possibilities nearly unlimited. Focusing on the wrong aspect gets you nowhere, but being willing to look past everything that seems to be going wrong and make the most of what's going right.

Filed Under: brandon boyd, future, incubus, labels, music

Beck Needs Your Help To Hear To His Next Release, An Album Of Sheet Music

from the streaming-pdfs dept

Nothing sells like scarcity. We've seen artists package their music in any number of new ways to make the infinite, well, less infinite. Collectors and afficionados of analog devices are picking up vinyl at a record (oh ha! and I didn't even mean that one!) pace. Even the cassette has made a resurgence.

But Beck, always the iconoclast, is going back even further. Past 78s and wax cylinders. Past player pianos and John Phillip Sousa's eerily prescient fear of new formats. Beck is going all the way back to the day when artists only had one way to publish music: via the staves and bars of sheet music.

Beck has announced that his newest album will arrive in the form of Beck Hansen's Song Reader, meaning you won't know what the songs sound like unless you put some work in. What is a song reader, you ask? It's an experimental collection of individual pieces of sheet music. In this case, none of the 20 songs have been recorded or released before. It'll be available through indie publishing house McSweeney's in December of this year.

While it remains to be seen if today's Beck fan has the washboard-and-harmonica skills to pull off a Beck tune, the novelty of the whole thing should certainly see a few dollars thrown its way. Of course, releasing an album of sheet music asks a lot of your audience, including "Did you like the thing the Flaming Lips did when you needed four stereos playing simultaneously to hear the album in its intended form?," "Regret dropping band after 6th grade?," and "Can you read ukelele notation?" McSweeney's has more details, but no solid answers to these rhetorical questions:

In the wake of Modern Guilt and The Information, Beck’s latest album comes in an almost-forgotten form—twenty songs existing only as individual pieces of sheet music, never before released or recorded. Complete with full-color, heyday-of- home-play-inspired art for each song and a lavishly produced hardcover carrying case (and, when necessary, ukelele notation), the Song Reader is an experiment in what an album can be at the end of 2012—an alternative that enlists the listener in the tone of every track, and that’s as visually absorbing as a dozen gatefold LPs put together.

Man, that takes me back. The last time I had a dozen gatefold LPs put together, I was running a small-time weed dealership and pulling an all-night seeds-and-stem sorting operation. Good times... probably. But this package is more than just functional. In addition to its collection of ukelele explorations, the collectible package will include art from more than a dozen different artists (some of which you can eyeball here) and 20 individual full-color song booklets. 

This is definitely a case of giving people a Reason to Buy, even if many of them will still need outside assistance to hear the music they purchased. And I could imagine an entire cottage industry of Beck Hansen's Song Reader covers springing up all over YouTube, assuming Beck is cool with that. Packaging his new album this way also makes his post-release touring that much more of a draw. If all people have heard is their own renditions and other covers, I imagine they'd jump at the chance to hear the original performer actually perform them.

Filed Under: beck, music, sheet music

Amazon Reverses Course, Signs Licenses With Music Labels To Allow File Matching

from the matching-offerings dept

In the spring of 2011, Amazon launched its cloud music streaming player to much fanfare, along with questions about its legal status. Amazon chose not to get licenses from the labels, saying (accurately) that since the service was just to allow individuals to upload and stream their own MP3s, there was no need to get licenses. While the labels indicated they disagreed with this assessment, none seemed willing to take on the legal fight against Amazon (or Google who initially made a similar choice). After both Amazon and Google launched their cloud offerings, Apple got attention for not doing a cloud player, but rather a matching and syncing system.

Now, Amazon has apparently decided that a similar matching system makes more sense... and has done licensing deals with the four major labels and a bunch of indies. The end result is that the streaming player is changing significantly. The free service is greatly limited, and they now want $25/year for more. If you pay, then it'll now match as many songs as it can on your hard drive with its own database, and automatically populate your account (similar to Apple's system). Thus, users no longer need to upload all their tracks.

Basically, Amazon bought a license to allow the matching, and then switched its whole service around to enable that (and to charge people). It'll be interesting to see how well this works. $25 isn't much at all, but in the year+ since Amazon's streaming player launched, I honestly can't remember ever hearing anyone mention using it. I'm sure there are some out there, but it never seemed that successful, so it may be a challenge to get people to pay the $25. Personally, I played around with Amazon's player a few times, but the storage limit as compared to Google's similar offering meant that I used Google instead. These days I tend to bounce back and forth between Spotify and Google Music, and can't think of a reason to use Amazon's service instead -- even with the matching.

Filed Under: licenses, lockers, music, streaming
Companies: amazon