We've written about UK singer Dan Bull a bunch of times, highlighting his various songs that often cover copyright issues. His latest is an anti-SOPA song and video, called SOPA Cabana (take a wild guess what that's a reference to). Check out the video here first, and read on below about the video and why it's interesting (beyond the music/lyrics):
First of all, what strikes me as most interesting about this is that Dan's not in the US, but the UK. But he recognizes how this law being debated in the US can have a significant and dangerous impact around the world. In talking about his reasons for doing a song about SOPA, Dan noted that "SOPA is abhorrent on three fronts:"
Firstly, it threatens the future of the internet, which is something far more valuable both commercially and socially than the entertainment industry ever has been, or ever will be.
Secondly, creativity is all about interpreting and re-imagining what you see and hear around you. The idea that creativity exists in some kind of vacuum, and that you're not a real artist unless you can make something "completely original" is not only stupid, it contradicts the most fundamental axioms of how the universe works. Everything is influenced by something else. If we want a richer cultural landscape, we should embrace remixes, embrace mashups, and embrace sharing, not cling to ideas as pieces of property.
Thirdly, the internet is an amazing new forum for free speech and holding those in power us to account. The idea that governments and even private corporations can police the internet and decide what people on a global scale are allowed to say and hear is tyrannical.
Perhaps even more interesting, however, is how the song and video came together. After deciding he wanted to write a song about SOPA, he reached out to his followers on Twitter, asking for "help with themes and lyrics." After getting a bunch of ideas, and realizing he should do something different for the video, he went on Facebook and asked for volunteers to take photos of themselves holding up signs with the various lyrics... and tons and tons of people jumped at the chance. The whole video was put together over the last few hours, and the whole effort is pretty impressive.
Dan Bull is a musician. The entertainment industry and the lobbyists supporting SOPA insist that they're doing this to protect people like Dan Bull -- but Dan is quite reasonably scared of what this law will do to his ability to succeed online. Dan Bull is as well known as he is because of the internet, and his ability to share his works wherever and however he likes. SOPA would make that a lot more difficult. It doesn't "protect" Dan Bull. It helps destroy the careers of folks like Dan Bull by limiting their ability to create, promote, distribute and communicate.
Beyond singing about copyright issues, and releasing his stuff for free (though I bought his album), it appears he's experimenting in other areas of business models as well. For years, we've pointed out that one of the key "scarcities" that can be sold is the creation of new works. This is a point that confuses many, since a song is not scarce once created (and made available in digital format). But the creation of a new work is very much a scarcity. Dan seems to recognize that and is running an experiment in which he tries auctioning off the creation of a new song on eBay. Since eBay auctions disappear, here's a screenshot:
The text reads:
Hello, my name is Daniel and I make songs. You can see my stuff by typing "Dan Bull" into YouTube. I've decided to find out what my music is really worth so I'm sticking myself on eBay. The winning bidder will receive:
One song on any topic of your choice, written, performed and produced by Dan Bull. Duration: 2.30 - 3.30 approx. I will liaise with you via e-mail if there any specific details you wish to include in the song. You will be free to use and redistribute this song in any way you wish, however I reserve the right to do the same. The song will be delivered to you in MP3 format within 14 days of the winning bid.
Get bidding now, because this may never happen again. Love from Dan :) x
Pretty cool experiment. We'll be interested to see how it turns out...
You may recall last fall we wrote about one of Dan Bull's excellent tracks commenting on copyright issues, called Death Of ACTA. You can see the video for the song here:
Dan Bull has embraced file sharing -- not surprisingly, given the subject matter of many of his songs -- and placed the song on various sharing networks and sites, including the cyberlocker Mediafire. Obviously, he did so on purpose, with the desire that more people hear the song. However, he noted with a bit of irony recently that the song on Mediafire was taken down due to a copyright claim. Considering the whole song is about the overreaching efforts of copyright as censorship, this seems pretty ironic.
Dan was kind enough to forward on the takedown message... and it's a total mess. There's simply no useful info in it other than that a French company called TF1 wants the file (and a bunch of others) off of Mediafire as quickly as possible. Now, it's not clear what the issue is here, but it's not difficult to take a guess. "Death of ACTA" is obviously a play on Jay-Z's "Death of Autotune" Jay-Z's song features prominently a sample of the song "In the Space" by French film composers Janko Nilovic and Dave Sarkys. It's quite likely that Jay-Z licensed the sample. Not surprisingly, Dan Bull did not, but that's the nature of creating a parody song.
Also, since all of this is happening in Europe, there aren't fair use laws. Dan would probably have a stronger argument in the US. In Europe, it's a bit more of a crap shoot. Of course, the whole thing is pretty silly if you think about it. Is there any less demand for "In the Space," due to Dan's song? Anyone who suggests that's the case is not in touch with reality.
In the end, though, how ridiculous is it that a song that's all about the excessive nature of copyright law ends up being subject to a takedown notice itself? It seems to encapsulate everything that the song is talking about as being ridiculous concerning copyright law. The song is, of course, still available in lots of other places, though it will be interesting to see if TF1 starts going after it elsewhere as well. I'm guessing that each takedown will only draw that much more attention to Dan's song and the ridiculousness of copyright law today, if it creates a situation where a clear commentary about copyright law gets taken down... by copyright law.
As promised in our case study on Dan Bull, he's now released his latest song, entitled Death of ACTA. Better yet, the video was filmed on an actual pirate ship:
Two quick announcements. First, this is the latest in our "case study" series, of content creators doing interesting things online, and seeing what we can learn from them. The case studies now have their own tab if you want to check out previous case studies. Second, this profile is about Dan Bull, but stay tuned, because tomorrow, he'll be coming out with a new song, commenting on ACTA and the Gallo Report. We'll post it here, but trust me, you don't want to miss it.
You may recall, about a year ago, there was a bit of a kerfuffle involving singer Lily Allen -- who had built her (major label) career, in part off of releasing a bunch of clearly infringing mixtapes of other artists, mixed with some of her own music on her MySpace page and her official website (controlled by EMI). And yet... she suddenly posted a rant against file sharing, talking about how it was destroying the industry. She even started a blog about how evil copying was, but amusingly plagiarized an entire Techdirt post. We were fine with it (our material is free to use however you'd like), but thought it was an interesting teaching moment about the value of copying, and how even those who claim they're against it implicitly seem to recognize that copying is "natural." While Lily apologized to me, as we noted there was no need to apologize -- the content was free for using. We were hoping that she would understand how her actions went against her own words. Instead, she blamed everyone else, claimed she was "attacked" and shut down her blog.
However, soon after all of this, a musician in the UK, named Dan Bull, wrote and recorded a musical "open letter" to Ms. Allen, for which he created a video, and posted the whole thing to YouTube, generating a ton of attention. If you haven't seen it (or even if you have...), check it out:
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm name checked in the song, which actually caused me to go out and buy Dan's album, even though he makes it available for free as well, uploaded to various file sharing systems that are regularly decried for "destroying" the industry. With the Dear Lily song getting so much attention, Dan has continued to write new songs along these lines, starting with an open letter to Peter Mandelson, the UK politician who was the main driving force behind the Digital Economy Act, which brought three strikes to the UK:
Earlier this year, as the debate heated up over kicking people offline via the Digital Economy Act, UK ISP TalkTalk had Dan Bull create a new song, reminding us how familiar the recording industry's complaints sound to their complaints from years back about how home taping was killing music:
Tomorrow he's coming out with his latest track related to copyright issues, specifically commenting on ACTA and the Gallo report. I've heard it already, and you don't want to miss it. We'll post it as soon as it's ready to go tomorrow. However, as we gear up for that, I spoke to Dan about his experience creating music that has championed the idea that copyright is a much bigger problem than a solution to the music industry, and what lessons he's learned.
The first thing, of course, is that his music career was completely transformed by the original Dear Lily video. Even though he'd already released an album, this one song, changed things. As Dan told me:
I've been putting my songs on YouTube for years without anyone really noticing, so I didn't expect anything different with Dear Lily. I uploaded the video, e-mailed the link to the P2P blog TorrentFreak, and went to bed. The next morning I woke up to find my inbox was broken due to responses arriving every couple of seconds. The video seemed to have struck the right chord at the right time, and I was summarising what was on everybody's mind. Except Lily Allen's.
He pointed out that the video got 80,000 views that first night, and the MP3 (made freely available, of course) was downloaded over 20,000 times. And, despite all the claims that folks who support file sharing or think that copyright has problems are just a bunch of freeloaders who want stuff for free, this song made Dan money:
I made more money from music that week than I had in my entire musical career previously. I'd say it was split 50/50 between sales of my album, and donations from people who just wanted to show their appreciation. It goes to show that filesharers aren't cheapskates; they're happy to hand over a bit of cash if they know who it's going to.
He also pointed out that, if all of the interest in his songs had been monitored by the folks who create the charts, the song actually would have ended up on the UK singles charts.
But, of course, was this just a flash in the pan, one-hit-wonder sort of thing? Not according to Dan. He notes that he had a decent group of supporters before:
But this was when I first started to feel like I had a real fanbase, and that there are lots of other people out there who feel the way I do. Plenty of the people who saw the video have stuck around to check out my new stuff too. It's also made it easier to get my other songs noticed, and I've been on television and radio a few times as a result.
And, in talking about attention from elsewhere, it's not just limited to music about copyright. He's becoming a go-to guy for music about all sorts of political issues, including a successful (and brilliant) UK Election Debate Rap Battle. The tech/copyright songs are still the songs that get the most people excited, but all of his new works are getting more and more attention. As Dan notes, the way you build a career is to continue to keep building, rather than relying on old works and copyright complaints:
I enjoyed the wave of publicity I had from the novelty of the Dear Lily video, but instead of trying to milk it I decided to carry on and write more songs. Each one I do gets a little more attention and it's very satisfying when new fans get in touch with me. It's good to discuss the issues with people who disagree as well - it makes me think hard about whether my beliefs are right.
Oh, and finally, I did wonder if he ever heard from either Lily Allen or Peter Mandelson in response to his open letters. No such luck, apparently, but he's heard from a reliable source that Allen has at least seen the video, and he got to perform Dear Mandy right outside the houses of Parliament in front of a bunch of TV cameras, so he's hoping that maybe, just maybe, Mandelson got to hear it "drifting through his window..."
Once again, this is another case of an artist really finding a way to connect with fans in a fun way, encouraging the free sharing of his music, but recognizing that fans are more than willing to pay, if given a reason to buy. And, of course, I do wonder how folks who insist that no "real" musician would ever speak out against copyright respond to folks like Dan Bull.
Anyway, thanks to Dan for taking the time to answer my questions, and stay tuned for his latest song and video...
Unfortunately, I can't find who first sent this in, but the site Inieoma recently had an interesting multi-part "discussion" on how independent artists are dealing with the issue of "piracy." Some of the parts are quite interesting. Simon Indelicate has a bit of a bipolar post that does a fantastic job laying out the economic issues of music production and consumption. He notes that the technology has flipped scarcity and abundance on its head -- entirely separate from the file sharing issue. He is pessimistic about new business models working for most musicians (about the only point I disagree with him on), but thinks that the overall world is a better place with the internet and cheaper production of music. Quite a good read.
Then there's an interview of Dan Bull, known around these parts for his musically brilliant open letters to Lily Allen and Peter Mandelson. In the interview, he discusses his views on the music business and things like file sharing. He notes that he's mainly "against... enforcing backwards laws in order to cling onto an obsolete business model."
Next up, is an interview with Matt Stockman who is starting up a new record label, called Sharabang, which plans to give away its music for free to "open up other revenue streams."
No matter what industry you're in, to thrive you must firstly listen to your customers. For Sharabang Music it's about listening to music lovers, how music is now consumed and adapting to this to offer genuine choices. What we're actually doing by offering music fans a choice is trying to put the value back into recorded music by diversifying the product range and offering far more than can simply be sent over the internet.
The whole interview is interesting, as Sharabang is working hard to come up with interesting scarcities. One cool idea is that every concert of a band on the label will be filmed with audience participation encouraged. And there will also be limited edition t-shirts that are tied to a specific event or group, to encourage people to buy more and "wear them with pride." We keep hearing more and more about companies stepping up to help artists embrace new business models, so it's great to hear of one more that appears to understand the best way to face the modern era.
There are some other parts to the discussion as well -- some I agree with and others I disagree with, but overall there are some great viewpoints and thoughts on this general issue of how musicians can adapt to a changing world. Perhaps none of it's really all that different from what we usually discuss around here, but it's still great to see how different people are expressing their opinions on the issue.
Dan Bull, who wrote, recorded and made videos for his brilliant open letters to both Lily Allen and Peter Mandelson, was asked by UK ISP TalkTalk if he would be interested in creating a new song concerning the Digital Economy Bill. In response, Bull created this lovely song reminding us all about the old home taping is killing music argument:
Make sure your sarcasm meter is properly tuned before watching... Best lines? "Home sewing's killing fashion, Home cooking's killing fast food, Home sleeping's killing hotels." Enjoy.
Musician Dan Bull seems to be carving out a nice space for himself responding to UK efforts to make copyright law more ridiculous than it already is, by voicing his opposition in song. A few months back, we wrote about his awesome open letter to Lily Allen (full disclosure: I get a brief mention) and now he's informed us that he's back again with an open letter (in song) to Peter Mandelson, called Dear Mandy:
I wonder if someone rich and famous has to buy Mandelson dinner before he'll actually listen to it.
All weekend, I've been inundated via email, Twitter, the submission page and more, from people all pointing me to musician Dan Bull's brilliant musical "open letter" to Lily Allen in response to the whole kerfuffle last week concerning Lily Allen's decision to speak out against musicians who said they disagreed with plans to kick file sharers off the internet. I wasn't sure if it was worth posting, because I began to feel like some might view it as piling on -- and the purpose here was never to drag anyone down or abuse anyone. I thought I had been clear about that in each and every one of my posts -- and, for the most part, all of the conversations and discussions I'd seen on the topic were quite reasonable and fair. My posts never attacked Ms. Allen, but tried to raise the level of discourse, asking her to respond to certain questions -- and at the same time highlight how her position was, in fact, a bit hypocritical, seeing as she had been doing many of the same things that she said were destroying the industry.
And yet, with Ms. Allen shutting down the blog, and claiming it was because of "abuse," some people have started accusing me of "bullying" Ms. Allen. An IP lawyer in our comments insists that I am somehow bullying her in simply asking questions. One recording industry lawyer accused me of "leading" my "internet army" of "hackers" to "attack" any artist who agreed with Allen (what?!?). Then there was the major publication that claimed that Techdirt was upset about Allen copying our blog post and that we had "suddenly discovered the power of copyright." Apparently reading comprehension isn't a strong point there, seeing as we made no copyright claim at all, were happy that she copied our post, and merely used it as a teaching moment to show why everything wasn't nearly as clear cut as Ms. Allen believed. Suddenly, just because Ms. Allen cried "abuse," despite no evidence of any actual abuse, her supporters started assuming that it must be me who was doing the "abusing."
The whole thing has become rather insane, frankly. But I'm not afraid to respond to folks who raise reasonable questions. I don't shut down and hide when someone brings up points that weren't addressed. Ms. Allen kicked this whole thing off and claimed she was just trying to start a discussion. And we responded, by pointing out the inconsistencies in her position. That wasn't an attack. Plenty of people who first jump into a debate on copyright or file sharing don't fully understand the issues -- and the best way to help them get past those initial misconceptions is to ask important questions, and highlight how the issue is a lot more complex than it may appear at first blush. The fact that Ms. Allen was distributing others' copyrighted music on her own, and used that to help build her popularity -- while now claiming that the same activity by others was destroying the opportunity for new artists made little sense -- and the double standard seemed worth calling out. And, despite her deleting her blog, some actually saved many of the comments on her blog. And, again, they don't show "abuse," but thoughtful, reasoned argument along these lines -- none of which Ms. Allen has responded to as of yet. That post, by the way, also highlights numerous factual errors in Ms. Allen's earlier responses.
So, yes, I'm going to post this video, because I think it's great (and catchy) and because I think it does further the conversation, just not in the direction that Ms. Allen intended. It's from a fan of Ms. Allen's work, and is endearing, not attacking. It's entertaining. It's free... and it got me to go and buy Dan Bull's first album, even though he's offering it up for free, too. Ms. Allen wanted a conversation and she claims she wanted more new music. Well, here's both in one shot:
This isn't "abuse." This isn't an "attack." This is, as all of my posts on this subject have been, an attempt to get Ms. Allen to actually think through these issues and answer some questions which it appears she has not considered. If reaching her by song is the way to do it, then that would be wonderful. However, I fear that she's decided to declare victory and walk away, rather than address any of the points raised.
While lots of people have picked up on various aspects of the song, the two points that I think are most relevant are pointing out that downloads don't equal sales, so stopping downloads (or kicking people off the internet) doesn't make people pay up. This is a point we've been raising for ages, and no one ever responds. The industry seems to think that magically people will start paying. And yet, there's no evidence of that whatsoever.
The second point is sarcastic, but is really a good one. Dan Bull jokes that using the same logic of people who think that stopping piracy (as if that's possible) will make people buy more music, perhaps we should ban CDs, because (according to this logic) "then people would have to pay to see bands for real." There's a huge disconnect here. The people who think that blocking activity online (and, remember, study after study after study has shown that "pirates" end up spending a lot more on music) will drive more of some other buying activity have no sense of economic history.
Taking away what fans want to do doesn't drive them to paying you more money. It drives them towards others who actually treat fans right. Like Dan Bull.
