El-P To Radio: Let DJs Be DJs, And Stop Thinking Of Yourselves As Gatekeepers

from the because-you're-not,-anymore dept

One of the running themes we discuss here is the difference between gatekeepers and enablers, but there's also a third category that overlaps both of the others to some degree, and is more relevant than ever in a media-saturated world: curators. Though recommendation and matching algorithms are taking on some of the curation roles that humans used to fill (or that didn't exist before), nobody has ever suggested that there's no longer a need for hands-on human curation of media.

When it comes to music, the classic curation role is the radio DJ—but, like so many traditional fixtures of the industry, that role has increasingly (though not universally) drifted away from creative personal curation and towards safe, commercially-dictated playlists. Music blogs and podcasts have stepped in to fill the void, and today the best barometer of what's worth listening to is online, not on the airwaves—especially for those listeners interested in discovering the most compelling acts emerging from small, independent scenes.

Perhaps no genre feels this more acutely than hip-hop, which still enjoys widespread radio play as one of the dominant pop genres of the past decade, but where even the most widely acclaimed indie acts with a decade of rock-solid releases under their belts struggle to get onto DJ playlists. Rapper/producer/indie hip-hop fixture El-P (who dropped by with a guest post earlier this year) recently took to twitter (found via egotripland) and gave a straightforward rundown of why so much of radio is broken and what DJs need to do to fix it. The self-proclaimed "rant" was in response to an New York DJ who was asked why he didn't play underground records that had a lot of audience buzz, and responded by saying "you don’t just get a slot, you earn a slot"—but even without context, El-P's points serve as a perfect summary of what it means to be a curator in the modern music landscape. You can view the full set of tweets on the egotripland post, but I've copied the sum of the text below:

if you're a radio station that doesn't break new great records because they haven't "earned their slot" you might be forgetting the point.

unless of course you are talking payola. then i get it.

not to state the obvious but that's kinda why radio is dying. the internet lets you listen to ANYTHING ANYTIME. its a simple truth.

being the gatekeepers of what people hear only works if they actually have to get by you in order to hear it, and thats just not the case.

therefore in order to be competitive with the new paradigm radio programmers need to re-examine their whole approach or what it all die.

*watch it all die, i mean.

just my 2 cents. fuck do i know.

which is not to say radio has lost its power. but to not see that on the horizon if everything remains on the same path is foolish.

personally i feel like radio dj's should have more autonomy to play what they like/not have to choose from pre approved content. might help.

it certainly would encourage the music to grow if everyone wasn't desperately trying to make jams that they think fit in with that criteria.

and that would lead to more and renewed interest in traditional radio broadcasts, which would lead to more money for everyone.

but hey i come from an era where we had cats like @StretchArmy and bobbito launching the careers of people who go platinum now. im spoiled.

look at whats happened to the newspaper industry. no one wants their news a day later anymore. theres a metaphor in there somewhere.

also there are clearly many amazing stations that do just what im talking about and breed serious listener loyalty.

it ain't like i'm speaking some sort of hidden esoteric knowledge/philosophy here. but its worth bringing up now and again.

anyone way its just the opinion of one man. #fuckdoiactuallyknow

one more thought: music is a representation of human consciousness, and like human consciousness it is expansive and varying.

it wouldn't hurt for everyone to consider their role in the purveyance of that consciousness a little closer.

put simply:ultimately the only thing that should be a deciding factor in radio play is if the dj likes your shit or not. trust who you hire.

if the people consistently dont like what he plays hes by definition a bad dj. you should fire him. but he's the music guy. let him be that.

*or she

aight "rant" officially over. WHO WANTS SOME FART JOKES!

Filed Under: djs, el-p, gatekeepers, music, radio

GEMA Feels It Isn't Killing German Nightclubs Fast Enough, Moves Towards Charging DJs Per MP3 On Their Laptops

from the perhaps-GEMA-could-cut-out-the-middleman-and-have-clubgoers-empty-their-wallets dept

GEMA's ongoing efforts to destroy as many music venues as possible in the name of "performance rights" continue unabated. If anything, GEMA's approaching some sort of event horizon in terms of PRO insanity.

Recently, GEMA was given permission by the German parliament to assess levy increases of up to 1,400% on some of Germany's most iconic underground clubs, threatening their continued existence. The reason given for granting GEMA its exorbitant requests was, unbelievably, that it was too difficult to assess performance rights fees accurately. GEMA's new "simplified" rates are based purely on the size of the venue and the length of the event -- it has nothing to do with whether or not GEMA represents the artists played.

There has been a little pushback on the extra fee assessed to events that run more than five hours -- as they often do in underground clubs -- but GEMA has decided that because it gave an inch, it's fully justified in taking a mile. FACT Magazine brings us the news that GEMA is adding a brand new fee to the mix, bizarrely aimed at DJs who utilize laptops and play MP3s rather than records or CDs.

It now appears that GEMA are attempting to knuckle down even harder on club performances. So far this has only – to our knowledge – been reported on German language websites, but at the heart of these newly proposed set of changes is a tax (or “laptop surcharge”) on DJs playing music from laptops, to the tune of 30% for every music file under five minutes with an increase of 20% for each additional minute. What we’re unsure about is whether this only refers to files that are played, or all music on the offending laptop – we’d presume the former, but the post on Tanith implies the latter (“e.g. 10,000 mp3s on the DJ laptop would [require] 1,300 Euros”).

The gist of it, as far as can be made out via Chrome translation, is that venues will pay an additional 30% surcharge on top of the already jacked-up fees if the featured artist uses a laptop. This fee can be waived, however, in exchange for a per track levy. According to the Tanithblog, GEMA is charging a "duplication" fee for each MP3. MP3s under five minutes in length are assessed a 13-cent per track fee. Each additional minute brings with it a 20% increase in price.

It's unclear at this point whether GEMA is assessing this fee for each track played or each track on the hard drive. Considering its "difficulty" with accurately tracking music played, I would assume GEMA will opt for a levy on the contents of the drive, which will be less "onerous" and result in larger fee assessments. If this new fee is levied only on the tracks actually played, this means GEMA has access to actual tracks used during the event, and therefore should charge only for covered artists. But GEMA won't do that. Instead, it will go for whichever fee is larger and easier to assess. Considering 10,000 tracks is probably "traveling light" for any respected club DJ, a 1,300 Euro assessment is probably on the low end.

This is stupid, short-sighted and completely GEMA-like, the last of which is probably the greatest insult of all. Supposedly, this additional "laptop surcharge" was negotiated by representatives of the nightclub industry itself, giving the appearance that GEMA is actually working with club owners to work out mutually beneficial licensing. FACT points out that, in fact, this is just business as usual for the PRO megathug. (The info sheet from DDU and DDO is available here.)

The proposal has reportedly been negotiated with the German Discotheques and Nightclubs unions (DDU and DDO). Dean Driscoll, of German-based promotions company Tailored Communication, explained on Twitter this morning that these unions are “sub-branches of GEMA populated solely by GEMA members.”

It's a rigged game, with GEMA selling out the artists it represents by systematically running venues into the ground. This latest fee is another example of its outsized sense of entitlement and zealous pursuit of every possible revenue stream. The audacity of leveraging a new fee simply because of the technology involved has nothing to do with helping its artists and everything to do with cutting itself in on the ongoing migration of DJs to laptop-driven live sets.

As some commenters at FACT point out, this sort of per-MP3 fee has already been deployed in Hungary and Poland, so it's not the first time DJs have been charged for the contents of their laptops. Another commenter notes that Hungary's version is a per file fee, so if GEMA follows suit, DJs will be charged for every music file on their hard drive (unplayed or not) along with files on removable drives and burned CDs. There's no indication that the PROs assessing this MP3 surcharge have any interest in determining if the tracks they're collecting on are actually under their purview.

In the real world, this is called running a protection racket. Out in the PRO world, it's just business as usual. 

Filed Under: djs, germany, per mp3 fee
Companies: gema

Permission Culture And The Automated Diminishment Of Fair Use

from the tragic-losses dept

The very point of fair use is that it's supposed to allow for creativity without permission. Even in a society dominated by copyright, at least our courts and regulators recognized the need for creativity built (in part) on what came before, without having to go through the tollbooths of requiring permission to create. However, some recent events have shown how the DMCA and other attempts to beef up copyright law are trying to erode the very notion of fair use without permission.

SinkDeep alerts us to the news that a bunch of DJs are upset after discovering that SoundCloud took down a bunch of the mixes they had hosted on the service. If you're not familiar with SoundCloud, in the last few years, it has become one of the most popular tools for musicians and DJs to host their music. It offers a really nice toolset for anyone looking to promote their music online (and for others to build apps on top of it). SoundCloud has also been a pretty big supporter of open culture, supporting things like Creative Commons along the way.

I contacted SoundCloud to find out what was going on, and the response was pretty much as I expected. Due to the nature of the copyright world we live in today, the company recently implemented a fingerprinting-type technology, similar to those used by YouTube (ContentID) and MySpace (Audible Magic), which lets copyright holders designate their own works, and which SoundCloud then automatically blocks. While the original link above "blames" SoundCloud for becoming a "walled garden," that's not really fair nor accurate. The real problem is the nature of our copyright laws today, that assume infringement over fair use. As we've discussed before, copyright law is effectively broken when it sets up fair use as a defense, rather than a proactive right. Fair use should be seen as the default until proven otherwise, if fair use is really (as is claimed) designed to be a pressure valve on copyright law to allow free speech.

Unfortunately, the industry has pushed back on this notion to a huge level. The very crux of the YouTube-Viacom legal fight is really over this issue. As many have noted, in the specifics of the lawsuit, Viacom basically notes that it has no problem with YouTube starting with the exact date that it implemented its ContentID program. In Viacom's (and much of the entertainment industry's) interpretation, the DMCA requires such filters. The likely reason that smaller companies like SoundCloud are now implementing filters as well is that they know there's a half decent chance that the eventual outcome of lawsuits like the Viacom/YouTube fight will mean that a company is required by law to have such things in place.

But, of course, the problem with all of this is that it goes back to creating permission culture, rather than a culture where people freely create. You won't be able to use these popular or useful tools to build on the works of others -- which, contrary to the claims of today's copyright defenders, is a key component in almost all creativity you see out there -- without first getting permission. The systems will try to block it, until you make your case that something is fair use -- though many will just not bother. This is unfortunate, and really shuts down a major opening for creativity these days. If you look at the history of music, nearly all popular music today is built on earlier works, without first getting permission. It would be a terrible situation if we end up shutting off that form of creativity by requiring permission for everyone first.

The issue isn't to blame the tools providers for implementing such features, but to look more deeply at the state of copyright law today, where we're increasingly suffocating the real purpose of fair use, which was to allow such creativity, without first requiring permission. These filters don't understand fair use, so they assume anything that matches is infringement, and because of that, we all suffer.

Filed Under: copyright, creativity, culture, djs, fair use, filters, mixtapes, remix
Companies: soundcloud, youtube

After Putting Mixtape Creators In Jail, Universal Realizes It Needs Mixtapes

from the produce-your-own-crappy-ones dept

Remember back in January, when a SWAT team, at the direction of RIAA officials, raided the studio of a well known DJ and mixtape artist in Atlanta? This seemed like quite the overreaction to a system that had been known for its successful promotion of many RIAA-backed artists. However, after the DJs were arrested, the entire market was on notice and many mixtapes stopped showing up in the marketplace. In other words, many new acts lost a valuable channel for promotions. So what's a record label like Universal Music to do? Apparently start making its own mixtapes with some DJ that no one's ever heard of. Despite throwing the competition in jail, it seems that this attempt to coopt the mixtape space isn't working very well. The first Universal-backed mixtape has sold less than 6,000 copies since being released over a month ago and many record stores have very little interest in carrying it. Next time, perhaps the RIAA folks will ask the record labels they represent before throwing one of their biggest promoters in jail.

Filed Under: djs, mixtapes, record stores, riaa
Companies: riaa, universal music