And while its true someone has to pay, the band KNOWS the fee in advance, and can incorporate it into the tickets, so that a customer that clicks on a $15 ticket pays exactly that amount. As it is under most of the current systems, a band that prices its tickets at $15 has no idea what the customer pays in the end, nor does the customer until the very end of the transaction. And it seems that fees of over 50% have become the norm.
How is this going to work with venues? In cases where the band actually stands at the door and collects the cover charges, then you can exclude the venue altogether (this doesn't happen often, but I have worked some venues where they don't take any sort of cut and I have been able to pass 100% of the cover to the band).
In other cases, bands are given discounted tickets to pass out to fans. The fans still pay at the door. The venue gets the money and then turns around and either pays the band a guarantee or a percentage of sales.
In venues that handle their own tickets, there may be a fee going to the venue. With the Topspin system, is the band buying tickets from the venue and then reselling them to the fans? Or has the band contracted with the venue, paying the venue rent of the space for the evening, and then selling the tickets directly to fans for whatever price the band wants to offer?
I noticed that the Pug experiment was only for 50 tickets initially, so it looks like it's still in the trial stage right now.
Topspin is not free. The musician pays between 5% and 20% per transaction, which varies based on the price of the item being sold. In addition, the musician must also pay credit card fees and bandwidth charges.
I was wondering about this. Topspin takes a hefty fee for their services, so either they are going to be dropping their fees for ticket sales, the musicians are going to lose that much on each sale, or musicians are going to migrate to a ticketing system that won't hit them with fees.
This is what I saw. The Times article was more about the find than about copyright. So they seem to be satisfied, for the moment, with just making the music available at the museum. And if the museum is able to make money, it might be able to use that to support other activities that it is doing. It didn't say that, but I'm sure there are benefits to making money.
If you guys can get modifications in copyright laws, great. But in the meantime, the museum can use the discs to generate more traffic at the museum.
_________
National Jazz Museum Acquires Savory Collection - NYTimes.com: "Mr. Schoenberg said the museum planned to make as much as possible of the Savory collection publicly available at its Harlem home and eventually online. But the copyright status of the recorded material is complicated, which could inhibit plans to share the music. While the museum has title to Mr. Savory's discs as physical objects, the same cannot be said of the music on the discs. ...
In the meantime Mr. Pomeroy is plunging ahead. He has digitized just over 100 of the discs so far, and knows that additional challenges - and delights - await him.
'Every one of these discs is an unexpected discovery,' he said. 'It's an education for me. I can hardly wait to transfer some of this stuff because I am so eager to hear it, to find out what's there and solve all the mysteries that are there.'"
There's a chance that they'd hear zero songs they represent, and still collect from this museum...
Yes, that is how they tend work. I'm not defending them. Just saying that if you pay the PROs, you should be in the clear in terms of playing recordings at the museum because that's the sort of license they provide.
In other words, not being able to find the copyright holders for these recordings shouldn't prevent you from being able to play them in public.
The vast majority of this music wouldn't be covered by these PRO's, for the simple reason that these PRO's didn't exist yet.
Turns out ASCAP did exist before these recordings were made. Remember ASCAP is a songwriting association, not a recording association.
History of ASCAP: Founded February 13, 1914:
"The Birth of ASCAP (1914)
On February 13, 1914, at the Hotel Claridge in New York City, a group of prominent, visionary music creators founded The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. For songwriters and composers, this monumental event would forever change music history."
So, they would need to track down and pay statutory rates to every songwriter - and that's the problem.
Remember that the PROS collect on behalf of songwriters, so if these songs are in ASCAP/BMI/SESAC registry, they would be covered.
And if they aren't, well no one else is collecting on behalf of songwriters whose songs are played in venues. There are no compulsory rates for performance royalties, only mechanical royalties.
No one collects performance royalties from venues on behalf of those who made the recordings in the US so the fact that these are old recordings doesn't factor into what the PROs do.
So what would likely happen is that ASCAP/BMI/SESAC would hear at least a few songs they represent, they would collect from the museum, and that would be that.
Here's more about Savoy from the article. Apparently he had no intention of sharing the collection.
"After making the recordings, Mr. Savory, who had an eccentric, secretive streak, zealously guarded access to his collection, allowing only a few select tracks by his friend Benny Goodman to be released commercially. When he died in 2004, Eugene Desavouret, a son who lives in Illinois, salvaged the discs, which were moldering in crates; this year he sold the collection to the museum, whose executive director, Loren Schoenberg, transported the boxes to New York City in a rental truck."
Let's say the museum doesn't really want to make copies, and it's easier to publicly say that copyright prevents them from doing so than to say, "Our business plan is for you to come here to listen to them."
And let's say the museum announces, "We want to recreate the experience of listening to jazz on the radio in a 1930s home, so we feel the best way to present this material is for you to come to our museum and listen in as close a manner as we can duplicate to the original experience."
And the museum could also say, "William Savoy did not make these recordings widely available, so we plan to do the same. If you want to hear them, come to the museum."
There are many reasons why the museum might want to not release these recordings. If you guys want to call this artificial scarcity, that's fine by me. But the net result is that there are no copies and the museum could use this to its advantage.
Um. No. You are confusing (again) artificial scarcity with real scarcities.
No, I'm not. If you create a limited edition set of t-shirts, you have chosen to limit the number of available.
If you sell tickets to an event, you have chosen to limit the availability of tickets, either by setting a very high price, or by choosing a venue that will only hold a certain number of people.
Right now there aren't multiple copies of these recordings, so the museum could choose not to make them and instead sell the physical necessity of coming to the museum as its product. Sufjan Stevens sold a song to a fan and the only way you can hear that song is to go to the fan's house. The fan intentionally wants to make listening to the song an "event."
There's a movement called the "Theater of One" where you only allow one person at a time see a show. If you only allow a limited number of people to hear these recordings, it's the same thing.
A better solution is to push for better orphan works legislation that protects the museum from lawsuits or demands for damages if any rights holders come knocking.
That may be a better solution, but one that isn't going to happen anytime soon. So I'm suggesting something that could be done in the meantime and be perfectly legal.
I do believe, however, that you will see more examples of music that can be only heard if you are in a specific location. That's the very essence of selling scarcity.
They can't do that ether, I'd be considered a performance and a commercial one at that.
I believe they can do that. They would need to pay ASCAP/BMI/SESAC if those organizations came calling, but playing recorded music in your venue is permitted by anyone as long as the performance licensing organizations are paid.
Seems like this is a perfect example of using scarcity to your advantage. If you can't put the recordings online, make people come to the museum to listen to them. Even if you don't charge admission, you can have a snack bar or restaurant and make some money that way.
I think you are going to see more examples of providing music that you can only hear when you are in a specific location. That's a way to make the listening experience special.
Turn listening to this jazz collection into a pilgrimage.
Where do non-transferrable memberships or tickets fit in?
In some cases contracts say that if you are a member of a club or buy a plane ticket, you can't let someone else use it. So even if you aren't using the ticket or not using the club that day, you can't pass it along to someone else.
That doesn't seem to fit into the concept that if it is in my possession, I should be able to do whatever I want with it.
I haven't seen discussions on Techdirt about that. Are people as passionate about that as abolishing IP protection?
Payola schemes for radio coverage vs. the Internet. And you don't think anything has changed? :::sigh::: You are always, always an idiot.
Grateful Dead, String Cheese Incident, Phish, Yonder Mountain, etc.
The jamband scene has been driven by bands that have toured and done very well without radio. That's been my model in music for as long as I have been involved.
I love it when you call me an idiot. Respect is wonderful, isn't it?
I'm just saying that perhaps you're making a mountain out of a molehill, at least as far as pro artists are concerned.
Okay, here's where we agree. Music will continue to advance.
Where we may disagree is that you make reference to professional musicians and I'm expanding the term to suggest that the future talent in music will be the developers who create the tools to make music.
Instead of a musician creating music that an audience listens to, the developer creates the hardware/software that responds to each person using it to create music.
So the new "musician" is not physically present in the room. And he/she doesn't create anything where he/she is identified as the composer or performer. But he/she is present, in a sense, every time a person or family gets out that music device and does something with it in the living room.
So instead of people purchasing a prerecorded disc that they listen to on a music player, they purchase a magic music box that can play whatever they imagine. The "new" musician will be the facilitator.
The new rock stars will be people like Ge Wang.
Ge Wang | Bio: "Concurrently, Ge is the Co-founder, CTO, and Chief Creative Officer of Smule, a startup company exploring interactive sonic media on the iPhone. Smule serves as a unique platform for research and development combining the state-of-the-art in computer music research with the potential to bring its visions to a wide population. Ge is the designer of Ocarina and Leaf Trombone: World Stage for the iPhone, and Magic Piano for the iPad. These expressive social musical instruments currently enable over two millions users to expressively play and share music with one another around the world.
Overall, Ge's mission is to deeply explore new ways with which people think, do, and interact through sound, technology, and music."
Having a few people hit it big and the rest losing out is a pretty neat description of our economic system.
True. It's a "winner take all" approach and some say it's more the case than ever now.
However, when we send kids to college, the idea is that although most won't become millionaires, presumably a good college education will enable them to get decent jobs. So there is supposed to be a positive result for everyone who goes.
In sports, the odds are miniscule that high school athletes will end up with professional sports careers. Some understand that from the beginning, and others only grasp it when their careers stall. But there comes a time when most people accept that they are recreational athletes.
In stuff like ballet, most little girls who take it are not expected to become professional dancers. It's just part of a well-rounded education they parents expose them to.
Music, for some reason, seems to attract a lot of people who do think they will be able to make a living at it (and not by having to give lessons or play weddings).
It might be that a lot of popular musicians don't seem to be that talented so everyone assumes they can do it too.
Or that we only hear about the overnight successes.
Or the fact that unlike sports, music doesn't have clear cut definitions of what is good. So if you try to tell a musician that his music isn't that great, he often thinks you're the problem, not him.
Having been exposed to people in a lot of different fields (writing, business, sports, music), I find musicians to be the hardest to coach and the most likely to believe they are God's gift to the world. That's one reason I try to interject a dose of reality into discussions like this. Everyone needs to understand just how many other people want to do exactly what you want to do. YouTube and MySpace are two indications of how many people will upload videos and MP3s of themselves performing. There are millions of people hoping to be noticed.
On the upside, I think this is why free or low-cost, easy-to-use tools that let everyone play rock star will find a market. People will be very pleased with themselves if they create something that can be shared online or emailed to friends.
On the post: Artists Realizing It's Time To Offer Cheaper Concert Tickets Directly, And To Get Rid Of Annoying Fees
Re:
How is this going to work with venues? In cases where the band actually stands at the door and collects the cover charges, then you can exclude the venue altogether (this doesn't happen often, but I have worked some venues where they don't take any sort of cut and I have been able to pass 100% of the cover to the band).
In other cases, bands are given discounted tickets to pass out to fans. The fans still pay at the door. The venue gets the money and then turns around and either pays the band a guarantee or a percentage of sales.
In venues that handle their own tickets, there may be a fee going to the venue. With the Topspin system, is the band buying tickets from the venue and then reselling them to the fans? Or has the band contracted with the venue, paying the venue rent of the space for the evening, and then selling the tickets directly to fans for whatever price the band wants to offer?
I noticed that the Pug experiment was only for 50 tickets initially, so it looks like it's still in the trial stage right now.
On the post: Artists Realizing It's Time To Offer Cheaper Concert Tickets Directly, And To Get Rid Of Annoying Fees
Re: Six of one and half a dozen of the other
I was wondering about this. Topspin takes a hefty fee for their services, so either they are going to be dropping their fees for ticket sales, the musicians are going to lose that much on each sale, or musicians are going to migrate to a ticketing system that won't hit them with fees.
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: What am I missing here?
If you guys can get modifications in copyright laws, great. But in the meantime, the museum can use the discs to generate more traffic at the museum.
_________
National Jazz Museum Acquires Savory Collection - NYTimes.com: "Mr. Schoenberg said the museum planned to make as much as possible of the Savory collection publicly available at its Harlem home and eventually online. But the copyright status of the recorded material is complicated, which could inhibit plans to share the music. While the museum has title to Mr. Savory's discs as physical objects, the same cannot be said of the music on the discs. ...
In the meantime Mr. Pomeroy is plunging ahead. He has digitized just over 100 of the discs so far, and knows that additional challenges - and delights - await him.
'Every one of these discs is an unexpected discovery,' he said. 'It's an education for me. I can hardly wait to transfer some of this stuff because I am so eager to hear it, to find out what's there and solve all the mysteries that are there.'"
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
Yes, that is how they tend work. I'm not defending them. Just saying that if you pay the PROs, you should be in the clear in terms of playing recordings at the museum because that's the sort of license they provide.
In other words, not being able to find the copyright holders for these recordings shouldn't prevent you from being able to play them in public.
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
Turns out ASCAP did exist before these recordings were made. Remember ASCAP is a songwriting association, not a recording association.
History of ASCAP: Founded February 13, 1914:
"The Birth of ASCAP (1914)
On February 13, 1914, at the Hotel Claridge in New York City, a group of prominent, visionary music creators founded The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. For songwriters and composers, this monumental event would forever change music history."
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
Remember that the PROS collect on behalf of songwriters, so if these songs are in ASCAP/BMI/SESAC registry, they would be covered.
And if they aren't, well no one else is collecting on behalf of songwriters whose songs are played in venues. There are no compulsory rates for performance royalties, only mechanical royalties.
No one collects performance royalties from venues on behalf of those who made the recordings in the US so the fact that these are old recordings doesn't factor into what the PROs do.
So what would likely happen is that ASCAP/BMI/SESAC would hear at least a few songs they represent, they would collect from the museum, and that would be that.
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
Here's more about Savoy from the article. Apparently he had no intention of sharing the collection.
"After making the recordings, Mr. Savory, who had an eccentric, secretive streak, zealously guarded access to his collection, allowing only a few select tracks by his friend Benny Goodman to be released commercially. When he died in 2004, Eugene Desavouret, a son who lives in Illinois, salvaged the discs, which were moldering in crates; this year he sold the collection to the museum, whose executive director, Loren Schoenberg, transported the boxes to New York City in a rental truck."
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
Let's say the museum doesn't really want to make copies, and it's easier to publicly say that copyright prevents them from doing so than to say, "Our business plan is for you to come here to listen to them."
And let's say the museum announces, "We want to recreate the experience of listening to jazz on the radio in a 1930s home, so we feel the best way to present this material is for you to come to our museum and listen in as close a manner as we can duplicate to the original experience."
And the museum could also say, "William Savoy did not make these recordings widely available, so we plan to do the same. If you want to hear them, come to the museum."
There are many reasons why the museum might want to not release these recordings. If you guys want to call this artificial scarcity, that's fine by me. But the net result is that there are no copies and the museum could use this to its advantage.
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
Theatre for One
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
Not-So-Easy Listening: It Takes a Trek to Hear This Track - WSJ.com
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
No, I'm not. If you create a limited edition set of t-shirts, you have chosen to limit the number of available.
If you sell tickets to an event, you have chosen to limit the availability of tickets, either by setting a very high price, or by choosing a venue that will only hold a certain number of people.
Right now there aren't multiple copies of these recordings, so the museum could choose not to make them and instead sell the physical necessity of coming to the museum as its product. Sufjan Stevens sold a song to a fan and the only way you can hear that song is to go to the fan's house. The fan intentionally wants to make listening to the song an "event."
There's a movement called the "Theater of One" where you only allow one person at a time see a show. If you only allow a limited number of people to hear these recordings, it's the same thing.
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
I have no idea what they would charge. Presumably these and similar places have already worked something out.
Experience Music Project
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
Southern American Music Museum (SAMM)
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
That may be a better solution, but one that isn't going to happen anytime soon. So I'm suggesting something that could be done in the meantime and be perfectly legal.
I do believe, however, that you will see more examples of music that can be only heard if you are in a specific location. That's the very essence of selling scarcity.
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Re: Re: Leverage the scarcity
I believe they can do that. They would need to pay ASCAP/BMI/SESAC if those organizations came calling, but playing recorded music in your venue is permitted by anyone as long as the performance licensing organizations are paid.
On the post: Treasure Trove Of Jazz To Be Blocked, Perhaps Forever, Thanks To Copyright
Leverage the scarcity
I think you are going to see more examples of providing music that you can only hear when you are in a specific location. That's a way to make the listening experience special.
Turn listening to this jazz collection into a pilgrimage.
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I'm for freedom of choice
In some cases contracts say that if you are a member of a club or buy a plane ticket, you can't let someone else use it. So even if you aren't using the ticket or not using the club that day, you can't pass it along to someone else.
That doesn't seem to fit into the concept that if it is in my possession, I should be able to do whatever I want with it.
I haven't seen discussions on Techdirt about that. Are people as passionate about that as abolishing IP protection?
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Grateful Dead, String Cheese Incident, Phish, Yonder Mountain, etc.
The jamband scene has been driven by bands that have toured and done very well without radio. That's been my model in music for as long as I have been involved.
I love it when you call me an idiot. Respect is wonderful, isn't it?
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nitpicking
Okay, here's where we agree. Music will continue to advance.
Where we may disagree is that you make reference to professional musicians and I'm expanding the term to suggest that the future talent in music will be the developers who create the tools to make music.
Instead of a musician creating music that an audience listens to, the developer creates the hardware/software that responds to each person using it to create music.
So the new "musician" is not physically present in the room. And he/she doesn't create anything where he/she is identified as the composer or performer. But he/she is present, in a sense, every time a person or family gets out that music device and does something with it in the living room.
So instead of people purchasing a prerecorded disc that they listen to on a music player, they purchase a magic music box that can play whatever they imagine. The "new" musician will be the facilitator.
The new rock stars will be people like Ge Wang.
Ge Wang | Bio: "Concurrently, Ge is the Co-founder, CTO, and Chief Creative Officer of Smule, a startup company exploring interactive sonic media on the iPhone. Smule serves as a unique platform for research and development combining the state-of-the-art in computer music research with the potential to bring its visions to a wide population. Ge is the designer of Ocarina and Leaf Trombone: World Stage for the iPhone, and Magic Piano for the iPad. These expressive social musical instruments currently enable over two millions users to expressively play and share music with one another around the world.
Overall, Ge's mission is to deeply explore new ways with which people think, do, and interact through sound, technology, and music."
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
Re: The Crux of the Matter
True. It's a "winner take all" approach and some say it's more the case than ever now.
However, when we send kids to college, the idea is that although most won't become millionaires, presumably a good college education will enable them to get decent jobs. So there is supposed to be a positive result for everyone who goes.
In sports, the odds are miniscule that high school athletes will end up with professional sports careers. Some understand that from the beginning, and others only grasp it when their careers stall. But there comes a time when most people accept that they are recreational athletes.
In stuff like ballet, most little girls who take it are not expected to become professional dancers. It's just part of a well-rounded education they parents expose them to.
Music, for some reason, seems to attract a lot of people who do think they will be able to make a living at it (and not by having to give lessons or play weddings).
It might be that a lot of popular musicians don't seem to be that talented so everyone assumes they can do it too.
Or that we only hear about the overnight successes.
Or the fact that unlike sports, music doesn't have clear cut definitions of what is good. So if you try to tell a musician that his music isn't that great, he often thinks you're the problem, not him.
Having been exposed to people in a lot of different fields (writing, business, sports, music), I find musicians to be the hardest to coach and the most likely to believe they are God's gift to the world. That's one reason I try to interject a dose of reality into discussions like this. Everyone needs to understand just how many other people want to do exactly what you want to do. YouTube and MySpace are two indications of how many people will upload videos and MP3s of themselves performing. There are millions of people hoping to be noticed.
On the upside, I think this is why free or low-cost, easy-to-use tools that let everyone play rock star will find a market. People will be very pleased with themselves if they create something that can be shared online or emailed to friends.
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