let’s make our own godamn music.

http://www.memoryformat.com for my latest EP (free!)

i am a dunbfuckistani but at least i’m workin on it!

by the way i’ve been makin music for 34 years from top of the pops to the winter music conference, to workshopping with Boulez and Stockhausen, and i’m still out at cruddy gigs trying to do what u should do Communicate our injustice’s

drkimono

Of course, you could argue that people will simply go to illegal services, and I expect that’s true. But that hurts CC, too, because CC doesn’t work if people don’t respect the wishes of artists. If they give up and go to illegal services, they’re essentially saying the wishes of creators don’t matter.

That’s nothing against CC music, but I think CC benefits when large audiences are listening to the Internet. Then you have this great additional case to make with CC of, hey, pass my music around, remix it, sample it, use it. This is the opposite situations: providers and audiences abandoning legal media on the Internet.

It is just so easy to see the RIAA folks wringing their hands and curling their mustaches over this deal, but this scenario mostly stems from a wrongheaded and panicked attitude toward digital distribution.

This is a community of musicians, so it seems fair to ask: if the income from licensing and stores like eMusic is pithy, what does work? Digital tip jars? A Jane Siberry style honor jar? Or does the label system still have validity and can it still find a place?

And it’s not fair to say radio pays “lots” to performance rights organizations. I’m looking at ASCAP’s site at the moment, and the rates are actually pretty small. The blanket license for up to 50,000 listeners is US$450. For up to 150,000 listeners (that’s a pretty large station), you still pay only $1800. ASCAP alone, but still. And that’s per listener, whereas webcasters are paying statutory licenses per *listened song* in statutory rates *on top of* the webcasters’ performance rights blanket license — while the terrestrial radio stations pay only the performance license. ASCAP also has special rate structures for per-program licenses (e.g., news and chat that doesn’t have much music) and noncommercial stations. There’s no such equivalent on the statutory side. (BMI, SESAC I believe are similar.)

That’s comparing apples to oranges in that they’re two different types of licenses. But terrestrial is responsible for only one license, whereas webcasters are responsible for two. And when you look at something sensible like the performing rights blanket license, that only emphasizes how unrealistic the CRB’s new restrictions are on the statutory side.

I certainly don’t want to aid in the spreading of misinformation, but — as you say — there’s still an awfully huge inequity here.

The new streaming audio rules are poorly designed and are conducive to awful people regulating what gets played in this manner, but terrestrial radio is not a free operation. The comparison is a bad one to make and the facts are enough of an outrage to stand alone without the “terrestrial radio is free” argument.