I was invited to participate in a group blogging event hosted by Musicianwages.com, the title of which is “Dear 1999: If you could go back to 1999 and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?”. Here’s what I would tell myself, circa 1999:
You gotta start practicing and playing out asap! You can’t expect to get better when you’re not working on it every day and not playing in front of a crowd. It’s really not that hard and you have tons of friends who come see you play. Figure it out! You’ve got the talent, you’ve got the equipment (and while I’m at, quit buying stuff on credit cards!!!), just get off your a$$ and do it! Quit making excuses and quit waiting to magically become Jeff Buckley overnight. Jeff didn’t get as good as he was by pretending and dreaming, he played and played, put everything on the line, and then played some more. You’re in the perfect position to make it happen, right now!
This looks like a fascinating documentary that PBS is airing on January 19th, and it’s further proof that our current system of copyright is broken. We need to return to a constitutional copyright. The one that recognizes that copyright is a balance between the good of the public and the rights holder, but primarily for the good of the public. We need to get rid of this ridiculous “lifetime + 70 years” and return to a sensible 28 years. Let’s face it, if you can’t figure out a way to make money from your work in 28 years, you’re probably not going to figure it out, so let it go. If you do figure it out, there’s little to stop you from continuing to make money from it for the rest of your life. Plus, you should be saving some of that money (if you had a hit) and you should be creating more hits so you won’t be a pauper in your “golden years”.
People will argue that creators (musicians, authors, etc) will still have popular works after those 28 years (case in point: “I Feel Good” by James Brown) and they should be allowed to profit from them as long as they can (read: infinity). If this creator is good enough to have one popular work, shouldn’t we expect them to create more? Wouldn’t that be better for them and the public? But what about the work that would then be released to the public domain, the creator wouldn’t be able to profit from that any more, since people could get it for free. Really? So you couldn’t re-master it and put out a higher quality version than the original you did 28 years ago? And you think people wouldn’t pay for that difference, especially coming directly from the source and supporting your career?
The reason we have our current disaster of a copyright system is due to Disney. The squeaky-clean mouse peddler copyrighted its first iteration of Mickey Mouse in the 1928 movie Steamboat Willie. Once Walt realized Mickey was his cash cow…er, mouse…he began to protect it in every way possible, including manipulating Congress to extend copyrights so Mickey Mouse for forever be the property Disney Inc.
While I understand the desire to protect what makes you money, the purpose of copyright was to give the copyright holder a limited, government-protected period of time when they exclusively manipulate their work for profit, then it would be released to the public domain and anyone could use it as they wished. This way, the creator gets to make money from creating, they get credit for their creation, they are forced to create more due to the “limited” time, which in turn promotes the “useful arts” and enhances the public good through the creator’s creations.
Without copyrights altogether, it would be a free-for-all! The creator wouldn’t have any incentive to work, since there wouldn’t be any guarantee they could get paid for their work and/or get credit for it. The public might get enhanced by creators’ creations, but the creators wouldn’t have any motivation to create, so creating would become a hobbyist industry and the public would be the losers since they wouldn’t have the benefit of well-done art created by people who can concentrate their time and effort on it.
Copyright systems work because of that balance. Let the creators make some money, then give it over for public use. The creator gets paid and gets credit, the public gets a steady supply of art, everyone wins. The current system has been skewed so far to the creator’s side of the equation that the public no longer gets their due. Thus, dead grandmothers and children getting sued for “infringing copyrights” and works being protected long past any usefulness of the protection or the art.
I could go on for days about this, and I’m sure I’ll write more. A sensible, constitutional copyright is desperately needed in the US, I hope I live long enough to see it come about. Until then, check out this trailer for “Copyright Criminals“:
I know the feeling. Someone does you wrong and you feel the need to get back at them. Sometimes our natural instinct is some kind of violent response, like chopping off their fingers for excessive tapping, and sometimes it’s more subtle like the cold shoulder. Earlier this week, when the Toronto Star announced they were going to outsource 100 editing jobs, one editor got creative and constructive with his revenge. He decided to edit the memo, with the typical journalistic editing style. You can see the edited memo below.
Why am I bringing this up on a blog that’s either about an artist or the music business? As musicians, we are given to emotional responses, including revenge. Instead of getting upset and reacting violently or emotional, pour that energy into your creative work. That’s where most of the great music in the 60’s came from: creative and constructive revenge against the powers in charge at the time.
I saw this video on TwoGrooves.com and had to share it. Bobby McFerrin, yes the “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” guy demonstrates how the audience at the World Science Festival just *knows* the pentatonic scale. This is fun and amazing to watch. Check this out:
I’ve been hearing for months about this music service in Europe called Spotify and how it’s simply amazing. They say it will be the death of the MP3. They say it will rival iTunes. They’ve said that about alot of stuff and none of it came true.
However, I just saw the demo video of the Spotify iPhone app and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. I can see how this will make buying songs obsolete. Why would you store songs on your iPhone when you could just stream them, anywhere, anytime, nearly instantly? Plus, you’re not limited to the songs you own, you get all six million+ songs in their catalog. That doesn’t even mention the fact that you can sync it with your iPhone to play them when you’re not connected to the Internet. I know Elliot Van Buskirk at Wired really likes it. Am I a new believer? Yep, call me converted!
Recent news says that Spotify is coming to the US, but I’m sure our greedy labels and the RIAA will find a way to screw it up and/or make it ridiculously expensive. Let’s also hope that Apple doesn’t get a case of the stupids and reject the app.
Check out this video. You’ll be blown away. I’m thinking this is exactly what The Future of Music described. This IS the future of music. If you’re an artist, you gotta find a way to get your stuff onto Spotify!
When you’re getting people’s attention at a show, sometimes you have to play other people’s stuff. I recently discovered this version of AC/DC’s “Back in Black” by Irish artist, Foy Vance, and it’s pretty amazing!
But it still isn’t my favorite. That has to go to one of my all-time favorite artists, Matt Mahaffey, doing a one-man-band version in LA:
One of the many music blogs I read is written by a guy named Bob Lefsetz. His rather insightful commentary about the state of the music industry keeps me coming back, although he has a colorful way of phrasing things (read: potty mouth). Recently, he attended a conference in Canada and sat through a presentation by Gene Simmons of KISS. Bob, on his blog, called it an unending sales pitch by a guy who can’t can’t give back to his fans. Gene, through someone more internet savvy, responded publicly, and then the producer of the conference got the two of them on stage together. Below is the entire video of the “debate”, and I use that term loosely, since it was neither civil, nor intellectual. My favorite part is when Lefsetz totally owns Simmons by asking him what KISS’s definition of success if with their next record and Gene is speechless. It happens around 26:33. Unfortunately, most of the video is Gene making fun of Bob with low blows and refusing to be a real person. Check it out, but be warned, there are plenty of f-bombs from both sides.
Which begs the question, what is your definition of success? Since this business is changing by the day, do you think being signed with a label is success? What about having a sold out tour? What about having throngs of fans begging for autographs? What about having paparazzi follow you everywhere? What about having one of your musical heroes say they like your stuff? Bob asked this very thing a few months back and here’s the list I came up with in response:
All my income comes from music and is enough for Anna to stay home with our kids
Live debt-free & own a house
Leverage a team of people who work on my career (agent, manager, fans, etc)
Have an act I respect say they like my music
Bonuses:
Touring 6 months allows me to stay home the other 6 and work on new songs, videos, recordings, etc.
Being playing on my favorite station, Lightning 100, as “an artist who lives in Nashville”, not just on the Local Lightning Spotlight
Playing sold out shows every time I play
Having an artist I respect want to collaborate with me
I don’t really know why the news of Heath Ledger’s death last year hit me like it did. I didn’t know him. I enjoyed his work, like millions of other people. For some reason I can’t explain, I felt like I lost a friend. Maybe it’s just that a fellow young artist died. Maybe his performances connected with me on an emotional level, like how many people connect with actors. Maybe I’m just sentimental – my wife and I watched Four Feathers on our first date. Maybe I’m just THAT big of a Batman fan.
Either way, I checked out this pictorial the other day that included interviews with his friends and people that worked with him. It was pretty amazing to hear from people who actually knew him and it gives you a different view of someone you may have only heard about through tabloids.
Today’s news that Heath got an Oscar nomination is a really good one though. His portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight was just bloody brilliant. I’ve been a Batman fan since I was a kid, but I’ve never been so excited to see the bad guy come on screen as with Heath’s Joker. There’s this sense of excitement and energy that forces you to keep your eyes glued on the character so you don’t miss a thing. So, congrats, Heath. Wish you were here to enjoy it.
Here’s the way to do it. This is a promo video for Seagate hard drives, made and written by the Sniper Twins. Not only is it well written, but it’s funny and technically accurate. As a computer tech during the day, the fact that it’s accurate makes me respect the Sniper Twins even more.
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I don’t really know why the news of Heath Ledger’s death last year hit me like it did. I didn’t know him. I enjoyed his work, like millions of other people. For some reason I can’t explain, I felt like I lost a friend. Maybe it’s just that a fellow young artist died. Maybe his performances connected with me on an emotional level, like how many people connect with actors. Maybe I’m just sentimental – my wife and I watched Four Feathers on our first date. Maybe I’m just THAT big of a Batman fan.