sambo 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Playing Music In A Nightclub Just Got Ridiculously More Expensive In Australia

    sambo ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2009 @ 11:04pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: it all stinks

    Yes once again anonymous coward is correct. Any idiot can string a few samples together and make crap. It's not that hard nor is it creative.

    Seemes to work pretty well for all those hip-hop & R&B producers who make a bucket.

    Not really all that different to 1 bass, 1 electric guitar, 1 drums, 1 singer, a few basic chords then verse chours verse chorus verse chorus chorus....

    If you want to hear how wrong you are just go to beatport.com. All this is legit and legal. Sure theres some boring stuff in here but to claim that it's all the same, just a few mixed samples and not creative?

  • On the post: Playing Music In A Nightclub Just Got Ridiculously More Expensive In Australia

    sambo ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2009 @ 03:36pm

    Re: Re: it all stinks

    "Yeah, most of what comes from DJs is let's take this sample here and get a girl to sing "oh yeah sexy baby do me baby " over it and we will call it original."

    Oh yeah. You obviously don't listen to a lot of dance music do you.

  • On the post: Playing Music In A Nightclub Just Got Ridiculously More Expensive In Australia

    sambo ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2009 @ 03:34pm

    Re: Re: it all stinks

    I see you point about capacity but all this does it just eat into what little profits that are available for the venes which means if they stay open they have to employ less staff. Not being able to hire dj's will give less people a reason to attend a particualr nightclub.

    Think about this then. the above mentioned venue can hire a DJ/producer who play nothing but their own music all night. They have to pay the artist, all their staff and then another $1000 to PPCA. Bar staff get paid on average between $17-20 AUD per hour.

    There goes 3 staff.

    How is that fair?

  • On the post: Playing Music In A Nightclub Just Got Ridiculously More Expensive In Australia

    sambo ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2009 @ 03:19pm

    it all stinks

    I have been watching this since it was announced some time ago. While you could say that there may be some limited scope for local artists, the continous nature of DJ mixing and the need to constantly play new music - which this rise targets means that it will practically kill this off in most venues. How is that going to help the music industry?

    This raise was fought for with the aid of some aging (and wealthy) rock-stars who were claiming the same old 'poor old musician' theme often mentioned on Techdirt.

    Apart from the fact that most of the music that is played comes from small indepedent EU & US and local labels so they have NO right to claim these funds, it's on their website that they keep 90% of fees that belong to overseas artists - pretty much all of it. As per their counterparts elsewhere in the world, they just pressure venues to pay no matter what and the burden of proof is back on the venue if they claim that they don't play music that is not licensed by them. Their basic argument 'We have so many labels it's not possible for us to be able to check them all so you must be playing some of our music'

    The most troubling part of the ruling is that venues now have to pay a license fee for every night they are open of about $1 per approved license capacity regardless of actual. So basically a venue that has a capacity of 1000 people must now pay $1000 per night they want to open, even if there are only 5 people in the actual club.

    The non-commercial nature of many dance music styles means that most if not all is relased on the independent labels. The 4 big labels have done little or nothiing to support the house and techno scenes over the years .The digital nature of both the production and now almost exlcusively digital distribution of electronic music now allows many artists to create their own 'record' labels.

    This is most insensible and disgraceful money grab by an 'not for profit'institution (whose 4 major shareholders are the big 4 music labels) which really is just an attempt to extort money from dance music venues.

    Production is a natural step for many DJ's. People who play the music constantly often have many good ideas. No DJ's = less producers.

    How is that going to help anybody?

  • On the post: Australian Health Club Chain Fights 3000% Hike In Music Royalties

    sambo ( profile ), 12 Nov, 2008 @ 09:41pm

    I am from Australia and they have just done the same thing to the nightclub & bar industry.

    The whole outfit stinks as they are a 'not for proft' organisation whose main stakeholders are unsurprisingly, the 4 big record labels.

    Any decision to increase fees by the PPCA automatically increases the bottom line for the big four and has notning to do with getting more for the artists.

    The issue that they took up for the club and bar scene realtes specifically for dj's. The old rate was 70C per person per night. The new increase: $1 AUD per night based on the capacity of the venuew, REGARDLESS of how many patrons actually attend.

    A bar with a 100 person license therefore has to pay $100 per night, even if ther are only 3 people there.

    MMM, that sounds fair doesn't it.

    What really stinks about all of this is that the music played by dj's that they are collecting supposedly on behalf of the musicians for, at least 90% comes from overseas independent record labels who have nothing to do with the big 4. The sweetner being that the PPCA gets to keep 90% of the royalty fee for overseas released music, this then gets distributed to the major stakeholders who are of course, the big 4!

    In the electronic music scene due to the non-commercial nature of much of the music have always had rely on industry specific independent labels to distribute there music. The big 4 labels would not touch most of the music played in many clubs and themselves have done little to nothing to advance the electronic music scene.

    So in simple terms, they are stealing money off the clubs and giving it to themselves.

  • On the post: Court Says CD-ROMs Of Magazine Archives Don't Violate Copyrights Of Article Authors

    sambo ( profile ), 02 Jul, 2008 @ 03:45pm

    Seems pretty absurd.

    They should jsut archive the magazine on the CD-ROM as a PDF.

    Not too hard to search then.

  • On the post: Irritating Your Customers Is Almost Never A Good Business Strategy

    sambo ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2007 @ 02:51pm

    ditto - I have about 25 & growing invitations to crap.

    I have turned off all my email alerts, it's the only way to stay sane.

    PS. love the Techdirt full text feeds!

  • On the post: Radiohead's Marketing Ploy Not A Stunt; Just Good Business

    sambo ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2007 @ 05:29pm

    & they have made a packet

    I also have read that it has been a huge success.

    All up already they have made over $10mill & apparently if they had done this via the traditional record label distribution then they would have had to sell 10 times the volume to make the same amount of money.

    I thought that according the RIAA the only way for artists to profit was through DRM?

  • On the post: What Would Happen To Fanboys Remaking Raiders Of The Lost Ark Today?

    sambo ( profile ), 20 May, 2007 @ 06:07pm

    In answer to the question why the kids would face jail now, that's easy - The U.S is the land of the free of course.

    I actually saw something in these guys a few years ago & it even ended up with them meeting Spielberg - who loved it.

  • On the post: Trademark Law Spinning Out Of Control

    sambo ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2007 @ 09:22pm

    World gone crazy

    Reminds me of a recent issues here in Australia where the UK confectionary giant Cadbury Scweppes tried to trademark the colour purple.

    Basically their flagship chocolate bar comes in purple wrapper so they made moves to prevent any other chocolate or confection manufacturer using any purple on their wrappers, regardless of how long the competitors products had been on the market

    A bit like the RIAA they sent out a stack of cease & desist letters to other companies (one being Nestle) claiming that they had the sole rights to the colour purple when in reality no such trademark had actually been granted.

    Again like the RIAA they just assumed that as they were so big that nobody would challenge the legality of their claim.

    Unlucky for them a few companies did. The courts here in OZ quite sensibly struck down Cadbury's claim that they could trademark something as general as a colour.

    End result they allowed them to trademark 2 shades only.
    The colour purple is safe for now.

    Given how things seem to be going with the judicial system in the U.S. I wonder if the decision would have been the same....

  • On the post: Denmark Tells ISP It Must Block Allofmp3.com

    sambo ( profile ), 26 Oct, 2006 @ 09:07pm

    On tryin to attack the ISP - Just a thought that hit me here about the entertainment industrys tactics & how there might be some other applications out there in the real world.

    For a start let's make all gun manufacturers (& while we are at it, gun shops, dept stores that sell guns etc) liable for all & any crimes that are committed by people that use those arms!

    And, while we are at it, lets make all those schools unfortunate enough to have a had some psycho start taking pot shots at students liable as well. After all, it's obvious to anybody (in the entertainment industry at least) that if the schools did not provide the location for the shooting obviously would not have happened.

    I can't see that discussion going very far. What make the RIAA & other such bodies think that their argument is any different?