Hey Mike,
The PRO's are not at fault here (for once!). It's the Music Licensing Companies. They change the song titles to avoid having to pay the songwriter fees, or to collect the publisher fees themselves. So you can't really blame the PRO's for not being able to track usage of songs in this particular case.
Can't believe I'm defending the PRO's here! haha!
We experimented with Pay What You Want for both physical and digital versions of our album. On average, people paid more for the digital version than for CD and Vinyl!
We had to put a stop to it pretty quickly because a large majority of people were ordering the vinyl version for the 1 euro minimum and we were risking losing a lot of money. We won't be doing that one again!
"Our automatic content protection system has detected that your upload "Drums_RIDE.wav" may contain content that is owned or licensed by EMI UK (Oliver Wallace, En El Tejado).
As a result, we have paused the upload of your audio for the time being.
If you are the original creator of the audio in all its parts, or have obtained all necessary licenses and permissions to upload and share this content, please contact us using the form below."
The song they're referring to is on Disney's Peter Pan soundtrack, and the Spanish version to top it off!
My track was the ride (cymbal) track from the drums of one of our songs. Just to make sure everyone understands what that means, I'm talking about the a single element of the drum track from a song. Yeah, just a guy banging on a cymbal! This track was from a remix kit we put on soundcloud so our fans could remix our songs.
The situation sorted itself out within 48 hours but it's a taste of what's to come.
Winston Churchill said "Only trust statistics you've manipulated yourself" so I'm not going to argue about how impartial our survey was. Our goal was just to get to know our fans a little better. We shared the results because we thought there was information in there that could be useful to other independent bands.
I stand by our conclusion though, and I think you may have misunderstood what we were trying to say. First of all, it wasn't "It's the relationship and not the MP3 file" it was "The value is in the relationship, not the MP3 file".
So if I follow your logic, the music starts the relationship and the quality of that relationship is what allows the artist to monetize the music. The fan values the music more because of the relationship or shows how they value the relationship by buying the music.
You'll also note that the term MP3 file was used. We're not saying the music has no value. We're saying the MP3 file has no value.
So perhaps it would have been better to conclude that it's the relationship that allows the artist to monetize their content but that wasn't as clear cut!
I'm perfectly happy to agree to disagree with you though.
Cheers,
Andy
Uniform Motion
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Andy Richards.
Re: Re: Wrong culprit
I can prove that at least one Music Licensing Company I have worked with uses this method, yes.
Wrong culprit
Hey Mike,
The PRO's are not at fault here (for once!). It's the Music Licensing Companies. They change the song titles to avoid having to pay the songwriter fees, or to collect the publisher fees themselves. So you can't really blame the PRO's for not being able to track usage of songs in this particular case.
Can't believe I'm defending the PRO's here! haha!
Cheers
Andy
PWYW gone wrong
We experimented with Pay What You Want for both physical and digital versions of our album. On average, people paid more for the digital version than for CD and Vinyl!
We had to put a stop to it pretty quickly because a large majority of people were ordering the vinyl version for the 1 euro minimum and we were risking losing a lot of money. We won't be doing that one again!
The same thing happened to me on SoundCloud.
"Our automatic content protection system has detected that your upload "Drums_RIDE.wav" may contain content that is owned or licensed by EMI UK (Oliver Wallace, En El Tejado).
As a result, we have paused the upload of your audio for the time being.
If you are the original creator of the audio in all its parts, or have obtained all necessary licenses and permissions to upload and share this content, please contact us using the form below."
The song they're referring to is on Disney's Peter Pan soundtrack, and the Spanish version to top it off!
My track was the ride (cymbal) track from the drums of one of our songs. Just to make sure everyone understands what that means, I'm talking about the a single element of the drum track from a song. Yeah, just a guy banging on a cymbal! This track was from a remix kit we put on soundcloud so our fans could remix our songs.
The situation sorted itself out within 48 hours but it's a taste of what's to come.
Winston Churchill said "Only trust statistics you've manipulated yourself" so I'm not going to argue about how impartial our survey was. Our goal was just to get to know our fans a little better. We shared the results because we thought there was information in there that could be useful to other independent bands.
I stand by our conclusion though, and I think you may have misunderstood what we were trying to say. First of all, it wasn't "It's the relationship and not the MP3 file" it was "The value is in the relationship, not the MP3 file".
So if I follow your logic, the music starts the relationship and the quality of that relationship is what allows the artist to monetize the music. The fan values the music more because of the relationship or shows how they value the relationship by buying the music.
You'll also note that the term MP3 file was used. We're not saying the music has no value. We're saying the MP3 file has no value.
So perhaps it would have been better to conclude that it's the relationship that allows the artist to monetize their content but that wasn't as clear cut!
I'm perfectly happy to agree to disagree with you though.
Cheers,
Andy
Uniform Motion