Tagged: music
A free culture organisation – bis
Today I’ve been talking with Nick De Mey (http://www.mouseover.be) about the non-profit organisation we are about to start (see previous post). As he asked some to the point questions, I was aghast that I could not answer those in a simple and clear way. These are some (frequently?) asked questions that I, mainly as an exercise for myself, try to answer as concisely as possible.
1. What is the current state of the corporation?
At this moment it’s only an idea. As I have very little experience with corporations I’m trying to inform me as well as possible. For that reason I’m trying to talk with as many people as possible in Belgium who might possibly have something to do with the music scene, free culture or marketing.
We would like to found the corporation in the winter of 2011/2012.
2. What’s your product?
The product is a toolkit to provide free artists with a viable business-model for their music. As we believe every artist is an entrepreneur, they should be able to keep their copyright and build a business around their music. We do that by providing them non-exclusive tools/support and passing the right money from the right people to the right artists.
3. Free artists?
Yes. We think artists should be free to do with their own material what they like (although that might sound obvious, it isn’t). On the other hand, consumers should be free to share your song with others, remix it and reuse it. This is for two reasons. People do share music if they like it and they won’t stop sharing because of someone not agreeing. There is no way anyone should or should be able to monitor the use of digital files without explicit approval. The second reason is cultural innovation. Look around! We live in a remix society. If you can’t see remixes of cultural work is the most exciting thing in the 21th century, then I wonder where you got your ideas from.
§1: Free culture has free artists which are free to do with their work what they want
§2: Free culture has free consumers, which are allowed to share, remix and reuse
4. Non-exclusive?
Yes. Any artist, if their art is licensed under a free license can non-exclusively join our NPO. This means they are allowed and encouraged to join other similar corporations that will help them manage their music in other ways.
5. Who are you aiming at?
Artists who are not yet well established and who need a decent kick-start. Artists who understand the web revolution and who want to join it. Artists who want their fans to support them directly. Artists who have the guts to think different.
6. Do you collect copyrights?
No. We do not collect copyrights. We only help artists, who own their copyright, with earning money in a new revolutionary, cultural approved way.
7. Transparent?
Apart from free culture and non-exclusiveness, our biggest value is transparency. As an artist you will be able to see where the money you earned comes from.
8. How will you manage these artists?
We are thinking of netlabels. All artists will be assigned to a personal netlabel-maintainer. These maintainer will have you featured on his netlabel’s website. By doing this he may also add your music to online music stores such as itunes and jamendo. When customers buy CD’s their money (at least 90%) will go to that artist.
There are plenty of other ideas (see previous post) to make non-fixed-fee income.
9. Sabam, auvibel, … What are your points on these companies?
We have nothing against those companies. We don’t see them as rivals, since our product is something completely different. Sabam however is an exclusive organisation. This means, once your rights are in their hands, you cannot reuse those rights to go to another corporation and ask for support as well. This being said, artists that want to join our cause will not be able to join Sabam or will have to leave them. That’s not our decision, on the contrary, we strongly encourage anyone to use the support of multiple services.
Auvibel however is a hard one. We oppose any kind of compulsory flat-rate tax at any use of culture. However we think as the levy is already in use to support all artists, our artists should get a fair piece of the money-pie. Ironically this is not possible, due to non-profit organisations not being allowed to join Auvibel.
If you know people who I should contact or if you want to talk to me about this for any good reason, feel free to mail me: pieterc aŧ member.fsf.org.
– Pieter — follow me on identi.ca
Other people’s music
Persistent middlemen
Back in the old days, when the Internet was only among a very few companies, making music for a large audience was not easy. There were a lot of steps to go through before you finally could have your song on an LP, and each of those steps cost a lot of money. The listener on the other hand had only a few options how he could enjoy music: he could go to a concert, listen to the radio or buy an LP. Obviously, to make things more easy for both the listener and the artist, middlemen were needed. These middlemen had the right amount of money, had the right contacts and they had the noble goal to make life easier for both listener and artist.
http://robmyers.org/weblog/2009/12/14/ - Remix of Rob Myer's slides
Nowadays, things got quite different: sharing music on-line is easy, recording music does not require highly advanced technology anymore, recording has become quite affordable, etc. However, sharing music got this funny name ‘piracy’, given by companies who once were the middlemen with the noble goal to protect consumer and artist. Instead of those protectors they became the consumer’s worst enemy: we can no longer share files with our friends, because sharing became theft, and artist tend only to get a very low percent of their music’s gain. With pitiable words, these middlemen nowadays try to keep doing the same as they were doing in those days.
To those relentless speeches on piracy however, I say «amen». Because that’s what you say when a prayer comes to its end. It’s a reckless effort to keep this business in copyrights alive.
You know, at one time there must have been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I’ll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now, how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company?
Other people’s money, DeVito’s speech
steal_this_comic.png - xkcd.com
Free culture (as in freedom)
Today I can say with almost no doubt that you agree with my opinion on free culture, since you are already living it. You listen to some music and when you like it you might want to buy a CD, get to attend a concert, or share the music with other friends. I stand for all those things, except, I want to legalize it in a very nifty way. Artists have to realize these middlemen nowadays cause more problems than anyone else. Get rid of these guys who say your fans cannot listen to your music unless they pay. Fans want to promote your music and want to put it on their site without having copyright claims, they want to play it on their birthday-party without being scumbags since they’re promoting your music.
Yes, you got it right, I do not want you to change whatever you were doing. I only want you to realize this can be legal and can exist without all these uncertainties. If you’re an artist then please read about the creative commons licenses. They allow you to make free culture, as in freedom, the freedom to experience your art in any way.
-Pieter – follow me on identi.ca
–sidenote
A lot of artist are already using free culture licenses on their music. Check out jamendo.com, http://creativecommons.org/audio/, CC mixter, The Archive
Bon Sans Nom 