Vimeo Sued By Capitol Records Over Lip Dubs

zachklein:

I roared with a belly laugh when I read this headline in bed earlier today. Could Capitol Records truly be this misguided? Do they not realize that if you were to sort Internet brands by those most emblematic of creativity — not piracy — that Vimeo would line up at the top? Lip-dubbing is harmless and perfectly fun, and ultimately will define the aesthetic of an Internet generation. Other than for some petty legal jockeying towards a greater strategy can I imagine why this record company would sink such a potentially valuable lifeline — Lip-Dubbing and Vimeo create tremendous relevance and usefulness for their catalog!

If anything better underlines my point it’s an email I received from Sean Nelson, the frontman of the band Harvey Danger, whose song Flagpole Sitta we’ve now infamously lip-dubbed:

That Flagpole Sitta video made me incredibly happy, just when I thought there was NOTHING that could make me listen to that song again. A thousand thank you’s.

Capitol, you’re a bunch of goof-balls. This lawsuit is the tactical equivalent to pooping on someone’s birthday cake.

I, for one, am willing to boycott Capitol artists unless they reconsider, and I implore other labels to pivot and spur conversations with Vimeo in order to determine a simple process to give people access to copyrighted music for personal video that is satisfactory for all. Preemptive strikes simply won’t do anymore!

Who does Capitol think they are, Warner Music Group?

Jango Artist Airplay

I read about Jango this morning via our Tunecore account and immediately drafted a strongly negative post, but after taking a deep breath and thinking about it more, I’m reconsidering.

At first the idea of paying someone to play your songs on internet radio is borderline offensive (as if giving it away for free weren’t enough!), but as a marketing expense, it’s not a terrible idea.

In fact, it dawns on me that this is analogous to Google Adwords for music.

As a prospective artst (RRR), my immediate questions are:

  • How big is the listening audience?
  • How can I reach fans with my existing newsletter or other forms of marketing?  (Contacting them only through Jango is not terribly helpful.)
  • How scalable is the method of self-selecting similar artists?  (We can’t all sound like a handful of top artists.)  AdWords uses some sophisticated algorithms for ranking ads from numerous advertisers that want to be associated with certain keywords; this will eventually need something similar, à la Pandora’s music genome.
  • Speaking of which, how does this compare to submitting your music to Pandora and getting paid in their rotation (for free)?
david-noel: soundcloud: The Everybody (members of The Pixies), SoundCloud and Topspin Media call for remixers. That’s pretty exciting: The album is being made available exclusively at The Everybody website as a Creative Commons licensed, royalty-free package of lossless stems. The band are selling this package for $40 (via our friends at Topspin), which might at first sound like quite a bit but in fact you’re actually getting a lot. The stems are licensed and royalty free which means you can make your own version and (as long as you’re providing attribution back to the band) you can in theory make lots of money selling whatever you’ve created. We think that’s pretty badass!! Read the full story here. Cool concept.  For aspiring producers who have trouble creating songs when starting from scratch (e.g, those who lack formal musical training), purchasing royalty-free stems could be a good way to go. Or, for rappers who don’t compose intrumentals, how many of them would buy a collection of royalty-free Timbaland beat stems for $40?  A lot.
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david-noel:

soundcloud:

The Everybody (members of The Pixies), SoundCloud and Topspin Media call for remixers.

That’s pretty exciting:

The album is being made available exclusively at The Everybody website as a Creative Commons licensed, royalty-free package of lossless stems. The band are selling this package for $40 (via our friends at Topspin), which might at first sound like quite a bit but in fact you’re actually getting a lot. The stems are licensed and royalty free which means you can make your own version and (as long as you’re providing attribution back to the band) you can in theory make lots of money selling whatever you’ve created. We think that’s pretty badass!!

Read the full story here.

Cool concept.  For aspiring producers who have trouble creating songs when starting from scratch (e.g, those who lack formal musical training), purchasing royalty-free stems could be a good way to go.

Or, for rappers who don’t compose intrumentals, how many of them would buy a collection of royalty-free Timbaland beat stems for $40?  A lot.

Apple is supposedly planning to use its acquisition of online music service Lala to transform iTunes into a Web-based service

The future of music is Web-based, on-demand broadcast to any home or mobile phone.

But.

If it’s true, folding lala into iTunes will introduce lala (or lala’s technology) to a wider audience, but I don’t see it increasing the purchase of web-only tracks significantly in the near-term.  Without reliable mobile 3G connections or a local cache for offline listening, it’s too risky for customers.  For computer-based listening, it’s cheaper to go with Rhapsody or Napster—neither of which is overwhelmingly popular.  (Spotify may change this when it comes to the US.)

In the US, the most likely early adopters of Web-based music are mobile, tech-savvy music fans in urban areas—i.e., iPhone owners.  But AT&T’s network is iffy in heavy areas, they’re trying to move backward on unlimited data access, and it doesn’t look like the iPhone is going to CDMA anytime soon.  This is gonna take a while.

Wow. MySpace didn’t bother to open up a transition period, or nudge imeem accounts into MySpace accounts, or even force an account conversion:  they straight-up turned imeem off.  (imeem.com now redirects to this landing page.) I saw the writing on the wall, but I didn’t expect anything like this.  I can’t explain how glad I am to have migrated RRR’s song players from imeem to SoundCloud in September.
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Wow.

MySpace didn’t bother to open up a transition period, or nudge imeem accounts into MySpace accounts, or even force an account conversion:  they straight-up turned imeem off.  (imeem.com now redirects to this landing page.)

I saw the writing on the wall, but I didn’t expect anything like this.  I can’t explain how glad I am to have migrated RRR’s song players from imeem to SoundCloud in September.

8tracks:

Nice coverage of 8tracks’ positioning in the digital music sector in Wired today: http://bit.ly/7ofOzY

staff: We now extract album art from uploaded music! Developers can even add this art to Tumblr themes with: {block:AlbumArt} <img src="{AlbumArtURL}" /> {/block:AlbumArt} And access Artist, Album, and Track information like this: {block:Artist} Artist: {Artist} {/block:Artist} {block:Album} Album: {Album} {/block:Album} {block:TrackName} Track: {TrackName} {/block:TrackName} Now we’re talking. On another note, this is much different, but to connect Tumblr more properly to artists:  it would be sweet if artists could maintain a list of their songs and the preferred click-through URL of each one.  (Only after getting authorized as the actual artist or label, and afterward, only for songs under their umbrella.)  If Tumblr finds a match in a song post, the author would then have the option to check a box to have the song’s click-through link set as the artists’ preferred page, both on the art and the [artist - title]. That sounds overly complicated, and it is, but maybe somewhere in there is a simpler way of achieving the same sort of connection.
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staff:

We now extract album art from uploaded music!

Developers can even add this art to Tumblr themes with:

{block:AlbumArt}
    <img src="{AlbumArtURL}" />
{/block:AlbumArt}

And access Artist, Album, and Track information like this:

{block:Artist}
    Artist: {Artist}
{/block:Artist}

{block:Album}
    Album: {Album}
{/block:Album}

{block:TrackName}
    Track: {TrackName}
{/block:TrackName}

Now we’re talking.

On another note, this is much different, but to connect Tumblr more properly to artists:  it would be sweet if artists could maintain a list of their songs and the preferred click-through URL of each one.  (Only after getting authorized as the actual artist or label, and afterward, only for songs under their umbrella.)  If Tumblr finds a match in a song post, the author would then have the option to check a box to have the song’s click-through link set as the artists’ preferred page, both on the art and the [artist - title].

That sounds overly complicated, and it is, but maybe somewhere in there is a simpler way of achieving the same sort of connection.

merlin:

Lady Gaga - “Bad Romance”

I have nothing smart to say about this. This video is ridiculous, weirdly executed, and thoroughly fun to watch.

Okay. One-and-a-half things to say. But they’re not even very smart.

I think there are two sane reasons for a Big Act to be on a Big Label today:

…

Hey check out this vodka commercial.

mrgan:

A refreshingly wholesome (and entertaining) look at auto-tune.

Surprisingly fact-filled.

BERLIN – Fans hoping to glimpse U2’s free concert celebrating 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell were outraged Thursday to find that a nearly 6-1/2-foot (2-meter) high metal barrier was installed to block the view for those without tickets. Both Berliners and tourists alike saw the irony in building a wall around a concert dedicated to the wall that already has come down.

Outrage over wall blocking free U2 Berlin concert - Yahoo! News (via david-noel)

Bizarre.  Aside from the irony, it’s not like they lose revenue by letting outsiders see/hear the concert.  (I’m confident it will sell out either way.)