The Mona Lisa’s smile has always puzzled historians and searchers, who have extrapolated many theories about the identity of the mysterious Gioconda.
This week another piece might have been discovered by a group of engineers who experimented with a new technique called “quantum displacement”. This basically agitate atoms at the quantum level to reveal hidden pattern, a technique that is still relatively new but has already had a few success, revealing for example the silhouette of a a fourteenth character in another famous Leonardo’s painting, “The Supper”…
This time the team has projected their quantum beam on the Mona Lisa, and what has been revealed is now the subject of many new theories… What is this mysterious shape under the painting? Is that a beard? A ghost? A UFO? A mask? An alien? Who knows? Will we ever be able to decipher the riddle?
Another hidden clue seem to have been found (as seen above) with the mysterious “GB WAS HERE” message on the lady’s mantel lapel. Perhaps a message from Giovanni Battista, a famous musician, friend of Leonardo at the time, who’s well know to have opposed the streaming giants of the time, Spotificanti, Gioggli and Appolo.
Hopefully as the historians and scientists are working on more clues we’ll learn more about this soon.
In an extraordinary turn of event, the site of Giza's pyramids was the center of an incredible weather oddity, but what this lead to is even more astounding and baffles the entire world.
The phenomenon occurred on Saturday, July 14th as everyone was gazing at the stars during that night. A tourist noticed a strange pattern forming on one face of the Great Pyramid and took this amazing picture, which quickly went viral and piqued the curiosity of many in the scientist community, spreading various conspiracy theories, even used by UFO proponents as proof of an imminent invasion.
Witnesses on the spot also spoke about and eerie feeling, some talked about strange distortions of their field of vision and many said that some soothing sounds were emanating from the pattern…
A team of scientist has been sent to Egypt by the U.N. to study the pattern to try and find its origin.
According to Sarah Talbot, head of the department of Egyptian mysteries at the University of Montreal, the discovery had been made possible by the unusual ionization of the atmosphere during this exceptional aurora, a phenomenon so rare that it might take a few centuries before it appears again in this region…
“It’s a chance someone took pictures of the phenomenon from that angle, allowing the pattern to be seen for the first time in millennia…”, said the excited scientist, “now it’s up to the scientist community to study this major finding and ponder its significance. For now we are left to conjectures of course, but I would gather that it will shed a new light to the mysteries of the pyramids and lead to new revelations soon!”
No doubt there will be more news to come, so stay tuned!
There’s a lot of talks in the unsigned world, and indeed in the world in general about two proposed pieces of law that could be changing some rules in the music industry.
Now I’m not a lawyer so I have a hard time, like the majority of us, to understand all the fine prints and hundred pages of articles these proposed law changes are supposed to accomplish, but I’m trying hard to follow these things, because I believe that they are crucial to the future of recorded music in this world which has short changed creators in favor of Silicon Valley mega corporations.
First the Music Modernization Act, or MMA for short, which is a US Bill that comprises several pieces of legislation, mainly the MMA, the AMP act and the CLASSIC act. It has first been unanimously voted by the House of Representatives, and is now under scrutiny by the US Senate (which just released several amendments).
The MMA has been widely acclaimed as a necessary and important step in the right direction to clarify and standardize copyrights licensing of music and the various entities that are involved in managing publishers and mechanical rights. Problem is that this bill, from what I could read, is far from perfect and leaves some big gaps that streaming platforms in particular are going to exploit to further down their influence and wealth at the expense of creators, which is why I believe it’s a first step (although a possibly evil one in some details), and hopefully not the end of it… There is for example a problem with the minority of artists representation, when labels and streaming platforms have double the ranks when taking decisions. Then there is this proposal of a black box, that is going to hold unclaimed copyrights revenue, which will later be distributed based on market share to labels. Problem is that this creates a situation where the holders of this big pot will have no incentive to find the right owners, one could even say they will have every incentive not to find them, thus spoiling further the unsigned artists who are misrepresented and lack the legal power to enforce their rights.
So, as of now, this MMA bill, is both a blessing and a curse for unsigned artists, because it will regulate some of the Wild West situation in the US when it comes to copyrights, but will also create a new situation (that labels and streaming platform will deem ideal, of course) where they might have even less chances to get compensated correctly. If you are outside of the US, you might think this doesn’t affect you, but if you are a modern musician, chances are that you release your music worldwide, so this will affect your royalties anyway.
Now comes the Article 13, which is a EU directive that could affect the way some platforms have been hiding behind a “safe harbor” outdated law to avoid licensing costs or pay a lot less than others. Google/Youtube in particular, which is by far the biggest music platform, has been using this for 20 years to create an empire based on copyrights infringements.
Turns out that not that long ago, an Austrian court found Youtube liable for doing the very thing that they deny doing and that would give them the right to hide behind this safe harbor: they filter, edit, link, transform content every second of every day. They even have in place a system called Content ID that allows them to identify anything you post and monetize it, by putting ads on your videos. They hide behind DMCA rules, which puts the responsibilities of right owners to issue a take down notice when finding an infringement, when they should be held liable for the content they filter, edit, link and transform. Send a take down notice to Youtube and the content will possibly disappear, but will reappear the next day and Youtube will do nothing about it, in fact it will monetize it and make money out of it…
Following this Austrian ruling (which Youtube will most likely appeal), the European Commission has pushed further their Article 13 proposal, which aims to abolish in the EU the safe harbor for platforms that are clearly making editorial decision and are not just “transparent” user platforms. Of course Google/Youtube right now is pushing everyone with its enormous lobbying power (whether openly or under many disguises) to call out their MEP to vote against this directive…
Behind this directive though, many artists defense organizations, and even high profile artists are standing to support what could be a game changer in ending the value gap that YouTube has been exploiting for 20 years now, and has ripped off so many rights holders, among them unsigned artists being the most fragile and endangered of all, as they are being swept out as collateral damage for the good of the Silicon Valley monopoly.
You will read from Google subsidies that Article 13 is a danger to freedom of expression (which is the old claim that pirates have always held dear), or that this will kill internet memes, and other nonsense like that, when the article is including all sorts of provisions to ensure this is not the case. I believe the Google lobbying machine has no shame spreading lies to keep milking their golden goose, and they do so under many disguises.
I advise all songwriters and creators to look closer at the real content of these 2 pieces of law with objectivity and try not be influenced by the lobbying campaigns the various stakeholders are pushing at us. It’s time to open our eyes and fight for our artistic rights!
* In this post, I’ve left the links out because there are too many to choose from, a simple search in your preferred search engine (try something else than Google for a change and you’ll see different results, funnily enough, especially when it comes to Article 13, which menaces to take down their beloved safe harbor).
If you are into any kind of arts related circles, you’re bound to have encountered the mythic exposure bucks: It’s the kind of money that is offered by promoter/scam artists who want to use your art for no payment at all. Of course, by doing so they will themselves get some money, sometimes even asking you for it!
Now that’s an offer that is hard to refuse, right? You get “exposure bucks” for a few dollars (or euros, or pounds or whatever your real money is). The rate is always fluctuating, and is set by the “promoters” themselves, it’s almost like crypto currency, and it’s been around even before that crypto scam was invented! And nowhere more than in the unsigned music world is it more prevalent.
It’s hard to navigate the unsigned world, but it gets even harder as soon as you encounter these people who will send you emails and private messages on social media, telling you about their “wonderful” opportunities, when it so happens that they have a promotion for you! (That’s right! They always have a fantastic/brand new promotion just for you!).
But I would be very wary of anyone contacting you to “promote” your music. Spoiler alert: This is NOT how it works!
Now of course these con artists are just a little nuisance compared to the more greedy and powerful of them all: the streaming platforms. These platforms who manage to make you believe that they are going to pay more in the future (I actually heard some artists believing and repeating that!), when simple arithmetic will tell you that it’s simply not possible: the rate they pay is primarily based on what the average song value is, which is itself based on the number of songs they have in their catalog divided by the number of paying subscribers they have (minus all the expense they have, which are big, including royal payments to themselves).
Problem is that EVERY DAY more than 24000 new songs are added to streaming platforms, and although they are adding new subscribers most of them are free listeners or get some kind of discount, so of course these corporations keep hemorrhaging money in every corner. How do you think their rates are going to get higher? Is that magical thinking from desperate artists? No, of course not, because this is where the mighty exposure bucks come to the rescue! Yay!
They will just tell you that you shouldn’t look at the money anyway… No, really! You should take into account the exposure they allow you to get. What with their millions of people listening, eh? Now that would be so true if their algorithms were not meant to discard you little ones in favor of the big ones from the big labels that they push on top of every searches. If they didn’t have big ties with labels to push the same artists on all their playlists. That might be true if the vast majority of the listeners weren’t listening to the same decades old catalog.
In the end, it still comes down to this: whether they are little con artists or big crooks, it’s really up to you to say no to exposure bucks, because one thing is for sure, you won’t be able to pay your rent with these.
I’ve been reading about Blockchain lately… You’ve probably heard of it, at least you must have heard of Bitcoin, and have heard the latest crypto babble that the media enjoys so much. After all a good jargon is the wet dream of every journalist.
Now this technology is supposed to be the remedy to everything… Yes! Even the music industry! And well, if it can cure that, surely it will cure cancer!
Enter Musicoin and co
In the unsigned world, I see some people rave about Musicoinfor example, and how this wonderful platform is going to pay out more than any streaming platform and materialize money out of thin air, without any ads, while still being totally free for listeners. That’s pure magic or I don’t know what!
Turns out that Musicoin is only one of the many new platforms with more white paper than sense, apparently. (Boy! Do they love their white papers! They are all chock full of technical jargon that is mostly included to confuse you even more than you were). Digging a bit, without too much effort, I then found out about other platforms like Artbyte, Soundchain, Emanate, eMusic, Bittunes,Voise, Choon, Ujo (this one is funny, with Imogen Heap herself having released her “Tiny Human” song which sales amounted to a grand total of $133.20!) plus all these exotic new “currencies” dedicated to music like Musicoin but also Audiocoin, Songcoin, Metal Music Coin, Muse, Beatcoin… looks like they invent a new coin every day. Check out this website which references 1916 of these entries (as of today anyway!) Actually there is even a platform that allows anyone to create their own! Time for a BeardCoin?
My first contact with Musicoin was from links that some indie enthusiasts were sharing. Being curious I tried to listen, but the player would never want to play, so I went to the website and it looked rather messy to me. Not a really good impression overall. But OK. That’s another beta platform, right? <insert big sigh here>
Since their claim to being able to pay a decent amount per play was pretty extra-ordinary, I decided I would dig further… But I’m going to tell you straight up: I didn’t like what I found. At all.
Monkey money, monkey business
First, the value of Musicoin is in fact so fluctuant that what you read on their platform about the supposed earnings of the artists is never even close to reality. You see, first you have to exchange $MUSIC currency into another more accepted crypto currency (Like Bitcoin or Ethereum), using a convoluted process involving trading on a coin market or another (there are only a couple that can do this at the moment). The process is so ridiculously complex, involving installing a wallet application on your PC, opening an account on a couple trading sites, juggling with obscure hashes and calculating decimals, and gauging whether the time is right to “sell” your precious coins, that only seriously chronic nerds are going to want to go near it. I’m not joking, see this tutorial.
The real cost of Blockchain
The recommended process to ultimately withdraw your few Musicoin earnings is to trade them first against Bitcoin. Of course you will have to pay big fees to do so because the computing of your transaction involves a lot of computers in a pool, and it gets increasingly more complex as days go by, involving increasingly more processing power, and ultimately, increasingly more electricity. Fact is, Bitcoin today is already using 0.5% of the world’s electricity and by late next year, will be consuming more electricity than can be produced by the entire world solar panels. Let this all sink in for a moment.
And then of course, once you get your Bitcoins fractions, you will have to trade them again on another coin market into some real money, which means a lot more transaction fees (up to 50% from what I’ve seen) and a lot more electricity consumption…
Techno magic
Reading further on the Blockchain craziness, it turns out there is a lot of approximation and misinformation around (but of course there is, it’s a big buzzword in the press, and most journalists have no clue about the underlying technological issues, which are apparently numerous). I also found some articles that took to debunk all this hype, for example this one about eMusic (a Musicoin competitor). Let’s just say that I don’t have all the background that this guy has, but I have the general feeling again (thanks Mom, wherever you are!) that when something looks too good to be true, it generally is! Anyway, the guy wrote a book about the Blockchain scam.
So, to sum up: you get your tunes on a platform that’s pretty buggy (it’s beta), people are going to listen to them for free, you get paid virtual coins that you need to exchange against other virtual coins using a complex process, opening many accounts on various platforms, leaving more of your private information everywhere, trade on a virtual market that is bound to spiral down when all is said and done (remember the internet bubble burst? I do) and is consuming electricity at an exponential rate, which will ultimately eat all our planet resources… what’s wrong with this picture?
The worst of it
All of this and I still have another issue with this whole thing. And it’s another big one: turns out that this whole mess is again making everyone believe that it’s perfectly normal to listen to music for free, that no one needs to pay for it. Aren’t we all tired of this refrain?
If the fact that it’s all based on more hype and technological magic than reality, the fact that it’s unsustainable long term, the fact that it’s endangering our planet resources, if all of that wasn’t bad enough they are also basically saying that music is not worth paying for.
Finally, the terms of use pertaining to license grants on most of these new platforms were alarmingly similar to the ones I advised everyone to stay away from…
In conclusion, you know what? I wish you all good luck with this, but you can count me out. I mean until they come out with something really significant of course, like a BeardCoin for example, at which point I might trade my Monopoly money for it.
The indie world is full of wonders! No, really! Every day, if you are an unsigned artist, you will get at least a dozen of marvelous opportunities in your mailbox, or via social media private messages… It’s amazing how everyone wants you on their platforms or radio, amazing how many people want to promote your music, and bring you in front of millions of potential fans!
Turns out that all of these so called opportunities are click baits and you will soon learn that for the discounted price of $$$ (they accept Paypal!) you will be the new star of a social media no man’s land, guaranteed!
I must be getting old, because I will repeat what my mama used to say: when it sounds too good to be true, it usually is! That’s right, if you look closer, all of these wonderful opportunities turn out to not much… but hey, they are at a discounted price!
If you are new to this business, you will quickly learn to discard all these scams, they are not that hard to distinguish, really!
What might be a bit harder to wrap your head around are the countless platforms and radios who are not asking money upfront. You might think: “Great! These are not the scammers, finally! These are real genuine music lovers and they are going to help me reach an audience”.
Now is the right time to read the fine prints.
They usually have that kind of things on a form you will need to sign or agree to when you submit, or as a “terms of use” on their website. Don’t skip that reading! There’s a lot of boring boiler plate stuff, but there’s usually a paragraph about Intellectual Property, or Ownership, or License, or License Grant, or something that defines who owns what, and what you agree to when submitting as pertaining to your content.
USER TERMS - LICENSE
Here’s one of these paragraph, taken randomly from a radio website (that shall remain unnamed - XXX below -, but believe me, there are countless of the same clauses in the “terms of use” everywhere on a big majority of these platforms and radios), so here is just one example:
“With respect to any Content posted by or in connection with the Products and Services, you hereby grant XXX a WORLD-WIDE, ROYALTY FREE, IRREVOCABLE, PERPETUAL license, alone or together or as part of other information, Content and/or material of any kind or nature, to use, copy, modify, publish, edit, translate, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, and otherwise EXPLOIT such Content (specifically including through streaming, podcasting, online/broadcast and satellite radio, suggested playlists and user playlists, but specifically excluding through phonograph records), to publish and promote such Content in connection with the particular Products and Services (including, without limitation, for advertising and promotional purposes), to publish and promote such Content elsewhere within XXX or any other XXX website through links to XXX, and to SUBLICENSE such rights through multiple tiers of sublicenses, all without any obligation to you, whether by way of compensation, attribution or otherwise. Such license shall apply with respect to any form, media, or technology now known or hereafter developed.”
I have highlighted here the part that they especially DON’T want you to pay too close attention to. Read it again. Let it sink in!
What this basically says is that you are granting these people the perpetual, irrevocable right to do anything they want with your music, to use as they see fit on their platform/radio or any other that they might be affiliated to and might create later. They might use it and license it somewhere else, without your knowledge and you will have no recourse against that. They will have NO obligation to you, not even the obligation to say that this is YOUR music. In short, it’s the good old “all your data are belong to us” again!
So I suggest you read all these “term of use” very closely. Each time you submit your music somewhere. You might have already submitted somewhere with these kinds of terms. I’m pretty sure you did, because they are everywhere. Now is time to think of how much you want that supposed exposure, are you prepare to forfeit your rights to your own music perpetually and irrevocably? What kind of compensation will you actually get from it?
So, again, think long and hard about where you put your music, because otherwise one of these days you will realize that they might not have a license to kill, but you might have granted them a license to steal!
On twitter this week, Indie Music Bus asked an interesting question to artists: What do you think is a fair amount of money to stream 1 of your songs?
I thought about it and I will try to elaborate my reasoning here.
Let’s say the average number of plays for someone buying one of your tune on iTunes or others at a price of $1 (let’s forget the taxes and such to make this simpler) is about 50. That’s a generous number, because I would think that most people will get bored with your tune before hearing it fifty times, some songs might get more love, but most would get less, so let’s keep it simple again, even if this is a gross exaggeration…
Now let’s say that on average the artist gets 50% of the $1. Again that would be an average, because if you sell on your own site, you will get 100%, on Bandcamp you would earn 85% on iTunes, around 35%. So it really depends where you would have sold the song in the first place… But let’s say that you get 50%… this means that you should get $0.5 for about a 50 plays, right?
So to me, the logical, basic, common sense answer on the artist side is $0.5/50 = $0.01 per stream… Now, compare that to the average (ponderated among all streaming platforms) of $0.0016 and you will see that we’re far from what would be considered fair right now.
You would say: but these streaming platforms have servers and development costs, employees to pay, offices to rent, etc. Of course! And I would never imply that they shouldn’t take their cut and cover their expenses and costs.
It’s hard to believe that they are acting towards making things right, nor that they have the will to do so in any foreseeable future. I don’t see streaming platforms in general working towards paying artists fairly, quite the contrary, and because of that, I believe we, artists, should not support them in any way.
So in the end, before asking what’s fair for artists, perhaps we should start exposing how unfair the current situation is and make every music lover aware of it.
EDIT: also check out this article on ConsumersAdvocate.org comparing the "Best streaming services" that has some interesting facts about "Fairness in royalties payments"
Since I’ve started this thing on social media and reached out to many people in the unsigned world, I’ve virtually “met” countless passionate individuals both sides of the mic.
I’ve been interviewed a few times, and each time I enjoyed the conversation, as much as I hope people listening or reading have enjoyed it…
Still I’ve always felt that I needed to know more about the one behind the mic or the email, because as much as it’s fun to be asked questions about your passion, it’s also a bit frustrating because it only goes one way.
So I’ve started thinking (yes, this happens to me sometimes, I try to reduce that to a minimum, I assure you!), and came to the conclusion that I would like to reverse the roles for a moment, basically interview the interviewers… Not quite sure yet what form this will take, could be a written interview via email, or a Skype conversation, and it could be published in writing or as a podcast, or both.
I’ll probably need to add yet another section to this website which is becoming a monster hub of many things (hopefully fun!), but I think it would be nice to hear about these people that I call partners: Radio hosts, bloggers, promoters, etc… How they got the bug, how they started, how they operate, what are their goals and ambitions, what they think about the state of the music industry… I believe there are a lot of subjects that could be discussed and this could shine a light on those unsung heroes of the unsigned world.
What do you think? Do you have any suggestions? Are you a partner that would like to give this a try? Let me know in the comments below…
One of the argument I hear often about the marvelous benefits of streaming is how it has been the music industry savior, after the Napster years of generalized piracy which killed the cash cow that labels were enjoying, selling CDs and CD re-releases at prohibitive prices…
Perhaps it’s true for big labels, who, although they’ve seen their margins drastically reduced since their heyday (but truth is that they were pretty guilty of milking that cash cow much too much), are now enjoying some renewed revenue from streaming, thanks to their partnership contracts, allowing them to collect most of the revenues generated (the top 10% of the streaming catalog from all providers is collecting 99% of the revenues). Not so surprising when the search algorithms and big playlists pushed to streaming platforms users are carefully tweaked to favorite the big labels and their artists.
Once again, it’s the independent labels and the unsigned artists who bear the brunt of the industry debacle. And I would argue that the supposed streaming savior has made no difference at all for these 90%, who are truly the collateral damage of this digital economy, as Maria Schneider, five time Grammy award winner, points out in her open letter to the NMPA (National Music Publishers Association) outlining her perspective on the MMA (Music Modernization Act).
And not only didn’t streaming made any difference for independent artists, I would also say it made things worse.
But hey! Piracy has been vanquished, hasn’t it? Well, there are some indications that it’s actually not the case, as you can see in the chart above which lists the percentage of various types of copyright infringements by age group (based on consumer research from IFPI - the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry).
Combine Youtube free-for-all, – knowing they are by far the biggest streaming platform nowadays, with a pay per play rate far below any other thanks to infamous “Safe Harbor” loopholes –, with a rise of “stream ripping” tools, allowing anyone to download what’s played from free accounts on any streaming platforms, and you get a much more insidious kind of piracy, one that takes the guise of legality and one that is mostly benefiting the streaming giants.
Again, if big labels, and indeed streaming platforms can brush that off as simple losses compensated by their ad-generated huge profits, it cannot be the case for unsigned artists who are seeing their work stolen, or abused at a pay per play rate so low it’s laughable. What artists lose by believing in the streaming golden mirage is real physical and download sales that is fair pay for their craft, investment, time and efforts.
In the end, I would argue that piracy was better for unsigned artists, as it was mostly touching big labels, and it was after all, illegal, so actions could be taken against it. Nowadays, streaming is little more than legalized piracy and there’s not much we can do about it, or so it seems, short of opting out and educating our fans. I believe that opting out is our only option because it is our work that is exploited… Remove the work and that could ultimately force the industry to reconsider the digital economy landscape. If they don’t do it, then I suppose it’s time we do it ourselves.
But until we all remove our copyrighted work from all these places where everyone can access it and pirate it freely at no cost and with no consequences, there’s no doubt we are in fact just feeding the monster…
