Paying for "product" - ramblings inspired by Carl comments

On 17 Nov 2006, at 13:36, MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com wrote:
> I'm proud to say that well over 100 of my CDs were purchased
> directly from artists associated with these lists.
>
> -Carl

As a beneficiary of Carl's desire to purchase new microtonal
endeavours I have very much appreciated his timely contributions,
although long term he has probably also made a good investment, as he
has since then received pre-release CD versions as review copies from
me.

Having spent a day at the MusicTank conference on the subject of
"getting paid" for recordings,

http://www.musictank.co.uk/bts_conference.htm

I am coming to the conclusion that "putting out a hat", as buskers
would do, may be a practical way to fund recordings. (TipJar?)

This was not mentioned at the conference, yet some very interesting
ideas were discussed including the idea of a blanket license to be
paid by ISP's with a user opt out option.

The distribution could be shared amongst the participants in a
similar way to the allocation of performance royalties a la ASCAP....

The main difficulty would be to ensure that the four dinosaurs would
not devour every last scrap of the complete meal; leaving nothing for
the independent scavengers.

It seems that YouTube is one of the chief targets for copyright
"ignoring", and that Universal and others have made a deal with
Google not to sue for infringement.

There were some telephone number $ values stated, but unless I go
back to the audio recordings that I made at the time; any quotes from
me may not be accurate.

In practice if a license holder where to complain, YouTube would
require formal complaint, and then, when received just remove the
offending files, which really doesn't help anyone.

Although representatives from many of the major players attended
(Sony, Nokia, Future of Music (http://www.futureofmusic.org) etc.);
the BPI ( http://www.bpi.co.uk ) were absent, and the conference were
thinking in terms of UK legal changes and EU policies, rather than a
direct aim of creating a global organisation (like the International
Postal agreements).

The long term solution seems to have to be on a global level to work,
but that's going to take many decades to materialise.

In the meantime we continue to look and use various different ways to
deliver "content".

e.g. via the phone companies, "LucyStick" http://cdbaby.com/cd/
lucytuned3 , tipjars http://www.tipjar.com/ , advertising, sync rights

etc.

As a business enterprise, expanding the world's musical tuning
systems, is a tough row to hoe; but it is happening often in ways
that are not obvious.

e.g. microtuning capability now present in Logic, Cubase etc.

see:

http://www.lucytune.com/midi_and_keyboard/pitch_bend.html

I did have the opportunity to pester Jeremy Silver, the new CEO of
Sibelius Software Ltd., to get his techies to add microtonal playback
into future versions of Sibelius.

It will be an interesting future;-)

Charles Lucy -lucy@...

----- Promoting global harmony through LucyTuning -----

For information on LucyTuning go to: http://www.lucytune.com

LucyTuned Lullabies (from around the world):
http://www.lullabies.co.uk

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

>I am coming to the conclusion that "putting out a hat", as buskers
>would do, may be a practical way to fund recordings. (TipJar?)
>This was not mentioned at the conference, yet some very interesting
>ideas were discussed including the idea of a blanket license to be
>paid by ISP's with a user opt out option.
>The distribution could be shared amongst the participants in a
>similar way to the allocation of performance royalties a la ASCAP....

I think these sorts of models are good ideas too.

I also have a distributed-royalties model that I quite like.
The details of which are still being hashed out (my partner and
I got as far as a Matlab simulation). You can get a hint of
it here

http://www.lumma.org/microwave/#2003.11.13

It would be rather like Weed but without the DRM. The key to making
it work without DRM is to make it socially unacceptable to pirate
material. When everyone in the community has a stake in the system
working, such a condition should obtain.

>It seems that YouTube is one of the chief targets for copyright
>"ignoring", and that Universal and others have made a deal with
>Google not to sue for infringement.

Ironically also the DCMA protects them!

-Carl