Serendipity 2010

discovering digital bits and pieces

You’ll be able to go to Eagles.com (currently under construction) and get all their songs. They’re going to do it; it’s coming up in about 2 months.

And the music labels thought that the seas of music are calmer these days? Hoping to re-napster themselves and capture licensed music in a bottle this time around, the very core of the labels music is leaking and the ship might never really leave the store. The vast majority of music revenue is generated from its catalog. It sells way more than the current fare released on itunes, etc. ENTER: The copyright monster.

If an artist or author sold a copyright before 1978 (Section 304), they or their heirs can take it back 56 years later. If the artist or author sold the copyright during or after 1978 (Section 203), they can terminate that grant after 35 years. Assuming all the proper paperwork gets done in time, record labels could lose sound recording copyrights they bought in 1978 starting in 2013, 1979 in 2014, and so on. For 1953-and-earlier music, grants can already be terminated.  The Eagles plan to file grant termination notices by the end of the year, according to Law.com.
The record labels have two options for fending off notices of termination, neither of which looks good. The first is to continue to claim that albums are compilations, which doesn’t pass the common-sense test (compilations include songs from different artists), and probably won’t pass legal muster either. The second is to re-record the album in order to create new sound recording copyrights, which would reset the countdown clock at 35 years for copyright grant termination.
But wait, didn’t’ someone just try that? This might sound familiar, because BlueBeat.com employed similar logic in creating new copyrights to Beatles songs — right before it was sued by EMI and a judge barred them from continuing to sell the songs. So the music industry now needs to prepare for a new round of bleeding. And, its not just the Eagles, the same lawyer that represents the Eagles ALSO reps Barbara Streisand, Journey among others. Those three artists alone sell a significant back-catalog of music. Next year, it will all change.

November 14, 2009 Posted by William Sager | music, napster | , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Even better than Songza is Sad Steve…(thanks Steve Jobs!)

freemusic

I liked Songza. I really did. I actually still do. But there’s a new kid on the block. Sad Steve. You see, the name “Sad Steve” is a play on Steve Jobs not being so happy about free music so easily accessible.

sadsteve

Its basically a really simple search engine for any music on the web and then lets you play the song and download the source file easily, cleanly, all from this site. Even obscure stuff. Its very cool, and very simple!

Oh yeah, and don’t forget about all the free music on MySpace. Last night the new Gun’s and Roses album debuted online for free in over 25 countries: US, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Russia, Turkey, Poland, India, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan. Who says the music industry is in trouble?

gnr

This is trouble?

ohyesitsfree

November 20, 2008 Posted by William Sager | music | , , , , , | Leave a Comment

25 million songs and they are all FREE to download beginning at 12 midnight EST tonight!

No spyware, malware or adware included. There’s a new service in town beginning tonight, Sunday January 27th at 12 Midnight EST. You’ll be able to download their application (browser plug-in, not a desktop client) and then grab as many songs as you want, free of any charge. What’s the catch? None. Except, you’ll have to see or listen to an ad. Ads will be shown on musical devices as well. BUT, the songs are not portable to iPods (that won’t last as I’m sure someone will ‘jailbreak’ this). Its Windows only for the moment. Downloads should be relatively fast as it uses a peer-to-peer technology to get you the files. The ‘media player’ is browser based and is a plug-in or add on that you’ll grab from Mozilla/FireFox. The service is called Qtrax qtrax and according to Qtrax it has signed all 4 of the major music labels (although Warner Music has not confirmed this yet). iTunes has about 6 million songs and Amazon has about 3 million to put this in perspective for you. No doubt it has its drawbacks. Correction: it DOES have  no DRM DRM restrictions and has a far larger body of music than anyone else (because its built upon the Gnutella P2P network). Someone will crack the portability issue soon I’m sure. But this is a website to watch. The legal subscription free/ad model applied to music is about to be tested. 25 million songs is a huge catalog. And on their site they scream for you to ‘come and get the music’. I’m sure that’s just what their advertisers are saying too. tougue.gif

January 27, 2008 Posted by William Sager | music | , , , , , | 1 Comment