Shafted ARTist -know your enemy

BradSucks, a popular musician from amongst other sites www.ccmixter.org has had a fan offer to pay BradSucks for the first 50 people to download his album for free. Wouldn’t I love fans like this. It seems that this might be a cool way to add some value and exposure to other sites. Maybe a website owner can use the music download as an opportunity for exposure, sort of like advertising links. The band page can list the link as the ‘official’ download site for the page and provide the webmaster with some more traffic.

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It seems ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Arrangers and Publishers has weighed in against the ‘crime’ of embedding Youtube videos in your webpage. Why oh why oh why do they continue to hurt us? Personally, I would much prefer to have people hear my music, like it, and talk about it and thus find more people who are willing to buy… then try and charge everyone to hear it.

Ascap, you twits

via Techdirt

Royalty agencies have been having their way for years. And now it seems that we’re seeing more stories coming out about the shady tactics and underhanded systems put in place to maximise  their profits and limit the money sent to artists.

Here’s another example this time from Germany of a collection agency interfering with royalty payments and stopping musicians from do what they want with their music.

Seems like all the love musicians have for composing is all we have left. The rest is just an incredible uphill battle.

via techdirt