David Byrne's Wired article is a couple of weeks old, but worth a blog for those following the recorded music industry or ven other industries faced with the digitization of IP. I think it's interesting to note that some of the most insightful articles around the music business in the last 2 years has come from Wired magazine, and not the more obvious publications like Billboard.

In the article David Byrne rehashes a brief history of the recorded music industry and the distribution of money in the sale of a song (Which mirrors some posts I made on the topic). The major thesis of the article points out that today musicians have choice in how their music is distributed and that this represents a great opportunity for today's artists.

These include:

1. The 360 deal, or equity deal, where every aspect of the artist's career is handled by producers, promoters, marketing people, and managers. The label or management company gets a piece from of everything produced by the artist. Artists with this type of deal include: Robbie Williams, Korn, and Madonna
2. The standard distribution deal, where the label The record company advances artists funds for the recording of an album and manages the manufacturing, distribution, and promotion of the album. In return the artist is paid a royalty after the entire advance is repaid to the label. David, makes special note to remind artists that in this scenario, the label owns the copyright to the recording forever.
3. The license deal which is similar to the standard deal except the artist retains the copyrights and ownership of the master recording. Labels are granted rights to promote, sell, and sub-license the recording for a limited time. Artists with this type of deal include Arcade Fire.
4. The profit-sharing deal, where there may be some small upfront payment by the label to cover recording costs, but all sales are split on a profit sharing basis with the artist. In this scenario copyright remains continually with the artist. David Byrne did a deal like this for one of his albums.
5. The manufacturing and distribution deal, where the M&D company only manufactures and distributes the album. The artist gets absolute creative control and maintains all rights. earning potential for the M&D company is very limited so major labels generally do not sign these type of deals. Artists with this type of deal include Aimee Mann.
6. The Do-it-yourself model (since it is DYI it's technically not a deal) where the music is self-produced, self-written, self-played, and self-marketed. Artist doing this include Issa (formerly known as Jane Siberry) and obviously Radio Head.

I found the article very interesting, but I wonder about the value of any of these distribution models/deals when the value of recorded music sales are in a complete free fall. Intriguingly David points out that "in the past, music was something you heard and experienced — it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. " He should expand upon this thought, and I think explore how that social aspect of music can be captured in a recorded music context.

A friend of mine sent me a note on Terry Corcoran's latest editorial supporting Jim Prentice's copyright legislation. In it he labeled everyone opposed to the legislation - Telecom Trotskyites. I am still shaking my head that this story came from the National Post. I thought they were for Less Regulation, Less Government, and More Competition within free markets. This doesn't sound like it.

I love the allusion to Trotsky. Is this an allusion to the mass of people who are engaged in the industry in question actually protesting a bad bill? This makes us all Troskyites? My close friend and business partner Trevor Doerksen was an organizer for the Prentice open house protest in Calgary. We both believe in economic and personal freedom. We own our own companies and we own shares in other people's companies. I'm not too sure Trotsky would be a friend of ours.

It would seem that Terry's opinion is that the Government and a few large struggling media companies should legislate draconian restrictions on legal and ethical consumer behavior. The state's will over ours. This is 100% counter to economic liberalism. If Mr. Corcoran looks up people from Trotsky's time (1930s) who were diametrically opposed to economic liberalism he will find two very interesting individuals from history. Is this really what the National Post's is advocating?

Beyond the issue of actually curtailing ethical use of content, I and others believe that bill is counter to competition and innovation and will handicap Canada. Transparency and open access to information is today's reality. Even the Chinese government cannot control the information that people get in their country, and they are trying desperately.

Surprisingly, he lumps copyright issues with net neutrality. First net neutrality is a bloated on not well defined term in my opinion. However most advocates of Net Neutrality are focused on ensuring competition and innovation of all enterprises - the way of free markets. (Something, until now I thought Terry supported.) Take a simple point, without a level of net neutrality VOIP innovation would never have taken place, because it never would have been adopted by consumers - Telcos would shut it down because it cannibalizes their business. However, VOIP is great for consumers and businesses. It now saves my company about $2,000 a year. Sure that sucks for Telus. But they know how to compete. They can and must adapt. Terry obviously would prefer the government legislate them into a non-competitive advantage and monopoly on data services so that a small local company like FUGU Phone cannot compete.

Business models around the control of information and data are in utter collapse because new technology and consumption patterns have taken root. Mr. Corcoran, obviously believes that Canada should legislate ourselves back to the 1980s to sustain those failing businesses. I personally still believe in free markets and innovation and believe the markets will bring forth new businesses and opportunities, but to do so you must compete not sick your lawyers on our MPs to compete for you.

This has nothing to do with me, Michael Geist, or other thoughtful people being against copyright. We are all for new copyright legislation in Canada - we WANT it. But as a creator of IP, as a representative of individuals who create IP this bill is misguided and damaging.

I'd write a letter to the editor, but that would put control of my information into Terry's hands. It's a new world, Terry.

Additional Links:

Kempton Lam makes a point by point rebuttal.

Ars Technica is reporting that Congressman Howard Berman (AKA Congressman Hollywood) the chair of the Congressional Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property is advocating the gutting of the Safe Harbor Provision in the DMCA. Protecting copyright owners is critical, but Rep. Berman appears from this report (and this one) to be advocating the establishment of Information Police.

One more step towards 1984.

I've been a sleep at the wheel. It seemed so far off, and I wasn't too concerned. I honestly thought this would take care of itself with some smart people focused on the issue. But now, Michael Geist has made it clear that the Government is tabling new copyright legislation this session.

Michael posted 30 things we can do. I strongly urge you to take the time and read this and PLEASE take action.

Flash support h.264 is BIG news. Many of my colleagues said this would never happen. They said that Flash support for h.264 would open their player (.swf) to competition that would threaten Flash's rich media dominance on the web.

However, video is a critical communications format that cannot be dominated by priority codecs which are controlled by one company. This announcement, in my opinion, is the start of the end of video data format/codec wars.