« The Amazing RedLaser | Snow and Ski Data for Colorado »
Where Do My Music Rights Start and Stop?
Last night I had a long ranging conversation with Amy and a pair of close friends about the singularity and the future of human and machine. The conversation centered around the notion of consciousness and what happens if (or – in my opinion – when) non-biological entities have more reasoning and processing power than biological entities, especially if this is combined with the notion of consciousness. We didn’t reach any conclusions, but we made an hour disappear really quickly.
I woke up to a fun blog post from one of my favorite biological entities (Fred Wilson) listing his Top Records of the Decade. I brought up one of my favorite non-biological entities (Pandora) and created a new channel called “Fred Wilson 2000 Decade” that consisted of the artists behind these records (I find it intriguing that Fred calls them “records” instead of “albums” or “CDs” or “disks” – it definitely dates him.) I then tweeted the Fred Wilson 2000 Decade Pandora Station and shared it with him via email. Here’s the response I got from the non-biological entity masquerading as Fred.
From: Fred Wilson
Sent: Monday, December 28, 2009 8:36 AM
To: Brad Feld
Subject: Re: Brad Feld thought you would be interested in this stationDear Pandora Visitor,
We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.
We believe that you are in Argentina (your IP address appears to be 201.234.146.243). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us atpandora-support@pandora.com
If you are a paid subscriber, please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com and we will issue a pro-rated refund to the credit card you used to sign up. If you have been using Pandora, we will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you.
We will be notifying listeners as licensing agreements are established in individual countries. If you would like to be notified by email when Pandora is available in your country, please enter your email address below. The pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.
We share your disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding.
I know Fred is on vacation in Buenos Aires with his family. I even know that they got hosed last night at La Cabrera. Suddenly I was thinking about the mix of human and machine here – Pandora (machine), Geolocation (machine), my knowledge of their vacation (human), their dinner experience (human), the description of their dinner experience (written by a human, coded and transmitted by machine), and Fred’s Records of the Decade List (human, but coded by machine – the post and the music). The level of interaction of human and machine is high, although the level of sophistication is pretty low.
In an effort to be subversive, I forwarded the email to Fred with a note that said “Wild how the music licensing stuff is stupid.” He responded immediately with “Yup. Rights holders fuck everything up.” I wonder what the machines think of that?
I've been reading Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton over the holidays. It has a lot of these concepts in them — immortality through downloadable memories, interstellar colonization via wormholes, custom genetics… the works.
As I read the book, I'm filled with a bit of melancholy that comes from truly believing that this is the future of our species and equally believing that I was born just a couple of generations too soon.
On Monday, December 28, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Skynet became self aware…
I think this is all going to happen in the next 40 years so take good care of your meat puppet.
Indeed, although I’m going to maintain hope that the machines don’t feel compelled to eliminate us.
If we figure out how to download the brain, then you're right. But given how little we know about the brain, I think we'll see wetware augmentation and gene therapy to slow aging long before we can transfer ourselves to new puppets. And based upon the current literature (okay, Wired) neither of those are going to be very effective on a 75-year-old body.
I think we’re going to have step function advances in this stuff that obsolete the predications from folks like Wired. Of course, I’m an optimist.
Where Do "My" Music Rights Start and Stop? I understand your frustration, Its a real cluster, but let me challenge your assumption here.
"Your" rights, for the works "You" create or control are "Yours" completely.
Like real estate. You decide what you what to do with "Your" asset. You don't have a right to Garth Brooks assets. and Garth cant lay claim to TechStars or one of your portfolio companies. You and your team decide who, what, when, and where you take Tech-stars. Fair isn't it?
The pain here is massive, both sides suffer, but you really can't blame the owners of copyrights. Technology has sped past old school, music 1.0 forms of handling your assets. The world has changed, unfortunately, the licensing process has not evolved since the 1920s Tin Pan Alley era, currently, and licensors and content owners are more balkanized more than ever. I believe we are entering an exciting time within the media entertainment space. For an industry based around the creative process working “in” the industry, there is very little innovation around working "on" the problem.
This creative disruption is the best time for new thinkers, transformative solutions. It really is a failure of innovation.
Full discloser, around our prior discussions re: a platform in development here at Ripcord. For copyright owners, our platform will fix a massive problem, with 100% copyright integrity. Your point of "non-biological entities having more reasoning and processing power than biological entities" not only could be a Bladerunner quote, but a good description of what’s around the corner.
I don’t think you are challenging my assumption at all. I simply asked a rhetorical question. I pay a subscription fee to Pandora for access to the music. Fred either gets it free or pays a subscription. Either way, the rights holder (whoever holds the rights to the work in question) – either specifically, or broadly, has limited Pandora’s license.
Your assertion below that it needs new thinking is exactly correct. That’s part of the point of the post!
Interesting to note the machine "shares your disappointment and greatly appreciates your understanding." A very emotional response
Good catch – I hadn’t noticed that!
To say the rights holders fuck everything up isn't actually correct. It's oftentimes a case of the laws surrounding the Performance Rights Organization for the particular region.
For example, in Germany if I own all of my own songs and I'm the rights holder, but I'm signed to GEMA (their PRO), I don't have the right to waive my royalties in exchange for promotion. If I'm signed to GEMA and you play my music, you MUST pay them royalties on my behalf regardless of whether I require you to or not.
Each country has a different set of laws surrounding mechanical licenses and royalties, requiring music companies like Pandora to enter into lengthy negotiations surrounding blanket licenses. I believe it's particularly prevalent in European countries.
On top of the PRO's, you've got the NMPA not to mention the major labels, who all have their own agendas. Any one of these organizations can establish roadblocks for companies like Pandora, despite the fact that the rights holders may very well want their music played in Argentina.
A couple things here:
- "Records" are actually a newer-school reference to "recordings," which I think better-describes musical works that are licensed across so many formats — I'd say the cooler kids are saying 'records' (and I think Fred's onto that).
- I get the tension between rights holders and those trying to build more open (and global) businesses on the web, but securing rights is a legitimate form of competitive barrier to entry. I license rights for a living, and the ability to secure rights that others either (i) cannot afford or (ii) cannot execute quickly provide a meaningful barrier, in music and other forms of media.
I'm sure there's a future scenario where licensing is negotiated via a read/write, API-based exchanges among machines, but until then, artists and labels want choice and control over their channels of distribution. That may look like a chafe from the 50,000-foot level, but I'd posit that businesses that out-execute other businesses with great licenses stand to be extremely valuable.
Re: “Records” – once again demonstrating that Fred is much cooler and hipper than I am. Is it pronounced “wreckords” or “re-cords”?
Re: license rights – I don’t pretend to be an expert here, but I have several friends who are. And all of them believe that there is a massive misallocation of dollars between artists and the other participants in the ecosystem. I personally have no idea how it ultimately resolves, but I think the next decade is going to see some massive change in the way all of this works.
Yeah – my guess is that Fred is using “rights holders” generally and is mostly referring to the types of organizations, including the labels, that you refer to below. As you know, he’s hugely pro artist.
I found this really interesting because I have sometimes wondered what will happen far in the future when merely listening to music once allows me to store it perfectly in my brain and play it back at will. Will DRM somehow be inaudibly woven into the sounds? Will they set a no-save flag that everyone will just ignore? Will the MPAA and RIAA be obtaining court orders allowing them to dig through people's brains looking for music that was listened to illegally? Bullshit. It seems like copyrights are doomed.
Could you imagine how absurd it would be to have to implement DRM inside your brain (or whatever the equivalent would be).
So on the subject of singularity – http://www.livescience.com/health/060327_neuro_ch...
Advances in nanotechnology will ensure that we live longer and create more powerful computers. And then eventually we will become the computers. Imagine a world where learning is as easy as "downloading" the instruction set to program your brain to perform a task. And while some argue that this technique will not make you a master, it will give you a certain level of proficiency to perform tasks.
And then one day we will all be connected together on a giant network, all aware of each others existence. But then the scary part, since we are all "connected" does that mean someone can "disconnect" us (ie kill us?).
Its like Asimov + Matrix
I give you Steve Albini's seminal "The Problem With Music":
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
The labels are screwed
One of the most interesting issues that I’m pondering is “who decides the rules” – man or machines. For now, we do. Eventually, we might not.
The way he starts the essay is priceless.
“Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says \”Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke\”. And he does of course.”
I'm a bit late to this thread, but I found it interesting that your response to Fred's post was so similar to mine. Where you created a Pandora variation, I chose Spotify. I took Fred's top 10 records of the year (from a few days ago) and created a Fred Wilson Top Recordings of 2009 Spotify playlist. It was sooo easy. I just searched for each recording and dumped the entire contents into the playlist. And just as your note to Fred (with the Pandora link) ran into licensing issues, Spotify has been struggling for months (years, actually) to reach acceptable licensing terms here in the US with the major labels.
I've been using the service since Daniel Ek first showed it to me two and a half years ago. (It has completely changed the way I connect with recorded music.) Even then, Spotify already had a working iPhone version of the app, but this has never been available in the US (without a proxy hack). And the one thing that keeps this experience out of the hands of US consumers? Licensing issues.
The music industry as we know it was built on the back of copyright and recording and manufacturing technologies. The licensing issues we wrestle with today grew up over decades and created powerful prevailing norms (and interests) that have become immensely frustrating to most consumers because (a) most consumers know full well that technology would support a far superior music listening experience and far more liberal access to content, and (b) most consumers know full well that the resistance to these technologies and capabilities has been (and continues to be) managed by people who act as though the old way of doing things (Albums, CDs, physical distribution, etc.) is the norm. Indeed it was. But that norm is never coming back. Not ever. But that doesn't keep the "rights holders" from blocking the dissemination of technology that would make our music world a much richer, more satisfying place.
And I think Samantha's distinction – between rights holder and rights enforcer (e.g., the PROs and other rights organizations) is interesting. PROs act on behalf of the rights holders, and the legal provisions and systems they enforce (that create obstacles for Pandora and many, many others) are really just the codified notions of "fairness" created during a time when a "record" was wax or vinyl, the copyrights were easier to police and enforce (because you could keep someone from making the record, and if they couldn't make it or manufacture it, they couldn't very well distribute it), and digital distribution was a figment of some sci fi author's imagination.
I loved your description of the machine / human / machine / human interplay; and I hope the answer to "who decides" doesn't turn out to be "the machine." On a related note, I wish we could see the interplay between Asimov and Ray Kurzweil. And I always secretly suspected Azimov himself was part machine, or at the very least lobotomized – so he could type separate books and magazine articles simultaneously with each hand.
Simple! In late 2009, the so-called “machines” (reverse spin – actually human-created computer software, and the original, human rights holders) are still being trumped by “humans” (again: total spin; actually sub-humans — the Hollywood lawyers, agents, business strategists, and other sub-human forms).
This will change… at some point soon. Hollywood knows this, and fears it more than anything.
whoa. we've been on a mind meld, it seems as i posted on man/machine stuff today too
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/12/people-first-mach...
my post is also about music but not about rights holders fucking everything up. i've said my piece on that
[...] Where Do My Music Rights Start and Stop? In an effort to be subversive, I forwarded the email to Fred with a note that said “Wild how the music licensing stuff is stupid.” He responded immediately with “Yup. Rights holders fuck everything up.” I wonder what the machines think of that? [...]
I’ve been reading, thinking, and fantasizing a lot about this over the holidays. I think we are going to see a major level up (I love to use gamer lingo – it makes me feel cool) in how machines work.
Rust.
If we can reliably halt or reverse rust (oxidation) in cells, then 'immortality' becomes a whole lot more practically achievable. Probably no more desirable, but hey…
Tom – great summary of the issues. You are – and have always been – one of the experts that I reference back to on this issue. And yes – Asimov was part machine. That man was so far ahead of his time – he and Heinlein introduced me to the future when I was a young boy.
speaking of getting hosed at La Cabrera, they really shouldn't do that to a blogger with serious google juice like gotham gal
http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=ch...
yup
i showed it to her and she smiled
I love the way it shows up in Google: “Dec 28, 2009…AARRRGGGHHHHHH! That pretty much sums up our night atLa Cabrera.“
I've been envisioning a future where we all have the technological tools to create our own music, so we won't have to bother with any issues of ownership or rights. We'll just hear what we have created ourselves and it will be perfect.
LOL. A cynic might say this also applies to signing a VC termsheet…..
Oh come on. We're not that bad are we. Are we?
I like the post Brad, but I wanted to clarify some things, including shedding some technical light on what I see as a major weakness (among others) of Pandora … Beyond PageRank: Learning with Content and Networks http://bit.ly/7cqL5i
Bradford – I just read your post. It’s a good, long, thoughtful post about this stuff, especially your section on supervised and unsupervised learning (thanks for the various links).
That said, I didn’t suggest that Pandora’s algorithms were any good, I simply said that it’s “one of my favorite non-biological entities.” As your correctly point out, it’s pretty weak right now even though it is best in class.
Your assertion, “My hunch is that it won't be too long before systems that can not learn from both content and networks are obsoleted by systems that can. Truly state of the art learning systems do this now, but it is by no means ubiquitous” is right on the money – I completely agree and am deeply intrigued by all of this.
I'm with you. Pandora is on of my favorites as well – which is why it is so troublesome to know how much faster they could expand their # of songs and how much better their recommendations could be.
Luckily I think we may be in for a bit of a shakeup this decade.
Hi, last year I went to Argentina and I do believe that the the best place to eat is "La Cabrera". Last year I was in an apartment in buenos aires which was near that place and went there almost every day.
I loved it and it is in the neighborhood of Palermo.
Cheers
Tiffany