Shortly after our music locker service debuted, we got sued by all the major labels. I spent 4 months writing tools to pull all the discovery data for their lawsuits.
When it was apparent our court case was going south, the major music publishers sued us as well (lead by Harry Fox Agency). I spent another 4 months pulling discovery data for those lawsuits.
When those court cases trended badly for us, we got sued by every 2 bit operation that owned a partial percentage of the country-based rights to a song (ie, one company may of owned 4% the rights of a song in the United States and 10% in Mexico and 9.3% in Ireland, with another company owning 1.3%, 40%, .5% respectively). I spent another 4 months pulling discovery data for those lawsuits.
Finally, after we where acquired by Vivendi Universal and they took on our liabilities, I spent almost a year writing tools for them to pay these partial percentages. Have you ever had to split 1 cent via check between 3 parties? It's not fun.
Moral of this boring story is Spotify better win this fast and clean or they are in a world of pain; I can never get those 2 years of my life back.
> When it was apparent our court case was going south, the major music publishers sued us as well (lead by Harry Fox Agency).
From the OP:
> Wixen also alleged that Spotify outsourced its work to a third party, licensing and royalty services provider the Harry Fox Agency, which was “ill-equipped to obtain all the necessary mechanical licenses”.
If there's any justice, if they lose at all in court Spotify will be suing Harry Fox for damages too.
Wixen also alleged that Spotify outsourced its work to a third party, licensing and royalty services provider the Harry Fox Agency, which was “ill-equipped to obtain all the necessary mechanical licenses”
Not to mention that SoundExchange makes zero effort to track down rightsholders, seemingly because they get to keep any left over royalties they collect, and IIRC these extra royalties may also be partially distributed to top artists regardless of whoever a particular leftover royalty dollar should be allocated.
If you don't mind me asking, is there any particular reason you didn't just leave? I'd imagine this fits the kind of situation where you aren't obligated to stay.
The billion dollar question. Why didn't you leave.
Couple of weeks ago been talking to a coworker and said him that _sometimes_ people end up in uncomfortable situations. Family, children, debt, divorce, medical, elderly parents and so on - he said, that's not possible, because people _should_ plan their lives.
Ah, the Just World Hypothesis. "Something bad happens, you must've screwed up somehow. Just look at me, I'm doing fine and I instinctively know that random good-luck had nothing to do with it."
You forgot the most important psychological part "... and if that wasn't true, then life would be terrifying".
People believe in the witchdoctor's raindance because the alternative is to believe your entire life is at the mercy of the random chance of weather and could be destroyed at any moment. Which is true, but hard to deal with mentally.
It was a different time, but probably not that different figuratively.
Things like Shatner taking Priceline stock to be their spokesperson played into the dot-com mania narrative of the time, but now that's seen as a shrewd business move. 50 Cent had a $60-100 million exit with Vitamin Water and Lebron had a $30 million exit with Beats.
Being tied up in a lawsuit does not grind a company to a halt. Most of the Fortune 500 is probably getting sued right now for some reason or another. Also, when a company loses a lawsuit, the court doesn’t automatically debit the damages from the company. Winning a case and collecting damages are 2 very different things.
>"we got sued by every 2 bit operation that owned a partial percentage of the country-based rights to a song"
Were these these each each country's performing rights societies then? I am confused on why these are partial percentages. I would have though that they would be 100% owned in each country. Does the performing right society divide up 1 pie amongst all its affiliates in each of the countries.
Do you have any idea what the final amount Vivendi paid out to straighten everything out? I am guessing they had good idea of that before the acquisition, so I am guessing it was still a good investment for them.
I worked on a similar system for various music rights holders.
It could be a record label, recording studio or even a song writer that holds a partial percentage of the proceeds from a composition, performance, or recording, and the actual percentage owned could vary by country.
So in Norway, Sony, Mom&Pop Music and your uncle Joe could hold various rights on a song, and in Sweden hold entirely different rights. Based on various revshares, contracts and agreements the amount paid out to each entity could vary as well - in my case sometimes they even varied on the platform it was played on, who played the song, etc.
It's very complicated and there are a ton of edge cases. These edge cases is where a lot of the partial percentages and confusing ownerships come from. And it doesn't help that there's a lot of music out there for which the metadata is really bad. The majors have complicated systems to figure this out (not sophisticated-complicated, more like 1-million lines of business logic complicated), mainly because they have to.
But i think that's what the collecting societies of each country are for. Not every artist/composer is a member of one though, so that's probably where those come from.
What can happen is, that a rights holders music is played in another country so that this countries collecting society has to transfer the money to the respective collecting society in his country.
The collecting society then splits up the money for that song among all rights holders (labels, composers, songwriters, etc.). That's where small percentages and sub-cent calculations come from.
At least that's how it works in germany. The GEMA (german collecting society for composers and such) collects money for songs being played in germany. The rights holder may not be a member of the GEMA and as such the money will be transfered to the collecting society of the member.
At least that's my understanding.
I take it that "discovery" is the process of communicating with the people who are suing providing the raw data and facts as to their basis for suing. This could be a giant spreadsheet of the songs that were sold and what was paid on it.
This article reads like a press release from the plantiff (Wixen) and took a little googling to unwind. Long story short, it sounds like there's disagreement about what type of license Spotify needs. Spotify has previously claimed that streaming is not "reproduction" and is more akin to "performance"... and they (may) have those licenses. What they do not have (in some cases?) is a "mechanical" license[1], which carries requirements for notification and payment that Spotify claims are onerous.[2]
Thus, I'd re-write the lede of this story to:
Music streaming company Spotify was sued by Wixen Music
Publishing Inc last week for allegedly using thousands of
songs... without [the right kind of] license and
[associated kind of notification and] compensation to the
music publisher.
[1] https://www.harryfox.com/license_music/what_is_mechanical_li... - Incidentally, this is HFM, the same firm Spotify uses for "third-party" licensing. They define a mechanical license to include the right to "reproduce and distribute copyrighted musical compositions (songs) on ... interactive streams and other digital configurations." Seems a little damning for Spotify.
It’s kind of a gray area, the whole performing/mechanical rights system was obviously invented before streaming. Radio stations pay for performing rights, so the question arises whether streaming is more like radio broadcast or manufacturing and distributing physical copies (e.g. CDs)? Without further legislation, ultimately only the courts can decide that.
My guess is that ultimately streaming rights will end up as their own category, separate from performance, mechanical or sync rights.
On a logical level it should be treated the same as broadcast radio, however it gets hazy because you can store playlists and play tracks on demand so its really not clear cut. With radio you can hear the song if it happens to be playing but there is no on demand, no playlists.
YouTube is different though because as soon as you have visuals accompanying the audio you are in sync rights territory which is the kind of royalty that e.g. television broadcasters pay. Same goes for Twitch.
> YouTube is different though because as soon as you have visuals accompanying the audio you are in sync rights territory which is the kind of royalty that e.g. television broadcasters pay. Same goes for Twitch.
There are endless uploads to YouTube with a static title slide accompanied by a popular song. I see them constantly when searching for genuine music videos from my adolescence. Infringement seems pretty clear in these particular cases.
This is obviously distinct from Spotify’s streaming business, of course. I’m only attempting to address this specific subtopic.
But you see, the thing is with commercial music is that the music owner is not a single entity. There is a composer, if there are lyrics there is a lyricist, if it was translated then there is a translator, if it’s a cover or remix there is an arranger, there is a publisher that published the music, there might be a sub-publisher, then there is a record label… One of the main reasons behind the existence of this complex system of rights is the complex ownership structure of the copyright and related rights.
Isn't this the reason vevo exists? youtube pays a single royalty based on playback and leaves it to the uploader to split it up between all the interested parties.
YouTube don't need a license because they say they are covered by safe harbors / DMCA, so the record companies have negotiated separate agreements with YouTube. The fact that safe harbors were designed for passive intermediaries like ISPs and not a service like YT that promotes and makes money and gets value from all the music people upload (including record companies) is glossed over by YouTube.
Functionally, for the consumer, streaming is mostly identical to a recording. Want to listen to a song? Press play. The storage just happens to be on some server somewhere.
Not entirely. You get a CD, and a licence to reproduce it under certain conditions. If you purchase a music CD, your rights to reproduce it can legally be revoked (though I can't think of any cases where this has actually happened).
Perhaps, more importantly, it's easier for Spotify to enforce this, than a CD-making company.
True, but most users don't seem to mind. Arguably, streaming is just a better storage medium for most users. Until the company providing the service screws its customers over, if course. I doubt that possibility weighs very heavily into many consumers' buying choices.
But the relative cost one would be willing to pay varies.
Would I pay a streaming service $10 a month for 10 tracks, that I can only listen to on their service, but which I get unlimited plays of so long as I subscribe to their service? Hell no.
Would I purchase an album of 10 songs, that are mine into perpetuity to listen to, make reasonable copies of, fair use of, etc, for $10? Yes.
Would I pay a streaming company for on demand access to a broad catalog of songs? Yes.
But note how my consumption and value varies.
The thing is, streaming services are, fundamentally, gainining 'per listen' value, and that model is reflected into how they're paying rightsholders. That is, the more I listen to a track, the more value it collects for the owner.
A purchasing model is how many purchases. Listens are not really correlated to that (at least, not to the price). That is, one user may listen to the purchased album 100 times, the other may listen to one song 100 times, and one user may listen to the album 1000 times. All paid the same, all generated the rightsholders the same.
As such, I think treating streaming as a storage medium would be...poorly thought out. Not least of all because at that point you could make a strong case that the streaming service should be paying every rightsholder for every subscriber; they are, after all, -storing- that music for the new subscriber; nevermind if the subscriber ever listens to it or not.
The key difference is your rights, isn't it? After all, this is a legal issue.
I permanently have the right to listen to a CD I own as many times as I want.
With Spotify, as far as I'm aware, they can yank any part of the catalog without anything owed to me as a listener. If I wake up tomorrow and the only thing available is John Cage's 4'33", I have no recourse. Spotify isn't offering me storage space.
You hold a physical artifact on which some data can be extracted and interpreted by a device build for that purpose, but the legality of you playing the data isn't implicitly tied up to the ownership of the artifact holding the data. That is what the licensing scheme is. The common assumption is to think that because you hold the storage, you are therefore entitled to decode the data held on it, but the laws about IP are there to limit this and allow to extract value from you using the device.
Otherwise, you could just legally extract the bits downloaded onto your computer and keep the music files you have just streamed from Spotify or any equivalent service.
Well, now we're getting into the question of what the intent is behind having different pricing and licensing for broadcast and distribution of recordings.
Guessing that would fall under "performance" as well, but each jukebox would be separately licensed. In the case of something like Spotify, it's n jukeboxes, where n is the number of total users. Of course, that's absurd, since most Spotify accounts are listened to a single user.
I think the reality is that over 20 years after the development of Real Player, we still don't have a good legal framework to discuss streaming.
It's also the reason behind ridiculous things like DRM.
The idea that there is a difference between broadcasting and copying, and that computers can emulate that difference is a pipe dream; nonetheless shared by most music labels.
Friendly reminder: when discussed in context of copyright laws, "broadcasting" and "copying" are colours, only tangentially related to technical meaning of those terms. The law deals with colours, not with physical reality.
(TL;DR: 'colour' captures those path-dependent aspects of a thing, like where did it came from and why someone is doing something with it. A song legally bought and one illegally acquired may be bit-for-bit identical, but they have different colours.)
It doesn't seem outlandish to claim there's a distinction between a broadcast, where you might hear a song at a particular time of day, and having an on-demand copy of a song at any time. The former scenario could see you, for instance, buying a CD because you liked a song you heard on the radio; that is probably not as likely with Spotify.
There is, but that distinction does not exist with internet distribution. It's arbitrarily enforced via DRM (which doesn't really work), which is in turn enforced by Section 1201 of the DMCA.
> The former scenario could see you, for instance, buying a CD because you liked a song you heard on the radio; that is probably not as likely with Spotify.
That depends on whether you want to support the record label/artist, and find CDs as/more convenient as/than streaming.
The trouble is that CDs are really less convenient, and therefore less valuable.
Copyright holders should react to the declining value of physical media by creating better distribution platforms. Unfortunately, they have failed miserably, and now resort to disproportional copyright enforcement and DRM, which pushes the value of their product even farther down.
I can't seem to follow your argument. If you want DRM-free, lossless, digital music to download and own you can buy it from countless shops - from iTunes (well, not lossless) to platforms like Bandcamp to niche stores like Boomkat.
I think the music industry, in contrast to its Hollywood sibling, has very much succeeded in offering DRM-free content from a wide range of stores, shops and platforms. Physical media like CDs aren't relevant to this development.
Of course a subscription-based streaming service like Spotify can't operate without DRM. It's the whole point of the service: If you stop being a subscriber you lose access to the content.
> I want the liberty to compete with Spotify, Pandora, Google Music, iTunes, etc. without fear of debilitating litigation.
Feel free to do so. Of course it will be an uphill battle and a very complicated process, but I guess that applies to competing with any kind of major service, regardless of its category.
> I want to enjoy music without ever sacrificing my security or privacy to DRM.
Again, you can. Buy music from the shop of your choice - it's yours. No DRM, no strings attached.
> Just because the music industry is in a significantly better position than others does not make it good enough.
Spotify started as a convenient P2P streaming service, then got the capital to pay rightsholders. If I were to do the exact same thing, I would almost definitely be stopped on the outset by litigation.
> Again, you can
Sometimes. A few specific services offer DRM-free tracks, but there isn't much competition in that space. Again, it is practically impossible to legally compete with incumbents.
> from the shop of your choice
CD's are still the gold standard for lossless DRM-free music distribution. That is not a good thing. That is not a reasonable thing. That is the status quo that we are all constrained to by a select few corporations. It's not as drastic a problem as in Movies/TV, but it is still a problem.
> I still don't understand what you're missing.
Maybe you can read my comments over again, and ask about specific points. I care an awful lot about the subject, and would be happy to clear things up.
For the vast majority of the internet users, it does.
They won't "hack" the online radio to download (rip) the stream. Even if it's just a click away via countless stream downloading services found via any web search engine.
DRM raises that technical bar by a few notches, but it doesn't really work for non-interactive content, because there are again countless sites that offer non-DRMed access. (So DRM works for games, because it takes a while to crack them.)
> So DRM works for games, because it takes a while to crack them.)
It really doesn't.
> For the vast majority of the internet users, it does.
The significant majority of internet users have been carefully conditioned with propaganda to be afraid of file sharing and other more convenient options.
The idea that it works just enough to be valuable is what these media corporations are constantly telling themselves, and each other. They have managed to cultivate a culture where that is almost true, so they continue to believe it.
What they are too afraid to believe is that DRM devalues their product more than it controls customers' spending. If that isn't true now (I am quite certain it is), it will be soon.
Most people who are willing to pay full price at the beginning of sales (usually $60, often over $100) are people who want to support the creators and distributors of the game.
Adding DRM is not likely to change a significant amount of that groups behavior. It does, however, significantly devalue the product.
That's what you say. But what evidence do you have for it? I contend that there is a significant number of people who would probably be willing to buy a game on its release date at full price, but will choose not to if a free bootleg is available. I also contend that for many or even most gamers DRM in video games is not an issue that really bothers them.
If you take physical media out of the equation you get buying the CD on iTunes or something. It's hard to see what utility this gives you beyond playing the song on Spotify.
The utility Spotify provides is discoverability. Spotify is a large and diverse collection.
> you get buying the CD on iTunes or something
As far as iTunes goes, it does not provide lossless DRM-free content at a competitive price, and is especially worthless to me, since it does not even run in Linux, and is painful to use in Windows.
There aren't many competitors either, because media corporations are holding back innovation and competition by demanding fees and DRM.
Broadcasting a song and on-demand streaming is technically isomorphic.
1. Clearly on-demand streaming implies broadcasting.
2. Presumably I could turn a broadcast into an on-demand radio stream by setting up a radio station which loops through all songs. Then I get into my rocket ship and travel away from Earth at near lightspeed and return, arriving exactly when the song I want to hear on-demand is being broadcasted. It's possible to approach zero latency for this method, depending on whether I stay in my rocket ship all the time and how fast I travel.
Light speed travel doesn't exist and getting into a rocket to listen to a song sounds like a big inconvenience (not to mention prohibitively expensive).
For the vast majority of history, musicians were not some of the wealthiest members of society, far from it. Music has traditionally been “near free” and only ceased to be during a brief period necessitated by tech. That period has long since ended.
I don’t see that an artificial value placed on music, rather than the previous real value set on its distribution, is necessarily a good thing.
Being a musical artist is not easy business for pretty much every artists except for a few outliers, though we do appreciate and consume music.
If you made a graph with the x axis being percentile and the y axis being the amount of money made, on the far right side of the x axis there would be a huge spike where a tiny fraction are making a fortune. (I think) I'd prefer the spike to be smoothed out.
What's interesting is that Apple/Google/Pandora/Spotify could test this. Adjust the distribution curve and then see how demand for music services changes over the years. With more artists able to live as pros, would music as a whole be more in demand? I'd venture that music as a whole would be more in demand due to increasing the number of (quality) trials in the musical search space. And if you flatten it out too much, you would reduce the motivation to continue to try to "hit it big", so you're looking to optimize the distribution curve.
I think what you're doing (seeing this as an optimization problem) is asking the right sort of question
A related point is the FOSS-style model of "give away music for free, make money on tours/advertising/movie soundtracks" biases the search towards music that works well in live performance/in advertising/in a film. So we are missing huge parts of the search space.
Not even then. Musicians as a group weren't wealthy even in the heyday of physical albums. As with so many things, it's only a handful of top names that make a bundle.
Can we ignore any question about whether 21st century tech/economic changes are helpful to us by saying "for the vast majority of history, we lived in caves and many died in childbirth?"
That’s an excellent point, but I’d say that death during childbirth has always been recognized as a bad outcome. I’m not so convinced that the same can be said for the history of music before the modern mass market. I don’t think that the history of music is akin to the history of premedical chikdbirth; the history of music is in fact replete with positive outcomes we enjoy to this day.
Sure, but the question of whether or not streaming has helped music or musicians overall has nothing to do with the economic model of the 19th century and prior. It's about the change from 20th to 21st century.
I hope in future we come up with something better than any of the three.
How much FOSS software is actually funded by big companies that are either trying to upsell support or non free offerings, trying to get others to contribute for free to help them,or by companies who are trying to "commoditize their compliments"?
Most major open source software is not done as a labor of love.
Whereas most music is clearly the muses working through mortal souls, right? Come on...
I'm saying just the opposite, he seems to implying that the majority of well known, popular open source software is done by starving programmers as a labor of love. Their is usually a financial motive.
I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not a software developer so it may not hit as close to home as you hope. Having said that, I would point out that programming isn’t an art, but engineering. You’re not performing, you’re building something. Traditionally it’s been easier to earn a living by making something people want to buy than making art which may or may not be popular.
I don’t have a problem with that, and as I said, I don’t think anything other than a brief moment in the history of art does either.
> but has streaming really helped the average artist?
Sure has helped most of the artists I know, who would never be lucky enough/know the right people to be among the chosen elite that got to participate in the record system.
Streaming services and the internet means that 100000s of artists can have a following of maybe 1000 people each and still make ends meet doing what they love. They won't get filthy rich, but they'll make a living.
>My guess is that ultimately streaming rights will end up as their own category
That could get complicated if labels and artists have clauses to be involved in any new rights management categories. Everyone might have to renegotiate from the bottom up.
These rights should be negotiated relative to consumer rights: if my music subscription fee pays for mechanical licensing as well as performance, I should be free to copy that music for personal offline use.
> Spotify has previously claimed that streaming is not "reproduction" and is more akin to "performance"... and they (may) have those licenses.
Doesn't having an offline mode run counter to this claim? That's clearly reproducing it. It once lived as a copy on their servers, now it lives as a copy on their servers and on the subscriber's device.
I could see, however, the argument going this way: a true reproduction is permanent, such as when a user burns a copy of a CD and distributes it to a third party. In this case, there are now two copies in the world. With offline mode (I think) those files are only playable so long as the software checks in with the service to ensure the subscription is still active.
>"Doesn't having an offline mode run counter to this claim? That's clearly reproducing it."
I agree with this. Even if it only lives an encrypted cache you are effectively doing a bit by bit reproduction when you offline sync. They do expire once the user hadn't logged in for some amount of time, I believe it's something like after 30 days of not logging in or refreshing a token.
Before streaming when someone bought a CD they bought just that copy you weren't permitted to make a copy of that CD at any time.
"Mechanical licenses apply to reproduction and distribution of musical works on records and CDs, in permanent digital downloads, and in some other digital uses."[1]
>"Even radio is on the receiving end reproduced bit by bit, copied multiple times and stored in some kind of memory, which could be analog or digital"
Copying bytes of a track into a buffer for transmission is not the same as storing a complete copy of the track on persistent storage i.e a downloaded copy done as part of an "offline sync."
> Copying bytes of a track into a buffer for transmission is not the same as storing a complete copy of the track on persistent storage i.e a downloaded copy done as part of an "offline sync."
Physically they are the same thing. A buffer could be large enough to hold a complete copy and all storage is persistent to greater or lesser degrees.
It sounds like you are claiming if you buffered a small track in a future non-voltile RAM suddenly it's a different license?
The legal difference is intent. What can the user do with the copy and does it feel like a copy.
>"Physically they are the same thing. A buffer could be large enough to hold a complete copy and all storage is persistent to greater or lesser degrees."
A buffer is generally understood to mean transient storage, so no not the same at all.
>Before streaming when someone bought a CD they bought just that copy you weren't permitted to make a copy of that CD at any time.
I guess it depends on what you mean by permitted, was I legally allowed to copy the CD? Yes, was I also able to pick my favorite tracks and make a custom playlist CD? Also yes. You were also free to rip it to your computer and put it on your iPod. It's called Fair Use and since there was no DRM on a CD you were free to utilize your fair use rights.
> Also yes. You were also free to rip it to your computer and put it on your iPod. It's called Fair Use
That's not how Fair Use works. Fair Use is about making transformative works like "commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, and scholarship" (according to Wikipedia). Not copying entire songs for your personal use.
> That's not how Fair Use works. Fair Use is about making transformative works
Fair Use covers more than transformative works. See, notably, Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417, 455 (1984).
Though while audio ripping of the type descrived could have been considered general fair use much like space shifting was in Sony, it actually was covered under a separate statutory allowance to avoid ambiguity, as the Audio Home Recording Act; this was found to cover ripping mp3s specifically in RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F.3d 1072 (9th Cir. 1999), which specifically cited Sony’s Fair Use result.
I wonder how this works as they've been available on Spotify for as long as I can recall. I assume they will have to show they requested discussion on the licensing long before taking extraordinary measures such as this.
Wixen allegedly represent Neil Young who is founder of a now defunct (I believe) digital music distribution service called Pono^ focused around lossless encoding.
To quote Neil himself (as CEO) when he had to shut the service down by Apple acquiring their store partner=. he said:
I had to put up with lots of criticism for the high cost of music
delivered in the way all music should be provided, at full
resolution and not hollowed out. I had no control over the pricing,
but I was the one that felt the criticism, because I was the face
of it. And I pretty much agreed with the criticism. Music should
not be priced this way.
Basically he was squeezed by licensers to pay more because he had a higher fidelity product:
Record companies believe they should charge a premium for high res
recordings and conversely, I believe all music should cost the
same, regardless of the technology used.
I think they just wanted him to not cloud much much bigger deals and gave him the cold shoulder.
Young is one of the most productive workers in the history of music and clearly a dedicated, business minded chap. I'd have a hard time believing he isn't involved in this in some way or perhaps the death of their client Tom Petty has liberated their ability to pursue anti consumer legal avenues for short term revenue generation.
"Move fast and break things", remember? Who cares if the legal stuff is a quagmire, just scale your user base and hope someone buys you out before the shit hits the fan.
Thank you for this! I was quite shocked that Spotify would just outright steal a bunch of songs and publish them without any kind of license. This makes a lot more sense.
> The generally preferred
> method on HN is to begin
> the line with a >
The problem with ">"-style quoting, is that the markup doesn't recognize them. Nor does it preserve the preceding newline. So if you are quoting anything more than a one-liner, you get a mess.
@foota, yes double-line break kinda works. But it forces each line to be a para and that looks ugly. I prefer to use italics in these cases as @akvadrako suggests.
But italics is not great either, because the light-weight syntax with asterisks is really meant for a small bits of text. It gets brittle for long texts which might include asterisks, or other things that confuse the markup.
"The Settlement Agreement is procedurally and substantively unfair to Settlement Class Members because it prevents meaningful participation by rights holders and offers them an unfair dollar amount in light of Spotify’s ongoing, willful copyright infringement of their works," ...
"In reaction, Spotify has been questioning whether Wixen has really been authorized by its clients (including Andrew Bird, Kenny Rogers, and Jim Morrison's heirs) to take its aggressive actions. Songwriters have administrative agreements with Wixen allowing the publisher to negotiate licensing deals, but Spotify has pointed out these agreements are silent about litigation."
This is a bit confusing. My understanding of how music publishing works is that the copyright is usually assigned to the publisher (for a limited amount of time), so any rights of the copyright holder are rights of the publisher. They wouldn't have to explicitly assign litigation rights to the publisher.
Disclaimer: IANAL, and with big artists, publishing deals can be very very different from boilerplate.
There are creation rights and performance rights, which may be treated differently. Plus artists can recover their copyrights after 35 years, under 17 U.S. Code § 203.
The reason this is being brought up is because often these litigations end with zero funds being transferred to the artists themselves. It’s not in the artists interests to sue for _damages_ if they make no money. That is the sketchy thing that this type of litigation exudes.
The pieces don't quite fit together here - Harry Fox handles a LOT of licensing (they're one of the places you can get mechanical licenses for cover songs via self-service) and I'd assume that a big contract for an organization the size of Spotify would include at least some indemnification for any legal issues.
And, naturally, the damage amount is wildly unrelated to actual revenues - not quite the "one download on Napster == $250k" levels seen in copyright litigation against consumers, but still almost half of Spotify's likely revenue for 2017...
My knowledge is that the rights to some albums end being packaged and sold in large batches, which can lead to some oddness when only some of an artist's back catalogue is included - not that uncommon to see on Spotify, which also has albums appear and disappear as the rights change hands and deals get redone.
So you can probably build a fairly large catalogue from a relatively small number of deals, I'm guessing it follows a rough 80/20 pattern.
This article adds a bit more context. Spotify claims that Wixen is overstepping their authority as music licensors and suing on behalf of clients who have not given Wixen that authority.
Reminds me of the 2010s, when a company named RightHaven was hired by media companies to sue bloggers/message boards upon finding copies or excerpts of news articles. Ostensibly Righthaven had the authority of the clients, but were ruled as not having the legal standing to sue https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righthaven
That article is discussing several different legal actions. I understood Spotify's comments regarding the artists to be in reference to the class action lawsuite Wixen is (in their opinion) interfering in.
In general to have standing you need to show you have been directly harmed. The exclusive licensee of a song would be directly harmed if someone distributed it without paying for a license. So while Wixen may not have standing in a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of the original artisits, they would have standing in their own action which they have now filed.
> In May, the Stockholm, Sweden-based company agreed to pay more than $43 million to settle a proposed class action alleging it failed to pay royalties for some of the songs it makes available to users.
This number seems closer to reality. It may be Tom Petty, Neil Young, and the Doors, but they're not worth nearly 10% of Spotify's valuation, and that certainly wouldn't match a compensatory amount in revenue that Spotify failed to pay.
Are they aiming for some punitive measure? Or are they going to settle for 5% of this in the near future?
> but they're not worth nearly 10% of Spotify's valuation
FYI - This is very likely not the metric they're after and so it's probably not helpful to frame against it. Valuation is a measure of the value of the company at any given time. In this case they're seeking damages for revenues that Spotify has made in the past as a result of alleged unlicensed content.
If you're trying to scope against Spotify's valuation, then likely you'd be looking at their earnings/profit, which as of reports since October 2017 is still negative. In other words, if there is indeed $1.6B to pay for unpaid royalties, then Spotify's already abysmal financials are going to look even worse.
> This number seems closer to reality. It may be Tom Petty, Neil Young, and the Doors, but they're not worth nearly 10% of Spotify's valuation
Why not? Is there some plausible way to build a $19bn company that lets you listen to music without the works of major globally famous artists?
I am willing to agree with you intuitively that this suit is overstating damages as well, but it's definitely not a prima facie argument, you'll have to support that point of view with facts.
> 1.Wixen brings this action against Spotify for willfully infringing the copyrights in the musical compositions listed in Exhibit A (each a “Work” and collectively the “Works”). Wixen is an independent music publisher and exclusive licensee of the Works, all of which have either been registered or are pending registration with the United States Copyright Office. Spotify is the world’s most dominant music streaming and limited downloading service. As Spotify has publicly admitted, and as recent lawsuits and settlements confirm, Spotify has repeatedly failed to obtain necessary statutory, or “mechanical,” licenses to reproduce and/or distribute musical compositions on its service. Consequently, while Spotify has become a multibillion dollar company, songwriters and their publishers, such as Wixen, have not been able to fairly and rightfully share in Spotify’s success, as Spotify has in many cases used their music without a license and without compensation.
2.A recent proposed settlement involving rights holders and Spotify inthe class action lawsuit Ferricket al. v. Spotify USA Inc. et al.,No. 1:16-cv-8412(AJN) (S.D.N.Y.)(Dkt. # 167-3 (“Proposed Settlement”))does not adequately compensate Wixen or the songwriters it represents. Wixen has and, to the extent not yet effected, will opt out the Works from the Proposed Settlement.
They used to be peer-to-peer, and they'd give "free" service to employees of certain big tech companies because they could take advantage of the upload bandwidth of the big tech offices.
They culled the P2P tech in 2014 and went to a standard server-client model.
I get the feeling that a lot of p2p efforts fail because of patents.
For example I understand the reason Facetime calls don't go phone-to-phone and instead go through a server is because of a patent [troll]. I'm curious to see how WebRTC fits into that.
I think that was more a lesson from observing the problems with Skype and other video conferencing software. P2P video is great when everything is one on one, start adding in additional people and the whole experience grinds to a stuttering pixelated mess.
As someone whose PhD touched this: it is actually ok because it stabilises towards using the most available paths.
As someone who set this up at an ISP: you can QoS the hell out of P2P and keep everyone happy. That's unless you tried blocking it and now find yourself in a stupid arms war, against folks with more free time than yourself.
There only issue I can think of is upload speed, which is improving for many, and would improve more prevalently if more average users had a clear need.
The original BitTorrent wasn't aware of network topology at all, so it could randomly use a relatively expensive or congested link just as easily as a LAN connection. You could get better use of network resources overall if you usually preferred to get pieces from peers that are closer to you on the network.
I think the BitTorrent company and/or community were studying this issue at some point and so they may have come up with alternative algorithms that prefer at least AS-locality or something.
As an extreme case, imagine that there are two seeds, one being another computer on your LAN and another being a host in Timor-Leste (which at one point in the 2000s reportedly had a single T1 connection for the entire country). It will be nicer for you and for the Timorese if you can somehow arrange to simply download the file from your LAN seed.
I like the overprovisioning concept fine, but it's going to be pretty expensive to overprovision for the possibility of high-speed connections between all random pairs of hosts everywhere in the world regardless of geography. We'll probably have to persuade a lot more people to value this degree of connectivity ideologically, because demand for it isn't really getting expressed much right now.
I don't want to sound like a Bellhead here, but the packet switching infrastructure that's been built out has embodied some assumptions about its likely patterns of use. To change those patterns of use a lot (which I'd like to see too) probably needs more infrastructure. Even things like ADSL are a problem here. I agree that path asymmetry doesn't feel at all healthy for the Internet -- it feels like it's baking in producer and consumer roles -- but there are a few counterarguments that may give us some pause:
* It's never been cheaper for people who specifically want to provide services to others to rent servers in colocation facilities. It's getting cheaper every year. So, maybe people who care to do so could just rent some servers. (Of course, this might give them less autonomy because there are more people who can decide to kick them off or shut them down, and they might still not have the infrastructure to distribute media that they produce at home to the servers they rent. On the other hand, running things at home may make anonymous publishing harder because the associated broadband service is usually tied to a physical address by the ISP.)
* There's never been a huge amount of expressed demand for symmetric network connections, even when they've been available as an option. (Maybe this is different in different countries?) The economic division of network operators into "eyeball networks" (major net traffic sinks) and "provider networks" (major net traffic sources) seems to be getting sharper over time. The network operators themselves might have an economic incentive to try to get their users to equalize the traffic in both directions -- especially in terms of arrangements around settlement-free peering -- but they haven't managed to change most users' habits very much this way.
* I think of myself as a very pro-decentralization Internet user, yet whenever I run "ifconfig wlan0 | grep bytes", my download volumes consistently dramatically outpace my upload volumes, even though I have a symmetric broadband connection both at home and at work! So apparently I'm not being the change I want to see in the world.
Your first point is actually a boon for P2P. If it is cheap enough for users to rent bandwidth closer to each other, that will solve the same problem CDNs solve.
As for points two and three, decentralization does not mean 100% symmetry, just relatively more.
I have a symmetric connection, and can forward ports without any fuss, and rather enjoy those advantages. Even so, I download quite a lot more than upload. I don't expect that to change much, even with significantly more P2P traffic.
There are a few things where I am really frustrated with other's inability to forward ports, especially video games and VOIP.
Well, ISPs did not build their systems with equal upload and download in mind. There is no pure technical reason they couldn't have, but it was what they did. To replace all of that would be difficult, and the large players in the existing system will have economic motivations for fighting any change.
Not particularly. Symmetry is totally arbitrary. It's having the same amount down as before, while having more up that is the problem.
> and the large players in the existing system -will- have economic motivations for fighting any change.
That's the real problem. The solution is to give them an economic incentive to change. Average users wanting more bandwidth/symmetry is an effective way to do that.
Symmetry isn't totally arbitrary. In many deployed access technologies, scaling head end send speed is easier than scaling user end send speed; sometimes there are settings to increase upload speed at the expense of download speed (ex annex M for adsl2), but sometimes it's an inherently asymmetric system.
Well, doesn't your answer of "it's improving for many" admit to the reality that it sucks right now, answering your own question? Besides, even if we have more bandwidth, it doesn't change the fact that p2p would require more of it.
Also, if you asked the average person if they want Spotify to be peer-to-peer + use more bandwidth vs centralized + use less bandwidth, do you think they are in a position to care much beyond the bandwidth difference? Especially on mobile devices?
I certainly would choose the latter. What do I care about making Spotify's operations cheaper at my own expense?
> it doesn't change the fact that p2p would require more of it.
But P2P doesn't require more bandwidth. It requires more upload bandwidth, which is arbitrarily constrained.
> if you asked the average person if they want Spotify to be peer-to-peer + use more bandwidth vs centralized + use less bandwidth, do you think they are in a position to care much beyond the bandwidth difference? Especially on mobile devices?
Of course not. Spotify is already tailored to the current state of internet infrastructure, which heavily favors centralized content delivery.
Spotify can afford to foot the bill for their content delivery network. That is why it is no longer "better" for them to use peer to peer networking.
> What do I care about making Spotify's operations cheaper at my own expense?
For Spotify or Netflix, or any other site that already has a centralized CDN, there is no advantage.
For everything else, however, P2P is a great way to scale distribution, and the more we do to incentivize ISPs to increase upload speed, open ports, etc. the better.
It doesn't scale well. It saturates the upload bandwidth and grinds the connection to a halt. It ruins the internet for the entire family or office. Office sysadmins will block the software and start a witch hunt once they realize the problem.
Also, connecting doesn't work with NAT, carrier grade NAT and firewalls. They need a client-server model with a server that is accessible.
Just because ISPs love to skimp on upload speed does not mean that it is reasonable to do so.
Infrastructure is reactionary. If users need more upload speed, they will pay for it, and ISPs will update the infrastructure accordingly.
> Also, connecting doesn't work with NAT, carrier grade NAT and firewalls. They need a client-server model with a server that is accessible.
That's another arbitrary issue caused by overbearing ISPs. There is an awful lot that people would be able to do if they had reasonable control over their ports.
ISPs - especially the 6 massive incumbents - build the absolute minimum infrastructure they can get away with. That is simply their fiscal incentive. We shouldn't be afraid to give them new incentives.
This is a controversial stance but I too don't understand why patents are generally limited to 20 years but creative copyright is granted until 70 or more years after the death of all participating authors. If you cannot make money off of your work within 20 years, it's highly unlikely that this will change.
I don't think companies like Disney lobby to extend copyright endlessly because they can't make money in the first 20 years, but because they can continue making money after 20 years and would prefer to do that than not. Especially with things like Disney cycling availability of older films and stuff, I'm sure they make loads of money on their older material and just want to keep doing that even if it was successful when first released.
This is exactly my point. It only benefits the already big successful cooperations and people. It does nearly nothing for small artists while actively hindering people from enjoying cultural goods. Every song that is being created today will still be under copyright when you die. Meanwhile if someone creates a new way to manufacture a certain product, it's "only" protected for 20 years (which is fine).
If Taylor Swift lives until she is 80, her songs will be free in the year 2140 - maybe even later if someone like a composer lives longer. Isn't this just absurd?
When an artistic pursuit is personal, it seems like it could maybe be passed on in a will or something similar. This might be a ridiculous idea, but I guess I find complaining about someone’s artistic endeavors not being free to be absurd in it’s own way.
Copied? Snow White was a groundbreaking feat of animation brilliance, a result of tireless effort, craftsmanship and detail that experts widely agree rivals any animation project produced to date. It was literally the first feature-length color animated film with sync audio ever produced, and you’re cutting it down for it’s screenplay being inspired by a fairy tale? This is no weakness. This is consistent with filmmaking tradition and the nature of humanities efforts in general. The line is not a sharp one, but in terms of Snow White, if I understand your accusation correctly, your point is lost.
I am open minded but, with all due respect, it appears you might not be aware of some critical truths of how art gets made.
Either way, what do you suggest?
We probably generally agree on the topic at hand. I am saddened seeing many early films eroding which have yet to be digitized because they are not accessible.
>you’re cutting it down for it’s screenplay being inspired by a fairy tale
That wasn't my reading of the parent at all.
Snow White the animated film wouldn't have been made if copyright was perpetually inherited and some distant Grimm relative refused to give Disney permission to make the film. This is relevant to your original point - that "I find complaining about someone’s artistic endeavors not being free to be absurd in it’s own way." You may find it absurd, but if it were not so, a work you seem to admire might never have been produced.
There is a cultural component to art. It draws from the culture and gives back to the culture. Long copyright terms - and I find current copyright terms very long - prevent future artists from drawing on the culture to produce new, transformative works.
Disney was able to draw on cultural material from the prior 100 years to make Snow White. But if the current copyright-extension-cycle continues, it seems plausible that Disney films - and all works created in the same period - may never fall into the public domain in the USA, and future artists will not be able to enjoy the same free use of cultural source material as Disney itself has done.
Thanks for posting your response. This makes a little more sense.
Of course, my point was about distribution of original works, not inspiration or even creative appropriation. Maybe I needed to specify that? Or maybe this was well implied by the wider conversation around Spotify’s distribution of original works. Either way, it’s a separate discussion.
To be clear, Disney did not publish and distribute copies of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
And let’s consider what Disney would have done if prevented from using the Snow White tale for his animation project? Would he have just given up?? Let’s not kid ourselves. He would have done what great artists tend to do: be creative and find another solution. There were mountains of hurdles in making this film and that would have been a mole hill. It would have been a different film, sure. It may have been better. We do not know.
The modern Disney corporation is a separate entity, to be sure.
You open up a new basket of issues here. For example, films are commonly produced from narrative works in other domains, personal accounts, etc. The royalty system allows for more than simply profit. In films, it also protects from the original authors, or storytellers and their families from what can be something like libel. It allows them to deny permission when accounts are exaggerated for audience appeal, when it may unjustly disgrace their reputation. This is only a basic example of why these things exist. It does sort of sometimes suck for artists but artists but they tend to better understand the issues at hand.
Kinda off-topic here, but as someone who co-authored a thesis on the subject, snow white was indeed ahead of it's time in terms of fluid animations and mood making, but it still featured the passive damsel-in-distress archetype which put it way behind in terms of sociological evolution.
Compare it to female counterparts in, say, Hayao Miyazaki cartoons where women are proactive and actually have character development.
> This is consistent with filmmaking tradition and the nature of humanities efforts in general.
It was consistent with filmmaking tradition when Snow White was made. It's not anymore because the previous century's worth of work is locked up behind essentially perpetual copyright.
Disney used public domain works as inspiration but then pulled up the ladder behind them so that future artists can't do the same.
> If you cannot make money off of your work within 20 years, it's highly unlikely that this will change.
Is your argument that if I can't make money off my own creative work in 20 years, anyone should have the right to give it a shot after that, even if I'm still around?
That sounds pretty shitty to me. I'm all for copyright expiring, but I'd hate to lose the rights to my own work while I'm still living.
One reason is that patents are much broader than copyrights. A copyright only prevents someone from copying your specific work. You can copyright Batman, but someone else can make Black Panther.
Patents cover independently developmed products and can cover fundamental methods or products. Inventions are often nearly developed by diffrent people. If the Wright Brothers didn't invent the airplane, someone else would have within ten years.
Someone else wouldn't have written To Kill a Mockingbird. Some other novel may have captured the same fame and critical praise, but that copyright doesn't stop that novel from exisiting.
It's a double edged sword. Less capital would flow into creating new technologies if there was no way to protect that investment. On the other hand onerous copyright protections slow the pace of innovation.
See, the "an unjust law should not be obeyed" rhetoric works better when the principle being upheld isn't "I want to be entertained for free".
I can get behind the "the information wants to be free, man" line when we're talking about overpriced textbooks and academic journals and bytecode for tractors, but when it comes to entertainment, I have a hard time caring. I don't think producers have a fundamental right to control recording, performance and distribution, as granted by the gub'mint, but I also don't think the consumers have a fundamental right to consume any cultural artifact for free.
But I do think that people should obey most laws, even ones they disagree with, until some ethereal line has been crossed, simply because it is the law, and I think "I want to be entertained for free" is way too low a bar, so I get kind of disgusted when pirates try to take a high-and-mighty stance.
There are a lot of definitions you could use: a law which denies fundamental rights; a law created by an illegitimate government; a law which makes the world worse.
But if your definition is basically "any law I personally disagree with", you're just advocating for simple anarchy.
All three of the definitions you provided will work fine.
I am denied the fundamental right of expression by copyright.
I am denied the fundamental right of security by DRM.
I am denied the fundamental right of privacy by DRM and copyright enforcement.
The United States bullies other countries like New Zealand and Sweden to enforce its copyright.
Now that Spotify exists, and can afford royalties, all innovation must be done by Spotify, and a select few other incumbents; who are all more likely to favor stability. To do as Spotify did originally (P2P file streaming) is illegal.
Section 1201 of the DMCA prevents lawful security research on anything that includes any form of DRM, making the world less secure, making actors less trustworthy, and seriously degrading privacy.
It is law that I adamantly disagree with for very real reasons. I am sharing my disagreement with anyone who will listen, and hoping for change. That is not a slippery slope to anarchy: it is democracy.
If it's "just entertainment," then why should the government (and by extension, we the people) be engaged in propping up the profitability of their industry?
If you can't find a way to make your entertainment profitable without legal protectionism, maybe you don't deserve too.
I don't really care if the government is in the business of "propping up the profitability" of the entertainment industry. If the laws were changed to reduce or eliminate copyright protections, I'd be fine with that.
I do care about rule of law. If copyright laws are the law of your land, I think that is sufficient reason to follow them, even if you are actively working to get them changed, either because you don't like them specifically or because you don't believe the government should be engaged in unnecessary activities. I don't believe that the existence of copyright law abrogates a fundamental right or denies a fundamental need, so I don't believe there is a legitimate basis for "protest" non-compliance.
It's simply nonsense to claim that sampling and mashups have been stifled by copyright law.
Ignoring a few ancient parody/satire acts like Negativland, samples are made, used, cleared, and paid for with no serious negative consequences. Likewise remixes.
There's some extra paperwork, money changes hands, and on the whole everyone is happy.
What's been far more damaging is Spotify's insanely exploitative model, which sees its officers making millions while the artists who provide the content get pocket change - if that.
> Spotify's insanely exploitative model, which sees its officers making millions while the artists who provide the content get pocket change - if that.
That's not just Spotify's model; it's music labels' model.
Spotify would gladly pay the artists all the money and it could. And it can’t. Precisely because of copyright laws: you end up paying the labels, not the artists.
Independent artists with whole or majority ownership exist and do well on Spotify.
For example, a signed artist would have to stream 1,117,021 songs to make $1,260 in a month (what the attached infographic says is minimum wage for a month). However, an independent artist who owns their work only needs to stream 180K to make the same amount [1]. This data is in 2015, but is the best data I've seen in quite a while. FWIW, they would have had to sell ~100 (~450 for signed artists) albums in a month to make this same money vs. streaming.
At this point, affiliating with a label is only worth it when you know you're going to break out.
Most musicians, even niche ones, have learned how to use the system their confined in, and do well off of a royalty-based model vs the traditional selling-CDs-at-a-show [2].
FWIW selling 100 albums/month, if you’re touring, was far far incredibly far more feasible than getting 180,000 streams is now.
Also it seems a bit unclear whether Spotify’s payouts are as egalitarian as they claim. It may be the case that a bunch of cash went towards getting existing catalogues signed up.
I’m all for Spotify btw, I just think it may not be as idealized as we like, and has some structural problems that make it infeasible for certain types of artists to make any sort of living.
I’m not advocating for touring being better. I hate touring. But the streaming amounts we’re discussing are really tiny in the end. The guitar player you linked to is making less than a tenth of what someone should hope to make to even think about calling their music income a success.
> The guitar player you linked to is making less than a tenth of what someone should hope to make to even think about calling their music income a success.
I'd surely hope $7000/month is considered a success. A passive $700/month from streams would be considered a success around here.
This is the assumption the stream counts continue, of course.
Copyright is exactly how a a musical artist is able to turn their creative output into an asset on which they can make a living from. The copyright is the very thing that allows an artist to sell and license their recorded work. An artists record company buys tor licenses he copyright to the master recording from them.
There will always be weasels and bottom feeders that seek to exploit but do you really believe copyright has somehow held back musical innovation? It was this copyright that enabled a business model that brought recorded music to the masses.
Copyright has been abused to the point where it is more of a detriment than it is worth.
There will always be weasels and bottom feeders that seek to constrain every other individual in the world from extending an artistic work or idea, even generations after his or her death; but do you really believe copyright/patent law has somehow pushed forward innovation?
>"Copyright has been abused to the point where it is more of a detriment than it is worth."
Do you really believe that an artist who makes good money licensing their music for use in TV or movies views copyright as "more of a detriment than its worth"? The only reason that revenue stream is possible is because of copyright and the sync royalties paid out on them.
>"...but do you really believe copyright/patent law has somehow pushed forward innovation?"
That's not the point I was making, my point was that it hasn't prevented musical innovation creatively. Not every instance of copyright usage is automatically detrimental to society.
Quite a few people make money with copyleft works. Even so, it is difficult, because strongly enforced copyright, and propaganda have created a culture that tries desperately to require copyright.
> Not every instance of copyright usage is automatically detrimental to society.
Of course not! But many are:
I can't watch Netflix in 1080p using Linux because of DRM.
Security research is illegal because of DRM.
I can't start a P2P music streaming service like Spotify did, because I don't have the capitol to pay for licenses. Any innovation in this sector must be done by incumbents; who have already found success, and are more content with stability.
I can't upload a video with fair use copyrighted content to Youtube, because Google has been bullied to/shows off their "capability" to weed out copyrighted content. That also sets an unfeasible precedent for competitors; who will never have the resources to do anything similar.
s/I can't/Practically no one in the world is allowed to/
Something need not be 100% detrimental to be more detrimental than it is worth. Copyright is a clear example of that. It began somewhere near middle ground, but has since drifted extremely to the benefit of media corporations, and the detriment of everyone else.
>"Enforcement is not a requirement to possibility."
That statement is gibberish. Today an artists are able to get paid because their creative output becomes an asset by virtue of a copyright. An artists can and many do start their own publishing and record companies are fully in control of their copyright regime.
>"I can't watch Netflix in 1080p using Linux because of DRM."
DRM and copyright are orthogonal.
>"I can't start a P2P music streaming service like Spotify did, because I don't have the capitol to pay for licenses."
No you can go to Media Net and get your streaming service up and running pretty quickly for as little as $1K a month only increase royalties as your service grows. See:
It's not clear to me that streaming music has actually resulted in better music or a better listening experience. It's just resulted in more plays. This benefits Spotify and advertisers the most.
Music streaming has resulted in a better discovery experience, which is valuable to users and creators.
There is an awful lot of innovation being held back. You are likely unaware, since it is not you who wants to innovate, and you aren't experiencing those innovations.
Just not sure that’s really the case. Discovery hasn’t changed much since Pandora or Last.fm.
Vinyl has made a massive comeback. Probably growing at a rate faster than Spotify at this point.
I’m really not sure what amazing “innovation” is being held back. The vast majority of social music applications just create “value” by taking revenue from someone else, not by creating new value of any kind. Not really what I think of when I think innovation.
The CD was innovative. The iPod was innovative. Spotify was just the last man standing in a long line of music streaming applications that came after music piracy hit its peak. I never found it unique or innovative. They all offered the same damn thing. Most of Spotify’s growth came from spam on the Facebook newsfeed when that was still allowed.
The whole social <whatever> app is a bit of a farce. It’s mostly based on quasi-legal theft. If that’s what counts for innovation these days then I don’t want to innovate anymore.
Though that was from a beta and in an unsure time of how the service would turn out.
Just because a service starts by doing dubious things, does not mean it will continue doing so.
I got in post-beta, but invite-only free version in 2008, and I remember it having a lot of albums where names of which were still scene releases because (I presume) the parsing was off. I also remember specific releases having audio compression artefacts matching what I streamed from Spotify.
They replaced everything in phases, because I remember all the URI:s to songs kept breaking in my playlists before they implemented auto-matching of your songs to new location once a specific album was rendered unavailable.
It is my belief that their library was in some portion built by exflitrating data from user's computers.
I have an enormous collection of lossless audio and noticed it using lots of bandwidth. The desktop versions insist on loading when the machine boots, and use subsantial amounts of bandwidth/memory at idle.
I'm pretty sure that's just the absurd inefficiency of today's trendy software.
I've also long shunned the spotify "deskop apps" and stuck to the website because firefox can contain the damage a bit, and ublock origin can make a surprising difference in the cpu usage of spotify! The ads are crazy javascript sometimes, and I'm guessing the same crap is loaded into the desktop electron apps.
There is a little (understandable) confusion in some of the comments here.
The issue here is not that Spotify is infringing copyright (so it’s nothing to do with BitTorrent etc) but rather that Wixen says that it has not been paid correctly for the mechanical exploitation of the copyrights it administers. This is complex for several reasons.
First of all: the recordings in question have without doubt been legitimately supplied to Spotify by the record labels of the artists in question.
Secondly - a record label controls only one of the two copyrights in a song - the recording copyright.
It is impossible to record a song without using the other fundamental copyright in music - which is the song itself. The literal words and music.
This is the copyright that the publisher controls - and which Wixen claims has not been properly accounted.
Third point: When the words-and-music copyright is reproduced by mechanical means for commercial gain the publisher is due a royalty - this royalty is known as “mechanicals”.
In the “old” music business when a label pressed a record they paid out the “mechanicals” to the publisher directly - for every record pressed they owed a set amount. So this was easy to track and it meant that the money flowed directly from label to publisher based on volume of records manufactured and sold.
Point number four: Spotify’s licensing regime is complex. They need to pay a royalty for the use of the sound recording. This generally goes direct to the label or artist if they self release often via their distributor).
The mechanical reproduction of the words-and-music copyright is much less straight forward in terms of how the money flows.
The reason for this is that songwriters and the performers of a song are not always the same person - though they may also be the same person. This is where publishers come into play. If I write a song, I may not be able to record and perform it sufficiently to generate good revenue from that work. So if I can persuade a high profile artist to perform and record it I will probably make much more money from my words and music. A publisher’s job is to maximise the commercial exploitation of my words and music. This can be done in several ways - first of all, they go and shop my song around to labels in the hope that an A&R at a label (basically someone a bit like a product manager in a tech company) will see a good fit between my song and an artist that they work with. The artist records the song and I generate money in two ways - first of all the mechanicals previously discussed, but also from “performance” royalties - which is where my song is performed live to an audience. So a prominent artist performs my song on a tour - the audience in the arena have paid good money for tickets, and the artist would not have any material without my song and other songs. This also needs to be compensated, and this is done through a “performance royalty” which is generally a split of Ickes revenues.
There are other revenue streams as well, and a publisher’s job is to manage and administer these revenues as effectively as possible.
Now: I mentioned Spotify has a complex licensing model. When you play a song through Spotify it is being mechanically reproduced (the data that makes the audio waveform is being transmitted from one machine to another) but the audio is also being performed by the Spotify application on your computer. So Spotify needs to pay out a mechanical royalty and a performance royalty.
It used to be that the mechanical royalty was paid out by the label - but as the label is no longer pressing discs the “replication” of the music has passed to Spotify, and so Spotify is liable.
In the “old” music business once you bought the record or CD the revenue flow ended: your CD player manufacturer was not continuing to benefit each time you played a disc. So the “performance” of the music did not have a revenue stream attached to it, assuming that you were enjoying the music in the privacy of your own home.
But Spotify can be seen to benefit each time you play a song, because you pay an ongoing subscription for access to the music.
So a performance royalty is also due.
Now: further complexity. In many territories songwriters and publishers assign the management of performance and mechanical royalties to third parties. In the U.K. for example a songwriter will join PRS - the performing right society, which administers performance copyright for the words-and-music copyright in a song. They should also join the MCPS - the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society - to collect mechanical royalties. These organisations and others like them in other territories are known as Collective Management Organisations or “CMOs”.
Spotify has deals with these two organisations (PRS/MCPS) - and generally also with the equivalent CMOs around the world. Spotify says “this song was streamed X times and so we owe Y for mechanical royalties and Z for performance royalties. This money is then paid trough the CMOs to the publishers/songwriters. You cannot - as a publisher or an artist - get this money directly from Spotify.
This works on one level because it means that so long as a work is correctly identified in the database of the CMOs and that whoever is performing or mechanically reproducing a song submits accurate data showing how and when hat song was reproduced and what revenue is attached then it all works perfectly. More critically the CMO mechanism makes it possible for services like Spotify to exist (and even for live concerts to happen) because otherwise anyone who wanted to put on a concert would need to obtain the permission of every songwriter individually before their songs could be performed.
However - you need to keep in mind that this system was invented when sheet music and clockwork pianos where the main way that words-and-music copyright was mechanically reproduced, and performance was limited to someone standing up and singing the song in a concert hall.
So far, so complex.
To add a further few layers of complexity:
There is no authoratitive database that says “this words-and-music is the copyright of Tom Petty”. Additionally, when a record label ingests music into the Spotify catalogue there is no requirement to specify who wrote the words-and-music.
The way it works is that (in essence) Spotify sends the CMOs a list of everything that has been played and the CMOs say “I represent that words-and-music copyright in X territory - so you owe me $X representing Y streams.”
It’s a pretty clunky system - but as yet, no one has really come up with a better solution. Technology moved faster than copyright admin.
Add into the mix that some artists may not register with the appropriate CMOs; some artists may not have a publisher; some labels may be releasing cover versions of songs where they have not directly obtained the permission of the copyright holder - but this is ok because in theory the words-and-music royalties flow from Spotify through the CMOs to the copyright holders.
So it’s a very complex case and hinges on whether the relevant CMOs had been delegated authority by songwriters/copyright holders/publishers to exploit those works and whether Spotify was accurately accounting and paying out for the use of the copyrights.
So it’s not about BitTorrent or Spotify having pirated music and is everything to do with how technology, the exploitation of copyright and how money flows through music are all a bit out of sync with each other.
Excellent explanation. But to complicated matters further, your description applies mainly to European licensing. The US music publishing workflow is different.
In the US, there is no CMO. After agreeing to a license, music publishers send their composition (word-and-music) catalog information directly to Spotify. There is no requirement that they need to send the associated recording with their musical composition. So the burden is on Spotify to match the composition up with the recording to recognize if the recording's underlying composition is licensed. (The recording is licensed because the actual audio file was sent to Spotify by the label).
So then Spotify needs to tie all this data together. Compositions can be owned by 5 publishers, who are all sending separate catalog files. Again, no requirement to send an unique identifier to tie these all are up. So Spotify does the best it can to associate all this data to figure out if a recording is licensed, but ultimately, they cannot verify millions of tracks. So they make business decisions that carry risk so people can listen to music. They can say, if we have 90% ownership, we will treat it as licensed or some other deviation from affirmatively knowing every copyright owner without a doubt.
So then the music publisher finds a handful of tracks that slipped through and were unlicensed. And they sue. And technically, those tracks were unlicensed, but its not for lack of trying from Spotify. And no music industry player is helping solve the metadata standards or systemic issues. They just lie in wait and sue for money or as a negotiation tactic. And they exploit the "Spotify is ripping off artists" narrative, when in reality, Spotify is working very hard and investing a lot of money to pay out artist and writers properly.
These lawsuits are very dishonest, but legally defensible. There are not in the spirit of any productive working relationship with the MAIN distribution channel of your product!
Music licensing is really complex. As someone else has said in another comment thread it also varies territory by territory in how this is managed - but then also who is owed what can vary territory by territory depending on other deals at play.
Well sure, but who owns the database? Where is it hosted and who vouches for its accuracy? What happens if it goes down or its maintainer goes out of business?
Of course, all these questions can be addressed in one way or another with conventional database tech. But blockchain has some undeniable appeal in an application like this.
If by blockchain you mean a merkle tree then sure I might agree with you. If by blockchain you mean one of the various crypto currencies with a consensus protocol then I don't really see the appeal.
A merkle tree has some useful properties for verifying the integrity of your data cryptographically. As such it is a useful way to distribute a ledger. But in this particular domain there is no double spend problem to worry about so proof of work and most other consensus protocols are... wasteful at best.
UMG, Warner, Sony and Spotify cannot share bills for running a common database on AWS today without creating yet another corporation and relinquishing power over the data to it.
Blockchains are not the next big thing in databases. They are here to revolutionize how existing organizations co-ordinate, enter into contracts with each other, and even allow individuals themselves co-ordinate directly with each other without intermediaries through novel org structures.
You are trading computational scalability for social scalability.
> Blockchains are not the next big thing in databases
Blockchains are the next big thing in nothing. They are not here to revolutionise anything [1]
> hey are here to revolutionize how existing organizations co-ordinate, enter into contracts with each other etc.
Nope. There are about zero things in blockchain that help with that. Because at the end of the day someone has to do all the job of, you know, adding all the info about who owns what percentage of what song in which region of the world.
Oh wait. Which song was that? A Japanese LP that's 2 seconds longer than the original single released in Europe? Or that remastered song on a "Best of album" that was published by a different publisher than the remastered version published on the "Remastered" album that is published by a different combination of publishers than the original 1960s album that is different from that singular French copy of a concert in 1995...
All that for a single song that ends up being attributed to the same singers and songwriters, except that one cover by all the same people sans that one guy, and except that different cover that will be attributed to the same songwriters, but a different singer, and except...
All that info has to be: standardized, assigned to every single one of those 30 million songs, and any new releases should contain the same standardized info.
You know, something the publishers could agree on right now, and they don't. So how in the seven hells is blockchain going to help?
> Blockchains are the next big thing in nothing. They are not here to revolutionise anything [1]
I beg to differ [1]
> So how in the seven hells is blockchain going to help?
It's not a silver bullet, and most things are not ones that were not possible before. But it facilitates some combinations, makes some things a lot more practical, and opens space for innovation.
In this case, in particular, what comes to mind is:
- there's a replicated consensus of all this attributions. Every single company agrees and has a shared database of the rights and the licensing.
- the disintermediation: there's not necessarily a need to have a middle man managing this informations and agreements.
- auditable, notorized, unforgeable history: you have this immutable record of when songs were released, who held their records, who and when licensed them, etc.
- open information: if you design this system as an open network, any interested party can join and get the information it wants without needing APIs, etc.
All this without getting into tokens and handling the payments and distribution of royalties on the chain, and other innovations that the capabilities of the blockchain can bring.
> there's a replicated consensus of all this attributions. Every single company agrees and has a shared database of the rights and the licensing.
Riiight. They can't agree on a standard describing their music and licensing now. But blockchain will magically create that shared database out of thin air.
BTW. Again. That same word, database. Nothing a relational database couldn't handle with much more ease and efficiency.
> there's not necessarily a need to have a middle man managing this informations and agreements
Riiight. Because every single company will provide an up-to-date complete information with no omission and mistakes. Magic of blockchain!
> you have this immutable record of when songs were released, who held their records, who and when licensed them, etc.
Riiight. Because there's not even a consensus on what to define as a song, it will somehow magically be solved by blockchain which will automagically identify and attribute eve ry song/track/music correctly, completely, and without omission.
Just some brain teasers for you:
- is a single in Europe the same song as the same single released in Japan?
- the single in Japan is 12 seconds longer, though.
- The authors and the singer are the same. The publishers are different.
- There's the same song, with the same people + a different drummer released two years later. Is it the same song?
- All three variations appear on fifteen different albums in 7 different countries, spanning 4 major and 5 regional publishers.
- Oh. I forgot to say, it's the same classical Tchaikovsky music which is in the public domain. Yet surprise! You still have to pay money (you may research why as a part of your answers to the brain teaser).
- Also, the global and regional distribution, performance, streaming, and radio rights may or may not be be different for each of those.
> ny interested party can join and get the information it wants without needing APIs
Because blockchain is a magical technology that transmits all this information directly into your brain without the need of APIs.
Also, the article you linked is a bunch of demagoguery with zero practical applications that for some reason equates blockchain with TCP/IP and not, let's say, Tamagotchi.
> But blockchain will magically create that shared database out of thin air.
It won't, and it's a strawman you are setting up. Of course you have to design your business logic and rules and answer all the questions. There's nothing a blockchain, a relational or a nosql database will do for you there. They will give you different options and different tradeoffs. The point here is that this distributed solution has interesting trade-offs and opportunities that makes this a good match for this particular problem, regardless of rules of what defines a song or how licensing rights rules are defined.
> BTW. Again. That same word, database. Nothing a relational database couldn't handle with much more ease and efficiency.
Yes, sure. You can have a third party with a central relational database that does all that, and all companies trust it. The proposed solution is more akin to a relational database replicated between all interested parties. All the parties having the same vision of immutable data allows interesting tradeoffs for this particular problem, that's all. No one is claiming it will identify or classify songs for you.
> Because blockchain is a magical technology that transmits all this information directly into your brain without the need of APIs.
No, because you can design a solution where any interested party can join the network and have a copy of the data. Or not. Trade-offs.
> Also, the article you linked is a bunch of demagoguery
I think it's a very pratical way of understanding the oportunities and capabilities that open up with new technology, particulary if you have a knee-jerk reaction such as shown above. Scepticism is healthy particularly given all the hype and magical promises around it but if you look at it through the framework proposed there I hope you can see how it opens design space that was unpractical before.
> It won't, and it's a strawman you are setting up.
It wasn't set up by me, was it? Let me remind you:
"Of course, all these questions can be addressed in one way or another with conventional database tech. But blockchain has some undeniable appeal in an application like this."
So far no one has shown that "undeniable appeal". Moreover, every person who roots for blockchain in this conversation comes up with easily refutable claims.
> Of course you have to design your business logic and rules and answer all the questions. There's nothing a blockchain, a relational or a nosql database will do for you there.
Let's see what one of the proponents said: "UMG, Warner, Sony and Spotify cannot share bills for running a common database on AWS today without creating yet another corporation and relinquishing power over the data to it... They are here to revolutionize how existing organizations co-ordinate, enter into contracts with each other, and even allow individuals themselves co-ordinate directly with each other without intermediaries through novel org structures."
And yet. Suddenly. "Oh, you have to agree and design your business logic and rules and answer all the questions." Why the hell would I need blockchain for this?
> You can have a third party with a central relational database that does all that, and all companies trust it. The proposed solution is more akin to a relational database replicated between all interested parties.
Oh wait. Let me remind you: "Every single company agrees and has a shared database of the rights and the licensing."
Moreover, it means that every single company agrees that anyone can just write whatever they want to this database, sure. And probably fork it at some time, splitting it further.
Remind me again, why blockchain?
> No, because you can design a solution where any interested party can join the network and have a copy of the data.
Oh cool. Data is useless without access to it though. Hence, APIs. You are not a programmer, are you?
> I think it's a very pratical way of understanding the oportunities and capabilities that open up with new technology, particulary if you have a knee-jerk reaction such as shown above.
It's not a knee-jerk reaction. It's a healthy scepticism based on experience and actual understanding of some of the inside workings of music industry.
Your "solutions" are basically "let's add blockchain to it because it's this new cool new thing even though I have no idea how it will aid the problem in question". All it does according to you is letting everyone have a copy of some data. Oh my god. I am so sold on this idea :-\
Just count the number of assumptions you make to make this work:
- everyone has to agree to use this shared database
- everyone agrees on a standard way to define songs, define licensing, define song metadata
- everyone agrees to provide exact truthful complete metadata for every song and track they release at any point in time (hey, remember the brain teaser I gave you? Try answering that first)
- everyone agrees to have this shared database as the one and only source of truth even if everyone can write any data to it
- everyone agrees to never under any circumstances fork the database or create competing copies of it (we know how well that worked for Ethereum etc.)
Oh, golly. I sure am sold on the opportunities and capabilities. Blockchain surely "has some undeniable appeal in an application like this." and will "revolutionize how existing organizations co-ordinate, enter into contracts with each other, and even allow individuals themselves co-ordinate directly with each other without intermediaries through novel org structures." "All this without getting into tokens and handling the payments and distribution of royalties on the chain, and other innovations that the capabilities of the blockchain can bring."
BTW. Blockchain cannot handle either payments or royalties. It can hardly handle a few payments without buckling under its own load.
Yeah, you are the one claiming that blockchain has to somehow identify and categorize songs automatically in order for it to be in anyway useful. The undeniable appeal claimed is about how organizations coordinate and share information.
> Moreover, it means that every single company agrees that anyone can just write whatever they want to this database, sure.
No, you can design it with whichever rules you want on who can write, on what's written, and how the consensus is determined if that information is accepted.
> Oh cool. Data is useless without access to it though. Hence, APIs. You are not a programmer, are you?
This makes no sense. If I have a copy of the data, I can access it. Yes, I'm a programmer.
> Just count the number of assumptions you make to make this work:
Aren't those mostly the same assumptions you have to make to have music licensing work at all? Through an intermediary, on a relational database somewhere? Everyone has to agree to use this system, to provide truthful metadata, and use this intermediary's information as the only source of truth?
> BTW. Blockchain cannot handle either payments or royalties. It can hardly handle a few payments without buckling under its own load.
Again, don't take Bitcoin's limitations for Blockchain limitations.
> Yeah, you are the one claiming that blockchain has to somehow identify and categorize songs automatically in order for it to be in anyway useful.
Nope. Not me. I've even quoted the claims.
> The undeniable appeal claimed is about how organizations coordinate and share information.
Once again. I asked several times: the organisations cannot organise and agree now. Why would they agree in the case of blockchain? Just be cause you say "blockchain" it won't magically happen.
> Aren't those mostly the same assumptions you have to make to have music licensing work at all?
Yes. So. Once again. What's the undeniable appeal of the blockchain? You need all of the exact same assumptions that don't work or work very poorly in the first place, and you decide to add a blockchain on top of that because somehow it will magically make everything work.
So, once again. What exactly does blockchain bring into the equation if everything remains the same?
> Again, don't take Bitcoin's limitations for Blockchain limitations.
Riiight. There apparently exists some magical blockchain that doesn't have any of the limitations that every single blockchain on the market has.
> So, once again. What exactly does blockchain bring into the equation if everything remains the same?
I did state it, repeatedly, but it doesn't count because everything else remains the same and it doesn't magicaly makes everything simple and easy. Allright.
You did, and it breaks immediately, because everything else (the things that actually don't work) remain the same, and you for some reason expect them to work in your blockchain.
If something doesn't already work, adding something that's completely orthogonal doesn't help it, or solve it. All other perceived benefits are just not good enough, and blockchain brings enough problems of its own.
> Blockchain meanwhile... something something ... 4 txns/second ... 1 terrawatt per txn ... up to several days to clear a txn when network is congested
Don't mistake Bitcoin's limitations for Blockchain limitations. These are characteristics of the consensus mechanism, of Proof of Work in particular.
For anyone concerned, there's nothing to worry about! This specific article isn't directly sponsored. It's just a generic ad network at the bottom that's 'SPONSORED'.
Seems opportunistic. They file for IPO and this lawsuit comes out at the same time? Almost certainly not a coincidence. This is arguably when Spotify is most vulnerable and when they will be most likely to settle -- investors hate uncertainty, so settling, even for a large amount, would probably be good for the IPO.
I'm seeing several comments here that assume the lawsuit to be over recordings, but Wixen manages "mechanical licenses" (rights to melody and lyrics), not recordings.
Mechanical licenses are governed very differently from recordings. For one, they are subject to compulsory licensing, which allows you pay a statutory rate to license them, as opposed to directly licensing them from the rightsholder. The suit alleges that Spotify did neither in this case.
Thinking about it, part of the reasons music labels got big is for economy of scale when mass producing CDs for example. Of course, such economy of scale was not needed anymore with the move to digital distribution. This didn't work well with the current debt-based economy where shareholders depends on stocks always going up for things like retirements. I assume that Hollywood has similar problems, right?
My backout plan is to manually copy over all the artists I'm following. It'll take an hour or two, and I'd have to remember which of their albums I liked the most.
For custom playlists? Currently you're shit out of luck, you'll have to do it manually.
It's definitely an API. I'm not sure I'd say it was -nice- going off my experiences with it (caveat: they might have changed it since 2013 when it was the bane of my life.)
What a headache of an industry to get into. Seeing the direction that Pandora, Soundcloud, and others have gone, I wouldn't touch this vertical with 10-ft pole and a billion in capital.
Soundcloud is obviously still very alive. I switched my Spotify plan to Soundcloud, because the independent stuff is so good there. With a paid account you also have access to most things you would find on Spotify. Also I'm pretty sure the Spotify Windows Client has some horrible security vulnerabilities, I don't trust it at all.
I would think that the authors/rights holders of the music really should get the majority of the revenue. The underlying technology is of little interest to the end user.
Who would really install and pay for spotify if the entire library consisted of a two minute track of street sounds from Los Angeles and thirty seconds of doorbells? Basically no one. Nobody really cares about the technology, what they want is the music, without which even the coolest technology is uninteresting.
Yes, but without the underlying tech, there is no way for the end user to access that content. So the question is, which is more scarce? The infrastructure, tools, and millions of paying customers using your streaming service, or the music itself?
There are a lot of music producers and publishers. There aren't many streaming services that have a large customer base and the tech to service it.
Copyright holders demand control over distribution, which makes smaller competitors less lucrative to rightsholders, so the rightsholders pick larger incumbents, and force smaller businesses to fail via litigation.
The problem is that copyright has an unreasonable amount of authority.
Brick and Mortar stores don't count, because they aren't streaming services, and are not really competing for the same market.
The other two count (although Apple Music and Amazon Music Streaming, not the music store and downloads), but I didn't say there was only ONE distributer, just that there were only a few.
A good distributer, with a wide audience, is able to take a big cut and not have producers run away. Apple is able to take 30%, and so is Steam. If it was so easy to make an alternative, people would do it. The network effect is strong.
>Brick and Mortar stores don't count, because they aren't streaming services, and are not really competing for the same market.
I guess I misunderstood your point when you said there was no way to access the product. Even if you want to exclude purchasing music there is a mechanism that's been around for decades: radio.
Shortly after our music locker service debuted, we got sued by all the major labels. I spent 4 months writing tools to pull all the discovery data for their lawsuits.
When it was apparent our court case was going south, the major music publishers sued us as well (lead by Harry Fox Agency). I spent another 4 months pulling discovery data for those lawsuits.
When those court cases trended badly for us, we got sued by every 2 bit operation that owned a partial percentage of the country-based rights to a song (ie, one company may of owned 4% the rights of a song in the United States and 10% in Mexico and 9.3% in Ireland, with another company owning 1.3%, 40%, .5% respectively). I spent another 4 months pulling discovery data for those lawsuits.
Finally, after we where acquired by Vivendi Universal and they took on our liabilities, I spent almost a year writing tools for them to pay these partial percentages. Have you ever had to split 1 cent via check between 3 parties? It's not fun.
Moral of this boring story is Spotify better win this fast and clean or they are in a world of pain; I can never get those 2 years of my life back.