"The Artist" may have won several Golden Globes, but there's at least one person who apparently hates the film because of some music it uses:
Copyright has its convenient myths. The principal one is that copyright is intellectual *property*, which taps into our natural tendency to support tangible property. The other, more subtle, is that copyright is necessary to fan the flame of the creativity.
In fact copyright inheres in just about anything in fixed form, however banal and trivial - and not just to sonnets and symphonies. But even for these hopeless, quotidian artefacts, there might be some logic to offering the incentive of copyright in the hope that by accident an occasional masterpiece is produced as a result.
But what about this?This month, Wolfram Alpha’s WolframTones, modestly subtitled “A New Kind Of Music.” (Yes, that would be the same breathtaking humility that led them to originally price the Wolfram Alpha app at a hilarious $50. Fortunately, they subsequently bought a clue.)
It is pretty cool, in a geeky sort of way: music generated by fractally complex cellular automata, in the style of your choice—classical, dance, rock/pop, hip-hop, etcetera. Every composition is unique, and can be downloaded as a ringtone.
That's interesting, but the real kicker is the following:
They lay claim to the copyright on all the generated music, mind you, raising the interesting question of what counts as “fair use”
But this isn't just about "fair use", it goes to the heart of what exactly we mean by creativity. Why should something produced algorithmically be regarded as creative? If there is any creativity, it's at the level of programming - and programs are already covered by copyright - so why is another layer of protection needed?
Nor is this a unique case, as a recent story of a "robot journalist" writing news stories indicates.
Copyright is designed to encourage creativity; but if output is produced algorithmically,there is no need to provide any incentive, since machines cannot (yet) respond to such things, and the incentive to create the program that produces the output is rewarded by copyright in the lines of code. So surely, by logic, such creatorless creations do not need copyright?
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A few months ago, Musopen ran a fundraiser on Kickstarter:Musopen is a non-profit dedicated to providing copyright free music content: music recordings, sheet music and a music textbook. This project will use your donations to purchase and release music to the public domain. Right now, if you were to buy a CD of Beethoven's 9th symphony, you would not be legally allowed to do anything but listen to it. You wouldn't be able to share it, upload it, or use it as a soundtrack to your indie film- yet Beethoven has been dead for 183 years and his music is no longer copyrighted. There is a lifetime of music out there, legally in the public domain, but it has yet to be recorded and released to the public.
This is such an eminently sensible idea: releasing music into the public domain that all can use as they wish. I don't think this other project is public domain (anyone know?), but it's still a nice gesture:Free downloads of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, recorded by Dr. James Kibbie on original baroque organs in Germany, are offered on this site.
Here's where the money's coming from:This project is sponsored by the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance with generous support from Dr. Barbara Furin Sloat in honor of J. Barry Sloat. Additional support has been provided by the Office of Vice-President for Research, the University of Michigan.
It's another model that would be good to see utilised elsewhere, ideally with the results being put into the public domain. (Via @ulyssestone, @alexrossmusic)
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Eric Whitacre is that remarkable thing: a composer able to write classical music that is at once completely contemporary and totally approachable even at the first hearing.
Just as, er, noteworthy is his total ease with modern technology. His website is undoubtedly one of the most attractive ever created for a composer, and uses the full panoply of the latest Internet technologies to support his music and to interact with his audience, including a blog with embedded YouTube videos, and links to Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Perhaps the best place to get a feel for his music and his amazing facility with technology is the performance of his piece "Lux Aurumque" by a "virtual choir" that he put together on YouTube (there's another video where the composer explains some of the details and how this came about.)
Against that background, it should perhaps be no surprise that on his website he has links to pages about most (maybe all?) of his compositions that include not only fascinating background material but complete embedded recordings of the pieces.
Clearly, Whitacre has no qualms about people being able to hear his music for free, since he knows that this is by far the best way to get the message out about it and to encourage people to perform it for themselves. The countless comments on these pages are testimony to the success of that approach: time and again people speak of being entranced when they heard the music on his web site - and then badgering local choirs to sing the pieces themselves.
It's really good to see a contemporary composer that really gets what digital music is about - seeding live performances - and understands that making it available online can only increase his audience, not diminish it. And so against that background, the story behind one of his very best pieces, and probably my current favourite, "Sleep", is truly dispiriting.
Originally, it was to have been a setting of Robert Frost’s "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening". The composition went well:I took my time with the piece, crafting it note by note until I felt that it was exactly the way I wanted it. The poem is perfect, truly a gem, and my general approach was to try to get out of the way of the words and let them work their magic.
But then something terrible happened:And here was my tragic mistake: I never secured permission to use the poem. Robert Frost’s poetry has been under tight control from his estate since his death, and until a few years ago only Randall Thompson (Frostiana) had been given permission to set his poetry. In 1997, out of the blue, the estate released a number of titles, and at least twenty composers set and published Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening for chorus. When I looked online and saw all of these new and different settings, I naturally (and naively) assumed that it was open to anyone. Little did I know that the Robert Frost Estate had shut down ANY use of the poem just months before, ostensibly because of this plethora of new settings.
Thanks to copyright law, this is the prospect that Whitacre faced:the estate of Robert Frost and their publisher, Henry Holt Inc., sternly and formally forbid me from using the poem for publication or performance until the poem became public domain in 2038.
I was crushed. The piece was dead, and would sit under my bed for the next 37 years because of some ridiculous ruling by heirs and lawyers.
Fortunately for him - and for us - he came up with an ingenious way of rescuing his work:After many discussions with my wife, I decided that I would ask my friend and brilliant poet Charles Anthony Silvestri (Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine, Lux Aurumque, Nox Aurumque, Her Sacred Spirit Soars) to set new words to the music I had already written. This was an enormous task, because I was asking him to not only write a poem that had the exact structure of the Frost, but that would even incorporate key words from “Stopping”, like ‘sleep’. Tony wrote an absolutely exquisite poem, finding a completely different (but equally beautiful) message in the music I had already written. I actually prefer Tony’s poem now…
Not only that:My setting of Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening no longer exists. And I won’t use that poem ever again, not even when it becomes public domain in 2038.
So, thanks to a disproportionate copyright term, a fine poem will never be married with sublime music that was originally written specially for it. This is the modern-day reality of copyright, originally devised for "the encouragement of learning", but now a real obstacle to the creation of new masterpieces.
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One of the reasons I am so excited by Spotify is that it is asymptotically approaching an online library of All Music. Even in its necessarily incomplete state, it offers amazing possibilities. For example, one of the key advantages of having all this stuff on tap is that it's possible to create playlists that mix and match in interesting ways.
Here's a great example: a playlist of Beethoven's works ordered by opus number. Now, I already have the Brilliant Classics boxed set of Beethoven's complete works on CD, but that's rather different. In particular, I can't move through the works by opus number easily.
Why might I want to do that? Well, it's an interesting journey through Beethoven's works - not strictly chronological, but historical in terms of what came out when. In particular, it lets me see at a glance all those odd little works that usually get overlooked - the opus 42, 105, 128 etc. that rarely pop up.
The other great thing about services like Spotify is that they let people share in interesting ways by passing on their playlists. It's a level above simply sharing the files themselves, and adds a richness to listening that is not otherwise easy to replicate. It's a hint of a world where all content is freely available online, and we can share and build on each other's insanely stimulating mashups.
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By now, it's evident that the old model of music distribution is irredeemably broken. This has led to various attempts to offer download services, but most of them have been horribly half-hearted, with one or more fatal flaws (and that includes iTunes, whose use of DRM means that it just doesn't cut the mustard.)
Against that background, I can only wonder at Passionato, a new online service for the world of classical music - it's gets just about everything right:Passionato's aim is to become the world's most comprehensive online classical resource and offer classical music lovers the largest available collection of high-quality DRM-free classical music downloads. Passionato provides access to catalogues from the two largest major labels (Universal Music and EMI Classics) as well as the key independent classical labels including Naxos (the biggest independent), Chandos (one of the premier British independent labels), Avie and Arts.
Designed for classical music lovers, Passionato's main features are: DRM-free recordings, transferable to any portable device and burnable to CD; high audio quality downloads (320kbps DRM-free MP3 and lossless FLAC); access to free software the Passionato Player specifically developed to help organise users' existing Classical CDs alongside tracks purchased through the Passionato Store; an unprecedented level of recording information which users benefit from when they download a track, work or album, and when they import their own CD libraries to their computers; the ability to search Passionato's recordings using over 20 fields, including by work, composer, conductor, venue and recording engineer.
Passionato does not employ any DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology. This means your purchase allows you to transfer your downloaded audio files to your portable player, CDs and other media for personal use. Purchase does not include file transfer for commercial purpose.
Not only no DRM, but high-quality MP3 *and* lossless FLAC format - just what audiophiles love.
The site is still a little rough at the edges, and the prices are rather on the high side, but those are details that can be dealt with later: the core ideas look spot on. I hope the new service thrives - not least so that it can act as an example to others who have less of a clue.
One of the huge benefits of openness and sharing is that it divides up tasks into smaller, less onerous pieces: everyone contributes a little, but gets the lot. Here's an interesting application of that idea to funding the creation of a musical commons:
Musopen has been around for a couple of years but has recently rolled out a new version of its web site, added freely-downloadable sheet music, and raised enough cash to professionally record the entire set of 32 Beethoven piano sonatas and place them in the public domain.
One of the site's innovative features is its bidding system, in which users can pledge contributions toward specific pieces. When they necessary amount is raised, a professional musician is hired to perform, say, Bach's Goldberg Variations (currently the top request). Most of the money used to fund the Beethoven Sonatas was also raised from users in small increments, with a $5 average contribution. While individuals can spend that same money purchasing their own copies of such works, a donation to Musopen helps fund a musical commons that makes the pieces available worldwide and for any application.
As a young lad getting into classical music, Gramophone was my bible. I would read it pretty much from cover to cover, and it became an important part of my education, imparting not just the bare facts about music and musicians, many of them deeply obscure, but also a sense of what a critical response to both of those might entail.
So the following news is potentially mind-blowing:
Gramophone, the world’s most influential classical music magazine, is to create an exciting new website that promises to transform the classical music industry. The magazine, started in 1923, today announces its commitment to a bold two stage plan.
By September every word ever printed in Gramophone will be available for free as a fully searchable online archive – that’s hundreds and thousands of reviews, articles and interviews, by far the biggest archive of its kind.
This is clearly fantastic news for all those who love classical music - or who want to find out more. But what's in it for the magazine?The new website, Gramophone.net, will be created in two stages. The first, the creation of the archive, will live alongside this existing website from early September. The start of 2009 will then see the creation of an all-new state-of-the-art website – where downloading, internet mail order and ticket-buying services will be linked to editorial – so visitors will be able to read reviews and features, listen to music samples and then if they wish, buy CDs or book tickets to live events.
This does all the things this blog and many others have been advocating for a while: giving away core content in order sell all kinds of ancillary materials and services. I can't wait.
It might seem strange that an avowed lover of high-tech and music should not have a DAB radio: but so it is with me. In part, it's because DAB in the UK seems to be worse than FM (at least that's what Jack Schofield says, and his argument looks pretty reasonable).
But it's also been from a gut feeling that this is the wrong way to go. It looks like I'm not alone:In a sign of crisis for digital radio, UK commercial radio leader GCap will, as expected, sell its 67 percent stake in the DigitalOne DAB multiplex
...
”We believe that broadband is the ideal complementary platform to analogue radio given the interactivity that they both provide, creating social networks and communities on-air and online.”
I suppose what I'm looking towards is a radio with built-in Wifi to pick up radio-over-IP signals sent out by one of my computers. One reason for that is the extremely high quality of music online these days: BBC Radio 3, for example, is broadcast at 64 kps, which is pretty much CD quality in a domestic setting. Who needs DAB?
Here's another billion reasons why DRM'd music downloads will die out - and why copyright law will need to be rewritten:Like millions of other young Chinese, he downloads them for free using Baidu.com (BIDU ), the country's biggest search engine. Baidu makes it so easy—just hit the MP3 tab on the home page, type in the name of the song, and click. What's more, Zhu doesn't believe he and his friends are doing anything wrong. "I think it's a problem with the law, not with us users," he says.
I and many others have written about the pathetic moves by the BBC in terms of adopting Windows DRM, but you've got to give it to Cory, he has a way with words. In particular, he sums up nicely one aspect that I haven't covered here:They also instructed the BBC to stop making MP3s of public-domain classical music available, because the classical music industry is "precarious." That's smart -- we'll improve the health of the classical music industry by making sure that no one under 35 with an iPod can listen to it. Nice one, Trustees.
Couldn't have put it better myself. And, in fact, I didn't.
Update: Nice piece by Bobby in the Guardian, too: good to see the rage is spreading. Shame on you, BBC.
When it comes to digital music, Magnatune is definitely on the side of the angels:We call it "try before you buy." It's the shareware model applied to music. Listen to 525 complete MP3 albums from musicians we work with (not 30 second snippets).
We let the music sell itself, because we think that's the best way to get you excited by it.
We pick the best submissions from independent musicians so you don't have to.
If you like what you hear, download an album for as little as $5 (you pick the price), or buy a real CD, or license our music for commercial use. And no copy protection (DRM), ever.
Artists keep half of every purchase. And unlike most record labels, they keep all the rights to their music.
No major label connections.
We are not evil.
And how about this little factette:In 1980, Classical music represented 20% of global music sales. In 2000, Classical had plummeted to just 2% of global music sales. What happened? Did all those people suddenly lose their taste for classical music? Or is something else going on?
At Magnatune.com, an online record label I run, we sell six different genres of music, ranging from Ambient to Classical to Death Metal and World Music. Yet Classical represents a whopping 42% of our sales. Even more intriguingly, only 9% of the visitors to our music site click on “classical” as the genre they’re interested in, yet almost half of them end up buying classical music.
Do read the rest - it's fascinating.
Looks like innovative digital music business models can be even more disruptive than you might think.
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