JK Wedding Entrance Might Save Chris Brown’s Career

If you listen to groups like the RIAA, they will tell you that people using songs in their videos with express written consent and a high license fee will be the death of music.  RIAA and labels like Universal Music have gone out of their way to police sites like YouTube and block or ban anything using a copyrighted song they can claim to own.

Of course, this sort of behavior actually results in endless negative impacts including pissed off fans and even pissed off artists who actually like to see their music used and shared and recognize the huge potential upside of not behaving like a law-suit junkie.

The most recent proof of this comes thanks to the biggest web meme of the month, the JK Wedding Entrance (below) featuring, without permission, Chris Brown’s song, “Forever.”

Instead of doing what, say, Universal Music does, which is to force YouTube to mute the music track, it appears that Chris Brown and his label, Zomba (a part of Jive Records) has instead embraced the video and created a direct link to the buying of the song on iTunes.

The result?

The wedding video now has a direct link to buy “Forever,” which, despite being released last year, is now in the iTunes top 10. Brown’s own attempt at a viral video, a recently released apology video for the Rihanna “incident” which he calls “inexcusable,” has been viewed more than 2 million times. As BlogPulse shows, July buzz about Brown and “Forever” reach almost as high as blog discussion that occurred around the time of the assault.        LINK

Dear Music Labels, Variable Pricing is Not the Answer

First comes word that overall sales are down on iTunes since the implementation of variable pricing.

Then Warner Music Group’s CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. says:

Although we priced down a far greater number of tracks that we priced up, early results show a net positive result on our digital (sales). Variable pricing will be even more positive for us as we shift more to digital.

While variable pricing made sense when hard, physically “scarce” albums were being sold, it is just plain folly to think the same rules can be applied to digital music.

The biggest reason for this is that digital copies of songs are simply not scarce.  By raising prices on popular songs the labels simply make it more likely for fans to feel justified in sharing the music via P2P services rather than paying a jacked-up price for a digital file.

Clearly, there is a major disconnect between the dreams of the labels and the reality of the market.  There is no way that the labels will convince consumers that even though they no longer have to manufacture or deliver the music that they still have the right to charge the same or more than they have in the past for the same content.

There is also a major disconnect between the labels and the musicians who are getting ever-more frustrated with seeing their music kept out of the hands of their fans at every turn, seeing their fans sued and prosecuted for basically expressing extreme fandom and, to top it off, getting a crappy percentage of the profits generated.

So, if the labels think something as anti-consumer and anti-musician as variable pricing will be the thing that saves your business, well, that will just expedite your demise.

The YouTube Dilemma – Users vs. Copyright Protection

There is simply no denying that YouTube is still the most important video-sharing site, at least in the United States.  It is not likely to see this position change much, at least not in the next year.

As YouTube has grown it has been forced to decide if they want to side with the users who have made the site what it is or the rights-holders to a lot the material that users have posted.  More and more, YouTube is siding with rights-holders, even in cases where fair-use can easily be argued.

YouTube is trying to avoid a never-ending string of lawsuits (justified or otherwise) from RIAA, DMCA, et al. with pre-emptive actions against their users.  Unfortunately for both YouTube and its users this means that the site is rapidly becoming a very unfriendly destination for the kinds of “mashup” entertainment that independent video creators and viewers so enjoy.

Here are just a few of the things YouTube will take down and eventually ban users completely for doing:

1) Dancing to a pop song not in the public domain

2) Remixing videos to existing songs not in the public domain

3) Using TV news clips to make a political statement

4) Kids singing Hannah Montana songs at a birthday party

5) Video-collages of Hollywood movies. (like every time they say “fuck” in Pulp Fiction)

The really sad part is that the vast majority of these kinds of videos are completely fair-use but there is no way to argue that with YouTube.  It is also incredibly short-sighted of rights-holders not to understand the intrinsic value of being used and exposed via these kinds of videos.  It is hard to imagine how Warner Music loses money when a teenager lipsyncs to the latest top-ten single.

The end-result will be that people who want to create these types of videos are going to find a new host.  And a smart host could make a good amount of cash providing a legal safe-haven.

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Atlantic Records Goes Hardcore Digital and Beats Expectations

Image via Wikipedia

Seems like all I am doing today is citing the NYT.  Maybe they hope that by actually covering the internet they can remain a relevant media outlet…

Anyhow, they have another piece about the challenges facing the major music labels in the digital age.  This has been discussed ad nauseum but they do highlight one fascinating fact that ArsTech also picked up on: Atlantic Records became the first big record label to make more money via digital sales than via CD sales.

The interesting thing to note is how this was accomplished:

“In making that transition to a digital business, the music business has become immeasurably more complicated. Replacing compact disc sales are small bits of revenue from many sources: Atlantic Records’ digital sales include ring tones, ringbacks, satellite radio, iTunes sales and subscription services.”

It used to be much easier to be a record label – just sell records.  Well those days are long gone and for the labels that refuse to accept that fact it’s going to be a fast trip to backruptcy.

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