fair music weblog

Carlinhos Brown from Salvador, Bahia is one of the most creative artists within the new generation of Brazilian musicians. His fundamental merit has been the total integration of Afro-Brazilian rhythms with pop music. But being a great artist himself is not enough for him. Besides his work as a musician, Carlinhos Brown founded the Asociación Pracatum Açâo Social (APAS) in Candeal, one of the more impoverished neighbourhoods of Salvador de Bahia. The nucleus of this association is the Pracatum Music School, the only school in Brazil that teaches popular music courses.

(weiterlesen…)

In a report released today, RIAA v. The People: Four Years Later, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) provides a comprehensive look at the four-year litigation campaign waged by the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) against music fans. The report traces the RIAA campaign from its beginnings in 2003 against a handful of students up to now.
The RIAA, writes EFF, continues to target college campuses for hundreds of new lawsuits each month. Under pressure from the recording industry, universities are establishing austere punishments for students suspected of sharing music files. In total, says the report, RIAA has already sued 20.000 file sharers.
“Despite the RIAA’s legal campaign, file-sharing is more popular than ever,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. “History will treat this as a shameful chapter in the history of the music industry, when record companies singled out random music fans for disproportionate penalties. Artists must be compensated, but these lawsuits aren’t putting money in any creator’s pocket.”

Back to School for Reading, Writing, and RIAA Lawsuits? - EFF (the report can be downloaded from there)

“Schandfleck” in der Musikgeschichte - ORF Futurezone

Electric Indigo, aka Susanne Kirchmayr, is an Austrian DJ and musician of international rank and has her own record label indigo:inc. Fed up by hearing a thousand times “Why are there so few female activists in the electronic music scene?”, she in 1998 created female:pressure, an international database for female DJs, producers, and visual artists who work in the fields of electronic music. female:pressure is a unique, web-based resource of female talent all around the globe and was built to enhance mutual support and communication as well as the general level of information about female artists. Because, Susanne Kirchmayr says, “it’s not our number, it’s about how and if we are recognized”.

(weiterlesen…)

The online newspaper Der Standard today published a comment of Paul Stepan, assistent for Cultural Economics and Creative Industries at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and member of the board of the Forschungsgesellschaft für kulturökonomische und kulturpolitische Studien (FOKUS), in wich he claims that there is no evidence of negative consequences of file sharing on the revenue of the music business. The comment is the latest contribution to a dispute over the role of the music industry in the digital age in Austria that has been going on in Der Standard lately.

(weiterlesen…)

Manu Chao has sold up to 3 million albums when he decided to quit the contract with the record label and sell his next album at news stands and by homeless people - only in France, for a low price and in a small pressing. He even added a children’s picture book as a gimmick. Why he did that he didn’t tell. Music in the digital age is perpetually available and the master of world music says Goodbye to capitalism. Manu Chao’s step was surprising, but could have been predicted. It was the consequent continuation of his artistic and personal non-conformism.

(weiterlesen…)

Maximizing the writers income is one of the key targets of Freibank Music Publishing, a Hamburg company that has originally been incorporated in 1986 to administer the copyrights of German avantgarde artists Einstürzende Neubauten as effectively as possible. They had come to the conclusion that the traditional ways of collection and distribution of copyrights are too slow and cost too much. To improve this, they introduced the system of direct collection of mechanicals from record companies in Germany and became direct members in the copyright collecting societies in Europe. “More & faster” is their motto. Very soon Freibank offered this service as well for buddy-musicians.

(weiterlesen…)