“Never in history music has been able to get so far, geographically, as now.”, says Ronaldo Lemos, law professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas law school in Rio de Janeiro, head of Creative Commons Brazil and chairman of iCommons, at a fair music discussion at Ars Electronica in Linz in September. By this Lemos means that the internet and digital technologies enabled the spread of music globally in a simple, cheap and fast way. This technological change leads to societal changes according to art and culture.
To give an example Ronaldo Lemos describes the scene of Tecno Brega in Brazil. Tecno Brega is a mix between an 80s beat with very romantic music, which is great for dancing together and therefore extremely popular in Brazil, especially in the north. The Tecno Brega scene releases around 400 new CDs every year and the so called Sound System Parties are crowded every weekend. Sony BMG, the largest music label in Brazil, in 2006 only released 13 CDs of brazilian music, Ronaldo Lemos remarks.
The International Music Council’s Second World Forum on Music starts in Beijing, China, on Thursday 10th October. Following the first World Forum on Music, held in Los Angeles in October 2005, the 2007 Forum aims at exploring some of the most important developments in music.
The main themes of the Forum are: Music in Development with a focus on the importance of strengthening the musical sector in developing countries; intellectual Property Rights and the implications of alternative regimes for ensuring artists’ rights; enhancing musical diversity; music in the Future - how social, cultural, political and technological trends influence music in the years to come.
Peter Rantasa, Executive Board Member of IMC, director of mica - music austria and initiator of fair music initiave will chair an important session on the complex topic of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in music on Friday. The speakers represent perspectives of authors, musicians, collecting societies, research, online-business and music industry and the UN organisation WIPO.
Hip Hop in Schwizer Dütsch (swiss german)? A tv program that is called Cafe Ristretto? A video plattform on the web that has a fixed schedule? For some days now this is real: The internet technology design studio Neotrivium, which is situated in Zürich, Switzerland, has just launched the internet music tv-station Restorm.
“We want to get swiss bands to publish their own clips”, says Restorm-founder Theo Favetto in an interview for Blick online. Charts don’t have a go at Restorm. Of course they want as well to play videos of known bands, but their main interest is to foster young swiss bands. If necessary they would even help them out with a camerateam to shoot their music clip in a professional manner. That could mean a lot for the artists publicity in the country and abroad. Because up to now when people think of swiss music they probably only come up with Alphorns and Yodeling. And it is quite unlikely that a swiss band that is rapping in Schwizer Dütsch would have a chance on MTV or at one of the Majors.
Posted by Fairmusic Team on 27. September 2007 under news, culture
On 27 and 28 September the Expert Group Meeting on the statistical measure of the diversity of cultural expressions, organized by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the UNESCO Culture Sector, will be held in Montreal, Canada.
The experts will identify methodologies that can help measure the diversity of cultural expressions and study ways to assess and monitor this diversity to meet the requests of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. (weiterlesen…)
Posted by Fairmusic Team on 26. September 2007 under news, culture
At the World Forum on Music in Beijing Martin Kretschmer, director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management of Bournemouth University, UK presented his study about the earnings of musical artists. He said that there is not much data available on artist’s income and that it would be helpful to have a better and statistically comparable income basis. But what his research showed so far was that artists earn way less then the average citizen and that the top 10% of composers and songwriters account for almost 90% of the total earnings of the profession. A very important statement Kretschmer made on copyright income: “It is often claimed that copyright does ensure income for artists, but that’s plain nonsense.”, Kretschmer made clear. For composers, earnings from copyright royalties account on average for less than a quarter of creative income, for musicians, for about 1%. Copyright law in its current form is a weak and skewed regulatory mechanism for awarding authors and artists, says Kretschmer.
The song “Return to Innocence”, recorded by the German Group Enigma, was directly mixed from a song recorded years earlier by Kuo Ying-Nan and Kuo Hsin-Chu, known as “Jubilant Drinking Song”. Large portions of “Jubilant Drinking Song” were lifted and copied by Enigma into their hugely popular track. Over fifty percent of “Return to Innocence” contains portions of the “Jubilant Drinking Song”. Although Enigma claimed that it had received permission to copy from a third party, neither that third party nor Enigma had ever received permission from the Kuos. But far worse, Enigma failed to recognize the Kuos as the creators and performers of this work. (weiterlesen…)
Posted by Fairmusic Team on 21. September 2007 under background, culture
