fair music weblog

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.

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Popkomm, the international business platform for the music and entertain-
ment industry, will take place in Berlin September 19-21. Popkomm is exhibition, festival and conference at the same time.

Many topics of the conference track will deal with the future of the music industry and market in the digital age.

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BeatPick, “the FairPlay Music Label”, as they call themselves, is one of the rare examples of new business models for music distribution that try to balance the interests of artists, producers, customers and marketers. But the number is growing.

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Markus Beckedahl, founder and blogger of netzpolitik.org, talked to music management expert Peter Jenner in a long interview at a conference in Berlin about the idea of a culture flatrate, the expansion of intellectual property rights, digital rights management and the prosecution of p2p-users.

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Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated, the publishing units of the hip-hop star Eminem, last month filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Apple’s iTunes music store. There are currently two similar suits running but as Greg Sandoval reports on ZDNet, that this isn’t about Apple or copyright infringement: “What the musicians and writers really want is to challenge the claim by record labels that they have the right to negotiate Internet sales on their behalf.” As CD sales go down and royalties get squeezed, more and more artists are growing dissatisfied with their share for digital downloads. “A growing number of performers, publishers and songwriters want a bigger share of that download revenue and want to see an overhaul of recording and publishing contracts”, writes Greg Sandoval.

Hey Eminem, blame the system, not Apple - ZDNet