Brian Mazzaferri, lead singer of independent rock back I Fight Dragons, has made a post on We Are Listening about how he and his band made $10,000 in 48 hours by selling ‘Lifetime Membership USB Drives’.

The band, which is only 9 months old, has focused on building a fanbase and giving their fans lots of free music through their mailing list. When they reached the point where they were starting to think how they could monetize off their music, instead of going the traditional (and outdated) route of recording an album and selling it, they came up with an idea that would not only give their fans a lot more, but them also.

The idea they came up with was to sell ‘Lifetime Membership USB Drives’ which were basically USB drives preloaded with all of the music they’ve ever released and they guarantee the owner a free digital copy of anything they ever release, as well as free admission to any live show of ours now and forever. And there were only 100 made.

Needless to say, they all went quickly, but the question is; why?

Brian puts it down to 3 reasons:

We gave a lot of free stuff away. A LOT.

The upside is infinite.

We’re selling Memberships, not Products.

These are all things we’ve discussed before and Brian’s story, once again, proves that you can build a successful business model around free content.

My point is this:  we started our relationship with our fans by giving.  And then giving more.  Then more.  This is the first time we’ve really tried to sell anything to our mailing list, and it’s been 9 months!  Fans jumped at the chance to support us, and many many more were disappointed that we sold out so quickly, because they didn’t get a chance to buy.  We’ve shown our fans that we respect them and support them, and now they want to do the same for us.

This quote from Brian is almost identical to something Amanda Palmer said a few months ago. If you show your fans that you care, they will want to support you in any way possible. Brian even goes on to say that many of their fans felt guilty as they know they are getting way more than $100’s worth of value from the Membership, and they will continue to purchase any future releases, even though they have free access!

Yet another example of Mr. Masnick’s CwF + RtB business model in full effect.

Donald Passman’s seventh edition of his book “All You Need to Know About the Music Business” is available in bookstores today.

Along with the material from the previous editions – the music industry structure, building a team, understanding copyright and publishing, and literally everything else you need to know about the music business – this new edition adds the latest developments from the rapidly changing music business, including:

* The new 360 model of record deals, wherein record companies share in nonrecord revenue

* The Copyright Royalty Board’s latest decisions regarding online transmissions

* The developing customs on new technologies such as streaming on demand, ringtones, and digital downloads

* Updates on recording and publishing deals, as well as film music

I don’t know what else to say about this book that hasn’t already been said. If you’re even thinking about pursuing music as more than just a hobby, you need this book. If you only get one book about the music business, this is the book to get.

Rather than writing a review, I think it suffices to list the thesaurus entries for “definitive.” This book is: absolute, authoritative, clear-cut, complete, conclusive, exhaustive, precise, and reliable.

To kick off our “re-launch”, here’s a humorous (but very true) article from Bob Baker in which he gives musicians a 7 step plan to ruin their music career. I’ve written out the 7 steps below, but head over to Music Think Tank to read the full article.

1. Give away your personal power.
2. Turn marketing, promotion and sales into a huge burden.
3. Be fearful of being perceived as a greedy, capitalist pig.
4. Use a lack of time, money and connections as your biggest excuse.
5. Market yourself to the faceless masses using traditional big media.
6. Promote yourself sporadically and only when it’s urgent.
7. Know that everyone owes you something simply because you exist.

GrindEFX is back, w00t! Over at Techdirt, Michael Masnick highlights an interesting development in machine-generated music: a company claims to have created software that can recreate musical performances by famous musicians, living or dead.

As described on the blog, “Zenph Studio’s approach is to work out how the musician and the instrument acts and responds, then get a computer to play that track again as a real-time, real-life performance, which in turn can be recorded using modern techniques.”

It’s essentially MIDI on steroids. Zenph claims that through its software process, it can capture the nuances of any performer’s style and translate that into an algorithm to generate new recordings of old songs – or make entirely new songs that sound like they were performed by a famous musician.

Leaving aside whether this is a good idea in the first place – how long before we have Kurt Cobain hawking deodorant? - Masnick concludes with what I can only describe as an excellent law school final exam question -

So, now, take this software that supposedly can perfectly mimic a certain musician’s playing, and have it record a song. Say it’s a new song. Who owns the copyright? What if it’s adding John Lennon to a Rolling Stone’s song? Who owns the copyright? What if it’s an old song, updated in some slight way? Who owns the copyright? What if it’s just the same song but “remastered”? Who owns the copyright? The legal questions raised by this kind of software are going to keep copyright lawyers busy for a long, long time.

Being the slightly sadomasochistic law student I am, I couldn’t resist analyzing the issues raised in this situation. I am not a lawyer, and this article is only for general informational purposes; nothing here constitutes legal advice.

Who owns the copyright in a new song created by this software?

So, there’s this girl you like, named Ann Tates. You, being a musician, want to write a song for her (”She makes me pancakes!”) Her favorite artists are Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimi Hendrix, and Yo Yo Ma. Let’s say (assuming the software eventually does this type of thing) that you create your new song with this software.

The song itself is entirely new, including all music, lyrics, and backing parts. But the piano part sounds like it’s being banged out by Lewis, the guitar sounds like something Jimi would play, and the cello part has the characteristics of a Yo Yo Ma performance.

As far as ownership of copyright is concerned, nothing in this situation changes the fact that you, as the musician, wrote and composed the song, so you would own the copyright. But let’s make it more interesting and say the computer program is more like Jammer or Microsoft Songsmith. Instead of actually writing the song yourself, all you have to do is pick the performers you want to emulate, select a music style, and hit ‘go’ – the program does the rest of the work.

Who owns the copyright now? Copyright protection does require only the barest “modicum of creativity“, but here all you’re doing is pressing a couple buttons – theoretically you could do this all day and generate millions of songs.

Intellectual Property attorney William T. Ralston explores the answer to this question in his 2005 article “Copyright in Computer-Composed Music: Hal Meets Handel.” (52 Journal of the Copyright Society of the USA 281). Noting the struggle that copyright law has had with new technologies since the very first Copyright Act, he points out that “no direct legal challenge to the status of copyright in a machine-generated musical work has been raised” to date. He comes to the conclusion that yes, a computer-composed musical work would be protected by copyright, and the user of the program (not the programmer) would typically be the owner of that copyright.

What if it’s adding John Lennon to a Rolling Stone’s song?

Remember that when you’re talking about recorded music, you’re dealing with two entirely separate copyrights – a copyright on the underlying music composition, and a copyright on the sound recording itself. While both copyrights might be held by the same author (for example, an independent artist who records her own songs), it’s important to note that copyright protection in one of the copyrights doesn’t extend to the other.

That is, you’re free to record yourself playing a song in the public domain – Beethoven’s 5th perhaps – and you would receive copyright protection on the sound recording, but that doesn’t stop anyone from recording their own version of Beethoven’s 5th. Your copyright protection on the recording doesn’t give you any exclusive rights to the underlying composition. The same is true for cover versions of songs – anyone and everyone can make their own recordings of a track. None of them have any claim to the underlying musical composition though. And because of the scope of copyright protection on sound recordings, none of them can sue someone else who made a recording of the same song for copyright infringement, no matter how similar the two recordings turned out.

Just like Sir Mix-a-lot, copyright law likes big buts. The ‘big but’ here is that while you get a copyright on a sound recording of someone else’s musical composition, along with the exclusive rights copyright gives you, you still need permission from the composition’s owner to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, etc, (I’ve truncated the ‘etc’ in this list for simplicity purposes) your sound recording, since you are simultaneously reproducing, distributing, or publicly performing the songwriter’s copyrighted work.

Getting back to the original question, the answer is clear. Since the software is generating its own sound recording (rather than ’sampling’ the sounds from any existing sound recording), you would own the copyright on a sound recording of John Lennon playing on a Rolling Stone’s song. You would not, however, be able to do anything with that recording without the permission of John Lennon or the Rolling Stones (or whoever happens to own the copyright on the musical composition you’ve used).

What if it’s an old song, updated in some slight way? What if it’s just the same song but “remastered”?

The same answer for the previous question holds true here. Again, so long as you’re not actually using the sounds from the original sound recording itself, you would own the copyright on a new sound recording you create from an old song, but the owner of the copyright to the musical composition still retains his or her rights to the song itself. You would need permission from them before distributing, reproducing, or publicly performing your sound recording (or not, if you qualify for a statutory compulsory license).

If you have made changes to the original composition’s  ”basic melody or fundamental character,” you may need additional permissions from the composition owner for creating a derivative work. (’Remastering’ or altering the arrangement to the  ’extent necessary to conform it to the style or manner of interpretation of the performance involved’ does not create a derivative work.)

You may be fine under copyright law, but there are other laws too

Masnick was only asking about the copyright issues that come into play with the software described here. Appropriating an artist’s “style” of playing may implicate various state and federal laws concerning right of publicity or unfair competition, to name a few.

Bette Midler, Nancy Sinatra, and Bert Lahr are just a few of the celebrities who have sued after discovering someone else had used a “sound-alike” to create a new work that mimicked their vocal styles. Copyright doesn’t work here – you can’t copyright a vocal style. Instead, they sought remedies through other laws, including those mentioned above.

These types of claims are complex to analyze. Tort law varies from state to state – what might be a valid claim in California may not be in Wisconsin – and the elements required to plead a case under each law differ. And while you can’t copyright a vocal style, you may still find yourself losing your case if the claim you bring clashes with federal copyright law, as Sinatra found out.

Additionally, you have state common law copyright to contend with, as well as First Amendment implications that may protect certain transformative uses of a performer’s right to publicity! Are you getting a headache yet?

In short, recreating the performance styles of famous musicians using this software may not be legal in areas of the law outside of copyright. The same things that hold true for a vocalist’s right to some control over the use of her vocal likeness would hold true for a performer’s right to the use of his musical likeness. In most states, right to publicity extends to the heirs of a deceased celebrity.

If Zenph Studio’s software does what it says it does, it is likely that we will see some kind of legal challenge in the future from one of the performers it adds to its software.

Image courtesy of misterbisson

You’ve probably noticed some strange activity here at GrindEFX over the past few weeks, this was due to an attack on our server. It has taken a while, but we are back up and running now and ready to pick up where we left off. If you received any warnings about malware or viruses on the site, don’t worry, we have given it a thorough check and it is now clean as a whistle.

Apologies for the lack of communication throughout all of this, we’ve now moved the site to a new server and are hopeful this will not happen again. Thanks for your patience!

A few months ago Spotify introduced the ability to purchase songs and albums directly from them, though it was a little long-winded and hard to find. Users had to right-click on songs to see the “Buy” option before being directed to partner 7digital’s site to complete the purchase.

There is now a clear “Buy” button next to all songs and albums available to purchase and the transaction process is pretty much the same as iTunes.

Check out the demo:

Despite the lack of success music subscription services have had, entrepreneurs seem to be lining up to have shot at it. We’re hearing about new subscription services every week, and none of them have a USP. They all seem to have the same business model – pay a high monthly fee for a very limited access to music.

The latest company to try their hand at it is satellite television company Sky. Sky’s plan is to charge £7.99 a month for unlimited streaming and 1 album download (or 10 songs) – downloading more songs will cost extra.

Details on the new service are sketchy, some sources say they have partnered with Universal, while others say they have struck deals with all the majors and a number of indie labels.

The problem with subscription services such as this is that consumers don’t like being restricted. £7.99 a month for one album makes little sense to me, why would one choose to be restricted to one album a month when they can go to iTunes or Amazon for the same price. And the unlimited streaming doesn’t really add any value since there are services like Spotify and we7 out there that offer that for free.

The fact that over 9 million UK households have Sky as their digital TV provider will certainly work in its favour, but in reality I think Sky’s business model is flimsy and won’t attract much attention from music lovers.

On September 8th, Apple unveiled its latest ‘innovation’ to help prop up the recorded music industry – the iTunes LP. For only seven bucks more than a regular digital album, you can get some pretty pictures and liner notes. Facepalm!

But the story doesn’t end there.

Last week, Brian McKinney of Chocolate Lab Records told Gizmodo that Apple was charging record labels $10,000 in production costs to release an album in the iTunes LP format – and indie record labels need not apply. Apple later denied that allegation and said it is working on releasing the specs for the LP format and making them available to all, indie and major labels alike.

Regardless of the outcome of this “he said she said” tempest, it amplifies the silliness of the iTunes LP format itself.

Several web developers have dissected the format to find that it is essentially HTML, Javascript, CSS, and multimedia content – a website. For a little more than the cost of an actual physical CD, you get to save files to your hard drive that largely mirror content you can find online, from the artist’s website itself to Wikipedia, YouTube, and others.

I’ve been unable to find sales figures for albums released as iTunes LPs, but I’m curious to see how successful (or unsuccessful) it has been to date. Until then, the question remains whether Apple’s initiative – jacking up prices to include nicely designed text and album art with digital music files – can connect with fans, especially as consumers are shifting away from the album as a default container for music.

Until Apple opens up the specs to the iTunes LP format, indie artists who wish to bundle additional content with their albums can stick with a tried and true format: the zip archive. For years, netlabels and some independent artists have simply added media and documents to zip files of album tracks and offered the complete package to fans.

Bandcamp (one of the best music hosting/distribution sites out there IMHO) recently began offering this feature to artists on their site. Types of content you can include are limited only by your imagination and file-size concerns – videos, images, pdfs, etc. And with a little web development skill, artists can replicate a centralized user interface for interacting with the album’s content just like the iTunes LP.