Sander van Zoest: Behind the Scenes

As reported by Seattle PI, BillBoard and MTV, P2P networks are being flooded by short clips of Madonna saying "What the f*ck do you think you are doing?". These fans are being greeted with silence and this small personal message. I guess Madonna feels that these people aren't fans looking for a taste of Madonna's new album. She would rather disappoint them, by having them buy her album, only to discover that they just paid for ten filler tracks in addition the one or two they enjoy. Madonna doesn't want them to use P2P Networks to find out if the album is actually worth buying. They need to find an alternative method of discovering new music, online listening booths are much different then those at your local music store. What ever happened to being able to sample music in the comfort of your own home?

Meanwhile, the message is a great new sample that can be remixed into new tracks.
Now since this willfully got put online by the artist, do we have to worry about copyrights in regards to this message?

Thanks to a few crackers, the fans could have gotten the MP3s from Madonna.com. It displayed links to MP3s of her new album entitled American Life.

Roxio, Pressplay and Napster

As rumored last week, Roxio has acquired the remains of the music subscription service Pressplay. A fair amount of the technology we developed at MP3.com (bought by Vivendi Universal) was a foundation for Pressplay. So now it looks like Roxio is going to give it a shot with the Napster brand. The brand they acquired last November.

After RealNetworks bought Listen.com and the launch of the new iTunes. I think it is about time that we update David Weekly's graph of record companies (first posted on the pho music list). Who would have thought that the online music subscription services would get this hot. Summer is definitely here.

Hi-Tech Fashion

Since the days of Mondo 2000 Magazine, the hi-tech fashions created out of their unique textiles, space age fabrics and slick plastics, have always been an interest of mine. They represent a unique twist on wearable gear and the "new edge" fashion trends. The futuristic cyberpunk world displayed in many noir sci-fi films are taking some of these counterculture ideas to the screen. Not because they are the latest designs shown on the catwalk by famous fashion designers, but more through the visions represented by the movies themselves. The fashion that normally was isolated in the world of erotic and fetish balls is making its way to your general population. A few years ago, I distinctly remember seeing a PVC jacket hanging in a department store in the mall. I wasn't browsing at Syren, Stormy Leather or Skin Two. No, this was just at the local, Fashion Valley Mall, here in San Diego.

In the recently released Matrix Reloaded, costume designer Kym Barrettcontinued the trend and brought some great new designs to the big screen. A priest-like coat for Neo and the mixture of leather for close-ups, and PVC for Trinity and some alligator and reptilian for Niobe and Morpheus. Costume Cutter Roger Tait talks about his experience of cutting Persephone's nude latex dress. A dress that brings a more 40s formal, business-like cut to latex, but is right along the designs of Libidex and Inner Sanctum. I still would like to see someone create me that silver latex/PVC business suit that I have always dreamt of having. The days of my staple silver pants are over. Of course the sunglasses are still a big part of the costumes as well. I would like to check out a Première Vision fabric show one of these days. It would be neat to see what they would have for sale.

Robert Kaye of MusicBrainz fame points us to a great new project named RIAA Radar. It allows you to search for an artist or album and it will provide you with a best guess as to whether the item is affiliated with the RIAA. Now you can check, before you buy some music, if you will be contributing to RIAA's cause or not. Very handy.

Earlier this month, a friend and ex-coworker Kevin Baird posted a video of the my.mp3.com service launch on the evening of 11 Jan 2000. This launch had lots of PR and was what eventually brought on the lawsuits that forced the company to be sold to Vivendi Universal.

The my.mp3.com development was a long stretch and a lot of work went into making that launch happen.

Recently, I experienced the launch of Stage6 at DivX and although there was no where near such a large crowd at the office at the time of launch. It did remind me a lot of the my.MP3.com launch days.

Enjoy this great historical video. Thanks a million, Kevin!

The above movie is hosted by Eyespot, which was founded by none other then another MP3.com alumni, David Dudas.

Ideally, I could download a copy and save people the bandwidth of streaming this each time they load this page, but I did not find an easy way to do this. Please be respectful of the bandwidth, since I know that hosting videos is not cheap.

As you may know, we listen to a lot of music at home. Every once in a while, we find our 10 month old daughter, Jasmine, bobbing her head to a particular track. We noticed her interest in certain songs even when she was in the womb. For example, "Say Hello" by Deep Dish (Positiva) featuring vocals by Anousheh Khalili. She started kicking to the rhythm of the track before she was even born and, till this day, the track calms her every time we play it.

In the last few weeks we noticed that Jasmine dances every time we play "Hear My Name" by Armand Van Helden (Southern Fried). She shakes her shoulder, waves her hands and occassionally lifts her butt in the air to the beat. It is one of the cutest things I have seen in a long time. She smiles the whole time she is doing this.

It was one of those moments that I felt had to be shared with the rest of the family and therefore the easiest thing to do would be to video tape her dancing and post it on her site. However, this got me thinking.

How do I post such a video clip legally?

First thing first, I would have to have our baby daughter sign a contract saying that she approves of the taping and publishing of her dancing. I'd have to negotiate some royalty payment to her, but maybe we can do that based on us providing her with our college savings funds. Or we can just cover part of her rent.

Now, what about the background music that she is dancing to? Should I contact the label and tell them that I would be more then willing to pay 50 dollars for the life time of the video for licensing the track and the right to redistribute it as part of this clip. Do I contact ASCAP, BMI, SESAC or the Harry Fox Agency? There is a pretty good Licensing 101 page on the SoundExchange website. They have a question that talks to almost exactly what we need.

I'm going to videotape a public performance where there may be some background music used for the performance. Do I need to obtain a license for any such music? If so, what kind of license(s) do I need and where can I get them? Does it matter what I plan to do with the tape (e.g., sell it, stream it on the Internet, perform it in a public venue)?

It is in fact necessary to secure more than one license in order to videotape a performance that includes background music (unless, of course, the background music is deleted from the videotape). For more information, please go to FAQ

I looked at the FAQ, but I could not find anything related to licensing music that is being played in the background during a performance.

They have another question that answers what is needed to license music for a video soundtrack. It is the closest thing I found.

I'm making a video and want to create a sound track for the video using popular music. Do I have to obtain permission from anyone to use the music in my video? If so, from whom do I get it and how do I go about getting the permissions?

In order to use commercially released musical recordings in a video, a variety of licenses (detailed below) are required. However, SoundExchange is not in a position to grant any of the licenses you will need.

Every musical recording embodies two distinct copyrighted works. The first is the underlying musical composition, comprised of the written notes and lyrics (for purposes of copyright law, the musical composition is referred to as a "musical work"). The copyright in the musical work is usually owned by the songwriter and/or his or her music publisher. The second copyrighted work is the actual recording itself - the sounds, including the recording artist’s interpretation of the musical composition, and the creative efforts of the producer, sound engineers and background musicians. (This is referred to in copyright law as a "sound recording.") The copyrighted recording brings to life the written notes and lyrics of the musical work. The copyright in the sound recording is typically owned by a record label.

The two copyrighted works described above are subject to a variety of separate rights (e.g., reproduction, distribution, performance), each of which must be licensed separately and must be licensed from separate entities. In order to obtain permission to use a commercially released musical recording in a video, you must obtain the following licenses:

1. For each individual musical composition you will be using, you must obtain a synchronization license from the songwriter and/or his or her music publisher. Publisher contact information can be obtained from ASCAP, BMI, or the U.S. Copyright Office. It is possible that some of the older musical compositions you plan to use are in the public domain (i.e., their copyright has expired), but determining the public domain status of a given musical work gets rather complicated. If you think the musical work you wish to use is in the public domain, we recommend that you review this issue either with a copyright attorney, the individual music publishers or someone at the Harry Fox Agency.
2. For each individual sound recording you will be using, you must also obtain a master use license from the individual record label that owns such sound recording. The name of the relevant record company can usually be determined from the liner notes that accompany the commercially-released version of the music. To assist you in this process, a list of licensing contacts at the major labels is attached to this note. Each of the labels will set their own fees based on a variety of factors (e.g., how popular the song is or was, how current the song is, the type of video project, the number of copies that will be made, etc.) Because the labels receive numerous licensing requests, it generally takes some time for these licenses to be granted. Please be aware that labels are not required to license their recordings for use in video projects.
3. In order to publicly perform the music in the finished video, you (or the venue where the video is shown) must also obtain a public performance license from the relevant performance rights organization(s) (i.e., ASCAP, BMI and/or SESAC). Each of these organizations represents a separate roster of individual songwriters and music publishers and offers a license to perform all of the musical compositions in its catalog. Further information about these organizations can be found at their respective web sites (www.ascap.com, www.bmi.com, www.sesac.com). No public performance license is required with respect to the sound recording.

What about our family members and friends that live overseas? Do I need to pay licensing costs for each of those countries as well? This is starting to become quite an ordeal for a simple home video clip. Even so, it is possible I will never be granted an international license. It is possible that the rights holders do not want my video to be associated with their music. I guess that is fair, but it certainly is a complicated and very time consuming process. Do I really need to do all this for a home video of a little girl dancing? It seems like I should be able to go to a single place where I can give them a reasonable payment and be done with it.

Maybe startups such as RoyaltyShare could help out. Although, this is just a video where the primary motive is to show our little girl dance. It is not some multi-million dollar production that can afford to spend a few months tracking down the right people for licensing.

It seems to me that during the days of VHS, people made videos of their children and weddings with little concern for the music playing in the background. I guess it was assumed that the video was for private use and it would be distributed to a limited audience and therefore was considered "fair use".

Now that the video is digital and distributed electronically over the internet, suddenly it is no longer considered "fair use". Is it because of the potential wider audience and the ease of distribution? Or maybe it was always done illegally, but there was little to no way of auditing this.

While I am spending all this time working out the rights to be able to distribute this video to friends from my website. It seems that I might as well find every decal and branded item that I find through out my personal video and see if I can get some spot advertising deal. Maybe I can get enough advertising revenue to cover the licensing costs?

It is sure is an interesting and detail oriented world we live in.

Trent Reznor explained earlier this week on the Nine Inch Nails blog how "safe harbor" under the DMCA is restricting them from launching a site where fans can upload their own mixes of Nine Inch Nails songs as Universal, owner of their master recordings, is afraid they may sponsor the same technical violation of copyright that they are suing Youtube and Myspace for. This is because the remixes may contain uncleared material, that Universal does not own, such as a mashup, sample or whatever.

This is a very interesting double-edged sword in regards to the DMCA. As during the early MP3.com days we had people sitting in a room listening to every track that was uploaded for copyright material, cover songs, etc. These days most companies rely on DMCA safe harbor to be re-active rather then pro-active at taking down content. It is really a shame that mashups and sampling are seen as such a liability. Rather than seeing it as a sign of appreciation and respect, we turn around and would sue the creator for a small piece of the action. I can see it to a certain degree, but clearing rights needs to be much much easier then it is now if we truly expect people to clear rights for things like a sample or mashup.

Trent decided to launch the site anyways. See remix.nin.com. As described in the FAQon the site, every upload will be scanned for infringing material, as we originally did at MP3.com.

• Q: Why doesn't my uploaded remix show up on the site immediately?
• A: Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of frustrating record company legal politics, and must ensure that your mix does not include any unauthorized material - as defined in the next answer on this page - before it is approved for the site. Approving every mix is a tedious process, and we rely on the greatly-appreciated help of the site moderators to review submitted mixes. Because of this, it may take some time before your mix shows up on the site. You will receive an email when it becomes available - in the meantime, please be patient, and understand this isn't the way we'd run the site if we had a choice.
• Q: What kind of materials are not okay to include in my remix?
• A: Thanks to the record company copyright politics mentioned in the answer above, we must require that your mix does not contain ANY elements of copyrighted material, unless you yourself own the copyright (i.e. it's your own music). Your mix can include any element of any NIN song, or of other songs offered in multitrack format on this site. You can manipulate or destroy those pieces as much as you'd like, and you can combine them with your own original sounds and music. You CANNOT include samples of songs by other artists, or samples from movies, TV shows, or video games. Any remixes containing these elements will be rejected during the approval process. Please understand that it is not our wish to impose these restrictions on your creativity or the functionality of this site, but we have no choice in the matter.

It is unfortunate that you have to do this, especially since it is hard for individuals to know what is copyrighted material and what is in the public domain. It certainly seems to highlight that the DMCA is not the right answer here.