The current legal system around sampling is outdated and broken. It was created in 1991 by a judge throwing Bible quotes around who (more importantly) failed to consider the doctrine of fair use. Treating all samples the same unfairly burdens producers who use samples to create unique and original work. They system has been maintained by the economics of how it benefits players in the industry with the most time, money, and lawyers. The claims of producers like Girl Talk - that sampling constitutes fair use and is in line with copyright law - should see its day in court. Until it does, the music industry will continue to be hampered by ambiguity that stifles creativity. Clearing samples can be impossible for all but the biggest stars, which leaves the music industry’s dreamers facing a hard choice between restricting their creativity or making music with the nagging fear of a lawsuit. A law that makes it impossible to play by the rules is not a good one.

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ttrk is my MIDI sequencer application. I was annoyed by the bad step editors found on pretty much all MIDI sequencers I could find, and since I was big fan of the tracker interface, I used the user interface ideas behind a tracker in my design.

SunVox is a small, fast and powerful modular synthesizer with pattern based sequencer (tracker). It is a tool for those people who like to compose music wherever they are, whenever they wish. On any device. SunVox is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows Mobile, PalmOS, Maemo, Meego, iOS and Android.

The purpose of beets is to get your music collection right once and for all. It catalogs your collection, automatically improving its metadata as it goes using the MusicBrainz database. (It also downloads cover art for albums it imports.) Then it provides a bouquet of tools for manipulating and accessing your music.

Anti-piracy group BREIN is caught up in a huge copyright scandal in the Netherlands. A musician who composed a track for use at a local film festival later found it being used without permission in an anti-piracy campaign. He is now claiming at least a million euros for the unauthorized distribution of his work on DVDs. To make matters even worse, a board member of a royalty collection agency offered to to help the composer to recoup the money, but only if he received 33% of the loot.

Det är förmodligen så man ska se på Spotify; det är ytterligare en livsuppehållande åtgärd för en industri som egentligen borde få somna in för gott. Det kommer heta att det är piratkopierarnas fel, man kommer skylla på ungefär allt som går att skylla på för att försöka skyla de egentliga orsakerna; en trasig och förlegad upphovsrätt och fullständigt föråldrade affärsmodeller inom upphovsrättsindustrin.

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Spotifys affärsmodell är väldigt rätt, en Internetbaserad tjänst som ger dig ett musikbibliotek som är många gånger större än det du själv orkar sortera och indexera på egen hand, men det hjälper inte när de samtidigt tvingas hålla en obsolet och döende dinosaurie vid liv. Utan den dödvikten tror jag att Spotify hade varit markant mer framgångsrik, artisterna hade definitivt fått markant mer betalt och mycket av dagens kritik hade aldrig ens uppstått men med dagens beslut kommer kritikerna knappast bli tystare.

Making a telephone call to SABAM [the Belgian association of authors, composers and publishers] from a public toilet, a Basta [an investigative and satirical TV show in Belgium] team member looked at the manufacturer of a hand dryer and explained that Kimberly Clark would be performing at an upcoming event. That would cost 134 euros minimum said SABAM.

Next the playlist. What if Kimberly Clark sang songs not covered by SABAM? Titles such as ‘Hot Breeze’, ‘Show Me Your Hands’, ‘I Wanna Blow You Dry’, ‘I’m Not a Singer I Am a Machine’ and the ever-timeless, ‘We Fooled You’, for example.

Five days later the answer came from SABAM. All of the songs were “100% protected” and so Basta must pay 127.07 euros.

According to an article in the Guardian:

Illegal downloading of music cost the UK industry nearly £1bn this year, the BPI claimed today, as it produced research showing online piracy is still growing.

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It based that calculation on an assumption that every track would have sold for 82p, the average price of a digital single, although it conceded not everyone who downloaded tracks illegally would have paid for them if they had been unable to obtain them illegitimately.

Also, last year thousands of people rode on the same bus as me. This cost me thousands of euros. I base that calculation on an assumption that they would each have paid me €1 to keep them company, though I concede that maybe not all of them would have paid if they could just have gone along anyway. As indeed they did.

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Libre.fm actively supports the creation of music by independent artists, and only plays music that has been licensed freely.

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Every song on Libre.fm is made by musicians who *want* you to share their music.