Issues

Musicians Are Attacking The Wrong Enemy

By: Mike Montgomery

Music royalty payments are at an all-time high. So why are artists turning on the streaming companies?

According to the companies that collect royalties for songwriters and publishers, times are good. ASCAP and BMI, the two performance rights organizations (or PROs) that represent almost all songwriters and publishers, are falling over each other to brag about how much money they’ve collected.

In March, ASCAP announced that it was the first PRO in the world to report $1 billion in revenues. The nonprofit boasted of “historic high” distributions of over $883 million to its members. In September, BMI also announced “record breaking revenues” of $1 billion with digital revenues exceeding $100 million for the first time ever.

And yet, songwriters and musicians are complaining loudly that they aren’t getting their share of the pie. They are demanding royalty rate increases and a larger direct cut of streaming companies’ revenues, which already operate at half-mast by paying out 50% or more of revenue to royalties.

Where is this disconnect coming from? On the one hand, it seems like streaming is the engine that is finally starting to turn things around for the suffering music industry. Consumers are embracing platforms like Pandora, iHeart and Soundcloud instead of piracy and as a result, they are once again paying for music with subscriptions or by willingly listening to ads.

Read the full article here. 

The Hill – Time For Hollywood and Silicon Valley to stop fighting over copyright

(This article ran in the TheHill.com on December 3, 2015)

By: Mike Montgomery

Recently, the idea of felony streaming once again reared its ugly head. Making streaming copyright infringement a felony is a terrible idea and an example of backward thinking that creates further rifts between tech and entertainment at a time when these two sectors are not only reliant upon one another, but melding. As some may recall, this kind of backward thinking famously and furiously failed before when it was a key part of the ill-conceived effort known as SOPA-PIPA (Stop Internet Piracy Act / Protect IP Act). So strong was the backlash against these would-be laws and their breathtaking overreach, to this day, the term “SOPA-PIPA” sends chills down the spines of lawmakers.

And rightly so.  When it was first proposed in 2011, millions of Internet users demanded it be shut down. YouTubers, on the forefront of the new entertainment industry, worried that uploading images of video games or parts of songs could suddenly land them in jail. Wikipedia, Google and an estimated 7,000 other websites coordinated a day-long service blackout in protest against the bill. One petition drive attracted seven million signatures. Companies and organizations that supported the legislation were boycotted. Even the White House’s Senior Intellectual Property Enforcement official at the time, responding to a We The People Petition against the legislation, vowed to oppose any legislation that would chill innovation and free expression. Much to the relief of many lawmakers, the bill was quietly set aside.

Read the full article here.

Techwire.net – Rajan: The ‘Sharing Economy’ Is Here to Stay (Opinion)

By: Kish Rajan

I recently was a guest on a cable news show to discuss politicians’ attitudes toward companies like Uber, Airbnb and TaskRabbit. On this occasion, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes got particularly heated when I brought up the “sharing economy.” He shot back, insisting the name is misleading: “No one’s sharing anything. People are just selling things a different way,” he said.

Hayes isn’t the first person to make this claim, and I don’t completely disagree with his semantics. But I prefer to use the term “personal enterprise economy” to describe the new paradigm. Why? The substantive criticism is that rideshare drivers and home share hosts aren’t sharing their assets; in reality, they’re selling them. Point conceded, happily.

It’s called entrepreneurship, and that’s why this new personal enterprise economy is so exciting. Powerful new technology platforms are empowering regular people to become the CEOs of their own enterprises — marketing and selling their assets and talents to a global marketplace heretofore out of reach to the average person. Until now, global markets were the exclusive domain of companies with the resources and capacity to reach those markets. Technology is transforming that, opening up a new world of opportunity to everyday people. See the marketing consultant in Los Angeles using video conferencing to sell her services in Beijing. Consider the baker in Fresno selling his cookies to the customer in Brazil.

Read the full article here.

Forbes – How Laurene Powell Jobs’ XQ Institute Is Inspiring Entrepreneurs To Help Fix America’s High Schools

(This article ran on Forbes.com on December 1, 2015.)

By: Mike Montgomery

It’s pretty clear that our high schools are almost hopelessly broken. In math and science, the United States scores below countries like Slovenia and New Zealand. But the question of how to fix our schools is a thorny one.

Big government programs, like No Child Left Behind and the Common Core, aren’t moving the needle. Charter schools and voucher programs might seem like panaceas, but too often they leave the neediest students behind. And faced with unmoving bureaucracies and entrenched unions many innovative educators simply throw their hands up in frustration and move to more welcoming fields.

Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’ widow, thinks there’s another way…

Read the full article here.