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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Killing their own young
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The music industry has reached bizarro territory - killing its own young in the quest to ensure that all music fits into their box. Have a look at this from Joi Ito:
"I thought it was a new kind of fraud," said Naoki Kasugai, who runs Daytrip, a nightclub that offers live music in Nagoya. He received a letter from JASRAC in summer 2003 along with an invoice for a monthly charge of 28,350 yen in copyright fees, covering the entire time his bar has been open since 1997. It totaled a whopping 2.32 million yen.
Kasugai was shocked and puzzled. He had never heard from JASRAC before. He figured someone was trying to con him.
But after receiving a second invoice from JASRAC, he called to find out what was going on. A JASRAC official came by in person to explain: "The bands you hire have likely played covers of songs by other composers. We want you to pay the copyright fees on those songs."
"How many cover songs does this account for?" asked Kasugai.
"We don't know how many copyrighted songs were played here," the official replied. "So we are not charging for each of them. Instead, we are charging on a monthly basis."
Now stop and consider this for a moment. Let's say that bands playing there did, in fact, play cover songs. Well then - the audience heard a bunch of music which they might then be interested in buying. Instead, the morons from the music industry would like to ensure that only original music gets played (because that's what bar owners would do, rather than have to pay an extra fee). What' the end result of that? A less diverse range of music heard by the audience, which will result in fewer experimental sales.
The music industry has moved beyond protecting itself, and straight on to suicidal behavior.
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