Music & Entertainment For U

There’s no ‘compulsory’ licensing in literature… And if there’s an industry in worse shape than music, it’s the publishing world. Amazon’s Kindle is stillborn because it relies heavily on Amazon for content, and there are no easy paths to licensing writing. It’s entirely a 1:1 negotiation and as a result, the vast majority of authors are left out. It’s pretty clear: without the right to use (and pay) authors to fairly use recent works, modern works languish on the shelves until they go out of print and disappear forever. Today the blogosphere stands as a monument to both the triumph of amateurism, and the difficulty of getting noticed or paid. While content aggregators have labored to create a web-based syndication market for a decade, broadcaster’s ability to play any and everything whenever they want creates new stars to this day, and supports a much larger industry.

Many written works are so far ahead of their time as to be worthless when published. Einstein’s most famous works were dormant for over a decade until the world caught up with his theories. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s ‘The New Vision’ was written in the 1920s, but required digital computers to fully realize and flesh out… the author was dead for 50 years before the ideas could be deployed at all! Had the work been more easily carved up and annotated, it may never have gone out of print, and almost certainly would have earned it’s author more income in his lifetime. Furthermore, earlier development would have made the franchise and the body of his work more valuable to his heirs.

How many contemporary painters can anyone outside the art world name? The average consumer knows far more pop stars than painters. There are more working millionaire pop stars than painters, and they make their fortunes faster. These two worlds reflect the most restrictive copyrights. The results and state of the respective arts make the case: As bad as things may be for the music industry, the art world lacks the exposure, opportunity, and yes, money, that would flow their way with compulsory licensing of images. At least pop stars don’t have to die to get paid (though classical composers were in that boat prior to compulsory licensing!).

In the 20th and 21st century more musical artists achieved greater notoriety and commercial success than authors or painters. Sure, you can pick out a couple individuals, like Stephen King and Andy Warhol, who out-earned almost all musical artists of their respective eras, but there are far more Madonnas, Christinas and Britneys than Andys. While as many books are written as CDs are released, who’s more popular? Joe Strummer put it best: ‘Plato the Greek or Rin Tin Tin; who’s more famous to the million-billions?’ Similarly, in the drug industry patents are inviolable for 17 years. Witness the result: Obscene profits for pharmaceutical companies, unreasonable pricing for patients (unreasonable in a business sense, not a moral one). Clearly broadcasting expanded some industries and incomes via compulsory licensing.

Its clear the absence of compulsory licensing deprives us of all kinds of fun, entertaining and previously legitimate media-baubles. A century ago, copyrights expired and works passed into the public domain, and classical music freely filled high schools, symphony halls, and band shells. Today copyrights of media conglomerates are effectively eternal (Mickey Mouse’s legitimate copyright was up 20 years ago, but Disney is still prosecuting infringement of their icon). In a reasonable world, an X-Rated Mickey Mouse cartoon would already be at Blockbuster!

Since conglomerates will not surrender their gains easily, compulsory rates are the next best solution that allows ALL citizens access to our collective cultural cache. In the constitution, and international law, there is a long-standing presumption that it is a GOOD THING for intellectual property to enter the public domain. The notion of heavy-handed enforcement of perpetual (or ever-extended in the case of drugs) intellectual property, not fair use and mash ups, is the novel concept here.

Virtually NO ONE but Stephen King and his cohort can make a living writing books today, but there are plenty of people making a living making music. The art world is even more dismal: If you don’t make it and can’t land a teaching job, you’re probably bitter about your retail job. Of course most musicians see nothing from licensing, but it’s impossible to miss the broader market for music created by the existence of popular music and broadcasting. Conversely, the collapse of music formats and regionalism on the radio, far more than file trading, have halted the growth of our industry.

The challenge today is to revitalize programmed music, so webcasters can grow the market in the ways broadcast once did. There are far more and better opportunities on the web than there ever were in broadcasting. Compulsory licensing that rewards performance, alongside song writing, open those doors and grow the market for our work.