djedna.org

Another interesting article that explains why artists shouldn’t worry about copyright violations of their recorded music. Unless it’s a big time ripoff where the violator is making a ton of money off your work, don’t sweat it. And don’t expect all the web 2.0 companies you’ve put your content onto to look out for copyright violations either. That will only raise their costs, be ineffective, and reduce the number of players in the market. That, of course, will result in fewer choices for you, the artist, and cost you in the end.

So, what’s the moral of the story? Just distribute your own material yourself (using something like DJ Edna). If someone is ripping you off to the degree that you should do something about it, you’ll know (because if you don’t, chances are it wasn’t popular enough to matter anyway) and be able to hire a lawyer to go get your money. Or, for free, you can publicly shame the violator on your artist blog.

As with all things in life, fear can make you do silly things.

Lots of interesting Music Industry 2.0 news today. Here’s yet another article claiming that the RIAA has gone too far in their claims over music copyright. In it, the author advocates reducing the duration of a copyright from the current, ridiculously long term of 125 years to 5 years. Although I believe that this one move would alone set the industry straight and get them to focus on innovation rather than litigation, I don’t think it’ll ever happen. Certainly not while Disney is lobbying congress.

Instead, I believe that the inevitable change in the industry has to start with the artists themselves. No changes in law are necessary for artists to simply deny giving major labels artistic copyrights to protect in the first place. The music industry won’t change until the artists themselves decide to change it. After all, the artists are the most powerful force in the industry, not the labels. The major labels simply parasite off that forfeited artist power and use it for their own ends.

From an interesting article covering the RIAA’s new foolishness:

“As I’ve said before, a good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value. If it starts to pursue paying customers — which doesn’t seem that outlandish at this point — then I guess we’ll all know the extent of the desperation. Investor, beware.”

One more lesson for independent artists — don’t sue the fans that are giving you money.

You’ve probably already heard about David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars, but if not, go read it now. I’ve also added the link to the Resources section of the site. Even if you can’t stand David Byrne’s music, there’s no doubting his insight into the current and future states of the music industry. The DJ Edna team will be using his advice in this article as a roadmap to determine which features are most needed.

This article is a nice end of year wrap up of the facts and figures around the changing state of the music industry.

If you’re not interested in reading, the short version is that CD sales are down and digital sales are up.  So, if you’re looking at using DJ Edna to digitally distribute your music (and you must be if you’re reading this), you’re on top of industry trends.  Grats.