Musicians Need to Rethink Their Struggle with Piracy:
This isn’t a ‘4 steps to beating piracy guide’, but we might as well start at the beginning. Prepare a game plan for your music. Figure out what path you want to take with your music and then stick to it. Do you want to get your music out in the world trying to get the most people to hear it, or do you need to make a monetary return on your recording investment? If you need to make a return, don’t give away your music for free, expecting some people to pay or donate. If your goal is awareness and popularity, then giving away a bunch of songs or the entire album may be the way to go.
(Via news.allaboutjazz.com)
Interesting. I had a discussion with a bass player about things like Spotify and Pandora. He was all “they pay you” and I was “like .000001 cents per play”. I think the way to go is to either put it into iTunes, or perhaps do what some people are doing and make it a “pay what you want” thing.
UPDATE – Actually, the rate is $0.21 per 100 streams of a song. And Pandora supposedly pays $0.12 per 100 streams.
The US Supreme Court late Monday rejected ASCAP’s attempt to claim that song downloads are public performances. Its verdict upheld an earlier appeal ruling without added comment. The earlier, federal-level judge pointed to basic logic for support, contending that a digital recording isn’t necessarily being played live to a wide audience just because it had been transferred over the Internet….