July 3, 2009
Group Sues AT&T Over Ringtones Heard In Public
Already ringtones are more expensive than a full-length song-and pay a higher royalty to the artist than a normal track-but the music industry is trying to make them even more profitable by arguing that someone should pay even more when the 30-second snippet plays in public. The Washington Post reports.
IDG News Service reports (via MacWorld) that AT&T, in particular, has been sued by ASCAP, asserting that ringtones qualify "as a public performance under the Copyright Act." The group wants mobile operators to pay royalties, not individual consumers.
The fight is playing out in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In the operator's defense the Electronic Frontier Foundation, joined by the CDT, argued that copyright law exempts performances that are conducted without a commercial purpose, such as ringtones in a restaurant.
Read Already ringtones are more expensive than a full-length song-and pay a higher royalty to the artist than a normal track-but the music industry is trying to make them even more profitable by arguing that someone should pay even more when the 30-second snippet plays in public.
Read full article.
Related:
July 2, 2009
Verizon launches 4th of July ringtone catalogue
Verizon Wireless customers can choose from hundreds of patriotic tunes to customize their phones for the Fourth of July, including:
-- "Stars and Stripes Forever"
-- "God Bless The U.S.A.,"
-- "American Pie," by Don McLean
-- "R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A.," by John Mellencamp
-- "Born In The U.S.A.," by Bruce Springsteen
-- "American Girl," by Taylor Swift
-- "Summertime," by Herbie Hancock
June 30, 2009
President Interrupted By 'Duck Ringtone' During Speech
Obama to the press corps: "Where do you guys get these ringtones by the way?
[via Wonkette]
June 29, 2009
British music boss: we should have embraced Napster
Geoff Taylor, head of UK major label trade group BPI, wrote an op-ed piece for the BBC today in which he called Napster the "Rosetta Stone of digital music," said it was "simple to understand and use," and said that the music industry should have "embraced Napster rather than fighting it." ars technica reports.
Napster famously didn't bother about those things, and when it finally did get around to talking to the labels about actually compensating them and their artists for all that music being traded, the industry was insulted by the amounts offered.
Napster wasn't "prepared to pay fair royalties or to partner in a business model that could sustain investment in new music," said Taylor. That's too bad, since otherwise everything would have worked out great and we would now be living in a blanket-licensed digital music paradise.
Read full article.
June 27, 2009
Sales Are Strong for Michael Jackson’s Music
Awkward, yes, but not necessarily wrong.
Mr. Jackson’s albums are topping the moment-by-moment best-seller charts on Amazon.com and Apple’s iTunes Store.
Amazon.com said Friday that sales of Michael Jackson CDs and MP3s increased 721 times overnight from typical daily sales, Sharon Otterman and Liz Robbins report.
A ringtone version of “Thriller” also ranked among the top ringtones on iTunes.
June 26, 2009
Verizon To Refund Millions For Unwanted Ring Tones
As part of an agreement with Florida's Attorney General, Verizon and Alltel (now part of Verizon) will have to deliver roughly $30 million in refunds to consumers for ringtones and other services that customers either didn't want or didn't understand they signed up for. According to a statement by Attorney General Bill McCollum, Verizon is also required to adopt new guidelines preventing customers from getting snookered by such promotions in the future.
[via Broadband]
June 25, 2009
Shazam Now Tweets, Maps Your Music Journeys
The Shazam app for iPhone - that listens to songs playing out loud, telling you its name and artist - has gotten an update and allows you to send electronic postcards to friends, as well as sending tagged songs to Twitter.
You can also view your tags on a map and see your musical journey unfold by location
[via Gizmodo]
June 24, 2009
ASCAP and Copyright Doublespeak
Just a few days ago, the EFF pointed out that ASCAP is arguing in federal court that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by "publicly performing" it without a license.
Now, reports the EFF in a follow up article:
To be completely clear, ASCAP’s approach has always been to license these businesses – not to charge listeners/end-users.
This is an archetypal example of copyright doublespeak. What ASCAP should be saying is: "It's not infringing when your ringtone goes off in public." That's because the Copyright Act specifically provides in Section 110(4) that public performances "without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage" are "not infringements of copyright."
Instead, ASCAP's statement essentially amounts to "you're all pirates, but don't fret, we'd never sue you for it, just every company that provides you with services."
Read full article.
June 23, 2009
Damages of $1.9 million could backfire on music industry
The recording industry secured a resounding victory last week when a Minneapolis jury awarded the four major labels $1.92 million in damages after unanimously finding that a 32-year-old mother had willfully infringed on their copyrights by downloading and sharing 24 songs on the Kazaa peer-to-peer network. Reuters reports.
June 20, 2009
ASCAP Wants To Be Paid When Your Phone Rings
According to the EFF, ASCAP appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by "publicly performing" it without a license.
This will doubtless come as a shock to the millions of Americans who have legitimately purchased musical ringtones, contributing millions to the music industry's bottom line. Are we each liable for statutory damages (say, $80,000) if we forget to silence our phones in a restaurant?
ASCAP's outlandish claim is part of its battle with major mobile carriers (including Verizon and AT&T) over whether ASCAP is owed any money for "public performances" of the musical ringtones sold by the carriers. The carriers point out that the owners of the musical compositions (i.e., songwriters and music publishers) are already paid for each ringtone download, but ASCAP claims that it's owed another royalty for the "public performances" (i.e., ringing in a restaurant) of those same ringtones.
Read full article.
June 19, 2009
Music Labels Win $2 Million in Web Case
The Universal Music Group, owned by Vivendi, and other record labels were awarded $1.92 million on Thursday in the retrial of a Minnesota woman accused of swapping music over the Kazaa Internet service. Bloomberg reports.
The first time the case went to trial, in 2007, a jury awarded $9,250 a song, or $222,000.
The Recording Industry Association of America brought more than 35,000 legal actions against people it claimed were illegally sharing music before changing its policy in December. This is the only case that has gone to trial.
Judge Michael J. Davis of United States District Court threw out the first verdict, saying he had given the jury incorrect instructions.
After the verdict, Ms. Thomas-Rasset, a natural resources coordinator for the Mille Lacs Band of the Ojibwe, said she was disappointed that she had not been able to convince the jury that she had not posted the songs. “The only thing I can say is good luck trying to get it, because you can’t get blood out of a turnip.”
“The disproportionate size of the verdict raises constitutional questions,” said Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the consumer group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has criticized the music industry’s tactics.
At the four-day trial, lawyers for Ms. Thomas-Rasset argued that the labels could not prove that she had posted the songs on the Kazaa file-sharing site.
June 18, 2009
Ringtone sales fall blamed on music downloads
Sales of mobile phone ringtones have collapsed in Australia over the past two years according to a new report from business consultants. News.com.au reports.
Senior analyst Edward Butler said the poor performance of ringtone sales was likely due to increased sales of digital music.
"The biggest driver is that now people have the capacity to download songs on their phone," he said.
"With the release of the iPhone and things like BigPond having whole libraries of songs that you can download and the capacity to manipulate those songs and turn them into ringtones, there’s much less motivation to download a thirty second grab of the song."
Mr Butler also believes there has been a backlash against ringtone providers.
Sites like iTunes, Bigpond and Amazon that have downloads of MP3s available are seen as more reputable and safer."
Sales of mobile master ringtones hit a high in 2006, with 10 million ringtones sold – up from 3.7 million in 2005.
Research Labs intros Ringer 1.0 iPhone ringtones software
Pixel Research Labs has introduced Ringer 1.0, a new iPhone ringtone creation and editing tool for Mac OS X.
Users can choose any non-protected file from their iTunes library or any media file on their system that can be opened by QuickTime - MP3, AAC, MOV, MP4, M4V - and turn it into a ringtone.
[via MacWorld]
June 16, 2009
Universal Music and Virgin Reach a Download Deal
The Universal Music Group and Virgin Media said on Monday that they had reached a deal that would offer consumers unlimited downloads as part of a partnership that steps up antipiracy enforcement. The New York Times reports.
The music will be free from copy protection, a feature that distinguishes the service from most existing subscription offerings. The cost of the service, which will probably start by the end of the year, was not disclosed.
In return, Virgin Media, the British cable television and broadband provider, agreed to take steps to reduce piracy on its network, something that other broadband providers have resisted.
The measures could include temporary suspensions of offenders’ Internet connections, the company said.
June 15, 2009
SingTel launches music service for mobile phones
Developed with Universal Music, SingTel hopes the web-based facility, called AMPed, will help it attract new customers as well as get existing subscribers to upgrade service plans.
[via Reuters]
