Licensed Music better that copyright lawsuits?

Now this may be just my ignorance of how the music industry works showing, but bare with me.

I just watched a video which told me that Tom Waits employs sixty (60) or more people to search YouTube for channels that had uploaded videos using the sound tracks of any of his songs. When found, they immediately file a copyright claim and or a take down notice of the offending video. And he is not alone. For the vast majority of video creators, a copy lawsuit is a waist of time as there is no money there to recover.

Is it me or does this seem counter productive to anybody (everybody) else?

If you have ever looked into licensing a song through BMI, ASCAP, Marmoset, SESAC, SOCAN or any other media licensing company, you will have found the cost can run into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. There are a confusing medley of different licensees for variable circumstances. And the complex fee schedule varies as well, which obviously puts the music out of the reach of all but a few tip of the top YouTubers, who only want to share their favorite music.

With approximately 86000 new videos added per day and 60 people searching? I would say that your group are trying to stop an army of ants with a magnifying glass on a partly cloudy day. And I'm not suggesting let it all go free. After all, music has value. What I am suggesting is making it cheap and easy for video content makers to get a one time license for a video. It could go as easy as this.

Users create a social media account on, lets say, a special BMI website (this does not exist, its just an example). The account might contain the users personal information and contact info. Click on a new license form and fill it out, click pay and the site would spit out a one-use license in a PDF for print or email. The license contains the license number (an encoded version of the video description provided by the applicant) and the composer credit text that must appear in the video (end credits) and/or in any extended text description section available on the particular platform.

In order to make and keep this non-transferable social media license valid, the following information would be entered for registration: The date of application, the single upload web site (ie YouTube, Vemo, twitter, whatever), the account or channel name, the name of the video, the song you are licensing, if its the original track or a cover performance, your current follower/friend/subscriber count (more on this later), if your video will be monetized, and your expected publishing date. The License would permanently cover THAT one song on THAT video uploaded on THAT site on THAT channel. Additional uploads or songs would require their own license. IE one (1) song on one (1) video uploaded to YouTube and Twitter = 2 uploads = 2 licenses. Or five (5) songs on one (1) video on one (1) upload on YouTube = five (5) licenses.

License costs would be on a sliding scale (below based on one (1) song, one (1) video, one (1) upload);

$5.00 US - all non-monetized videos regardless of subscriber count.

$10.00 US - monetized video with less than 100,000 subscribers/followers

$25.00 US - monetized video with more than 100,000 subscribers/followers

Seems pretty cheap. But is it? YouTube alone gets about 80,000 hours of new uploads a day. According to Quora.com, the average length of a video on YouTube is less than 5 minutes. That comes out to about 86400 videos a day. If you low ball the figure and say only 10 percent of those bought a $5.00 license, that comes to $43,200 a day. That's per DAY and that only includes the $5.00, non-monetized, video license.

How much are your artists making on those uploads now? Oh, that's right your paying 60 people at 40 hours a week to police just YouTube. And I'm sure there are lawyer costs mixed up in there somewhere (there always are).

The cheap price is the key. Affordable by everyone. The license code makes checking against a database easy. The text credits make publicity for the music that is being paid for by the licensee, and its easy to check the video license validity. Now for a few bucks content creators can avoid video take downs, copyright strikes, all the bad stuff. Who wouldn't do that?

With proper announcements the site would be flooded with applicants. At the very least it would pay for its own operation, policing, and royalties. And since take downs don't make money, instead point creators to the licensing site where they could buy a license and get their video creation restored.

This is not an original idea. There are already sites on the internet that license music for uses like YouTube. But at $14-150 dollars a pop for unknown artists, their percentage of uses on videos is limited. To my thinking, the value here is volume. Getting a great rep and building that 10 percent to 40-50-60 percent licensed with a large and happy repeat user base.

So as I said at the start, I'm not a professional musician. I'm not an executive responsible for collecting royalties. I'm not paying 60 people a day to make me no money and spread animosity about my brand by doing take downs on YouTube. But even I would stop using free Creative Commons music in my videos if for five or ten bucks each a I could use popular music.

Be Well.

Yellow Ink

My brand not pictured

I needed an ink cartridge.  My printer was insisting that it could not go on until the yellow ink cartridge, which had run out, was replaced.  It insisted on this even though the tax document I was attempting to print contained no yellow.

Unable to convince the stubborn machine otherwise, I headed out for our local office supply store.  The printer is not a newer unit (more than two years old...imagine), so the outlets available to buy new ink are limited.   Why not replace it with a newer model?  It works very well, it's connected to our little intranet and everyone uses it.  It also has, what seems to be a vanishing attribute, a straight through paper path.  What I mean is, the media that you are printing on does not need to bend as it moves through the printer.  This is very handy when printing business cards, clear vellum sheets for overhead projection and other media that is not simple #20 inkjet paper.

I had a different brand of printer that had only two initials as a name and it had a folding paper path.  the continual jams, stutters, and waist brought about its sad and untimely demise on the office floor.   With a few kicks to be sure the beast was dead, I went and bought the printer we are still using today.

The one that is currently out of yellow ink.

I hear on the TV and radio how poorly the economy is doing and how retailers are struggling to get by with a skeleton staff.  Its very hard for them to keep the doors open.  You could not prove it by the parking lot of the mall outside the office supply store. Its 114 degrees in the shade (of which there is none) and the lot is full to brimming over. 

Cars are parked on any available open spot, marked or not, making the search for an open spot more like the "Dodge-um" amusement park ride than a .. well... search for an open parking spot.  After circling the lot and watching the temperature gauge on my old minivan slowly climb towards the red line, I finally slip into a spot that is not completely out of sight of the office supply store.

Victory! 

"Too bad for you, slackers," I smile as other cars pass by my old van with heated scowls.  For a moment, I actually entertained the idea of realigning my parked vehicle in its spot, just to watch the circling parking piranhas come flying together only to be disappointed as my van slipped back into the same parking spot.  Muhahahaha!

But the moment passes and I pause to survey the trek ahead of me across the hot asphalt.  I should have brought water. 

And maybe a camel.

Crossing the parking lot is no easy task.  Pass between parked vehicles is safe enough, so long as you watch where and in what you are stepping.  I learned long ago the little green puddles can be as slippery as sheets of ice and catching your balance by placing bare skin on a sun baked, painted car hood can be just as painful as landing on the asphalt.  But the most dangerous by far is crossing the streams.  Referred to as "access drives" or "lanes" by the uninitiated, they are streams filled with creatures more deadly and unpredictable than anything in the rivers of Africa or the Amazon jungle... impatient drivers.   Some are on the hunt for a parking spot, others attempting to escape the mall altogether.  Each are equally desperate.  Each are equally dangerous should an opening arise with you in between them and their intended target.  Having just been one of the pack, I wave them by, patient waiting for my opening to cross. 

Sweat is running down my back as I enter the store and a chill runs through me as I plunge my body into 78 degree conditioned air.  I'm greeted with a hollow "welcome to ..." by one of the minimum wage drones behind the service counter who does not even look up to see me as she speaks.  I make no attempt to get her attention or even reply, but make my way to the aisle with its perforated gondolas filled with ink cartridges in sealed plastic hangers.  All the brands are here and even some generic refill kits.  And my brand hangs right here....

Hey.  It's gone.

"Can I help you" asks a young girl covered in her "Big Box Store" smock.

"My ink is gone," I say pointing to a display now filled with another brand.

"We moved those down here," she says as she leads me to the far end of the aisle.

"But its not here either," I say as my eyes dart from one packaged ink to another, "its the one with a guitar on the box."

"Those are over here," she says point to an opposite row.  "Personally, I don't like those because its hard to read the box."

"It has a guitar on the box.  Its the only one with a guitar on the box.  Others have horses, or butterflies, or something, but only one has a guitar on the box."  My explanation failed to impress her.  "There are only singles here," I pointed out questioningly.  "Where are the multipacks?"

"I don't know," she said, "we might have them online."

I thought of my printer which is stopped mid page and demanding an ink cartridge which it did not need.  Could it sit that way while I wait for ink to be delivered?  I shook off the thought and resigned myself to paying $20 for a single ink cartridge.  I would find the multipacks somewhere else, perhaps online...

Producing the proper "member" card saved me nothing, but it did inform the management that there was still someone stupid enough to be buying ink single packs and just who that idiot was.  I maneuvered my way back to my old van and cautiously opened the door to allow the trapped heat to escape without singeing the hair in my mustache and eyebrows.  And a mere 20 minutes later I was approaching the exit. 

Back at my office I was greeted by my printer, still stopped mid-page, its little green and red lights blinking.  I pressed the red flashing button and the ink carriage swung out into the open where I could pop out the old yellow cartridge and snap the new one into place.  The printer jumped into life and ran its cleaning cycle to bring the new cartridge online, thereby being ready to not print yellow in the twenty-five page black and white tax form still in my computers print buffer.

Cleaning...

Cleaning...

AH! Here it goes.  The print head swings into position, data begins to move, and the computer beeps and stops. 

It would seem that the head cleaning was all that remained of the light cyan.

Too Much!

I have always been a big fan of Allen Mezquida "allenmez" and his Smigly cartoon series. But this one really takes exposure to all the new technology and advertising right where you live or at least, try to live.



Be Well.