Laws of Piracy & Sound Exchange

Electronic Piracy Laws and how music distribution is changing!

Has DRM really been around since the 90’s? DRM is known as Digital Right’s Management. It was around since the early 90's and even thrown into the movie Hackers. It was created to help regulate the digital files that we obtain. Some refer to it as Digital Restriction Management, because it is all about restricting how we obtain our music. The government is regulating what we do and how we do, even if we like to pretend they are not involved in piracy. The “No Electronic Theft Law” (NEFT Act) is very similar to the copyright violations that involve digital recordings and what is considered illegal for distributing digital assets. Some of the criminal penalties can land you up to 5 years in prison and up to $259,000 in fines even if you didn’t do it for monetary or financial gain (www.riaa.com).

Another one of the topics I’ve been wondering about was digital rights management. So what about the companies that play all the streams we are hearing everywhere, do artists make any money on it? How are all the royalties being collected with this new model of music we are witnessing? If I stream on youtube, I know that artist isn't getting paid! People say over and over again that record labels are going out of business and Compact Discs are obsolete, how are the artists getting paid if not by actual records sales? Is there a new way to get royalties that we haven’t explored?

One way is a new company that has recently emerged for the artists and labels, and they do a lot of the collections to keep people in business in this fast changing industry! The company is called Sound Exchange, and they deal with the digital rights of the online radio community. Sound Exchange is a non-profit and mostly collects statutory royalties from cable TV music, Sirrius XM Radio, Pandora, and other similar platforms for streaming sound recordings. “Sound Exchange has been entrusted by the U.S. Library of Congress as the sole entity of the United States to collect and distribute these digital performance royalties on behalf of featured recording artists, master rights owners (like recording labels), and independent artists who record and own their own masters” (www.soundexchange.com). There is a great interview from the former executive director of sound exchange John Simson and he discusses the future of radio and how Sound Exchange came about. The title of the interview is called, “The Day The Music Died.”

This interview is amazing! Click the link below that's purple to watch!

CLICK HERE

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Spatial Recognition: Neil Burgees

Recently reviewing speeches and talks on TED.com I found one that hit an area of interest of mine. When completing my undergrad I had a minor in Psychology and one of my interests was neuroscience. As an analytical individual, understanding how the mind works and what makes us have those patterns was fascinating to me! In regards to my blog the affect music perception has on neuro-responses and how our mind processes these sounds in our brain could be a great topic for study or TED talks.