Category: Uncategorized

Building upon a stolen past

July 3rd, 2009 · · Uncategorized 12 comments - Tags: , ,

Tape Vault

Techdirt ran an interesting post recently about The Myth of Original Creators. In it, they explored the Romantic Era notion of the artist as the sole creative participant in a work.

And when I say ‘Romantic Era’, think Beethoven. He was the poster child for art as unique ‘self expression’ rather than art as contributing participant in a cultural dialogue with antecedents and referents.

I’m not saying Beethoven was deluded – and nor that his genius is diminished if I claim that no work is wholly original – but simply that he was making an assertion about his art that has captured the imagination, and which largely remains as the basis of our music copyright law.

But music – especially popular music – is part of a cultural conversation.

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Music as Culture, Music as Tribute

June 27th, 2009 · · Uncategorized 3 comments - Tags:

Dwele’s tribute to Michael Jackson is the most honest and authentic expression marking the passing of the pop legend I’ve yet seen.

Essentially a cover version, but with no reasonable cause for publishing claims or financial transactions to take place. This is simultaneously an artistic expression and cultural communication of something for which there aren’t any right words.

It’s pop music by an important recording artist, using the intellectual property of another.

But it’s not commerce.

Rethinking the BBC

June 2nd, 2009 · · Uncategorized No comments - Tags: , , ,

Rory Keating
Roly Keating delivers his keynote speech at FOCAL

Late last year, I was involved in a research project with the BBC’s Audio and Music Interactive Department. It was about how specialist music fans connected with the BBC with regard to that kind of programming.

You can read what we came up with as a result of that research, but for me, one of the key lessons was the problem of the word Broadcasting as a defining and totalising concept for the BBC – that is, the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Because the BBC’s role, in a digital sphere, is no longer simply about making content and pushing it out there to audiences. It’s about acting as a resource for public media. That’s not to say they shouldn’t do broadcasting – but that the broadcasting should be part of a bigger concept of British Public Media (and BPM’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?).

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Destiny in Motion

June 1st, 2009 · · Uncategorized 12 comments - Tags: , ,

Satellite Spies

I was actually going to lay off the New Zealand stuff for a bit. Cultural history, localism and identity are going to be major themes in the book, but I planned to mix it up a bit in the blog. However, a good case study has pretty much fallen into my lap in the last few days, and it would be a shame to let it pass.

This story – just to lay all the cards on the table (and underline just how small New Zealand is) – comes from within my own family. Mark Loveys (pictured left, with the Dr Who look going on) is my sister’s partner. He was in a band called Satellite Spies who had a major NZ pop hit in the mid 80s called Destiny in Motion, which Mark wrote.

Throughout May, for New Zealand Music Month, I put one NZ music clip a day up on my personal blog, and I thought it would be cool to put Destiny in Motion up there – far and away Mark’s biggest hit (but far from his only single).

However… when it came time for the video to go live on my site, it disappeared from YouTube. Mark picks up the story…

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Flying Nun follow-up

May 27th, 2009 · · Uncategorized No comments - Tags: , ,

I had the opportunity to interview Stephen from Amplifier, who were selling classic Flying Nun records online – classic and archetypal albums – but had their catalogue pulled, much to the dismay of some NZ music fans, for whom the ongoing availability of FN records is part of the culture of NZ music.

1) A lot of people seemed alarmed when some Flying Nun catalogue disappeared from your site. What happened?

Warner Music (WM) has taken the decision to not repress the Flying Nun catalogue on CD. As they run out of stock of a given title then that title will cease to exist physically. We were given a list of FN titles and their current stock levels. Several were already out of print and a dozen had such small stock levels that we couldn’t be guaranteed supply. To the dismay of the office we were left with no option but to remove those titles from sale. Many more will also be removed over the coming weeks/months as stock levels fall.

WM are making these titles available digitally through iTunes, however we have no digital agreement in place with WM so we’re left with no way to retail Flying Nun.

The explanation that we were given by WM was that the titles were commercially unviable and that a re-run of 500 CDs would take years to sell. From a business perspective I can’t fault this however when you’re dealing with art, and music is art, I feel there should be some level of custodianship taken into account. Also I know that for the majority of NZ CDs are still the primary media for accessing purchased music.

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