leoroberts
C.O.G.
Posts: 24,615
My main instrument is: probably needing new strings
|
Post by leoroberts on Aug 20, 2015 16:59:53 GMT
One of the things I like about Soundcloud (apart from its ease of use) is that you can track statistics about how often a track gets played and so on.
For some reason, my parody "Hello Darkness My Old Friend' gets played a number of times each day and has been for over a year - mostly by people in the States and Brazil.
Weird!
|
|
ocarolan
Global Moderator
CURMUDGEONLY OLD GIT (leader - to join, just ask!)
Posts: 34,052
Mini-Profile Background: {"image":"","color":"c0cfe1"}
Mini-Profile Name Color: 182a3f
Mini-Profile Text Color: 733a1c
|
Post by ocarolan on Aug 20, 2015 17:36:59 GMT
There's no accounting for taste! keith
|
|
brianr2
C.O.G.
Posts: 3,062
My main instrument is: Brook Lyn guitar
|
Post by brianr2 on Aug 20, 2015 17:59:19 GMT
Or, as I used to say to Finance colleagues in my (late unlamented) working days: "there's no taste for accounting".
Brian
|
|
David Hutton
Cheerfully Optimistic
Posts: 1,179
My main instrument is: The Colin Symonds All English Guitar
Mini-Profile Background: {"image":"","color":"45423e"}
Mini-Profile Name Color: f9f0f0
Mini-Profile Text Color: d0bebe
|
Post by David Hutton on Aug 20, 2015 23:35:50 GMT
One of the things I like about Soundcloud (apart from its ease of use) is that you can track statistics about how often a track gets played and so on. For some reason, my parody "Hello Darkness My Old Friend' gets played a number of times each day and has been for over a year - mostly by people in the States and Brazil. Weird! I have played it to confuse your states. Generously it get 2 (now 3) likes out of 1400 (now 1401) plays.
|
|
David Hutton
Cheerfully Optimistic
Posts: 1,179
My main instrument is: The Colin Symonds All English Guitar
Mini-Profile Background: {"image":"","color":"45423e"}
Mini-Profile Name Color: f9f0f0
Mini-Profile Text Color: d0bebe
|
Post by David Hutton on Aug 21, 2015 10:37:10 GMT
Sorry for my last post. Written after a trip to the pub and far to many shandies. Probably trying to say 'confuse your stats' rather than 'states', but who knows. Drunken me does some pretty random things, like sign me up to Halifax!
|
|
|
Post by scorpiodog on Aug 27, 2015 11:32:26 GMT
Paul Brett has just posted this on the facebook "Acoustic Power" page (the blue bit):
"PRS for Music begins legal action against SoundCloud
After careful consideration, and following five years of unsuccessful negotiations, we now find ourselves in a situation where we have no alternative but to commence legal proceedings against the online music service SoundCloud.
When a writer or publisher becomes a member of the Performing Right Society, they assign certain rights to their works over for us to administer, so it’s our job to ensure we collect and distribute royalties due to them. SoundCloud actively promotes and shares music. Launched in 2008, the service now has more than 175m unique listeners per month. Unfortunately, the organisation continues to deny it needs a PRS for Music licence for its existing service available in the UK and Europe, meaning it is not remunerating our members when their music is streamed by the SoundCloud platform.
Our aim is always to license services when they use our members’ music. It has been a difficult decision to begin legal action against SoundCloud but one we firmly believe is in the best, long-term interests of our membership. This is because it is important we establish the principle that a licence is required when services make available music to users. We have asked SoundCloud numerous times to recognise their responsibilities to take a licence to stop the infringement of our members’ copyrights but so far our requests have not been met. Therefore we now have no choice but to pursue the issue through the courts.
We understand SoundCloud has taken down some of our members’ works from their service. With our letter of claim, we sent SoundCloud a list of 4,500 musical works which are being made available on the service, as a sample of our repertoire being used, so that they understood the scale of our members’ repertoire and its use on the service. We asked them to take a licence to cover the use of all our members’ repertoire or otherwise stop infringing.
SoundCloud decided to respond to our claim by informing us that it had removed 250 posts. Unfortunately, we have no visibility or clarity on SoundCloud’s approach to removing works, so it is not currently clear why these particular posts have been selected by them given the wider issue of infringement that is occurring. Ultimately, it is SoundCloud’s decision as to whether it starts paying for the ongoing use of our members’ music or stops using these works entirely.
If the streaming market is to reach its true potential and offer a fair return for our members, organisations such as SoundCloud must pay for their use of our members’ music. We launched our Streamfair campaign in June to raise awareness of this issue and highlight how music creators need to be properly remunerated from streaming. We believe that all digital services should obtain a licence which grants them permission to use our members’ music and repertoire, in this case the works of songwriters, publishers and composers.
The streaming market cannot fairly develop unless this happens. We have always been pro-licensing and pro-actively work with organisations in order to propose an appropriate licensing solution for the use of our members’ works.
We remain hopeful that this matter can be resolved without the need for extended litigation. Members will appreciate that this is now a legal matter and our ability to communicate around it is therefore limited by the legal process. However, we will try to share information and updates whenever we can."
I can't decide whether I think this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, I agree that authors should be paid for their work, on the other - I'm not sure whether most people use Soundcloud for generating income or whether it's mostly for hobbyists who just want their music out there. Our copyright period is now very, very long, and so much copyright vests in large corporations, I'm not certain that authors' rights aren't overprotected (copyright is far longer than patent rights - but I can't really see why).
What does everybody think?
|
|
David Hutton
Cheerfully Optimistic
Posts: 1,179
My main instrument is: The Colin Symonds All English Guitar
Mini-Profile Background: {"image":"","color":"45423e"}
Mini-Profile Name Color: f9f0f0
Mini-Profile Text Color: d0bebe
|
Post by David Hutton on Aug 27, 2015 11:56:37 GMT
Like most things I don't really get it. Is this for members who have uploaded their own music to Soundcloud or to protect against say me uploading the fantastic Men in Black the EP? If it be the first, then don't upload your music to Soundcloud if you do not want it distributed without getting cash. I am probably missing the point again.
Still I am off down the pub again tonight, so with any luck you get the opinion of drunken me tonight. My advice would be to ignore him!
|
|
|
Post by grayn on Aug 27, 2015 11:58:40 GMT
I thought you could set it up, to choose whether your music could be downloaded or just listened to, on Soundcloud. As far as I know, it's people putting their own music, on the site.
It's wierd how you can get whole albums on Youtube, for nada. No one seems to bother about that.
|
|
|
Post by scorpiodog on Aug 27, 2015 12:09:44 GMT
I thought you could set it up, to choose whether your music could be downloaded or just listened to, on Soundcloud. As far as I know, it's people putting their own music, on the site. It's wierd how you can get whole albums on Youtube, for nada. No one seems to bother about that. It's strange the whole interaction between the web and copyright. Youtube will take down videos where copyright has been breached and they have received a complaint. In fact, when I first posted a Men In Black video on Youtube, I received a copyright warning. I obviously thought that it was the tune we played, but it turned out that it was because we call ourselves Men In Black and Warners (I think) have a blanket arrangement with youtube to stop breach of copyright on the movie Men In Black franchise. It was easily sorted out, but quite surprised me. And David Hutton I think your point is well made. Nothing in the notice from PRS seems to make clear whether it's referring to professional recordings posted by others or covers recorded by musicians such as all of us on this forum. I look forward to your drunken opinion. ;-)
|
|
leoroberts
C.O.G.
Posts: 24,615
My main instrument is: probably needing new strings
|
Post by leoroberts on Aug 27, 2015 14:46:41 GMT
hmm ... If people are using Soundcloud to generate income then they're using the wrong service! As ocarolan, markthomson and @robbiej seem to have decided (and possibly others on here, too) Bandcamp seems to be the best 'front end' for actually selling stuff. As far as Soundcloud goes, where appropriate (i.e. when they are mine) I post lyrics and make the tune downloadable just in case anybody is daft enough to want to keep it/learn it/perform it. I've never posted anybody else's music without their permission (Brian Willoughby and Cathryn Craig gave me permission) though I can see how it would be galling if someone ripped a CD to separate tracks and uploaded it to Soundcloud to be played through the 'streaming' service (you can, after all, arrange your own playlists). Maybe this is what PRS is going on about. I have, however, heard enough horror stories about PRS going after musicians and small venues with extortionate demands that I frankly am not too sure that what they do is in anybody's interests other than their own...
|
|
|
Post by colan on Aug 27, 2015 14:55:22 GMT
I believe that the only way to defeat the corporate parasites is for everybody to release their music for free . Suppose we declared 2016 the Year of Free Music ? That would be enough to ensure that the copyright rats quit the sinking ship. Would the public prefer free amateur music to PRS licensed music ? My guess is that they would. Music is NOT a rat race. What sort of a musician would see a fellow musician prosecuted because he/she won't play to the PRS rules ? And by what authority does PRS tax us anyway ?
|
|
|
Post by andyhowell on Aug 27, 2015 16:41:36 GMT
The PRS is a very odd organisation which is not very transparent in the way it works. Remember them targeting small live clubs a few years ago.
I only publish stuff I have written and performed myself. Sometimes I allow people to download. I do it to share, I have had people ask me can they perform my songs and I'm happy to do that in most cases.
People know exactly what they are doing when they publish to Soundcloud. Soundcloud listeners are not paying anything to listen. They find themselves through premium services to musicians.
They provide us with a service. If I want to publish something on a more commercial platform it is up to me to do that. Very suspicious of the whole thing.
|
|
|
Post by colan on Aug 30, 2015 18:31:58 GMT
Who appointed PRS as a collections agency ?
|
|
|
Post by andyhowell on Aug 30, 2015 21:48:58 GMT
Who appointed PRS as a collections agency ? PRS. Making very rich people richer.
|
|
|
Post by colan on Aug 31, 2015 7:53:35 GMT
Exactly so- and in so doing providing employment and payment for PRS snoopers at our expense.
I'm no fan of Soundcloud myself- I find it flaky and unresponsive- but it deserves the support of everybody who believes in improvement by experience and contact. The 'net should be free.
|
|