I was not expecting to write a post on here about Taylor Swift. I have nothing against her and wish her the best, I’m just not her target audience. But when you have kids, you find yourself in all kinds of new situations. Ever since my daughter started second grade, she has gone from mildly …
Tag Archives: music business
Is it okay to post tracks with unlicensed samples?
I am not a lawyer, just a guy who studies hip-hop academically. But I’m married to a lawyer, and have spoken to various music industry people and done a lot of reading on this. My advice is to go ahead and post tracks with uncleared samples, even though doing so is technically illegal. Understand that …
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Goodbye SoundCloud?
I love SoundCloud. I love it for being an exceptionally easy way to share my music with people all over the world. I love the community aspect, especially the Disquiet Junto. I have all of my students host their portfolios there. But like a lot of the electronic musicians who form the heart of the …
Why do people think music should be free?
The best way to get a professional recording artist angry is to say that everybody has a right to download their music for free. The outrage is well-motivated. Recording music at the pro level is expensive, in time as well as money. Just because it’s easy to pirate music, why have we as a society …
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Why hasn’t the recording industry sued Girl Talk?
Last year, I spoke on a panel about sampling with a few academics and copyright lawyers. One of the panelists was Martin Schwimmer, a partner in a law firm practicing trademark and copyright law. A big part of his job is going after copyright infringers. Schwimmer assured the audience that no one will ever sue …
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Promoting music through social media
As part of New York Social Media Week, I attended a panel entitled “The Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy of Social Media as Music’s Savior.” It was first thing in the morning, which really asks a lot from the music hipsters. I would normally have just live-tweeted this thing, but the wi-fi in the place was …