APPENDIX BMI
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my copyrights; (2) I retain total artistic control over my recordings; and
(3) I retain the right to accept or decline any and all offers for live
performances, and to solicit such offers myself.
Notice that I used the word “retain.” This is America. You are born with
all your rights, unless and until you surrender them.
* * *
I have been a recording artist for a very long time. My oldest extant
recordings, made in 1986, were done on reel-to-reel tapes and later
transferred to digital audio tape (DAT), from which master CDs can be made.
All my subsequent recordings were made in DAT format in hopes that the
technology for burning CDs would eventually reach the hands of individual
musicians, thus bypassing the major record companies. That day has arrived.
Last year I bought a computer, a scanner, a printer, and a CD burner. At the
studios of North Country Public Radio (NCPR) all my DATs were transferred to
master CDs, and were archived in their computers. Two tracks on which I sing
to an African kalimba are featured on their website at http://www.ncpr.org.
I now have eight different CDs. I choose what songs to include. I burn the
copies of the CDs at home. I scan, print and trim the covers at home. I
have total control over the process. It is a cottage industry.
I contacted many small, independent record labels. None were able to offer
national distribution to a musician not nationally known. More than one
advised me to distribute my CDs online, and cut out the middleman.
I posted all eight CDs online at http://www.cdbaby.com. They handle the
business and take $4 for each CD sold. The last thing I had to decide was
which tracks to make available for listening as MP3 files. I didn’t know a
thing about it until my Aunt Sally read me an op-ed piece by Janis Ian.
It seems that the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) would prefer
that she not post MP3 files of her own songs on her own website. The RIAA
represents the five major record labels – Sony, Universal, Warner, BMG and
EMI – which sell 85% of the music in the United States. Because the record
labels actually own the recordings, they consider the downloading of an MP3
file to be a copyright infringement. So the RIAA sued Verizon, an internet
service provider, and the United States District Court ruled in their favor.
The MP3 format is the most popular way of distributing music on the internet.
It allows unknown musicians around the world to find an audience without
relying on the major record companies. But MP3 files have no built-in
copyright protection. Music fans can download songs free of charge.
Although some of them actually buy the CD, the RIAA claims that record
companies are losing tens of millions of dollars to internet “piracy.”
Janis Ian says that her CD sales quadrupled when she first put MP3 files of
her music online, and sales are still double what they were before.
Thousands of people have downloaded her music because the radio stations no
longer play it and they have no other way to hear it. And 15% of them buy
her CDs online. Still more buy her CDs in stores and attend her concerts.
“The internet is the only outlet for many artists to be heard by an audience
larger than whoever shows up at a local coffeehouse,” she says. But the
record companies own her masters, her outtakes, her demos, even her voice,
and they tell her not to post her music on the internet.
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