Music ISP Tax is wrong headed. It taxes the wrong people.

Mathew Ingram is bringing up important considerations with regard to Jim Griffin's plan to Tax ISPs for music data on their networks. I have talked with Jim about this at SxSW, and he hates the term tax, he calls it (I'll paraphrase) "an agreed upon and negotiated fee (without government intervention) with an ISP, which will eliminate the threat of being sued by the RIAA et al." In this sense Mike Arrington is correct in calling it "Protection Money". However, as the courts have determined ISPs are NOT liable for the data transmitting through their lines. So unless the government legislates away this protection, what exactly is the incentive for an ISP?

Legal P2P Proposal Emerges in Canada

Straight from Digital Music News:

[quote]Legalized file-swapping has been a concept since the late 90s, though major content holders have mostly resisted the possibility. Despite immense volumes of P2P-based swapping and acquisition, most major label efforts have been focused on paid downloads, subscription initiatives, and more recently, broader content bundling and ISP-level filtering and enforcement. The result is that file-swapping is almost always a gratis endeavor, one that leaves rights holders out of the equation entirely.

The Death of High Fidelity

Today's (Pop) music is all noise. And it's draning. That's not to say it's not good - it's just loud.

Robert Levine from the Rolling Stone mourns over the age of the MP3, where tiny nuance and splendor gives way to the equivalent of aural McDonalds: music that is overproduced, undifferentiated, and in the end, really not good for you.

Creative Album Art Remixes

Everyone talks about music remixes, but I just found a site where there are GREAT album cover remixes.

Check out The album art challenge

Awesome stuff.

Josh Homme Rips Jimmy Iovine A New One

Lefsetz linked to a great interview by Antiquiet. In it Antiquiet interviewed Josh Homme, and it's honest raw and awesome. I encourage you to read it even if you are not fans of Queens of the Stone Age.

When asked: "When more big bands get free of their contracts and start to do it their own way, how do you think the labels are going to react to losing their grip on what’s been their cash cow for so long?"

Prince plans to sue YouTube for unauthorized use of songs

Doing the unexpected is exactly what we expect Prince to do, and rebellious artists who have fully embraced the new music economy don't tend to fall on the same side with the major labels. Prince has fought the absurdities of the record business at every turn, and even changing his name to an unpronouncable symbol to get around a clause that limited the amount of music he could produce. He released music of his own website without the help of the major label marketing machine. His antics are not popular among record label executives, so it would be easy to assume that Prince wouldn't been on the same side of the copyright battle as the label supported efforts of the RIAA.