Dragonfly Technologies' BuzzBlog

Bill Cosby, comedian, teacher, repurposer.

2010-08-01T03:36:00.003-04:00

Bill Cosby is a business genius. He's been a mainstay of standup comedy for fifty years. In that time, he's made astounding and prodigious contributions to the canon of comedy, as well as to television, and even (many forgettable, but a couple of not so bad) movies.

He's on top of the world financially because he wrote and performed great material, and he made his material work for him—over and over again.

Many on the money side of showbusiness call this "repurposing". No matter how quickly you can churn out original material, you can't just be writing all the time. If you're a performer, you have to perform it; if you write, you need time to be a person, have a life, and then come back to writing. What do you do in the meantime? How do you earn a living between gigs? You make sure your past work becomes a future annuity.

For a few examples, we will now turn to our friend Dr. Cosby. (Yup, he got a doctorate in the 1970s. His dissertation was called An Integration of the Visual Media via Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning. He only repurposed a little bit in his dissertation. I guess he had to be serious and analytical in a Ph.D thesis...but the thesis was based on his hit characters.

In the 1970s he wanted to reach out to kids with positive messages about getting an education, and just generally being good. He had done standup about his friend Fat Albert, and his whole gang of buddies from Philadelphia. Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids became a huge television hit. It ran for eight years, and for many years after that in reruns. There were holiday specials too. Herbie Hancock who wrote music for the "Fat Albert" TV series put out an album of the music from the show—another great example of repurposing!

More recently, Fat Albert became a movie, and another payday for Bill Cosby—the characters' creator.

So that's at least five uses of Fat Albert (standup, TV show, specials, movie, Ph.D thesis). Then there was Fat Albert merchandise. Merchandising (see the Merchandising link..it's really hilarious..) isn't just for the million-sellers anymore...it's become so easy and cheap to make "stuff", that you can, and should be thinking about new ways to make money off your old work.

If Cosby had only one repurposing success to his name, he'd still have been considered a business genius as well as a comedy giant. But in 1981, he started honing material that he performed consistently through 1982, and filmed for a 1983 movie called Bill Cosby, Himself . The material was his biggest seller to date. He saw that the material had "legs"—that it could do much more than just be a standup piece. He pitched it to NBC as the basis for a TV series. They were smart to have signed the show, because the standup routines that had started as Bill Cosby-Himself became The Cosby Show—one of NBC's biggest hits of all time.

In addition to the standup comedy performances, the movie, the TV show, Bill wrote several books about subjects he covered in his standup and on "The Cosby Show". The books are now e-books, and audiobooks too. Although he had to frame the material differently for each iteration of the work, the lion's share was already done, as he'd written it back in 1981, and refined it in 1982.

So let's assume for a moment you're not as well-known as Bill Cosby. How do you make this work for you? It varies. Comedians and musicians—even lesser-known ones—can always put out and sell CDs/DVDs of their live shows, or even create "studio" recordings of their best material. These days it's much cheaper to make a record than it was when The Cosby Show first went on the air. Once it's recorded, you can get the material up on iTunes or other digital music services and sell it there; you can let a publisher (song pimp) represent the work for you and try to sell it for use in movies, TV, stage, and other media. If you're smart, you'll keep at least half of the publishing rights , and always own your song. If a song you own ever gets big, whoever owns the publishing will collect a large annuity from that one work. If someone else owns the publishing rights to your song, they'll get paid every time you perform it live. The Performance Rights Agencies (BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, and SoundExchange in the US) pay the composer and the publisher for every public performance of material a given agency represents. (Some people get paid twice—once as the composer, and once as the publisher.)

Here's an unusual but very creative example of repurposing: Composer Andy Brick has toured Europe conducting arrangements for symphony orchestra of music he wrote for video games. The music for video games has gotten pretty serious. The budgets reflect how serious the producers are about having the music sound great, and the game producers hire top talent to compose music for their games. Everybody wins.

Comedians don't have the same options, but they have just as many. A smart comedian can perform their material live, produce a DVD, convert the DVD to digital media and sell it on iTunes and whichever other services will add it to their catalogs.

BUT, spoken word performers get really wildly ripped off with respect to performance rights/performance royalties. I wrote about that a while back. This article, and the one following it pertain to any spoken word performer who cares about making money from the use of their material.

What about writers? The wonderful author and commentator Tracy Quan wrote a (fiction) column in Salon (online) magazine. The column was called Diary Of A Manhattan Call Girl. The column was a big hit, and Tracy turned it into a book. The first book was a big hit, so she wrote a sequel, and a sequel-to-the-sequel

Let's look at one last example. Jonathan Katz created a TV series—Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist—that was a triple-play of repurposing. Jonathan used pieces of his own standup comedy in the character of Dr. Katz. His patients were all other standup comedians who did THEIR respective acts while "on the couch" with their comedian-therapist, and it got used again as Dr. Katz Live when Jonathan, other actors from the animated series, as well as his standup-comedian-patients worked their material while on the couch. Everybody won there.

Jonathan's podcast Hey We're Back has a few animated segments to it. Animators had heard the podcast and picked segments they wanted to animate. Holding For Miss Kiley is a fabulous repurposing of the original work.

The practical lesson here: Every creative work has more than one (potential) commercial use.Realizing income from your creative work requires a little effort and a little imagination.

Figure out how else you can sell intellectual property you've already created. Ask your fans if they'd buy it in some proposed new form (CD/DVD? video game? TV Show?). Create, repurpose, pay your bills with the repurposing money, create some more, and so on, and so on.

If you have had, or have heard of any particularly clever methods of repurposing, please write to me and let me know. I'll publish it in a future post, thus repurposing your work. See how that works?

Newsflash: Musicians are working lots harder for less money. Surprise!

2010-02-18T16:40:00.006-05:00

In May 2009 I had a very depressing meeting with some kids starting a record label. I wrote about it here. One of the things they said would happen has come to pass. Musicians, and the much of the music industry now view recording as the stimulus for, and as a means of promoting a tour. In better times the reverse was true. Musicians spent months composing and recording new albums, went on tour to promote the album, and had several income streams. I'm shocked that so many great musicians don't sell as many records as they used to, even though there's a larger consumer base than there used to be.

I won't go on another piracy rant. No one's listening to that old saw anyway. But it's painful to see that a musician can't make a living from a combination of recording and touring. Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Elton John are old school composers and bandleaders who are on the road more than ever now.

So, musicians must now tour more, tour longer, sleep in whatever accommodations they can afford, and endure a much harder life on the road.

This is good news for live music venues, I suppose. It seems a lot like a family having another kid because you need the tax benefits the child would bring.

Recordings are promotional tools now, and we're back to low-tech. However, I think there's a way to reverse (at least partially) this sad state of affairs. Hulu has the right idea. They subsidize /pay for broadcast on demand of intellectual property, and monetize the broadcasts with a variety of advertising. There are at least two dozen ways to cash in on internet-casting of music. iTunes should still be selling audio and video in five years. Maybe Hulu or another service will be giving music away and subsidizing the free stuff with advertising..but if that allows artists to make good money off recordings, then great.

Artists can only afford to make records if there'll be a payback. Shared revenues in broadcasts between songs, banner ads, licensing (for movies, and a variety of internet media), performance rights, media sales (iTunes, Rhapsody, etc..) and more, the art of recording doesn't have to be strictly for the promotion of live touring.

Musicians are usually among the first to take advantage of new technologies. Some say we missed the boat. I don't believe that's so. Almost everything comes around again.

Musicians: Speak Up! What do you think? Do you see yourselves touring till you're using a walker to help you to the stage, and till your physical abilities have worn down just so you can keep food on the table?

Is recording for profit dead?

What is success? Donald Trump and artists probably disagree!

2009-12-28T23:00:00.008-05:00

Over the years I've talked to, and been friends with hundreds, if not thousands of musicians, actors, screenwriters, visual artists, poets, comedians, authors and many others in the creative arts. Their income levels varied from zero to many millions of dollars annually.

Many of them were great at what they did, but only a few made over $100,000/year doing what they loved. $100,000/year isn't really that much anymore. Yet, many of them were happy, because they were doing what they loved. They were playing music, or writing and performing comedy, or acting...and the money meant less to them than the opportunity to do what they wanted. Many of them could be happy living in one room, working for $20 per set / show in small clubs or theaters, in the hopes of perfecting their craft, and growing to play to larger audiences, and get their message out.

The community in which I grew up didn't consider that to be success. Many musicians far more talented than I am were willing to starve for their art, and were so committed to their artistic success, that they sometimes spent years starving for it.

To those people, success meant pursuing their art and perfecting their craft fulltime, and not working in a shoe store to pay the bills. Just this morning, I talked to a comedian whose work I love, and whom I know will make it. She recently lost all the data on her computer, and may need a data recovery company to help her out. Chances are she couldn't afford our technology support services, or those of the data recovery company.

A lot of her writing was on the hard drive that had been toasted, and I wanted to help her as much as I could. I referred her to someone, and her data got rescued. A new hard drive was under $100, and she was back in business. I was really scared for her. Had she needed high end data recovery services, she'd not have been able to afford it.

The important thing is she's happy, she's talented, and she's generally a positive person.

Someone once said "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade." I always wondered what happens if life didn't give you a juicer. Not having a juicer is an impediment to getting the lemonade. Fine. Make your own juicer, but with an impediment, you get sediment. There was fruit juice before it was easy to squeeze juice out of an orange, lemon or grape.

Donald Trump didn't make his own juicer—not completely. He got a leg up in the real estate business from his father. He did a hell of a lot with what he was given, he is an astoundingly good self-promoter, and is still very hungry for the dollar and for more success. I don't understand that kind of hunger for the dollar, but that could explain why I'm not wealthy (warning: that last link leads to a Chris Rock video that has some swear words in it.) like Donald Trump. I'm not even rich like Chris Rock.

There are some political philosophies that tell folks who aren't doing well, or who've had some bad luck to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps.". Those "philosophers" assumed the one who was down could afford boots. It also seems like if one is down, pulling on one's own feet would more likely keep them down than support their back. But whatever. Trump got his boots from Daddy, Bush II was legacied into everything from Yale to the White House. I'm not so sure the whole "bootstrap" thing makes sense. "It takes a village to raise a child" seems a little more sensible a maxim/saying when it comes to helping groom someone for success, or for anything.

Richard Pryor worked his way up from poverty, to become a great artistic and financial success—in that order. He was talented, worked extremely hard at his craft, and got a payday.

Aaron Sorkin is a very accomplished, astoundingly talented, and yet, really humble man. Even after he'd had great success in writing TV, movies, and stage plays, he stuck to his values. He is very charitable, and is not all about "me, me, me", despite the fact that he pays far more in taxes than almost all his fans. He sees the insanity of corporate greed that those who employ him consider to be an ingredient of success.

I guess the bottom line is that people who don't compromise their values, and make a living benefitting society, and not ripping people off, and who love what they do, are a success.

I hope we all can achieve that some day.

Copycat, Tribute or Thievery? It's a tough call.

2009-09-25T18:37:00.015-04:00

I Recently got a call from a a musician friend of mine. He was given an assignment to create two minutes of music in the style of a recording by a popular artist. The recording had a typical-sounding contemporary rock band accompanying a singer. It was hackwork—a formulaic composition and commercial arrangement with few, if any original musical ideas.

Nonetheless, the producer of the recording, and the musician assigned to create the "sound alike" piece were concerned about copyright infringement. It's a valid concern. What constitutes imitation in a sound-alike? I advised my friends to watch and listen to what Alf Clausen does on The Simpsons, and what Walter Murphy does for Family Guy.

But even Family Guy gets into trouble over this stuff once in a while. Personally, I can't see their song and When You Wish Upon A Star being that similar. This is one in the style of Gilbert & Sullivan. If it's in the style of a particular song, I don't know the original. If you know the Gilbert & Sullivan style song to be a parody of one in particular, please comment on it here.

Composers like Clausen and Murphy often write new songs that are really variants on songs we already know. A lot of people who hear these variants can even recognize the song on which the variant was based. By having modified slightly the chord progressions, melodies and harmonies and rhythms from the original song (and sometimes of a particular recording of a song) the composer gets "off the hook" on technicalities.

In normal-people speak: You can imitate without ripping off. So long as the "sound-alike" piece is sufficiently different from the original that people can tell them apart, there's usually no basis for a lawsuit.

My friend's call to me about this problem brought out several age-old questions:

1) When does imitation cross the line into stealing?
2) When does stylistic influence become "copycat"?
3) Can two people come up with the same idea, conveyed almost exactly alike, without one having "borrowed" from the other?

These are tough questions, and have been fought in and out of courts for hundreds, if not thousands of years. And it doesn't apply only to music. There are comedians, authors, even tap dancers, who have claimed, after seeing someone else's seemingly-similar work, that the similar work had been "lifted" from one of their own. It's often tough to tell.

Below are a few cases and/or general scenarios showing different manifestations of this problem.

Harlan Ellison claimed that material for two of the episodes he authored for the series Babylon 5 were used in the movie The Terminator. He sued James Cameron (who wrote The Terminator) and won.

Two key (musical, not lyrical) phrases in George Harrison's My Sweet Lord sound very similar to The Shirelles' R&B hit He's So Fine. The composer of He's So Fine sued, and George Harrison paid a settlement. George claimed he could have been subconsciously influenced by The Shirelles hit. After all, he and the other Beatles were avid fans of American R&B before they had "made it big". However, George was a terrific composer, who'd written many truly-original songs.

There are many comedians who have written jokes about the same topics. Even comedians make fun of this, thinking of a lot of it as hackery. Many comedians use as an example the line "Why couldn't they make the whole plane with the same material the black box is made of?"..So many comedians have thought of that premise that it's considered a "hack" joke. Two people can observe and comment on the same thing without having heard one another's observation.

In Campbell v. Acuff Rose, Luther Campbell of the rap group 2 Live Crew admitted to have parodied the Roy Orbison hit Pretty Woman. However, he claimed that his integration of some of the lyrics into his Rap variant of it was sufficiently different from the original that it did no harm to the sale or reputation of the original. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed. Because of Campbell v. Acuff Rose, song parodists no longer have to get permission to use the work from the creator of the original the parodist is borrowing from. They must, however, pay the statutory royalties to which the original composer is entitled. (When Weird Al Yankovic puts new lyrics to an existing song, he pays the composers of the music. That's only fair.)

Note: Nothing in here is meant to be legal advice. If you need legal advice about this stuff, contact your friendly local intellectual property attorney. I know a whole bunch of 'em. Contact me if you'd like some help finding one.

Intellectual Property pirates haven't won, thanks to a win-win!

2009-08-12T19:41:00.007-04:00

Futurist Alan Kay once said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

My previous two blog posts decried the mentality that many people now see it as "okay" to steal music, movies, TV shows, and other intellectual property that others worked
hard to create and produce. I was beginning to think that since David Bowie said more than ten years ago that this kind of thing was going to happen, I became really upset. The NY Times piece is from 2002, but he's been thinking this kind of thing for a long time. The idea that creative people would non-consensually give away the things from which they now make a living was horrifying to me—and probably to many of you reading this.

But, it's a reality. Complaining about it won't make it go away. So what do we do? Crawl up into a little ball and die? I think the major record companies may be on the way there. But the rest of us—those of us who are small enough to "turn on a dime" can adapt.

I wondered how the internet service providers allow illegal traffic to pass through the conduits they set up—their little piece of the internet through which their customers get high speed access. There has to be some variety of accessory-like crime. I'm still not sure if I was right, as those with significantly more money/resources than I have chose not to test that, but instead, to get judgements against housewives.

I was beginning to resign myself to the idea that musicians, actors, authors, comedians, and so many other creators of works that enhance our lives would just have to make less money, or think of new ways to make a living. I knew there had to be some ways to prove the naysayers wrong. Yesterday, I found something that will help. This may be only a beginning, but it shows promise, and comes from someone who understands the challenges, and has the brains to help realize his vision.

Gerd Leonhard—a media visionary, hailed by the likes of The Wall Street Journal—said in his
book The Future of Music , and in many other places, that there is a way for creative people to make money other than live performance, and selling their recorded wares at gigs.

Do his thoughts carry over to creative works other than music? Damn right they do.

Gerd's new book is called Music 2.0. I haven't read it yet, but I will soon. It looks like a repurposing of existing material. Repurposing is a very a good thing, by the way.

I haven't met Mr. Leonhard yet, but I already like him a lot. If you create for a living, read his work. He likes you too, wants to help, and has some pretty good ideas on how to do so.

Although Leonhard and Bowie disagree on some critical points, they agree on some important things as well. Bowie's been expressing his views publicly about this subject for a long time, and Mr. Leonhard's been at it longer.David's an astute businessman, but Leonhard's coming at it differently. I'm rootin' for the (relative) underdog on this one, and think he may have something. I'd like to do whatever I can to help the cause of musicians making more money from their creative works.

Leonhard has shown that a "Download fee" assessed and added to every broadband subscription in the world, in addition to miniscule shares of web advertising revenues could go a long way toward letting what are now stolen works generate revenue for their creators. YouTube, Google, and so many others make a lot of their money selling advertising and "serving" the ads they sell.

An article in the UK's The Register highlighted an experimental model on a very small scale—80,000 people—on The Isle of Man in Scotland, in which the internet service provider assessed a small download fee, and added it to the monthly bill for broadband service. The assessment would be about $1.50 US per broadband connection per month. For that $1.50, a broadband customer would get unlimited downloading of music, movies, whatever copyrighted media are out there. It'd all be nice and legal, no one gets harassed, creators of art get paid for their work, and everyone gets to enjoy the fruit of creative artists' labors, while allowing them to create more.

If a YouTube page were tagged (labelled on the inside) as containing copyrighted and licensed intellectual property, and the Performance Rights Agencies such as BMI , ASCAP, SESAC, and now (thank God) SoundExchange—the first performance rights organization to pay attention to spoken word artists' broadcasts, webcasts, streaming media plays and narrowcasts—were to be the authorized representatives to license and collect royalties on the web, they could make money money for artists, distribute a whole bunch of it, and keep a nice taste.

It's a win-win. Google and other search engines could serve music as easily as it serves ads, and serve MORE ads as it licenses the content it serves. This isn't going to happen overnight. But it can happen.

There is much more to all this, and I will be investigating it as deeply as possible in the coming months.

Please send feedback. I'd love to know your thoughts on this matter!!

In future posts, I'll concentrate on repurposing, and why it's a very good thing.

New Music Economy—Part 2

2009-06-19T09:21:00.003-04:00

In my last rant about piracy and the state of the record business, I took what could be called a pro-industry stance. Well, let's explore the other side of the piracy problem.

People will continue to steal music. So what do we do about it? Do we inform the public? Maybe, but that will be minimally effective, at best. Do we punish the uploaders? I suppose that'd be a good start. Do we punish/close down the conduits such as KaZaa, Limewire, or Bearshare? Without a doubt, we must do that before we do anything else.

The RIAA has chosen the stupidest possible path. They made an example of a single mom of four kids who shared 24 songs. They took her to court and won a judgement of $220,000. She got a pro bono lawyer to fight it, and lost again to the tune of $1.9 million. That's just ridiculous. Not only is the amount of money a staggering overkill, but it makes the mother a sympathetic figure. Threatening her internet service provider, thus putting her at risk of losing internet access might be smarter. The broadband provider would never risk its business by letting this woman maintain an account with them. They should close down her sources of obtaining the new music, as their basis for existence is illegal. They should make it easier for MySpace or whoever's putting the music out there to share some of it consensually.

But they're not doing any of that. Instead, they're coming down like the wrath of God on someone who'll never be able to pay the judgement, and who was caught having pirated twenty four songs. She probably has a lot more pirated music besides those twenty four, but the RIAA didn't even focus on that. It's a public relations disaster that makes the RIAA seem like a bunch of ogres. Let them go after the businesses that deal in pirated music. Cut off the supply. The demand will still be there, but a certain percentage will stop pirating as much music, and the $1.9 million will be more than made up via a much more sensible means.

Public Service Announcements by the artists themselves might not hurt either. .Lawsuits against soccer moms just make the RIAA look stupid, discredit the industry in the eyes of teenagers, giving them one more rationalization to continue stealing. I'd like to see the record business fight piracy effectively. No one loses with good PR. I hope the RIAA, the record companies, and the recording artists figure that out quickly.

The New Music Economy (hyphenate wherever you like)

2009-05-25T18:28:00.019-04:00

I recently met with the founders of a startup record label. I'm 44 and they're in their twenties. Their view of how musicians use the internet is radically different from mine. I'd heard that musicians were all hyped on MySpace. I figured that they used MySpace because it was easy, and that the look of the page was secondary to the ease of posting content. I was wrong about that too. I wasn't giving the kids enough credit. Their thinking's more sophisticated than I'd given them credit for. (Sorry for having ended that sentence with a preposition. See? Old School.)

I still think that most of MySpace looks like a slum full of row-houses with the style and quality of the graffiti being the only difference between one house and the next.

Facebook is neat, clean, uniform, and overall, has content more relevant to me. That doesn't mean it's better for everyone. The kids want a means of expression, and Facebook allows less of that.

Okay, fine. I'm capable of admitting I was wrong, and hopefully I'm capable of learning and changing my view of things.

They also explained that, in their view, MySpace is a great way for the bands to publicize their material. They said that MySpace gives them free exposure to a lot of music, so they can determine (without paying for it,or working too hard to find it) whether they'd like to see the band live.

There's a much bigger issue in Gen-X and Millenial kids' view of intellectual property (and of how to publicize music). The current twenty-somethings have become accustomed to stealing music, and have found rationales for stealing which have insidiously crept into their culture. The rationalizations seem so deeply ingrained that they almost don't see it as stealing.

They appear, as a group, to be more okay with pirating music than previous generations had been. With Limewire and many other "services" it becomes so easy to steal that the kids don't see it as wrong. [Limewire is so evil and full of harmful things for computers (viruses, spyware, malware) that I won't even link to it.]

Not like I'm so holy myself. I don't mean to come off as holier than ..whoever, but this is one area that's important to me because I create things, and would prefer that people not steal them.

Perhaps many bands want fans to spread the word through whatever means possible, including the music-stealing sites and "services". Perhaps some bands say on their websites "Feel free to download and spread our stuff. We want to get our stuff in as many ears as possible.". I've not seen that type of notice on any band's website. Doesn't mean no one's doing it. But, you can be sure The Rolling Stones don't say that. Their stuff gets pirated as much as any other music.

The rationale these kids gave me was that the artists already know there's no money in making records any more, which is why most of them spend less on production today than they would have twenty years ago (if they were even old enough to have been in the business then). Production and distribution are much cheaper now, after all. Tools for making a high-quality record are available for only a few thousand dollars, and someone can put together a "great" studio for very little money today. (Of course, your definition of "great" may vary from theirs.)

Electronic distribution costs "nothing", and it's available on the "file sharing" networks. So.."What are we (the kids) doing wrong?"

The kids I met with believe that when a band releases a new record/CD, it serves as the basis for a new tour. There is a lot of money in touring, and the artists make their "real money" on tour. As such, by spreading the music around, the twenty-somethings help the artists to sell more seats, thus increasing tour profits. Tour profits lead to merchandise sales; so, again, helping to "promote" touring helps to increase merchandise and ticket sales, which is ultimately where the artist makes money anyway.

They also posed a social justice rationale. The big, bad evil record company charges $17 for a CD, and they keep majority of the $17. Very little goes to the artist, and the artist must use their piece of the record sale pie to pay back advances made by the record company. The kids I met with believe that, more often than not, the record company treats an artist's advance as a loan, and charges interest on it..

Helping the artist get out of debt is not too high on the kids' priority list. The kids say they'd rather pay iTunes for the one or two songs they might want from the CD, than buy the whole CD. Also, the artist sees approximately 70% of the recording sale by iTunes, versus a smaller percentage than that which they'd get from sale of the big bad record company's release.

[The (original) last word of the following sentence was censored by Facebook. So, I changed it both here and on Facebook:] That's a load of hooey.

I respect the kids who are starting the record company. I'm sure they have a lot of talent, and an understanding of the record business as it exists today. But I take issue with their positions. I figured that maybe I got it wrong, that I misunderstood. So I asked a few teenagers about their music consumption habits. The ones I asked tell me that they do buy songs individually, or that they listen to songs on MySpace without ever buying them. I think that's fine. If an artist puts a song on MySpace, but did not mean to distribute it beyond MySpace, and the kids go where the music is, that's just a sign that the band's getting popular. By having put the song up on the internet without a price tag on it, the artist is encouraging people to listen.

The social justice argument runs counter to the "recorded music is a promotional item for selling tour tickets.". rationale, but let's come back to that.

My research indicates that many artists' advances are interest-free., and that a good lawyer can make any such clause go away. Also, since production costs have come way down (part of the kids' argument), artists don't need advances as much as they used to. Any contract with a record label that doesn't involve an artist's advance, negates at least half the social justice rationale.

Let's look at the kids' rationales from another perspective:

John Lennon ain't touring. I doubt his estate agrees with the philosophy of "benevolence" espoused by the kids.

Billy Joel is 60. I don't think he's too thrilled about having to tour as much as he does at his age. Maybe he's not recorded (in part) because there's no money in it any more. His last studio album (River of Dreams, CBS 1993. Available on Amazon, iTunes, and lots of other places) sold in the tens of millions. Yet he tours with Elton John a lot. Elton is still recording. He's in a different position than most recording artists today.

I grew up Orthodox Jewish. A lot of Orthodox Jewish culture looks down upon the less observant variants of Judaism, and jokes that they have "Turned 'The Ten Commandments' into the Ten Suggestions."

Let's not ignore the obvious: The artists are charging for the recordings of their music. They're outright telling their fans that this recording costs $10 or $15. Do the kids think that's just a Suggestion? Do the kids think "Oh, the artists don't really mean that."?

Billy Joel wrote a great song called Christmas In Fallujah. The proceeds from the song are going to an organization called Homes for Our Troops —a not-for-profit organization that builds and adapts homes for injured veterans. Are the kids saying "Oh, no problem. We, the kids will tell all our friends about it, download it, spread it around, and somehow, Homes for Our Troops will make the money back on tour."?

Back to the slightly less obvious:

A band/recording artist can only tour so many days in a year, and can only sell so many tickets per performance. As such the revenue potential is much more limited. With digital distribution, manufacturing costs for recordings are down to almost nothing. The profit margin potential for the artist is substantial enough that stealing deprives them of more income today than it would have before digital distribution existed.

Concert tickets are $50 to $300, versus $10 for the digital version of the original recording. So the twenty-something rationalizes they'll spend $50 to see the concert (risking the possibility of not getting tickets) versus spending $10 for the record. Hmm..something doesn't fly.

The Grateful Dead (see reference below) used to have a "taping section" at their arena shows. They encouraged fans to tape and distribute shows. They believed that spreading the word among "the faithful" of the "Grateful" would increase sales. They were right. But that worked for THEM, and THEY authorized the taping.

There's a joke: "How many Grateful Dead fans does it take to change a lightbulb?....Grateful Dead fans don't change lightbulbs. They wait till the bulb burns out, then follow it around for twenty five years.".

The Grateful Dead had groupies on a par with few other bands. The "faithful" of the Grateful would buy the records. The "Dead", and their music-sharing marketing strategy were a phenomenon before file sharing, and before piracy became as easy as it is today. But again, "The Dead" authorized people to tape the live shows. They never authorized people to tape the records they (the Dead) made for sale.

I do NOT long for the days when record companies had an iron grip on the industry. I believe that "big corporate" is not out for the interest of the recording artists (except perhaps the interest it charges the stupider among them them on recording contract advances). That doesn't take away from the companies' right to demand money for their product.

The kids starting the record label told me that the only real means of directly making money from recordings is via synchronization licenses–the licensing of a recording for use in a movie or television show. There are also Performance Rights Organizations such as BMI, ASCAP , SESAC, and (most recently) SoundExchange, which distribute money to artists and publishers whose works are played in broadcast media and public forums (such as performance spaces, and as background music in clubs).

Needless to say, I disagree with the kids BIG time. I respect their passion and entrepreneurship, and realize that their rationale IS changing the record business. But I believe that this change is working to the detriment of recording artists. If record sales were through the roof, the fears would be less founded. There are fewer platinum (million-selling) records today than there were a few years ago.

So, to make money, today's record companies have to retain a large majority of publishing income. (Publishers are song pimps. They are the agents representing a musical work, and try to promote it for use in movies, television, performances by artists, and anything else that will get the work to generate income.).

In years and decades past, many record companies required some artists (who compose their own material) to sign over to the record company a percentage of publishing income to which they—the artist—would otherwise be entitled, in exchange for the record company allowing them to record the song, and have the record company get it out to the masses. This practice is abhorrent, but was tolerated for a long time.

The record label owners with whom I met want to write its artists' songs so that they can legitimately retain the publishing rights. That's fine. It's smart business. But if records aren't selling, why start a record label? Why not start a publishing company? Clearly these entrepreneurs believe they'll make money selling records. But with this new "understanding" of sales in the music business, how are these kids going to make a dollar with every would-be music consumer wanting to non-consensually barter their "promotion" services for the stolen music?

I like to think I understand the idea of promoting product versus selling it. Clearly I'm too stupid to understand "the new economy" as espoused by the Millen-Gen.

That's okay. Someone much smarter than me gets it. The great lyricist, author, and visionary John Perry Barlow beautifully and eloquently summarized the REAL new economy in his 1992 essay: Selling Wine Without Bottles . John was also a lyricist for many songs by the Grateful Dead—the SAME band who encouraged taping and distribution of The Dead's intellectual property.

Let's review: A new band distributes their product for free or cheap so that they can gain an audience. Check. Got it. I see the strategy.

Imagine now that the same new band tours, and word spreads about them. They work hard playing clubs for a few years, become bigger, develop a reputation, and they start wanting to charge for their intellectual property and product. They tell fans "Continue to download and spread our first two records, but the third one is for profit. You want it? You pay for it. This is what we do to eat, and we spent months making something from which you'll derive benefit. Please pay us the respect of not stealing our stuff.". What are the chances the fans will abide by the band's will after years of going by a rationale like the one above? Whether the kids steal it or abandon the band because they're charging for their work is, I suppose the kids' choice. But if they download the record when the band says it costs money, is that not stealing?

The new economy should be opening more doors for sales of music—every kind of music, in every imagineable form. CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray, Sheet Music, MP3s, streaming media subscriptions...They should be thriving more than ever, given how easy it is to promote the work all over the world for next to nothing. But the kids are figuring that by distributing the music across a file "sharing" service like Limewire they might help to make a struggling songwriter in Brooklyn get a "cult following" in India, thus opening up tour possibilities on another continent, is very nice. But...if the guy's struggling and you like his music, you should pay for it unless the artist /owner of that music specifically requests that you distribute his music without compensating him. Stealing the Brooklyn composer's music would be like walking into a pottery shop, taking a nice clay bowl, and telling the shop owner "I'm not going to pay for this thing you made, but I'll tell all my friends about it, and they'll all come in and pay you for some other bowl. Or maybe we can organize some parties at which you can present your pottery. People will buy them there. But clearly you've put out this nice display table so that we could take the stuff.

Radiohead set up a "pay what you want" scheme for their most recent release. The kids with the record company admitted that they paid nothing when they'd downloaded the music. The official Radiohead website encouraged people to donate something, but allowed people to download it without paying. That was Radiohead's choice. They have the money to allow fans to take their music in the hopes that the fans will be come an extension of the band's publicity firm. Most artists who record their music in the hopes of selling it don't have those kinds of resources, and ask fans to pay a set amount.

Last point: Has this ever been done before? Is there a precedent for "come see my live shows, because that's where I make all the money"? Almost. Comedians have traditionally not sold very well. Lisa Lampanelli and Jeff Foxworthy are noteworthy exceptions. (Shameless plug: My company—Dragonfly Technologies—developed Lisa Lampanelli's website) Jeff Foxworthy's You Might Be A Redneck is the best-selling comedy album to date.

Most comics make their money on the road. Most make the CDs, distribute them electronically or in-person after shows, but don't expect the CDs to be a major source of income. I doubt they want their material stolen (either by other comics who use their jokes or by would-be consumers who steal tracks from CDs/DVDs), but it's not as big a source of income for them, and they (comedians) have almost always made more money on tour/performing than they do from CD/merchandise sales.

That there's a precedent doesn't excuse the kids' behavior or justify their position. Stealing music is just wrong, and taking food out of the artists' mouths (or a record company's coffers) isn't good for anyone. John Perry Barlow got it right. The real New Economy is about making it easier to sell intellectual property by not requiring it to take physical form. However well-intentioned the proponent of the opposite view may be, by promoting the idea of giving away the "wine" in the hopes that the gifts may some day promote trips to the vineyard, they'll perpetuate the old "starving artist" paradigm, leaving the artist drunk with only their own wine and AA to keep them company.

Rant over!

Comments?

Creative people being "ripped off by the white man"? Gee, that's news!

2009-03-07T22:12:00.005-05:00

What I know about finance could fit into a thimble, and leave room for the Empire State Building. Nonetheless, a few things have become apparent, even to those of us who work in and around showbusiness,

The entertainment industry traditionally thrives during a down economy. That's not news. This down economy is different, though. Those who understand how and why the current situation came to be are saying it's worse than the cyclical ups and downs that previous Republican administrations had given us; in other words, the last guy was the worst we've seen in a long time.

Nonetheless, that doesn't affect musicians and other creative artist directly. Here's something that does: pension funds. Many musicians, actors, dancers, and others in the creative arts have worked at union jobs for part, most, or all of their careers. As part of employment with a union shop (such as the New York Philharmonic), they had a small pension contribution made on their behalf each time they performed. That pension fund was adminstered by God knows who, over decades. And now, union pension funds all over the country are invested in financial products that may have only ten percent of the value they had only two years ago.

Musicians: You're the first creative arts union to get the bad news. The American Federation of Musicians' and Employers Pension Fund recently announced that they're in really bad shape .

Since this is a crisis, we will defer the rant about how "Employers" could possibly be included by name /title in a union pension fund.

SAG and AFTRA are in slightly better (but not MUCH better) shape. If I understand their situation correctly, their pension funds merged around October 2008. Many of the union members of both unions wanted to merge the funds, but it didn't happen until very recently.

HOWEVER, as with many in SAG and AFTRA, there's some drama involved. The Actors Fund is suing JP Morgan for mismanagement/breach of fiduciary duties.

What a joy, huh?

People in all industries who looked forward to benefits after having spent thirty or forty years working union jobs, sticking by their unions–even during labor disputes, walkouts, and other tough times may not have anything left to which they can retire.

I don't mean to be an alarmist. What I know about money is...well, not a lot. But the stories I'm reading about failing banks, investment houses with stocks down to $1.50 or so, frighten me. Musicians, actors, dancers, or anyone else who worked a union job in the entertainment industry should be checking their pension funds often.

If it's possible to take your money out for a while, maybe that's the way to go. Talk to your investment advisor. If you don't have an investment advisor, get one. If you don't know how to get one, e-mail me, and I'll send you some information. I don't know about money, but I know people who do–and none of them are affiliated with a major bank or with Bernie Madoff. I don't claim to know about money. However, I care a lot about people who create art or who entertain for a living.

For those of you in other creative arts unions who are / were looking forward to some variety of retirement benefits, I'd love to know what your circumstances are.

Bottom line; CHECK YOUR PENSIONS!!!!

In Your Face!

2009-02-01T08:44:00.009-05:00

Ask most successful people in showbusiness how they got to where they are, and you'll find that most of the answers will have some pretty similar themes. You'll hear things like "I could never see myself doing anything except playing the piano."; or "I want to act more than I want to breathe."; or "The only time I'm happy is when I'm on stage."; or "I knew since I was 5 years old that one day I was going to sing at Carnegie Hall.".

People who succeed in showbusiness have to want it more than say, the guy vying for Carpet Salesman Of The Year at the "Rug Shack" in Teaneck, NJ. They also have to be willing to starve for it, and to work really really hard for a very long time till it "happens". A few talk about being "discovered", like they're waiting for Magellan to come around. Those aren't the ones who make it.
Lana Turner is/was the exception to that rule. She got discovered in a soda shop, but that was "dumb luck". Don't count on luck.

So, how do you make it happen? Do you just keep perfecting your craft, working every little hole-in-the-wall club that'll have you? Do you write a blog, or screenplays for college films in the hopes that someone will find your work? Absolutely, yes! You take the work, and you "work" it. Get experience, perfect your craft. My friends who are comedians work their hometown clubs every night they're in town. The ones who are in New York, Boston and L.A. work six clubs a night sometimes.

NO doubt about it, you have to perform as many times as possible, in front of many many MANY audiences. You have to make mistakes, and you must consistently get better at what you do. What then?

Well, you have to get the word out. You have to be the best self-promoter you can be. No one will believe in you more than you do (at least until you get famous). Exploit every resource available that can help you spread your message. It's easy to do, and it's FREE!

The job of "talent scout" in the world of arts and entertainment has changed dramatically since twenty five years ago. A wise talent scout isn't just going from club to club, or open mike nights to find the next great talent; they're out here on the web, looking for every possible "place" in which the "next big thing"could be performing "on demand".

The web has SO many free means of advertising, promotion, publicity, that getting your name out there is easy. You've just got a lot of competition. So, assuming you can do something to merit the attention of a prospective fan or purchaser of your services; assuming you have to have "the goods" to be able to keep their attention longer than a few seconds, you've got a shot. Maybe your video will go viral, and will get you some attention. Maybe someone will forward something you've written to..."the right person", and things will start to happen. But you have to get "out there".

Most people have shorter attention spans today than they did twenty years ago. The number of messages that come our way every ten seconds is..mind-boggling. So your stuff better be a real attention-grabber, and an attention keeper.

Remember Lonely Girl 15? She was an actress who was hired to play the part of a, well, a lonely girl. She did this on YouTube. To date, her first video blog installment/webisode has had 1.83 MILLION views. It cost practically nothing to do what she did. The second episode had over 2.5 million views. Her least popular episode had a 150,000 views.

The series has had spinoffs for both the web and (European) broadcast television. See? Someone in their basement with captivating content, the desire to succeed, and the "grass roots" cleverness to market it well has a good shot. Lonely Girl 15's still makin' a dollar off what started out as a $500 a week lark.

In the age of YouTube, Facebook, and ...just the plain' ol' web, the means to reach out and GRAB your audience are are easily accessible, and are FREE-FREE-FREE!!!!!!!!! So how come you're not famous yet? It's about usin' the tools.

The self-righteous purists of the arts and entertainment worlds don't get it. About fifty years ago, Truman Capote said of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, "That's not writing, that's just typing.". Truman wasn't speaking out of professional envy, of course. Truman was already successful as an author when he'd made that remark.

There are many people out there whose "typing", gets published, and many others whose writing, is being seen 0nly by their parents, and the 75 followers of their respective blogs. Why, oh WHY is this injustice allowed to continue? Because the "typing" sometimes speaks louder than the "writing", and because most people don't know the difference between art and hackery.

People will judge what's in front of them. If you ask most people to choose between A and B, they won't think about C. "Coke or Pepsi?"..."Vanilla or Chocolate?". ..You might occassionally get someone who'll ask for "bottled water", or "butterscotch", or who might even pass on dessert, but most will pick one of the things you offer, because they assume that's all there is. If people will judge what's in front of them, get in FRONT OF THEM! Easier said than done? Yup. Nonetheless, it must become an important part of your daily activity.

Don't believe me? Coca Cola's the most popular soft drink in the world! They spent $2.6 billion in advertising in 2006. And they're already #1. You can be sure that one of the reasons they stay at the top is because their message is constantly out there; they buy the best possible message they can afford, and they can afford a LOT.

Another example in popular culture: Reality TV sucks! But a pretty large percentage of the world watches TV. The networks realized they could spend less on production by letting go of trivial luxuries like actors and writers, while increasing (or even just keeping the current) advertising rates. The broadcast networks were right: people will watch garbage on TV if that's all there is to watch on TV. But before the networks put something on, they hype the hell out of it. They spend tens-of-millions of dollars in advertising trying to convince you that watching people lose weight, or rebuild a house, or lose weight by rebuilding a house is better than some..."scripted" drama or comedy. They're just selling dreck. Collectively, they're offering you Dreck A or Dreck B. Either way, they win, and they continue to keep this junk ON the air because most Americans are buying their hype.

Cable TV subscriptions are up. There's never been a time at which premium content is more worth paying for than during a bad economy during which "Reality TV" is...a reality.

So, if you're a comedian, how do you get out in front of the world? You work every club, you play for every audience, and in your off-time, you update your website very often, you get a blog, you trade links with people, you tell every club at which you work that you'll link to them if they link to you. If you manage to get up in the morning, you issue a news release. Of course, you can't just write a news release and expect people to publish it. You have to work smart. This book will tell you lots about how to do it, even if you have no money.

So get good, then get great, but ALWAYS get your message in front of people OTHER than those for whom you performed that night. Use your creativity, ask your friends for help, ask me for help if you'd like.

Go get `em!

Musicians, poets, comedians: Continuing in the Gypsy tradition, in 2008 and beyond

2008-11-27T14:26:00.010-05:00

Most performing artists are, in essence, independent business owners. Yeah? So what? So are a lot of people.

The strange and harsh thing about performing artists being business owners, is that performers base their livelihoods on their creative capacities. Performing artists are expected to run their business, perfect their craft, and do everything else it takes to get by, all by themselves (at first). Some are lucky enough to have help from family, friends, or others they trust on the business and logistics sides. To say it's difficult to nurture both sides of a creative person's business obligations is a tremendous understatement.

Creative artists have to worry about at least all of the following:
- Inventory
- Distribution
- Advertising/Publicity
- Health Benefits
- Travel expenses/reimbursement
- Payroll
- Taxes (personal and business)
- Unions
- Scheduling
- Wardrobe

and that's just the beginning.

Some who are married and have kids have the additional issues of child care, possible spousal neglect, and a host of other things most of us don't have to worry about—especially when combined with all the other facets of our business and personal lives.

If you own a hardware store, you have to know about hardware before you open up shop, you need to keep up with advancements in the field, you need to have inventory of stuff people need, and you need to be open so people can get stuff from you. It's hard work, but it's steady, and you can count on making a decent living at it if you stay in the same place, and keep providing the stuff people need. Can you imagine how much harder it would be for a hardware store owner to pack his stuff up in an RV and take his "show" on the road? Many hardware store owners can open up shop on the web, and be everywhere at once.

Somehow or other, people who need hardware will find a store. Performing artists have to go to the audience. With the exception of a few hotels in Las Vegas, or performance venues in Nashville, TN, or Branson, MO, performers aren't stationary.There's only so much of an entertainer's act they can convey through a website. That leads us to inventory. If you never thought of songwriters, poets or comedians carrying inventory, try this on for size:

Imagine if a hardware store owner had to build the store, and make every tool, nail, and whatever else in the shop himself. It's not the same gig anymore, is it?

A performer must create himself or herself from the ground up. A comedian or composer of music must write their material. Their music, poetry or comedy (respectively) is their inventory. Most throw away 75 to 90% of their material before they find the "gold". If the hardware store owner threw away 75% of his inventory, do you think he'd survive?

Every two years, the great George Carlin repeated the same cycle of getting new material for an HBO special. (He did fourteen of them, which, in total, represent thirty one years of work.)

In the last fifteen or so years of his life, he'd write a whole show (90 minutes or more of material), take it on the road, work it really hard for two years, and then perform it live on HBO, thus adding it to the canon of recorded comedy, and to his record collection—that is, the collection of records he'd made so that we could enjoy it. After he put a special out on HBO, he'd take a short break, then go back on the road using the previous year's material, and slowly start putting in the new stuff, with the new material eventually becoming a majority of the show.

I saw George live twice. Both times were during the beginning of a cycle. He'd just begun to write some new stuff, and was about 18 to 20 months from an HBO special. During the early performances in a cycle, he would read some of the newest stuff from notes. That's how "hot off the presses" it was. How exciting! I got to see one of the great comic minds of our time create, or at least refine his inventory.

After comedians or composers/performers write material, they have to perform it hundreds of times till they can do it in their sleep. The ones who are somewhat established can "get by" financially while developing new material. The ones who are starting out don't have that cushion. They're working without a net, or with a day job.

Imagine a comedian submitting a business plan to a bank, as part of applying for a small business loan. That's funny enough. Imagine the comedian telling the bank that 75% to 90% of what they create is going to be "tossed", and not "sold".

If you know a bank who would loan money to a comic, please let me know which one it is.

Many entrepreneurs have exploited creative souls' desire to be heard–to have their message brought to the world. The creative souls often look at the short term expression rather than the long term opportunity. That's part of what keeps them going from gig to gig. Little Richard talked about the early days of his career (and some of the later days) as if he had been a slave. His contracts were bought and sold (from one record company to another) for pennies. His last name is Penniman, but..he really shouldn't go living it out that way. He's 76 years old, and shouldn't have to be working quite so hard as he is now.

He could only be sold/traded that way because he cost the record labels so little in the first place. It's not a wonder that the great Little Richard–to whom both Lennon and McCartney owed much of their careers–is scrounging around playing dinner theater venues.

Don't get me wrong! I'm happy to have seen him live. But he looked like he was in pain. He's old. And being Little Richard up on the stage, even for an hour, looks like some hard work. To have to do that at age 76? That can't be fun.

So, why does this horrible tradition of exploitation and "gypsy"-style wandering continue? Are musicians and performing artists stupid? Are they gluttons for punishment; maybe just so attention-starved that they'd rather be on the stage and make no money than be a quiet conformist, average member of polite society?

No, I don't think that's it. I think it's in the "DNA" of creative people. Musicians, actors, authors, comedians have a holy mission. Their mission is to change their audience–to move them the way nothing but a great work of art could.

Billy Joel said it better in his 1993 Commencement Address to the graduates of Berklee College of Music—my alma mater, than I've ever heard/read anyone else say it:

And I hope you don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. For though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration or your aspiration. Do it for yourself, your highest self, for your own pride, joy, ego, gratification, expression, love, fulfillment, happiness—whatever you want to call it. Do it because it's what you have to do. And if you make this music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things. Ultimately, you enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings.

Once an artist has done that, their job—as far as that night's audience is concerned—is done. Performers of all types are holy people, in that they actively seek out audiences in order to help the audience grow.

That may not be how it appears on the surface. Dustin Hoffman, during his appearance on Inside The Actors Studio recounts how Sir Laurence Olivier answered the question "Why do we [actors] do what we do?"...Olivier's answer consisted of going nose-to-nose with Dustin, and saying, practically chanting "look-at-me, look-at-me, look-at-me, look-at-me..".

Okay, so actors (and comedians and musicians, and authors) want an audience. Without an audience their art wouldn't be very meaningful (, and they couldn't get paid). If one of their trees was to fall in the forest and nobody was there to hear it, the tree would have made a sound, but the artist wouldn't care as much about the tree if there had been no one there to have heard it fall.

But creative people's desire is to change the world with their contributions to it. The contribution couldn't be anywhere near as significant if you, an audience member, saw it every night. If you saw the New York Philharmonic every night for 20 years, you'd start falling asleep during performances pretty regularly—unless you were in the orchestra.

To me it's sad and ironic that standup comedians don't laugh very often. It's a pretty big no-no to tell jokes to comedians. The last thing they want to hear while they're cleaning house is "Hey, I'll bet you've never heard this one..."–especially if it starts with "Two Jews walk into a bar". I once told Judy Gold a joke of my own, but I did so in the context of conversation. She found it funny. And I know she found it funny because she said "That's funny.". Had she not found it funny, she'd mostly likely have made a face and a sarcastic remark.

Comedians don't laugh as easily as the rest of us because their whole job is to make us laugh. To them, hearing a joke (even a really good joke) is not unlike "talking shop". Their "resistance", if you will, to having a really hearty laugh, is higher than that of most people. That's sad and ironic, isn't it? I've been around some great comedians while they were just having casual conversation. They would talk about everyday stuff (taking their kid to school, or whatever), be really funny in recounting a story, but neither participant in the conversation was laughing at the other's remarks. I, as the guest of one of the comics tried not to be rude, but I'm not immune to the laughter—yet.

Dick Cavett said of my favorite comedian of all time—Groucho Marx—that it was sad that Groucho didn't have a Groucho to make him laugh.

Sturgeon's Law correctly states that "ninety percent of everything is crap." The "hacks" are 90%—the comic, or writer, or whatever, whose work doesn't make him or her grow, and whose work clearly doesn't strive to change or challenge the audience. It's the standup equivalent of According to Jim, or of most Adam Sandler movies.

Good comedians talk with contempt about "hack premises"—bases (for jokes) that are so overdone, tired, and clearly don't come from the soul, but rather from formulaic repackaging of common, everyday things that'll make a certain type of audience laugh. When the really good and great comedians work hard at their craft by baring their souls to an audience, they generally talk about something unique to them. They hope that you or I, as audience members, will be able to relate, or at least take something away—something that'll stay with you after the liquor from the club will have worn off.

Much of Steven Wright's humor's a little bit "out there". But it comes from inside him. One of his signature jokes is about his rented apartment, and how the landlord allows pets. Steven said "I have a pony". The great Emo Philips has a joke about suicide, religion, and the differences that separate us. Everyone can take something away from that joke. Me? I took away that the minute differences in people's beliefs can create chasms so wide, that two people may only get to know each other to the extent that they know the other's beliefs are different from their own. As a result, they may never get to serious dialogue. I'm guilty of it myself, and Emo made me even more aware of it. He taught an important lesson, but framed it in a funny context.

Jodie Wasserman talks about being broke. That's not easy, going on stage and talking about being broke. She was doing it before the economy tanked! It's one thing to tell your best friend something like that. Jodie says that in her act, to hundreds of strangers a day. She bares her soul on the stage, and hopes we will grow from it. That's an artist at work.

George Carlin said in 1977 (in "A Place for My Stuff") "That's my job: thinking up goofy shit...; coming around every once in a while, telling you what it is...".

Artists can't stagnate. They can't stay in the same place all the time. Even the great David Brenner and George Wallace who have indefinite engagements at Vegas hotels don't see the same audiences every night.

I have a sense that most Vegas audiences see standup comedy as something to do between bouts of addictive gambling, or sessions at the hotel's tanning salon. That's disgusting. That comedy clubs serve alcohol is not wonderful either. But hey, that's commerce, not art. If selling drinks gives the comedians a venue, it's a compromise that comics are willing to live with.

The truly great comics come around to where we live, and take us with them for a little while. Enjoy the ride. Take a snapshot in your mind. Don't take for granted the effort it took the musician/comedian/poet to get to the club/venue at which you're seeing them. They're doing what they do to help us grow. Thank them for the "ride", and for the opportunity to grow, and wish them well as they move on to help another little piece of the world.

Entertainment vs. art in a bad economy

2008-10-19T08:53:00.004-04:00

I've always found some comfort (and opportunism) in the fact that no matter what crisis or problem the world (or some segment of it) is facing, someone's makin' a buck off it. Warren Buffet just invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs—one of the two investment banks that got through this financial crisis relatively unscathed (is that an oxymoron?). When asked about it, he said "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." . He's wealthy, he does good things with his money, he's smart, and he's doing good for an investment bank. Why shouldn't he be rewarded?

Richard Nixon went to China when he was President. He brought back a piece of wisdom from there. He told folks that the Chinese symbol for crisis is one character that means "danger", and another character that means "opportunity". That's some pretty smart stuff. (I just saw another article that clarifies the "Crisis=Danger+Opportunity" thing. Nixon's "common wisdom" isn't 100% accurate.)

Who in showbusiness profited from 9/11? Filmmakers, comedians, musicians...We really needed to be cheered up. We escaped into things we found comforting, because the world was just too scary or too horrible for some of us.

How could we dare to laugh during a tragedy? We have to. We aren't laughing at the tragedy, we're laughing in spite of it. That's tough to figure out sometimes.

Comedians understand the concept of "too soon", and can even joke about that. The other night, Bill Maher (on his show "Real Time with Bill Maher", in the "Exit Strategy" segment) was talking about how India would be a good place to live if you want to stay thin. Behind him, as he talked about staying thing, was a picture of Gandhi. He didn't get a laugh. He asked "What? Too soon?".

One couldn't joke right away after 9/11—especially about the tragedy. Many comedians recount that it was Gilbert Gottfried at a Comedy Central Roast telling his version of the old joke "The Aristocrats" that gave comedians permission to laugh again. That was about 3 weeks after September 11, 2001.

Are entertainers being opportunistic? Absolutely not. The business world profits off the entertainers and artists, while the purveyors of entertainment product/services get paid the same whether times are good or bad. Comedians will always bare their souls the same way, whether during good times or bad.

Lots of charities took in money around 9/11. Politicians experienced boom times! (No kidding!) Some are still clinging to 9/11 to rationalize all kinds of disgusting behavior..but that's another story for another blog.

So what does this have to do with the arts and entertainment? It occurs to me that, during bad economic times we need escapism. Movies do well, despite many people cutting back on "unneccesary expenses"; comedy clubs often experience boom times because of bad times.

"Art" doesn't always make out as well as entertainment does.

Most musicians, comedians, actors and others who pursue their entertainment-industry related craft look on what they do as their art. Newsflash for the more serious among you: The sad truth is that most people who pay to see you /hear you don't care that it's your art. They want to take their minds off their problems, and they think you can help. They're not paying for art—especially not during tough times. Most people associate art with museums and auctions, neither of which are critical (for most people) during tough times.

Many artists—especially those who take themselves far too seriously—are offended by the idea that people will equate what they (artists) do with other, lesser forms of entertainment. Will I go see the circus, or will I go to a comedy club? They may even take it one step further. Well, both have people who'll make me laugh...The circus ticket is $40, and the comedy club is $20 + two drinks..and the comedy club is closer. Is it an insult to the comedian that someone's considering the circus as an alternative? I don't think so. I'm as big a fan of comedy as anyone I know, and I still see comedy as a form of entertainment for the masses.

Comedians perform a holy function in the world. They make us forget our problems, but that's not the holy part.

That comedians help us by baring their souls on the stage is not relevant to most of their audience. Jon Stewart's doing well. God bless him. He's a funny man, he's worked very hard for a very long time to get where he is. And he still works hard. On "The Daily Show" he doesn't usually bare his soul. No matter who is elected (or awarded the office of ) President of the United States, comedians will have plenty to joke about. With McCain, there'll be jokes about, teeth-whistling, anger management problems, a waddling walk, and just a general fuddy-duddiness. Needless to say comedians will have more material about Sarah Palin than they did about Dan Quayle. Damn! Who ever thought we'd have a president with more comedy-potential than Dan Quayle? The comedy bar's being raised pretty high now. If Sarah Palin gets into the Veep-spot, most comedians will be depressed for a short while, and then...the comedy will come flowing forth.

If Obama's elected, wow...It'll be a whole new thing. There will be race jokes, and that will upset some people. There'll be jokes about him being a "stiff". Joe Biden's not as old as McCain, but he's no spring chicken either.

Okay..I digress. If you play music, perform comedy, act, do magic, juggle, whatever...You'll do better in a bad economy if you go into showbusiness, and realize people will need you more in a bad economy. Don't be a sourpuss about most people using you for escapism. You have a job, and that's more than a lot of people can say in this economy. Be grateful, take the applause, and hope for that one great inspiration to create art that'll be remembered.

We have spoken, and SoundExchange has listened.

2008-08-17T14:47:00.005-04:00

When last we left our heroes, your fearless leader (that's me), had taken a firm stance about performance royalties for spoken word artists. Musicians get money when their published intellectual property is played live in many public forums, and over mass media. Spoken word artists (like standup comics) should get paid too when their stuff is used in the same forum/media. Makes sense, no?

For the most part, spoken word artists aren't getting performance royalties. That's because traditional performance rights organizations set up their infrastructure decades ago, and they're set up to monitor music. In 2006, BMI distributed $732 million in royalties to member-composers and publishers. This year, it'll be closer to $900 million. Also, BMI is Broadcast Music Incorporated. Too many people in their organization already drank the "Music-only" Kool-Aid. (Poor Ko0l-Aid. It is so often associated with a destructive cartoon-pitcher that breaks down people's walls, and as the primary means of a cult mass-suicide.)

Well, the battle's nowhere near over, but the first real proof-of-concept that it's not only doable, but is good for everyone, is here. That proof of concept is in a relatively new company called SoundExchange. They are a performance rights agency for streaming media.

I'd first heard about SoundExchange three or four years ago. It seemed like a really nice idea. Who knew they'd ever get anywhere? They recently contacted artists we serve with notices that money is being held in their behalf. I found that strange, as these artists had never registered with SoundExchange. SoundExchange grants blanket licenses to, among others, Sirius and XM Satellite Radio, and distributes a large majority of the license fees among the creators/owners of sound recordings (rather than of published works).

Of course, the most important part of such a royalty payment is how it's calculated. We will examine SoundExchange statements soon. If there's anything really interesting in the first one we see, we'll make sure and post it here.

Maybe this is the first important step in getting all Performance Rights Agencies in line about this issue. Copyrighted, published work performed over mass-media or public performance spaces should be annuities to their creators/owners....whether those recordings contain music or spoken word.

Congratulations, SoundExchange on this bold first step.

Stand Up for Spoken Word Performance Rights!

2008-07-02T13:58:00.077-04:00

The U.S. isn't doing so great economically. That's bad. Right? Maybe it's not all bad. Historically, entertainment has always done well during "lean" times. Vaudeville thrived during the Depression; "talking pictures" were only two years old; and people were lining up around the block to see Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, The Marx Brothers, and all the other film greats of that era. In the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was President, comedy clubs opened all over the country.

This time around it's not much different. People want escapism. But there is one huge difference between the '80s and today. We have exponentially more mass-media now than we had in the '80s. Many entertainers and performing artists are getting paid right and left because mass-media are using their intellectual property. But one important group of artists is getting shafted.

Some opinions may differ. BUT, we should all be able to agree on a few points:

Anyone who creates works of art must be compensated when those works are bought, sold, or otherwise used for the benefit of the general public.

One of the intended uses of commercial recorded works is broadcast—performance over mass-media.

One of the rules of commerce has always been (and will continue forever to be) that the greater the number of people who benefit from something, the greater the compensation to its creator/owner should be. Sound about right so far? Good.

Let's apply that to the arts and entertainment industry. Paul McCartney has been selling records for forty six years. He has probably sold more records than any popular music artist. He should be, and has been compensated accordingly.

Lucky for Paul he's also a music publisher (song pimp). He owns a lot of music. (If you want to find out just how much, go to that last link, and under "Browse All Titles", choose "All", then click the "Search" button). Every time a work he owns is played on the radio, or on TV he gets paid. He is a genius of music publishing. There was a time during which Sir Paul bought every college "fight song" he could get his hands on. Seem like a dumb move? Remember, college football is often televised. When Notre Dame plays football on TV, their "fight song" is played in the background at least once during every game. (Cha-ching!!) If Notre Dame plays a college whose "fight song" McCartney owns, he gets paid for use of both teams' songs. (Cha-Ching, Cha-Ching!!). Even if the game isn't televised, Paul still gets a smaller check (Cha!)

Funnily, and ironically, Paul doesn't own the music that made him most famous. He wrote it, but he doesn't own it. Michael Jackson does. Michael's been pimping out Paul's Beatle songs for use in TV commercials, stage shows, and LOTS of other stuff. Hello Goodbye has been used in at least four major national ad campaigns in the past two years.

When a song gets broadcast to millions of listeners, the listeners benefit, and so does the broadcaster. Accordingly, the creator /owner of the song should be paid. The U.S. Copyright Act as amended in 1909 says so. Although broadcasting as we know it didn't exist in 1909, those who amended the Copyright Act were looking out for the long-term interests of intellectual property owners. Yay! Well, it's time to look "long range" again.

(SPOKEN-WORD ARTISTS: We're comin' to the good part now. We've established the premise, now we're goin' for the setup.)

You might want to know who sees to getting copyright owners paid. Well...

In the USA, there are three Performance Rights Organizations (or PROs)—BMI, ASCAP , and SESAC. (SESAC is commonly pronounced "sea sack", by the way.) Their mission is to license the rights to broadcast music over mass-media and other public forums. They collect money from license fees, and disburse a large percentage of it to the composers and publishers whose work is broadcast/used in public forums. A composer or music publisher can sign up with any one of these three agencies. The agencies' respective payment and collection schemes/schedules vary from one another, and of course, change for those whose music is broadcast or played in public more.

If you look carefully as you walk into a club, bar, or performance venue, you'll likely see stickers with the logos of ASCAP, BMI, and/or SESAC around the front door somewhere. The sticker's an indication that the establishment/venue had been assessed a blanket fee for the year (to play music licensed by ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC). It's like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for composers. Those stickers tell the venue's patrons that composers/publishers of the music they're hearing are being paid for the public use of their work. But the mass media pays a nice chunk too. Every radio station, TV station, or cable network pays the PROs. When the agencies start monitoring internet media for use of copyrighted material, the pie will get even more huge. Gazillionaire Google hasn't been asked to chip in yet. And Google owns YouTube. Nice, huh?

Well, it's nice if you're a composer of music. What if you are a professional public speaker? What if you've recorded audiobooks and hundreds of speeches that are broadcast on mass media or performed in public? Don't you deserve to get paid for the broadcasts and public performances of your work? We established earlier that anyone who creates works of art must be compensated when those works are bought, sold, or otherwise used for the benefit of the general public.

That should be the beginning and the end of it.

Can you think of a group of public speakers whose copyrighted work is regularly broadcast over mass-media for the entertainment of the general public? I'd like to name a few of my favorites, if I may:

George Carlin
Chris Rock
Judy Gold
Jeffrey Ross
Greg Giraldo
Lewis Black
Lisa Lampanelli
Eugene Mirman
Jonathan Katz
Demetri Martin
Laurie Kilmartin (pictured below)

Yup, standup comedians! They don't write music, but they do compose. (Actually, Demetri Martin does compose music, but it's a very small part of his act. That makes him an interesting case. More about him later. Maybe.) Their works are copyrighted, performed and broadcast just like any other creative work. The public benefits from hearing the works, and many radio stations, internet streaming sites, and television networks benefit from the public performance of standup comedy. And the comedians don't see a dime of performance royalties! Why the hell not?

I asked this question of representatives from all three USA-based Performance Rights Organizations. Two of the three (ASCAP and BMI) gave me the exact same response. They said they are set up to collect money for musical works only. They added that if there were musical accompaniment behind a spoken word performance, the composer/owner of the music, and only the music can be paid by a Performance Rights Organization.

How about an example that has nothing to do with standup comedy? Okay.

A few people over the years have performed /recorded Allan Ginsberg's Howl with musical accompaniment. Howl is perhaps the most famous poem of the past 50-75 years, and Ginsberg's estate doesn't see a nickel of performance royalties when those recordings are played on the radio, or used in a movie. (He probably gets a license fee for use of the poem, but his estate deserves every consideration that musicians get.) Were it not for Ginsberg's poem, there'd have been no foreground to which the musical accompaniment had been a background!

BACK TO COMEDY! George Carlin performed his written work Braindroppings as an audiobook. When the audiobook (which runs about two hours) gets broadcast over satellite radio, the radio station is filling its airtime with George's copyrighted material. Subscribers pay to hear it (on the ALL-COMEDY satellite radio stations); XM Radio or Sirius keep their subscribers happy. If George had done a straight reading of the book (no background sounds of any kind—just his voice), he wouldn't get paid for the broadcasting of his work. If a musician composed (for the audiobook recording) a little 6 note interlude to aurally indicate that George is moving on to the next chapter of the book, "Mr. Six-note" gets paid, and Mr. Conductor (that's George...See the link) gets zilch. That's horribly unfair, and it gets worse. (By the way, a lot of Braindroppings is repurposed excerpts of George's wonderful standup material. )

Demetri Martin is a wonderful standup comedian. He incorporates music into his act, which makes him eligible for performance rights royalties today. He may be able to open an interesting door toward income streams for standup comics. But that'll come later.

Venues from the size of Madison Square Garden, down to small clubs all over the country, pay ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC for annual blanket licenses to play music represented by those agencies. Any time a represented work is performed live, the composer/publisher gets paid a tiny bit. Billy Joel playing 25 songs at 30,000+ seat arenas for a year will get a bigger "taste" than the punk band playing at a 50 seat club on the Lower East Side. Billy and the punk rockers get paid twice (once for their performance, and a second time by the Performance Rights Agency), and the standup comic gets paid once—by the club/promoter, but not by a PRO.

George Carlin did 14 HBO specials, Billy Joel did two. George and Billy both got paid by HBO. Both George and Billy composed copyrighted works that were performed on television. Billy got paid twice by BMI. Once for the live performance of the works, and a second time for their broadcast on HBO. George didn't get paid at all by a PRO.

You're not a multi-million seller? That's okay. This can still make a small difference to you if you compose (and/or perform) spoken-word pieces for a living. Some comedians perform 10 minutes of copyrighted (and possibly published) material three or four times a night. Why can't a PRO represent the comics too? The comedy clubs are already paying blanket license fees to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC (for the radio and other music they play over loudspeakers/between shows). Why would 100% of the fees collected from a comedy club by PROs go exclusively toward music? 90% of what's performed or played at a comedy club is COMEDY—spoken word comedy.

Wouldn't it be in everyone's best interest to let spoken word performers in on the action? Most comedians get paid bubkes for their work in the clubs. Performance Rights money won't pay for a house in the Hamptons, but it might help a comic make the rent one month in a tight year.

But it's not about need. It's about what's right!

That the PROs aren't factoring in the spoken word artists' contributions to a given venue is just dumb—especially when that venue is a COMEDY CLUB. The ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC license fees for a comedy club are based only on the music that's played there. By not factoring in spoken word as the lion's share of the Performance Rights assessment for a comedy venue, BMI and the other PROs are saying that comedy is insignificant to a comedy club. BMI charges several thousand dollars a year to the average comedy club, based only on the music. That's crazy!

ASCAP is an acronym for the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Aren't standup comics authors? (Actually, ASCAP meant to say lyricists, but the word Lyricist doesn't sound as good as Author; nor does the resulting acronym—ASCLP). Makes you want to put a CAP in their AS, doesn't it?

If you're read this far, I'll bet you have a few questions:

So how much more money do spoken-word artists/performers stand to make?

It's a good question, and I don't have the answer. The PROs use statistical sampling as the basis for how any of their members gets paid. There are technologies available that allow for a more accurate count of what's played where, and how often. But that's not in place yet.

Is it really that simple? Just get the PROs to factor in spoken word, and get a check?

Nope. It's not even close to that simple. It's a system, and ya gotta work the system to make something from it. Musicians have been working the system for decades. Spoken-word artists and their representatives should be in on this, and I'd like to help beyond simply writing a blog post.

Are you saying it's right to squeeze small businesses harder just to pay the standup comics?

Absolutely not. A restaurant that has a video jukebox full of Tammy Wynette, The Judds, and reruns of Hee Haw should not have to pay one penny toward a standup comic's performance royalties. But what if the jukebox has a little "Git 'R Done" or "You Might Be a Redneck"? Shouldn't Larry The Cable Guy and Jeff Foxworthy (respectively) have a tiny taste?

I don't even think that restaurant should be charged any more than they're being charged now. I think the BMI pie (mmm) should be carved just a little bit differently to give the standups their fair share. Who deserves more performance rights money from a comedy club, Jeffrey Ross or Britney Spears?

Isn't this a little pie-in-the-sky? Aren't you just dreaming?

Nope. History's on our side in this fight, folks. ASCAP was founded in 1914 by, among others, Irving Berlin—the Jewish guy who wrote White Christmas. Irving was a prolific songwriter, and wanted a central agency to monitor (and collect money for) public performance of his many works. Other songwriters were in the same boat, and wanted in.

ASCAP was considered "elitist", as it didn't acknowledge the legitimacy of country and folk music, it didn't allow membership to black composers, and excluded lots of other people, for reasons passing understanding. BMI was formed to meet the needs of those whom ASCAP didn't see fit to represent. SESAC was founded in 1936, BMI in 1939. Over the years, PROs have ventured into many new territories to see that their memberships expand, that more musicians are getting a taste, and that they all make more money. Inclusion is within our reach. But we haven't made our case yet.

How do we get started?

I have some of the broad strokes. It has to start with one PRO. Which one?

ASCAP is still snotty, and BMI is still a lot better for big-timers. SESAC is the smallest of the three, the most open minded, and therefore may hold the most potential for spoken-word performance rights. I don't know yet. It's still early in the game. I believe that if they're approached the right way, all the PROs will want the spoken-word creators in eventually.

Conclusions:

It's way too early in this game to determine with any accuracy what the real performance royalties numbers could be for spoken-word artists/writers. I asked some knowledgeable people to help me "do the math". If we took all the comedy being performed live in clubs and theaters all over the United States, added to that all the comedy broadcast over terrestrial radio and satellite radio, added to that all the standup comedy and other published, copyrighted spoken word that's broadcast on cable TV (that's BET, HBO, Showtime, Comedy Central, and on and on and on), the comedians stand to bring in tens of millions of dollars a year (collectively).

And the "Wild West" of the Web is hardly regulated right now. BMI has plans to turn the internet into a serious source of performance rights revenue. But execution is a lot more difficult than making a plan. The spoken-word people's time is now—while the PROs are still figuring out how to collect and fairly distribute all that internet money. Statistical sampling may not even be necessary anymore, because it's so easy to track how many times a copyrighted/published work has been streamed on the web.

Let's get in the door now, before the internet media get really monitored, so that we can be counted. When Google starts kicking in as they should; when Apple becomes one of the world's largest media "casters", there will be more money for everyone. All you authors have to do is claim your fair share.

Comedians, please weigh in. Could you use a tiny slice of the millions of dollars the PROs stand to collect from registered spoken-word works? Are you ready to work for it (or set your people to work for it)? Will you join me in helping you (and other spoken word artists) get paid for the broadcasts and public performances of your material? This will be a herculean effort, is likely to take a decade, and may not result in big money to the average spoken-word performer. But it opens the door to greater possibilities where there is now nothing. That door's going to close pretty soon. Google hasn't really been told to pay up yet. Neither have most of the website owners exploiting intellectual property without paying for it.

Let's talk to the WGA. Maybe they can help in this battle. Let's talk to all the people we know with the connections to make things happen. I'm your sister-in-arms, and will do whatever I can to help. If you've found this helpful, have a question, or just want to insult me, leave a comment, or drop me a note. If you really liked it, forward it to a friend who might benefit from it. Thanks for your attention.

Berklee keeps the tradition going.

2008-06-07T08:02:00.004-04:00

I'm a proud alumna of Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. I am still a bit active with the college. I go to alumni events, I give money, and I try to see the college every once in a while. I love my "old school" not just because of the vibrant, youthful energy that's there, but because it is a great mix of the old school rules, and the talented students' contemporary applications (and discretionary breaking) of those rules to create great new work. But the traditions remain inseparable from the new creations.

When I was in school there, I got derisive comments from academic snobs along the lines of "How nice. I go to a real college.". From other, well-meaning people who didn't understand that it was a real school, I got "Wow, your school must be like [the movie and TV show] Fame!"

In my head, I'd respond "Yes, that's exactly what it's like. A vocalist has a dramatic moment, spontaneously bursts into song in the hallway, with accompanying music, and background singers that come out of nowhere; and people around her begin to dance for no reason."

At a recent event for Berklee alumni, I got to meet some graduates from the classes of 2006 and 2007 respectively. I asked whether they got the same types of comments today that I got "in my day". I was told that the big question the students of today get is "Are you going to try out for [TV show] American Idol?". The wiseass students today respond with something along the lines of "No, because I have some self-respect, and don't care to sound like Beyoncé or Whitney Houston (ca. 1985) to please some rich, spoiled, non-musician with power." I love that!

Sadder still is the fact that, in order to get discovered, American Idol (winner) Kelly Clarkson had to "sign her life away" to the producers of the show.

I had no idea how disgusting that show's setup is. But I should have known better, because (in that part of the music business) nothing's changed since my day. It's all a (disgusting) music industry "tradition"—"Pay For Play". (That is, paying a club owner for the privilege of performing on his stage. That's not just working for free..that's PAYING to work.)

Blues singers from 70 or 80 years ago had their intellectual property exploited by someone else, while the originators of the music got next to nothing; Little Richard took the the just-short-of-highway-robbery record deals that were offered to him early in his career. Black musicians were treated unfairly back then. Now there's less discrimination—musicians with any skin color can get ripped off equally by American Idol, and much lesser forums, media, or venues.

"Do it for the exposure" is the slogan of the exploiters in the entertainment industry. It's one of our emotional "hot buttons". "The Man" takes advantage of the creative artist's desire to express him/herself, and to be liked, and to have their work acknowledged, and to make a "living" doing what they love.

There's a slightly more dignified manner of "Pay for Play" today. They're called "bringer shows". The musicians (or comedians, for that matter) bring the audience. They ask friends, colleagues, relatives, and whoever else they can, to come to the show, and pay for drinks. Often there's no cover charge at "bringer shows". But the drinks ($5 for a small, watered down orange juice) subsidizes the comics' stage time. Getting up in front of people is the ONLY way to get better at it.

The really great performers who start out doing bringer shows didn't have to do them for long.

By college students' standards, I'm old—43 to be somewhat close to exact. And yet, Berklee has stayed the same, while progressing a whole lot. Tradition mixed with musical experimentation and creativity, along with a great sense of humor are part of what makes Berklee special. I love anything that has a sense of humor about itself—even a funeral.

Berklee's unique. It always has been, and always will be. The best way to illustrate how different and special Berklee is, would be to tell you about Christopher Guest's visit to the school. Christopher Guest was honored at Berklee with an honorary doctorate. He, along with a fantastic ensemble of Berklee faculty and students, performed arrangements and adaptions of selections from his body of music.

Over a hundred bassists accompanied Christopher for the evening's final number, Big Bottoms . "Bottom" is a musical colloquialism meaning the bass part. In musical colloquial/trade-speak, when one is "holding down the bottom", one is playing the bass (or bass guitar). If you read the lyrics , you'll see that's not what the song's about.

That one hundred bassists thing? That's unique to Berklee. It takes the "Big Bottoms" joke from the ridiculous to the absurd! The students are, on the whole, a very talented bunch. They're very dedicated, but they don't miss out on the good times.

My favorite teachers at Berklee were Ken Zambello and Bob Freedman—with a special honor going to Bill Leavitt—founding chairman of the Guitar Department. If all I'd gotten out of Berklee was my time with these three great musicians/teachers, it'd have been more than enough.

I loved Ken as a teacher because he took rock and roll seriously. He approached it intellectually and technically, and with great respect. He would dissect it, and show us—his students—that it, like every other great genre of music, was an outgrowth of other traditions/genres. Without understanding what came before, it's really hard to understand how to properly and professionally execute any given genre.

"A-Wop-bop-a-loo-bop a-lop-bam-boom!"???

What the hell was that? Well, Little Richard may have composed that lyric himself, but he didn't invent the phenomenon of singing non-lyrics. There was scat singing well before him.

Little Richard was an original. But, did he create everything he did out of thin air? No. There was Louis Jordan not too far before him. And before Louis Jordan? There was Louis Armstrong, then the blues singers, then Africa. Frankly, I know almost nothing of African music.

Little Richard, Ray Charles, and others developed their styles out of a mix of gospel, jazz, earlier popular music, and jazz. One of Billy Joel's biggest influences was Ray Charles; another great source of Billy Joel's inspiration was The Beatles. The Beatles were influenced by Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. Elvis also loved black blues singers and gospel and took a lot out of it. Every great musician comes from some great tradition that came before they did.

I'm pretty sure the name of the first class I took with Ken was "Rock Analysis" He played Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the Comets and Oingo Boingo. And taking their music apart, and understanding the elements of it was real work. Ken also directed an ensemble in which I was a student-musician. He had us listen to recordings of pop songs, and try to play the song as it had been played on the original, with a slight adaptation for the ensemble of the moment.

In that class he pointed out (and then we heard what we already knew was there, but didn't know it well enough to articulate it), that some of the instruments were playing straight (think the guitar, bass, and drums on Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) and the guitars, the bass, and the vocal were playing swing (think Little Richard's Tutti Frutti). The elements of jazz were coming together with a more driving, set of rhythmic elements.

Did Bill Haley know what the hell all that meant? Probably not. Doesn't make it any less serious. Some of you won't get this, but the greatest thing I learned from Ken Zambello, is that we'd better learn music as a trade, and learn in depth about the styles that have already been successful, so that we can make it in commercial music. Although he said many funny things in my classes with him, my favorite was "Nobody's going to pay to hear your 7/8 Reggae version of Take Five." In English? He told students that there's a constant struggle between art and commerce. And while one shouldn't compromise on one's art, that's not always going to pay the rent. He also told students that if we are serious about music, we have to understand it thoroughly. Listening to a record, and being able to "copy" it is part skill, and part talent. After I took Ken's classes, I listened to rock and roll with "new ears". I was able to do things after his classes that I would never have been able to do without them. I had so much more respect for rock and roll. Since he released The Stranger, Billy Joel had always been my favorite pop music composer. Billy knows rock and roll as an art form, but also understands its forms, and its inner workings. He can dissect the songs he fell in love with, and that made him love rock and roll.

When he did an album in a particular style, he understood that style completely, and gave it his particular take.

That's reality. Imagine that! Liberal Arts colleges probably have lots of "Intro to Basket Weaving" type classes, and "Analysis of the eleventh notes in Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone pieces". How can anyone make a living from that? Ken was (and obviously still is) aware of the realities of art and commerce. He gave it to us in exactly the doses we needed.

And so, we are able to mix tradition with experimentation to make bold new work that has a solid, grounded foundation. What does this have to do with anything important?

In the Book of Proverbs we're taught that there's "nothing new under the sun". It's really true. The computer industry hasn't had anything new in a long time. It may seem new, but it's all been done before in cruder forms. The World Wide Web may come closest to anything truly new, but it's all just a big, complicated network.

With music? Hell, no. Ken Zambello said "Stevie Wonder didn't invent the II V.". Neither did Duke Ellington. Neither did Bach.

(I had a heck of a time finding a decent link to explain the II V (pronounced two-five. The first two chords to the song "Satin Doll" (Dmin7 and G7, in the key of C), also the first two chords to "Tea for Two".)

Tradition, religion, and the future of the arts.

2008-05-30T08:13:00.021-04:00

The great novelist and columnist Tracy Quan (whose website we designed, by the way) recently wrote in her column about atheism for The Guardian , that music is inseparable from religion. She's right. Some of the greatest music ever written was written as a form of (or an adjunct to) worship. Religion and music are both as old as the hills. Bach, Mozart, Leonard Bernstein, and many contemporary, popular recording artists have all written music expressing their love of God as they see Him.

Tracy's own one line summary of her own article on the topic was "If God is not great, why are the tunes so good?". It's an excellent question, and here's my answer.

Both music and religion have stayed alive for millenia because they each have dedicated, passionate followers, practitioners, and believers. A lot of the greatest music ever written is only hundreds of years old. Anything with that kind of staying power has to have something going for it. But "the old guard" eventually falls out of fashion with the younger generations. That's been addressed too–by both religion and music.

Religion and music (respectively) have traditionalists and modernists. The modernists give religion greater numbers, while the traditionalists give modernists something against which to rebel, and something to (in their view) update. "Fundamentalists" are typically at the far "right" end of traditionalist movements in just about every religion (, except perhaps Buddhism). The modernists look way to the "right" and think of the traditionalists as "stuck in the past", cultists, or just plain loony.

When thinking about this dichotomy (in either religion or music), I instinctively remember the stereotype of the old curmudgeon yelling in disgust about "these kids today, with the hair and the music...". These are the same (generally older) traditionalists who often start certain of the rants in their repertoire with "Back in my day..." or "In the old days"...Interestingly enough, these types of rants are common to both music traditionalists and religious traditionalists.

There are also advocates of modernity (in both religion and music). The religious modernists believe that religion must change to suit the times. They believe that along with culture shifts, and advances in technology (among other things) should come adaptation of religion to those shifts. Traditionalists believe that people should adapt their behavior to religious law, and maintain religious tradition.

That doesn't answer why the tunes are "so great". The tunes are so great because it's rarely the religious moderates who write the great religious music–that which stems from passion, rather than from the "gee, isn't our culture nice?" kind of warm, fuzzy feeling. Modernists want to change, things that are already great, don't need to change. If one views one's religion as sacred, changing it seems counter-intuitive. The intuitive action would be "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

The modernists generally compose and/or record music that is the religious equivalent of Peter, Paul & Mary's recording of "If I Had A Hammer". It's a nice tune, but it won't rock your world, or change your life—unless you're the song's publisher. Then you'll make a coupla bucks off it, since the song is still doin' business.

Johann Sebastian Bach was not a religious modernist. He was as old school as they ever got. Back in 1705 (when Bach was 20), the old school was a lot newer. Yet, I'm sure someone thought of Bach as a rebel. He was looking to do something new in music, but he wasn't looking to change that which he felt was quite right—his religion.
Bach was the real deal. The tunes are so great because they were written by people with tremendous talent, a contemporary ear, and old-school values. Can you see changing a note of Bach's music to "suit the times"?

Mozart wrote some great music for the church, he was an amazingly talented musician. There is some debate as to Mozart's religious practice. He was a Catholic, but also a Freemason. His father had been a Jesuit. Maybe he wasn't all that devout. I'm not sure we can know, and I'm not sure it makes a difference. Many of his greatest works were commissions for the church, or for church big-wigs (back in the day when they actually wore big wigs), and it was great work. No reason to change what's already great.

My longtime-friend Jonathan Rimberg (bottom left) is one such "old school" (highly talented) musician with a modern ear. (The song to which that links is more of a Hebrew rock and roll song than of religious praise. It's very Beatles and Billy Joel-influenced.)

Jonathan, as part of Shoresh did a fabulous a capella arrangement of a beautiful Jewish hymn-like prayer, in the style of Take 6 (Check out "Family Of Love") . Great tunes have staying power is partially that they were written out of passion, and were executed by people with the talent to do justice to the music. The melody was taken from an Israeli love song from the 1967 War

Having grown up in the Orthodox community, I wasn't always objective about Jewish music. I recently got to thinking about whether the music with contemporary influences made religious purists (traditonalists) "crosses a line". I asked Jonathan about this. His response is that the line (for music) shifts with the times, even though the religious values don't change.

I find that interesting. There's a concept in Judaism of making mundane things holy by adapting them into a Jewish context. Hence we have song parodies of classic rock and roll, but with religious-themed lyrics. Oy! That's a whole 'nother discussion we've already had.

Yet despite the efforts of some religious purists with contemporary ears, there are those on the farther-right (if you can believe that), who resist the modern influences. One rabbi in New York sought to ban a concert of Jewish music at Madison Square Garden because one or more of the performers was set to perform parodies of rock and roll songs.

Although Rabbis lead the Jewish community as a whole, there is a subset of Rabbis who are specialists in applying complex parts the "old school" law to contemporary phenomena. There are, for example, rabbis whose primary gig is applying the law to medical advances. One such rabbi is the leading authority on Jewish Law's take on whether or not, and under what circumstances "brain death" constitutes death. There have been decisions in Jewish law about everything from how to make a microwave oven suitable for cooking kosher food, to sex reassignment surgery. These decisions have made for more than a little controversy and divisiveness.

Musicians, on the other hand, can often get along despite their differences in philosophy about "old school" versus "new school". There are thousands of recorded performances featuring great old-school-meets-new-school combinations. Tony Bennett and Bono is but one example. Igor Stravinsky was open to incorporating Jazz influences into his music.

Mozart collaborated with librettists on his operas. That makes him what we today would call a songwriter. Of course, he's also much more than that, but it's one of his many musical talents.

If he were alive today, he might write for both Broadway, and The Met. Broadway would pay the bills, and The Met would be his passion. Or maybe not.

Religious traditionalists often express disgust at the modernists' adaptation of religion to suit their needs, while many modernists think of the old-schoolers as being zealots, cult-members, or just plain "antiquated".

Even within the realm of symphonic music there were modernists who rebelled. Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bartok. The great thing with all of them, is that they paid great (and due) homage the great forms that preceded them, and built their creations on a solid foundation. Bartok wrote some amazing pieces based on Hungarian folk songs. The great composers who rebelled did so with respect, and with a thorough understanding and appreciation for what came before them.

Most modernist religious practitioners today aren't like that. They want the quick, easy God-fix, or treat their church or synagogue attendance as if it were a social, or business networking opportunity. What does that have to do with the future of the arts? Plenty! More later...

Song Parodies—Repurposed brilliance or unlicensed hackery?

2008-05-10T11:14:00.018-04:00

[Despite the title, this post is not about musical tastes. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about what is funny, what isn't funny, and what is in good taste or bad taste. This is simply about music parody in the context of the music business.]

Parody has a long and interesting tradition. It has been used throughout the centuries, in many cultures, as a way to express protest, as a way to satirize some political or social phenomenon, or just as a means of amusement. Some have made a career out of it.

Allan Sherman is probably the best example of a contemporary song parodist. He was a really funny showbusiness jack-of-many trades. His credits include writing for Jackie Gleason, and producing Bill Cosby's first comedy album—Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow, Right?. He was also a very busy and successful television producer, and performer of song parodies during the 1960s.

Allan Sherman's (Sorry to have given a Wikipedia link, but this entry's pretty good, and pretty accurate.) greatness lay in several facets of his work—his song or composition choices, his comic persona, the subjects of his lyrics, and the production values are just a few reasons why Allan was such a great parodist.

The arrangements on Allan's records deserve their own blog entry. One paragraph will have to do. Lou Busch—Allan's co-conspirator in these musical pursuits—was an astounding and versatile musician. Lou's arrangements for Allan Sherman were part of the reason I wanted to be an arranger. They perfectly complemented Allan's performance, and sense of humor, and were always perfect for the song and the lyric. Busch's arrangements weren't copies of any single recording of a song—although one comes close.

Allan's biggest hit was a parody called Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah—a funny take on summer camp. Most people who knew the song parody had no idea that the original was from an 1870s opera called La Gionconda by Amilcare Ponchielli . The song (on which Hello Muddah Hello Faddah was based) is called Dance of the Hours. Allan Sherman brought us opera, and we didn't even know it. The first time I heard the original, I thought "Wow, an instrumental version of Hello Muddah Hello Faddah. It's a nice tune even without the lyrics.". His parody When I was a Lad was copped from Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore.

Allan also did a very ambitious project called Peter and The Commissar a very interesting take on Peter and The Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev. Sherman showed a depth and breadth of knowledge, not only about how to entertain, but about how to perform. He did not have what most would call a soothing voice. But in his comic persona, he made the performance/execution work perfectly.

Why all this fuss about Allan Sherman? Allan performed the art of parody respectably, respectfully, and very creatively. From a business perspective he did the right thing too. He paid both tribute and money to the composers of the original works (except for those works that were in the public domain). [Sometimes parodying a work that's in the public domain is a great idea, because it's royalty-free, and because it may be either well-known (a "classic"), or may be good enough to warrant /attract a new audience. Most people had (and still have) no idea who Ponchielli was, but they know his work because of Allan Sherman.

But this post really isn't about him—it's about how music parody fits into the music business. To see it in proper context, we should look at the history of music parody, music business of the past, and the music business overall.

Musical parodies go back a long way. Many American school-children are taught a song we knew as My Country, 'tis of Thee". I was shocked to have found out (as a kid) that the song was originally a British song called God Save The King. God Save The King was later adapted to God Save The Queen, after the King died. Isn't it hilarious that young American students sing a British song as tribute to the country from which America declared its independence?

Yankee Doodle—one of America's best known songs—is a song parody!

The Battle Hymn of the Republic started as a melody with a very different lyric .

Franz Josef Haydn wrote the melody for a song called Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser (God Save Franz the Emperor). Less than fifty years later, someone using different lyrics turned into the German National Anthem—Deutschland Uber Alles, which translates to "Germany Above/Before All". Many people still have very negative associations with the song because of the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Mel Brooks used the anthem very effectively in the original movie of The Producers, to make fun of the Nazis. But the melody by Haydn is beautiful. It's such a shame to see its parody/adaptation be held in such low regard because of its having been "repurposed".

So what does that have to do with the music business today? LOTS.

I'm not a lawyer, but we can even have some legal fun with this one.

Happy Birthday To You is just a different lyric to Good Morning, Dear Teacher (ca. 1890). Because the original composers (Mildred and Patty Hill, in case you like trivia) put different lyrics to it, and published the song again in 1935 as Happy Birthday, they revived it, and kept it out of the public domain. Their estates STILL collect money on it every time it's used in a TV show or a movie.

Put Good Morning, Dear Teacher (sans lyrics) in a movie, during a scene in which someone's bringing out a birthday cake, and you're using a song from 1890 (which is in the public domain). If the end credits of your movie list Good Morning, Dear Teacher rather than Happy Birthday To You, you could probably get away with using it for free.

Love Me Tender—one of Elvis Presley's biggest hits, started life out as a Civil War era song called Aura Lee. Sing Elvis's lyrics on the radio, and you owe someone money. Hum it (or sing the original lyrics), and you owe nothing.

There really ain't nothin' new in the world. Allan Sherman wasn't the first song parodist, and he certainly wasn't the last. Weird Al Yankovic has probably sold many more records than Allan could have. Allan's song parody career lasted perhaps twelve years. Weird Al's been around a lot longer than that, and the numbers of record buyers hit record numbers in the 1980s.

There is a HUGE number of parodists today who record others' musical works, but with lyrics different than the original. Whether or not the song makes fun of the original, or of anything, it is legally defined as a parody. Many parodists record independently, or on small labels, with "shoestring" budgets. Those who do this sidestep/conveniently forget to pay (financial) tribute to the original composers. When parodists/satirists do this, they're violating the law. There is a copyright law in every civilized country in the world, and in many less-than-civilized ones. Almost all countries with a copyright law in place require some variety of compensation/royalties be paid to the owner of a copyright when their work is used.

Weird Al, and Nutty Allan (Sherman) had something in common, though. They were both very high-profile writers and performers. They can't afford to try cheating the system. They couldn't afford to just use a composition with a then-enforceable copyright, without paying the monies mandated by the Copyright Act.

Mark Russell and The Capitol Steps are well-known political satirists and parodists. On The Capitol Steps' official website they acknowledge the original compositions they parody. One of the founding members of The Capitol Steps wrote a terrific article on the parody phenomenon. Read on, and you'll find a link.

Now we come to my big bugaboo, or bee in my bonnet. (Truth be told, I don't look very good in bonnets, but that's another story). Religious (music) groups are using popular songs that still have enforceable copyright, and are illegally using those songs to "spread the word" of their religion. This practice isn't specific to one religion. Whoever's doing it, I think it's pretty icky (that's a technical word), and horribly hypocritical to steal in the name of God.

Religious music groups who illegally sell (for profit, even if they don't make a profit) others' music with lyrics and themes very different from the original, seem to me to be quite hypocritical. In the spirit of proper disclosure, I participated in one such record in 1986. I asked the producers to obtain the necessary permissions. The copyright owners refused to grant permission, but the producers released the recording anyway.

You may wonder if music parody of copyrighted work is even legal. Well, it has always been legal, but until 1994, parodists who wanted to release a parody recording of an existing work required the permission of the copyright owner (in order to release it commercially). In 1994, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision that affected music parodists in a very positive way. In Campbell v. Acuff Rose, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision about whether or not a parodist must obtain the permission of the copyright holder before recording and releasing a parody of a copyrighted work. Before this case was decided, Elaina Newport and Bill Strauss of The Capitol Steps wrote a wonderful article about the case, and its potential ramifications.

Luther Campbell (of the rap group 2 Live Crew) wrote a parody of the classic Roy Orbison song Oh, Pretty Woman. Campbell's lyrics, and his take on the song were/was very different from the original. The publisher (Acuff Rose Music) believed that 2 Live Crew version would cast the original song in a bad light, and thus make the original song less marketable.

The plaintiff contended that his parody of the Roy Orbison song Oh, Pretty Woman, while wildly different in lyrical content from the original, did not detract from the marketability of the original recording and/or composition. Campbell asserted that he should therefore be permitted to use the work without having to obtain permission from the copyright holder. The Sixth Circuit Court sided with Acuff Rose Music, but the US Supreme Court overturned the Sixth Circuit's finding, and agreed with Luther Campbell.

No matter how that decision would have come down, any user of copyrighted musical work is obligated to pay royalties based on a mandated statutory rate of 9.1 cents per song per record/unit manufactured. That's for compositions of less than 5 minutes in length. Many parodists who have recorded works subsequent to 1994 believe mistakenly that because of Campbell v. Acuff Rose, they're allowed to use the music scott-free. Nope, 't'ain't so. The royalties mentioned above are known as "mechanical royalties"—so named because they are calculated based on "mechanical" (now also digital) reproductions of the original works/recordings. We could get into performance royalties, but that's a whole other post.

U.S. Copyright Law takes into account the phenomenon of a "derivative work". An example of a derivative work would be an orchestral arrangement of a song by The Beatles. Sex and The City—a wildly successful HBO series, now in syndication, was turned into a movie. That's another type of derivative work.

Most parodists, however, knowingly violate the law. They create intellectual property, put a copyright statementon it, and then don't respect the original copyright holders' work. Even more nervy than that, many parodists put a copyright warning on their commercial recordings. In essence they're saying "Don't you dare steal our product. Leave the stealing to us."

They are creating derivatives from which the copyright holder of the original has a right to benefit. With small-label independent recordings the original composers do not see dime one.

Here's the saddest part of the whole independent/underground music parody theft business. When one asks the parodists why they don't pay for the music they're using, they state pretty openly that they're probably too small to get caught. If they do get caught, the publishers/copyright holders/record companies which may own the original works would have to spend too much money for too little return to bother going after them.

An addendum to the sad story is how cheap it is to use the music legally. Let's say a band makes a record of ten song parodies, and manufactures 10,000 units, for sale at $15 each. That's gross income of $150,000. To legally use the music, they'd have to pay $9100. And they just don't do it. That boggles the mind! If you had to pay $9100 to use a work that could gross $150,000, would you do it? Let's keep in mind one thing. Songs consist of two elements: music and lyrics. So, 50% of the materials used by song parodists belong to someone other than the parodist. $9100 to use 50% of the stuff you're selling, and from which you're grossing $150,000 is a drop in the bucket.

Let's put another thing out there for consideration: Song parodists who aren't registering their works with The Harry Fox Agency , and Performance Rights Organizations are depriving the songs' composers and publishers of additional revenue they might have gotten from airplay and public performances of the song parodies.

There's money to be made from singing song parodies on tour. The performer's almost never liable for performance royalties. That's the liability of the venue (almost always). But that's another discussion for another time.

If you reading this create for a living, or you know anyone who creates for a living, or are related to anyone who creates for a living, I hope you'll feel strongly enough about this issue to investigate if the parody music you might think to buy is legal. If it doesn't support the creator of the original work (without which there would never have been a derivative), don't buy it.

Be an informed consumer of intellectual property. Keep funding the artists' ability to make a living, and to continue giving us great works.

Repurposing—Annuities for creative people.

2008-03-05T19:58:00.015-05:00

Those of you who put food on the table by doing what you
love are, for the most part either underemployed
or underpaid. Those whose souls you nourish
value your work. Most of those who feel revitalized
after hearing your music, seeing your movie,
reading your book, or even just cruising your blog,
wouldn't mind paying for the privilege. But, for
most of you, getting paid for that work is a one shot deal.

Whoever is employing you wants to get rid of you
quickly. They want to make a profit, and be done
with paying off the talent. That accounts for
why advertising agencies are pretty well done
with paying residuals for musicians who write,
produce, and perform on radio and television
commercials. Those at the top of the showbusiness heap can
demand compliance to union regulations about residuals, or can
work only with those for whom compliance to union regulations is
par for the course. This isn't a rant about union organizing, though.
That one will come later.

For now, let's discuss finding a way to make money off your stuff once the initial purchaser of your talents/works has taken their slice. Did you sign away your copyrights? Your publishing rights? Let's hope not.

Could you, as George Harrison and Bob Dylan have, put out a book of the lyrics to your songs, with the special added value of commentary by the composer? Maybe. If you're famous, people will buy it. If you're a screenwriter, can you adapt your movie for the stage? If you're an author, can you serialize your novel on the web? Or, maybe you can work the other way around. Maybe you can, as Tracy Quan did, serialize your novel on the web first, gain a following and/or a buzz, and score a book. From the book, Tracy scored two more books, and a TV show based on the book/series of books. Pretty good, ay?

How about all the comedy talk shows on TV? Jay Leno did a book of dumb headlines (and ads, and other stuff that appears in print). Some were featured on the "Headlines" segment he does on The Tonight Show, others were "added value"—headlines that hadn't been on the show. David Letterman has had several books of "Top Ten Lists". During the recent WGA Strike, "lateshowwritersonstrike.com" published some original Top 10 Lists, but they weren't all that funny (on purpose).

Bill Maher's HBO show—Real Time with Bill Maher—has a segment called "New Rules". There's a "New Rules" book. George Carlin took some of his most famous routines, and put them in his Braindroppings books. Those books were big sellers too.

Most of these examples contain original content along with the repurposed content. Added value is what sells them. Various licensees of The Beatles recordings have found some really silly ways to capitalize on The Beatles' music. Someone found recordings of them before they sounded very polished, and put that out. Others put out "Greatest Hits" compilations. Many people have done "cover" albums—interpretations of The Beatles' music. My favorite of these was the title track of a Bing Crosby album: Hey Jude, Hey Bing.

Of course, one of my favorites, Jonathan Katz has found a great way to repurpose content. He has used bits of his standup act, and bits from projects that may or may not have launched in his current (internet radio) series "HEY, WE'RE BACK". He used pieces of his standup in his hit animated series Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist. Just as significantly, he gave dozens of standup comedians the opportunity to repurpose their material, bringing it to a television audience who may never have seen the comics' faces before.

Bill Cosby had one of the most popular TV series of all time, based on his 1982 movie Bill Cosby, Himself.

Mildred and Patty S. Hill wrote Good Morning, Dear Teacher in 1890. You're not familiar with the song? Maybe you've heard of it in its repurposed form—Happy Birthday To You. Millie and Patty changed four words in 1935, copyrighted it with the new name, and their estates are still taking in millions of dollars from a song that's 117 years old.

But, the moral of the story is that good work can take many forms, and sell in more than one. And if not, maybe the first form in which your work is distributed is not the one that will "hit".
My best friend Lisa Liel—a historian—repurposed in an extraordinary way. She took a long out-of-print interpretation of the Book of Esther, and added some commentary to it. Her work was second edition of the book. The estate of the original author's work is pleased as punch, even though the original's in the Public Domain now.

How many forms has your work taken? Can you think of other forms into which your work will translate easily? Have you done something out of the norm with your musical composition, screenplay, poem, blog, or other intellectual property? I'd love to know about it.

Drop me a line.

Surprise-surprise! Government was slow to respond to a gaping hole!

2008-02-02T00:19:00.002-05:00

Once again, the U.S. government waited to get involved in a crisis till the damage was overdone.

Gee, I wonder where we've heard that before. Hmm..Hurricane Katrina, maybe? 9/11, perhaps? Let's take a stroll down memory lane to World War II. Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, having begun to kill Jews in 1938. The U.S. got involved in 1941. Okay, that was almost 70 years ago, and everyone who wasn't white and Christian was invisible in the U.S.. Doesn't make it forgiveable, it just states the facts of the times.

Today, members of the U.S. Congress wrote a letter to Bob Iger (CEO of Disney) and Peter Chernin (CEO of Fox), urging them to negotiate in good faith with the writers because of all the money that's been lost. Real smart, guys.

The writers went through Thanksgiving and Christmas on strike, because no one in a position of power told big business what to do. Until now! Pilot season could have been saved, and we could have been a little further into the season of Boston Legal and Desperate Housewives. My friends at Swingline Productions could be creating new episodes of Law and Order Criminal Intent.

Let's review. When big business tried to crush the writers by stonewalling them, our government said nothing. Nobody in government had the foresight to see (or the guts to speak out about the fact that) that billions would be lost; that the American people, and people in many other countries would lose out on great content in film and television, because the creatives who help make it happen asked for what was just, appropriate, and in keeping with tradition.

The Republican Governor of California—also a former movie actor—could have veered from the typical anti-union, pro big-business agenda, and spoken out. Wouldn't that have been something? It wouldn't surprise me if another former actor and ex-governor of California would have kept his mouth shut on the issue. Ronald Reagan—star of Bedtime for Bonzo—was a Democrat-turned-Republican.

Republicans are said to be "pro-business". One would think that every entrepreneur should, by virtue of that "pro-business" agenda, be a Republican. But that "pro-business" hype is a lot like many things in the Republican platform—reminiscent of the warning label "Objects in mirror may be larger than they appear.". The Republicans are pro-business when the businesses are big enough to be substantial campaign contributors. To them, "pro-business" means anti-union.

Ronald Reagan, who busted the air traffic controllers union in 1981, had a Washington, D.C. airport named for him. It gets worse. He was a former president of the Screen Actors Guild. The irony is saddening. The one good thing about him is that he knew how to tell a joke. I find it quite funny that it was during his presidency that the comedy club boom started. The great comedian Richard Belzer attributed the boom (in part) to Reagan's presidency. Comedians had such good fodder for material by 1982 that the comedy clubs just started popping up. Every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose.

Republicans supposedly feel that government shouldn't get in the way of business, and should let the market dictate who succeeds and who fails. Let's review. Many writers in New York and Hollywood own production companies. These companies are small businesses, producing scripts for big corporations like GE (NBC), Disney (ABC Television, and more media than you can shake a stick at), and Sony (CBS). So, when it's small business against big business, I guess the size of the contributor determines which side the Republicans take. Fun, huh?

A History of Silly Lawsuits (Brought to you by the Entertainment Industry)

2007-12-19T19:34:00.009-05:00

So the RIAA is really at it this time.

I don't blame them, on the one hand. Their constituency is the record companies. People are pirating records—STEALING! Some are doing it for fun,. others are doing it for profit. But the RIAA, and the MPAA have shown, time-after-time, that they don't understand the difference between letting the music get out there to cultivate the fan base (many of whom who will eventually buy the record anyway), and people genuinely stealing it, so that they can avoid paying for it. In the early '80s, during the advent of home video/VCRs, the MPAA was certain that home taping, and the new form of piracy now available to any TV watcher, would be the death of the movie industry. They couldn't have been more wrong.

Speaking of "Wrong", stealing is wrong! We know this. But prosecuting students, little old ladies, and others who not only don't have the means to pay outrageous fines, but who can easily play the "victim" card..that's just bad. They can't catch the travelling show that is most "services" that provide a conduit to illegally uploaded files. Not only do these services make it easy for people to download copyrighted material, but many of these "services" lead downloaders to viruses and other nasties that don't belong on anyone's computer.

When George Harrison was sued for copyright infringement / plagiarism, didn't the entire music community just...get a chuckle? George was a prolific, enormously talented composer. He knew the song ("He's So Fine"), acknowledged he knew the song at the time he wrote "My Sweet Lord". Did he steal it? I couldn't see how or why he'd want to. Do they share pitch and rhythm sequences in key parts of the respective songs? Yep. Could George have come up with that on his own? Definitely. Did "He's So Fine" pervade his consciousness enough to come out in one of his own compositions? Sure. Should he have had to pay for that? I don't think so. Doesn't matter. A judge ruled in favor of Bright Music (who owned the copyright to He's So Fine).

I view it as a subconscious version of Variations on a Theme. Many composers have purposely taken an existing melody (their own, or someone else's), and have written entire new compositions based on the original. What Harrison did could, at worst, be similar to a variations on a theme.

But he was a good sport and made an offer to settle the claim of infrigement/plagiarism. Of course, as in all things "big business", it got more complicated than George writing a check.

Intellectual property is an astoundingly important concept. Because we can claim copyright, we allow the great creators among us to be motivated and create new things for the world to enjoy. Intellectual property must be protected, but it must be protected intelligently. Publishers aren't as interested in the work as they are in the revenue that the property generates. Song pimps help the creative people to make a living. But to the publishers, one "girl"'s as good as the next—if they both make money. The "girls" who make the big money are generally treated better, and are defended more vigorously. Exploitation of intellectual property is fine. It's part of commerce, and hopefully, helps the composer, author, visual artist, or whoever, to sustain themselves, and to continue creating new works.

And so, the ridiculous lawsuits continue. More on them later. This post is very old and late.

Keeping the (Strike) Iron Hot:

2007-12-02T10:48:00.000-05:00

Technology Tips for the Writers Guild to create /
maintain public awareness during the strike

Dear Writers:

I wholeheartedly support your cause, and would like to help.

In the first days of the strike, you chanted “1, 2, 3, 4, we just want to write some more.5, 6, 7, 8, Why won’t you negotiate?”.

Clever? Perhaps. On Message? Definitely! Effective? Maybe (at best).

Your job is to put words on paper. Getting those words out to the public isn’t your specialty–nor should it be. In fact, the people against whom the writers are striking are the ones with the Mega-megaphones that reach around the world. (I won't bother linking to them.)

As such, I am not surprised that the writers’ message isn’t getting out as much as it could be. Isn’t it ironic that the primary reason for the strike is that the studios and production companies aren’t willing to better compensate you for internet broadcasts of your work, and that you aren’t ALL using that astoundingly powerful (and practically free) medium to better broadcast your message?

(Wasn't that a hell of a long sentence just now?)

Not only is the internet likely to be the primary broadcast medium in the near future, but it’s going to continue to be a much more versatile means of getting a message out than television is. As many of you know, ANYONE can broadcast on the internet.

Now, about getting the word out:

The Writers Guild of America website (wga.org) offers some news, but...how does the average person know to go there?

For rates ranging from zero to 1/25th of a penny, the Writers Guild (and each of you)
could be sending e-mail newsletters to “push” your message out to te public,
draw them to the Guild’s website, and to other information sources.

“Opt-In” Newsletters have been a very effective way to PULL traffic in by PUSHing a message out.

For zero dollars, the writers you could include links to YouTube videos, and Picasa picture galleries inside those e-mail newsletters.You could link to the amazing content on sites like
The Late Night Writers On Strike site, YouTube, and Deadline Hollywood Daily.

Vertical Response gives an opportunity for those without a lot of money, but with a great cause, to get the word out. Vertical Response will also let you send a wide variety of mailings, get great reporting/statistics on how many people have seen, or opened your message, and allows you to really organize your lists effectively.

For zero dollars, you could EACH be creating a blog, displaying the kinds of writing talent that’s laying fallow. Blogs which mention The Writers Guild, the strike, or anything else related to your cause increase their visibility on the web in general, and on Google specifically.

The Guild held a rally on November 23rd. It was terrific. I had to go to the Writers Guild website to find out there had even been a rally. I went to YouTube, and sure enough, there were video excerpts from it.

How about raising money for the strike fund?
Paypal is a great conduit for contributions to the WGA strike fund! It’d allow anyone
who’s so inclined to contribute to the strike fund. Your blogs, newsletters, and links wherever you can get them, will bring in visibility and money!

There is a FANTASTIC site that David Letterman’s writers put together. It’s full of GREAT, original videos and writing, that’ll keep us HANKERING to see that great writing talent back on TV. In fact, seeing their fantastic work online may give the Letterman audience a whole new perspective on what they could expect from Letterman’s show.

Someone with the pseudonym WriterBoi created a Hip Hop Anthem for the strike.

Holly Hunter did a fabulous short called “Speechless”.

It clearly demonstrates what happens without the Writers Guild membership.

But we had to go SEARCHING for it. Publicizing something that fantastic is EASY.

You’re writers, and you’re doing a fantastic job putting together original content that gets the word out. But the word’s not going far enough! Since the studios aren’t distributing your content on TV and in movies, do it yourselves.
Some of you are doing it already. Do it more. It’s easy. All it takes is a webcam, free software, and an internet connection.

PetitionOnline.com can get your word out to
the masses, and demonstrate a show of support. (There’s already one petition to the studios, add another, or get signatures for the one that’s up there.)...Include a link to it in your blog, your newsletter.

Take your webcam and a laptop to the picket line. Most Apple notebooks of the past 3 or 4 years have built-in webcams. Stream events live! Lord knows that significantly less important things are being streamed live on the web. Some cell phones can even function as webcams.

If you want to communicate the numbers, to those who don’t understand how little the
writers want for their contribution, putting a little gadget on the website that multiplies the number of
streams/users by the pennies the writers are asking for, versus the studio’s income from those same streams might be an effective tool.

Striking blue collar workers have the same tools available that you do, but you, the writers have an astounding talent that can complement the medium so well. Demonstrate further how your talent can still be a powerful force without the networks.

My thoughts are with you.

STRIKE: Showbiz shows unity with the Writers Guild of America!

2007-11-23T09:06:00.000-05:00

STRIKE!

The Writers Guild strike: The creative arts business is among the stranger ones in the world. Musicians, writers, and actors who went from labor to management in some aspect of "the business" can also be employees. In the world of society music/party music, a musician can be an employer (band leader) one day, and an employee for someone else the next. Such a musician may be a pianist who works weddings to pay the bills, but also has a jazz trio which doesn't have great commercial appeal. Perhaps a few nights a month, such a musician would prefer to accept less money, not take an engagement for a wedding, but rather, do something that fulfills his/her artistic need to play music that matters to them, rather than entertaining an audience of semi-drunk, less appreciative people who are really there for something other than the music.

On that same note, most people who are showrunners in Hollywood were once staff writers somewhere. Most of them are still sensitive, creative people who feel for the writers, and believe the cause to be a worthy one. Essentially, you have management striking against other management.

But with this strike, the whole "management striking against other management" thing goes up a notch. Garry Marshall and Norman Lear came out for the writers! Norman Lear created All In The Family—perhaps the greatest sitcom of all time. He created and was the driving force behind MANY other sitcoms. He is a Hollywood giant. Once upon a time he was a staff writer for television shows too. He feels for the writers. That's one of the many things that makes showbusiness so amazing. Norman Lear is, by his actions, telling Rupert Murdoch that he (Murdoch) has no idea what it's like to put words in actors' mouths, be paid a pittance, get none of the credit, and be treated like dirt in comparison to the cast of the show. Without the writers, the cast would be nothing. Norman knows it at least as well as anyone else in Hollywood, and he's in a position of tremendous power. And yet HE comes out to support the writers. That's awesome.

Garry Marshall once wrote for The Dick Van Dyke Show. He conceived and directed episodes of Happy Days. He is now a major player in Hollywood also. He also directed many huge hit movies. Garry Marshall and Norman Lear bonded in support of the writers, and came out to one of the rallies. Now THAT is a show of unity.

On a Garry Marshall note, right after Robin Williams got famous for his role on Mork and Mindy, he would perform standup comedy for little or no money in "hole in the wall" clubs in California and elsewhere. He would frequently get calls from the audience asking for "Mork". He would respond to those calls by saying "No, no....Not doin' the Mork. That's why I come out here..to do something DIFFERENT." That would get tremendous applause from the audience.

Why are the writers striking? Without the writers there are no TV shows, no movies..in fact, not much of anything in commercial programming, really. Much of television production has come to a standstill in the past few weeks; movie production at the major studios is down to less than nothing; and all because the writers want a small taste of digital media sales of their intellectual property. The studios are losing millions right now, with no production going on.

And yet, late night TV show hosts SUPPORT THE WRITERS. Jay Leno, Conan O' Brien, and David Letterman were/are all writers. They understand and sympathize with the writers' demands for compensation. Leno and Letterman are contributing to the writers' strike funds, and are doing their part to ensuring the writers don't starve during the strike.

Jimmy Kimmel hosted a major awards show, and did so (semi) unscripted because he wasn't allowed to write for it. Jimmy is a member of the Writers Guild, and takes that membership seriously. Part of his job is to be funny, and look good on television. He chose to risk embarrassing himself in front of a huge audience rather than break the WGA strike. Because he's a professional, he was able to make the evening somewhat funny, but there were many presenters who couldn't do much more than read the names of the nominees, and subsequently read the winner's name.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart requires fresh takes on the day's news (most) every Monday through Thursday. Jon's a very funny man, but there's no way he could possibly write every joke in 4 monologues a week, AND bits they do within the show, AND prepare properly for interviews with his guests. It's just not possible.

So what happens? The Daily Show is in reruns now. This will be the 4th week of reruns. When the strike's over, Viacom will require a major marketing campaign just to tell the regular viewers that there'll be new episodes on the air. Advertising dollars, production costs, and so many other things contribute to major losses. I'm guessing the studios might be willing to give up a small taste of digital media sales, and acknowledge the writers' contribution to their multi-gazillion dollar industry, and put an end to everyone's losses.

Many famous actors have come out for the writers. The writers are doing a great job of conveying their message too. They send effective messages about both the reasoning behind their stance, and their feelings about the offers being put forth by the studios/producers. The actors know they'd be nowhere without great writing. Ray Romano (also a standup comic and writer), Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, Rachel Griffiths, Elliot Gould, Rob Lowe and Kathy Griffin.

Even a few famous musicians came out to support the writers.

So where's government in all this? How will government affect the future of the internet? Some candidates clearly don't get it, or are in the pockets of media conglomerates. Others, like John Edwards, not only get it, but will advocate for those who need it.

John and Elizabeth Edwards just cancelled an upcoming appearance on The View because he wanted to support the writers, and wouldn't cross a picket line. YAY, John!

So what does all this mean? The top of the Hollywood food chain doesn't want to give up 4 cents of internet back-end profits to the people who write the scripts which make everything in Hollywood move. Many people in positions of power support the writers. And yet, the strike's in its 4th week. There is one longer writers strike on record, from 1988. Most writers in Hollywood don't make much money. If their work product is the backbone of Hollywood, those at the top of the food chain ought to consider for a moment what happens when the writers think of themselves and their families, and tearfully put aside their craft, just to figure out how make a living wage.

Smarten Up, Conglomeratis! You have more than enough money to give the writers what they need.

My thoughts are with you great creative people.

Major Record Labels, Darwinism, and the Future of Intellectual Property

2007-11-10T22:38:00.001-05:00

It's been over a month since my last post here. However, nothing has changed, and everything has changed in the world(s) of major purveyors of intellectual property. And with the Writers Guild on strike, it makes ya think (okay, it makes me think) about the whole intellectual property landscape, and how physical media are overvalued.

The short version: Intellectual Property is about what's in the mind(s) of its originator(s)! So many are concerned these days with the media on which the darn things are sold. The physical forms by which some entrepreneurs choose to sell intellectual property are but one means of capitalizing on it. Even those who focus on the digital transmission of music, lyrics, screenplays, and whatever else, are often myopic in their view.

Sorry, I'm full of big words and complex sentence structures today.

Let's review what's gone on in the past 6 weeks or so.

Radiohead has released their current album without the backing of a record company. They've made some money, and are sufficiently tired of the record companies' b.s., that they've decided to sell their album directly, and to make it available via their website for download (or purchase of physical media). That's pretty impressive. What's even more radical about Radiohead's move is that they are charging on a "pay what you wish" scale. When a friend first told me about it, I didn't believe it, so I downloaded it for free. I'm not a Radiohead fan, but I'm sure a fan of their marketing tactics.

The RIAA sued an individual for file-sharing/downloading music illegally. They were probably mistaken in going after the one they sued. No one could prove that the alleged file-sharer was even the one who did the deed. But before we get into the analysis of this event, let's continue with the next one.
Madonna has signed a $120 million record deal. The deal is not with a major record company, but rather, with Live Nation—a concert promoter and ticket sales outfit. She walked away from Warner Brothers, when they wouldn't "step up" with a viable offer. Warner was the first major label to sign her.
The Writers Guild of America is on strike right now. The only issue they have with movie and television studios is back end profits on digital media sales. Everyone there is being somewhat forward-thinking in their understanding that there's real money in selling and broadcasting over the internet.

There's some commonality in the lessons we can learn from these recent events. There are hundreds of others which made the news this year, and in recent prior years, from which we can learn similar lessons.

How about these for starters?

- Myopia has little to do with your personal collection of hallucinogens. (Okay, that was an awful pun). There are many ways in which someone who could have profited from the above-mentioned events, chose to lose money, because they had tunnel-vision about how they sell intellectual property, and/or how the profits should be divided.

- Profit centers change. Some are so stuck to the old models /their old ideas about how to make money, and/or what makes money, that they eschew change, in favor of their "old faithful". This is nothing new.

Blacksmiths aren't making quite as good a living these days as they did before cars were commercially available. Those who loved being blacksmiths, and learned their trade weren't about to give it up. They probably had to focus on different audiences. That's one way to stay in business.

When VCRs first came out, the MPAA was against them. They said that home taping and viewing would mean the end of movies and movie theaters. You tell me: How are movies doing today? :) G'ahead...tell me. Say it. They're making a dollar or two, aren't they? And DVD sales? Not bad, ay? The studios know where the money is. That leads to the next point...and the next post.

For most of us, "Record Deals" aren't much of a deal at all!

2007-10-12T08:14:00.000-04:00

This one's for you musicians out there! I was reading today's edition of Billboard online, and saw the most wonderful thing—a side-by-side summary of the Pop chart, the "Digital/Mobile" chart, and the "Heatseekers/Independent" chart! WOW!!! Even if advertisers dominate major entertainment industry publications, the "little guy" now has great potential for exposure. Twenty years ago that could NEVER have happened.

Case Study: Ingrid Michaelson

This week's #1 record (on Billboard's Independent chart) is by an artist named Ingrid Michaelson. I just got a small taste of it, and she can count me in as a new fan. We music fans now have a chance to learn about new music not put out by the consolidated major labels. All the really good music has a shot now.

You may ask: "Dana, how is all this possible?"...I said "You may ask"...So go ahead, ask. I'm waiting!....Okay, fine....I've asked for you.

The internet has been the greatest revolution for independent musicians since the phonograph! It is also helping independent authors and filmmakers to get an audience without "the majors" in their respective industries. Not only is Ingrid Michaelson's record listed, but also a bio, song list, a link to her website, and links to buy her music!!!!

You may now ask: "Dana, how do we get in on this goldmine?"...Now that you see how the "You may ask.." game is played, go ahead...Ask!

If you're an independent recording musician, you probably just want to write, or play, or make records, without having to mail a CD to a fan in Omaha who's just bought it from your website.

Ingrid, and thousands of independent musicians like her get it. They have signed up with fulfillment services like CD Baby , and their records are on iTunes.

(Note: Many artists want iTunes to sell their music. iTunes screens very carefully for submissions. They are, in effect, a record label, but they've been very fair in compensating the artists whose music they sell.)

Some independent musicians "Self produce". They use what resources they have available to make a record, and put out the best product they can. That might mean a basement studio, cover art by the bassist who is a graphic designer by day (till the band makes it), a nice duplication facility and printing shop like Lulu.com or VistaPrint respectively, and maybe borrowing a few bucks from Mom, Dad, or your stock portfolio. If you don't have the million dollar studio available to you, don't complain. Some of the greatest records of all time (including one referenced toward the bottom of this blog entry) were made with a 4 track tape recorder.

Many truly independent record labels serve niche markets, just like in the '60s. However, today these labels can produce high quality records for a relatively low budget; they can publicize in ways we were only dreaming of twenty years ago; and they can reach a worldwide audience for a fraction of a penny per new fan.

Once again..You may ask:

So what's so great about the majors?
They're rakin' in the dough, so they must be doin' somethin' right.

Major record labels, movie studios, and publishing companies all offer the same things to the artists they sign: publicity, distribution, and the kinds of resources that allow the artist to create, unhampered by minutiae. The prospect of having to promote the record on a "micro" level is frightening to an artist who's been signed to a major label. The record company will be setting up publicity tours that get to thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people at once. You can't be selling "onesy-twosey", or you'll lose money-money. (Not the song, just the moolah). Not that art is about commerce, mind you, but you do have to make a living, or you won't be able to keep a band together.

The majors take a huge cut of the artist's profits, they often find some way to steal (all or part of) the artist's publishing income, cashing in on the artist's desire to be heard by millions rather than by tens of thousands, and they negotiate most "first time" deals paying the artist a pittance. They also tell the artists stupid things like "We want hits!". Something tells me the artists already know that.

In short, the major labels and big publishing companies are the sadistic dominatrixes of the record industry. Sadistic Dominatrixes can be perfectly lovely, but their bent is to be in charge taking what they want and need. If you happen to get something out of it, bully for you! The nice dominatrixes are the ones who work with you, and fulfill a mutually beneficial fantasy..unless they're getting paid. If they're pros, they'll work toward only what you want, but will make it seem like they're in charge, because that's part of the customer's fantasy. The customer may say "Beat me, Mistress...Oh, yes..harder..now down a little to the left..Yes, that's it. Thank You, Mistress". Guess who's really in charge there.

That was a nice diversion, wasn't it? Most entertainment industry blogs don't venture (however briefly) into adult entertainment, do they?

Two Stories from which we can learn

Hello, Dolly!
Dolly Parton recounted how Elvis Presley wanted to record I Will Always Love You in 1973 or 1974. She got the call from Colonel Tom Parker—Elvis's manager. Colonel Tom told Dolly good news and bad news. The good news was Elvis LOVED the song, and wanted to record it. The bad news was that Elvis only recorded songs to which he owned half the publishing rights. Dolly politely declined Elvis's offer. In my estimation Dolly did the smart thing. She pointed out that Elvis recorded songs to which he owned half the publishing rights, which is why most of his songs are junk. (Dolly used a less polite word than "junk" to describe Elvis's catalog).

And look how BIG she won by having refused to give up her publishing! In 1992, The Bodyguard featured I Will Always Love You as its love theme. Whitney Houston performed it for the soundtrack of the movie, it was HUGE hit for Whitney. The song was nominated for an Oscar. And now, every American Idol wannabe who performs the song on TV is a cash cow for Dolly. Every time The Bodyguard is on HBO, and every time a 13 year old hackette (not as in Buddy Hackette (sic)) , thinking she's the next Beyoncé, gets on TV auditioning for the reality shows, the song makes money for Dolly and her publishing company! Yay, Dolly!

EMI got The Beatles for a song
The Beatles' first record deal with EMI in 1963 paid them (The Beatles) a pittance. The contract's term was from their 1963 releases With The Beatles (in the UK) and Meet The Beatles (in the US), until 1966.

In 1966, they were the biggest band in the world. To paraphrase the great comedian and author Jonathan Katz (best known for his groundbreaking animated series Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, and his new hit radio show HEY WE'RE BACK!): To say The Beatles had a strong negotiating position in 1966, would be like saying that The Shining was a movie about writer's block.

In their second agreement with EMI, The Beatles had a much better record deal. Subsequent to 1966, they were compensated in pounds (or dollars, if you wish) per-record sold, and not shillings (or pennies for us Americans). But you have to be that big to make that happen with a company the size of EMI.

And the deal was even sweeter for The Beatles. Not only was their publishing left intact, but they'd decided to stop touring. September 1966 was their last live show (except for the performance on the rooftop featured in their movie/record Let It Be. I'm not aware of any musician working today who is so popular that they don't have to perform live to promote their records. From 1967 to 1970, The Beatles were a "studio band". And their first creation after having quit touring? Seargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

So what's the bottom line in all this? YOU CAN DO IT! Go make a record! Use the resources available to the independent musician. You may not have the big money Dolly Parton does. But keep workin' at it like this woman on the right is. The resources are MUCH easier to get to today than they were 20 years ago. Talent, ambition, and drive will take you a lot further than they used to. If you'd like to consider us as one of your trusted resources, write to me. I'd love to see if we can help you.

Helpin' you get to the gig.

2007-10-07T19:49:00.000-04:00

So...some people "space", and some get to the gig. Different people work best with different tools to help them fulfill their obligations and appointments.

Among the many things that'll keep us on track are:

Smartphones
Contact Management Software
E-mail reminders and text messages
"Wake up call" services

Smartphones
These puppies usually have a rolodex, calendar, "to-do" list, e-mail, and many other handy-dandy features.
The Palm Treo

Palm has been developing handheld devices for over 15 years. They've gotten quite good at it, and have a versatile line of products. The Treo—Palm's Smartphone—probably has the most gadgety feel to it (of all the Palm products). It offers e-mail, web access, a rolodex, a calendar, and a to-do-lis. Many models have a (still and video) camera built in. The Treo has hundreds of optional features (many of them free). You can, if you wish have a Navigation system (for getting walking or driving directions to and from anywhere) for your Treo. You can turn it into a portable music-player, get an online restaurant guide for whatever town you're in, and many other things.

The Treo is far from the only player in the handheld game.

Apple has developed the much-hyped iPhone. The iPhone (pictured to the left, fingers not included) has all the features that most Treos have, and it includes Apple's iPod technology built right in. The iPod is widely considered to be the best portable music (and video) player available. So, those who really want their tunes with their personal organizing tool, might like the iPhone better than the Treo. The screen is quite clear, and there are many built-in features. Since it's new, there aren't quite as many "add-on" products for the iPhone yet. But you can bet they'll be out soon.

For those who care mostly about e-mail, there's Research In Motion's Blackberry.

There are many more handheld devices, but..you get the idea.

The little toys aren't the only answer. Maybe you just want your phone to be a phone. Okay. No problem. For you we have...

Contact Management Software
If you prefer to be at your computer to plan your day, and prefer to carry a list of what you're doing that day, there are many solutions for you. The most popular of these is known as contact management software or Contact Relationship Management software, if you care to use the industry term.

It'll keep track of your "rolodex", calendar, to-do list, and hopefully, a history of every "contact" you've had with clients, prospects, vendors, or your great aunt Tilly, if you wish.

If you wish to take your CRM on the road, most of them synchronize withSmartphones.

There are SO many examples of CRM tools, that we'd do a disservice to any one product by naming only a few here. We have our favorites, and help folks using PCs, Macs, or..nothing in particular to select the one that's best for them.

HERE is a key point, though, with selecting a CRM tool. If you are responsible for getting someone to wherever they have to be, but aren't necessarily in the same office as them, you should make sure you're using the same tool they are. We have been to MANY offices where the boss likes one calendar software, and the personal assistant who's new, uses the one that came with her computer. (Again, we won't name names. Contact me if you have questions.

We'll skip e-mail reminders and text messages for now. Let's explore a low-tech option.

Wake Up Call Services
Maybe you're a low tech person, and have enough devices in your life. Fair enough! Think about using a wake-up call service. They do MORE than 5 AM calls. They can be notified to call you 5 times a day if you need it, and the wake up call times can vary every day if you wish. Some have automated voicemail greetings/reminders, and others have actual humans ring you up.

Not sure how to go about setting it all up? Give us a call, send me a note.

Space—The Final Excuse...

2007-10-02T22:48:00.000-04:00

Today I recalled a few of the stories performing artists have told me over the years about "getting to the gig".

My favorite, and the saddest of them is the following: Years ago, I was on a recording session with legendary guitarist Eric Gale. Eric told me one of his "Dude, I Spaced" stories...though in his story, he was a beneficiary of that too-often used sub-excuse.

A well-known jazz composer and bandleader (whom we won't name here), was contracted to play a concert tour in Japan. He was travelling with a rhythm section (that's guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums), and some horns (saxophones, trombones, trumpets, perhaps). When the bandleader arrived in Japan, he hooked up with all but one of the band members. The guitarist he'd originally hired hadn't shown up. The bandleader called the guitarist's home in New York, to find that the guitarist was not only still at home, but was high on cocaine. He had forgotten to go to Japan! Eric was called in at the last minute, went to Japan, and saved the tour.

Imagine you're responsible for hauling all the equipment necessary for your employees to do their time-sensitive job, you take a left on the highway instead of a right, wind up 60 miles off course, and two hours late. Chances are that someone (besides you) will be slightly annoyed at this "turn" of events.

It's safe to assume that most people who have made it to the higher echelons of showbusiness, have earned their status, in part, because they made it to "the gig" a large majority of the time. Whether it was a 6AM call on a movie set, a deadline for a manuscript, or a 4PM bar-mitzvah, the successful people generally do what it takes to ensure they are there to do their thing when their audience expects them to be there.

Woody Allen taught us that "90% of life is just showing up".

Comedian Barry Sobel told us one of the many differences between New York and L.A.. He said that "In New York, when you tell your friend 'I'll meet you at the movie theater at 10 o' clock', you meet them at the theater at 10 o' clock!'...In L.A., they might not show up at all! The next morning, you call them up, and they say 'Dude! I spaced!'...'Dude, I spaced' is an excuse in L.A.!!".

Well, clearly the "Dude, I spaced!" people aren't ones we'd expect to see starring in a Broadway show, or playing concerts at arenas around the world. Typically, those who are successful show up on time, and rarely (if ever) "space".

Most of us are just hard-working people. If we have to go to Japan (or perhaps to downtown Kansas City) for work, we wouldn't be likely to forget that. In this day of so many things competing for our attention—advertisements everywhere, e-mail, podcasts, children, work deadlines, and...just the many distractions of day-to-day life in the "age of technology"—it's conceivable that even we might "space" on some important obligation or other. We might not forget to go to Japan, but..something that's time-sensitive might escape our attention once in a while.

How do we reduce the chances of missing an appointment, then?

There is an abundance of tools available to us today that will do everything from beep and buzz in our hands at a pre-set time, send us e-mail reminders well in advance of our appointments, pop up on our computer screens, and maybe even come to our door, ring our bell, and escort us out to whatever the "gig" of the moment is.

In the next post, we'll explore some of those options. Stay tuned. Write to me if you have questions.

(Introductory Post) I got those "Low tech profession in a high tech world blues"

2007-09-21T06:37:00.000-04:00

So..here's another techie blog. Wonderful, right? Well, maybe you'll find something here that'll be useful to you. Whether you're in the arts and entertainment industries or not, you may find something here that you can use in your own work and play. If you do, drop me a note, or please post a comment on the blog.

Dragonfly Technologies is dedicated to serving the arts and entertainment—actors, authors, screenwriters, comedians, musicians of all sorts, dancers, general performers and all those who help the artists "get to the gig". The accountants, attorneys, personal assistants, managers, agents, and occasionally housekeepers of the creators and performers are a central part of making sure that the artist gets to the gig, and has more gigs to get to after the current one's over.

Performance and creative artistry are, at their core, very low tech. A standup comic uses his or her brain, body, and possibly a microphone, to evoke involuntary physical responses from another human being. Hopefully that involuntary physical response is laughter. All the comic really needs (unless that comic is Carrot Top or Gallagher) is their mind and their body to do their job. Richard Pryor did standup comedy from a wheelchair during his last years living with Multiple Sclerosis. Jonathan Katz still does great standup, as well as many other really funny things, and he too has MS. (More on Jonathan later).

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet without the aid of Final Draft. Actors were asking "To be, or not to be?" long before there were blowdryers, house lights, or instant-drying nail polish. Mozart wrote 41 symphonies without Finale. Does that mean we should all be luddites, and use only our raw talent to bring new creative works into the world? Of course not!

Johnny Carson said that the definition of an optimist is "an accordionist with a beeper". Today we might substitute cell-phone or Blackberry for "beeper", but you get the idea. In today's world, comedians have Blackberries. Every so often I receive last-minute instructions / requests for website updates for the headliner comics, or high-profile authors we serve. Those requests are usually along the lines of "It's 12:45. I'm going to be on CNBC at 2PM. Please make sure we put up A, B, C, and my whole January calendar on the site by 1:45.".

Although we have a great staff for that kind of thing, pulling off that kind of last minute update isn't always easy. But the instant communication became possible when the creative folks and his/her team use the right tools to collaborate on getting to the gig, and parlaying the current gig into the next one, the bigger one, the one that'll allow their agent to get a better computer.

We're there to make sure the creative artist has all the best technology tools to aid them in their process; that they use those tools as efficiently as possible; and that they get to the gig, publicize the current and upcoming ones, and can continue unencumbered in creating things that make the world better.

So..bottom line: Creative arts which are low tech can benefit from high tech tools to do low tech things. Those who assist performers, artists or writers should definitely make the best use possible of the tech tools, so that the creative artist can be left alone to do their thing. Lawyers, accountants, agents, managers, personal assistants, website developers and computer techs for the artist, should all be using the best tools possible to collaborate better toward serving the creative professional, and helping them to bring joy to the world.