Rebel, Rebel
Rock star David Bowie and carmaker Audi have announced a contest: mash-up (mix together) two Bowie songs to win an MP3 recording of your remix and an Audi TT. How progressive, really, inviting fans to compete for violating your copyrights. Of course, it doesn’t say you can publish the remix, like Endless Noise did on its site with the two segments it created from the old “Rebel, Rebel” and the new ‘Never Get Old” for an Audi TV commercial.
But hang on, “David Bowie is a copyright terrorist”, says Canadian poster Max Keiser and author of the forthcoming novel “Buy Love, Sell Fear”, writing on Digital Rights on the blog KarmaBanque, the anti-American-corporate-culture-and-capitalism site.
By using his future royalties as collateral, Bowie was the first artist to employ David Pullman’s financing innovation in 1997, and raised $55 million. Keiser says that bond-holder value is being eroded by file sharing online, and it should be boycotted right up there with Monsanto for genetically modifying our food supply and effectively ‘renting’ seed to third world farmers that has to be renewed every season, Microsoft for monopolizing the software of computer users, the RIAA for filing lawsuits against citizen non-profit music pirates, and an array of others.
The term mash-up was popularized with the notorious “The Gray Album,” a blend of The Beatles “White” and Jay-Z “Black” albums by American DJ Dangermouse, which reportedly traded a million copies aroung the Internet before it was blocked by EMI last month. Referring to PlayFair, the anti-DRM hack for Apple iTunes copy protection encryption code wrapping downloaded tracks named FairPlay, someone on an anti-DRM post remarked taking that file off the net was going to be like trying to urine out of a swimming pool.
Despite the success of his latest album, Bowie Bonds are hovering just slightly over junk value.
Remember Bowie Bonds? Some regard the junk bond financier later convicted of securities fraud Michael Milken as a genius. Similar securities deals since have involved:
SESAC, a US music performing rights organization ($29 million, May 1999, Universal Credit Corp.);
Chrysalis Group, a British music publisher with a 50,000 song catalog (March, 2001, Royal Bank of Scotland);
James Brown, the Godfather of Soul (June, 1999, $20 million bond issues, David Pullman);
Marvin Gaye’s estate, Iron Maiden, Rod Stewart, and the songwriting teams of Edward and Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier, and Ashford & Simpson.
However, the activity seems to have waned over the last few years, in keeping with the record industry sales slump, the economic recession, and the bursting of the dot-com venture capital bubble.
DigiCirc bills itself as the first music rights trading market, sort of like an Ebay of copyrights. To use it an artist would lease out their copyrights for a limited period, up to 36 months, like a car (hopefully with a longer residual value).
The concept gives artists an equity instrument in addition to bank debt, and is promoted to the investor as being attractive to capture the upside of an emerging young artist, by fueling their growth and generating an upward spiral. And interestingly, it is promoted to the artist as an alternative to signing with a major label. Labels now can “bid for a percentage of the artist’s music copyrights, without having to sign the artists to the label.”
Nice theory, but since forming in June 2003, how are they doing? Is this a viable alternative to what George Zieman, musician/activist and frequent contributor to the Boycott-RIAA site, refers to as “the only game in town”?
If so, Bowie is a rebel squared.
posted by julia b schwerinÂ