Wired Magazine had a very interesting article about more bad news for the record companies.  A copyright ticking time bomb is set to explode on them in 2013.

Basically, the 1975 Copyright Act states that all copyrights granted after 1978 revert back to their original owners after 35 years, with some marginal cases excepted.  This means that starting in 2013 bands like the Eagles can own the rights to distribute and sell their songs, keeping all the profits for themselves.  No record companies needed, just go straight to Eaglesband.com.

This must be especially disturbing to the record companies, who tried and failed to get the statute changed back in 1999.  One of their tried and true ways of making money has been to re-issue their catalogs in new formats.  This was, for example, the primary source of the record industry boom in the 1980′s and 1990′s, as everybody bought CDs for the music they already had on tapes and vinyl.  One imagines the record companies would hope to do the same thing again as Rock Band and Guitar Hero continue to expand.  But it looks like they won’t be able to suck on the teats of those same mega-bands again, at least without some serious renegotiations from a very disadvantageous position.

Of course, the record companies may find some way to add value to the process of making and selling music.  Maybe by providing marketing and global reach, covering start-up costs, as well as some kind of central distribution point.  But if you think the music industry has been changing a lot in the last few years, just wait.  In 2013 the odyssey will move to another level.

One of our preoccupations here concerns the relations between music and the ambiance of a place.  Also, the constellations of people, businesses, networks, and practices that make a scene.  You couldn’t find a better window into those topics than a recent documentary about Toronto’s worlds of music, City Sonic.

City Sonic is an online collection of many short videos.  Each one focuses on a particular artist and some place that was transformative for her or his musical development.  You can also view maps showing the places each film depicts, illustrating powerfully the spatial concentration characteristic of many scenes.

It also is an innovative business and distribution model.  The videos can be downloaded and viewed on phones.  There are links to the bands’ myspace pages as well as to the clubs’ web pages.  The musicians and clubs in turn promote the film.  Perhaps a more distinctively Canadian aspect is that large portions of the funding were provided by public agencies, in addition to some corporate sponsors, notably mobile phone companies Bell and Telus.

Musicians, film-makers, club-owners, media companies, government agencies all working in tandem. Who is missing?  Oh yeah, the record companies.

Sonic Unyon label HQ in Hamilton, Ontario

This Friday, December 4 the Martin Prosperity Institute’s Kevin Stolarick will participate in a panel discussion on “Acting Locally” at the Hamilton Music Awards Careers in Music conference at Mohawk College. Admission is free for secondary and post-secondary students.

The details:

This year’s HMA “Careers in Music” Conference is dedicated to unlocking the full potential of Hamilton: The Music Capital of Canada. Representatives from Hamilton’s music industry, City of Hamilton, educational institutions and the international music industry, will propose types of engagement for all stakeholders and the expected results that this new strategy would have for those with an interest in Hamilton’s music industry on a local, national and international level. Thinking Globally Acting Locally will also feature a keynote address, creative clinics, technical workshops, and networking.

Thinking Globally Acting Locally is geared towards artists, students, industry, civic employees, politicians, marketing professionals and those interested in starting or furthering their career in the music industry.

Full details here.

Once again the Economist has a thoughtful perspective on the challenges facing the music business. This piece points to the rise of distributors who provide music for free (but legally) by monetizing the audio streams in a variety of creative ways:

The past year has seen rapid growth of digital music services that accept the post-Napster consensus that music should be free, or at least appear to be free. The companies involved range from Google, which now facilitates music streaming from its search page in America, to Nokia, which bundles access to a music-download service with some of its mobile phones. “The next big thing is a dozen different things,” says Thomas Hesse of Sony Music Entertainment.

Dave Kusek at Future of Music blog has been sharing his version of this “streaming-everything” vision for some time.

Mariah Carey a genius of the new music economy?

That is the impression one gets from an article in the Times of London.  The article describes how Carey’s new album is more or less being sponsored by Elle Magazine, outside the record company system.  Buyers of Mariah’s new album will receive a special edition of Elle, full of Mariah-related products they can buy.  Mariah has some financial stake in nearly all the products.

This reverses the normal musician-advertiser relationship.  Instead of a musician paying for advertisement in a magazine, now the magazine is paying the musician to be advertised by her album.

Here’s the key quote from MC herself, about why she does not view the relationship with Elle as “selling out”:

I don’t care if the rock-band person thinks, ‘Oh, I’m a sellout’. Well,guess what? They’re a sellout anyway for going to a record company. I’m sorry — you are. You want to just play in bands in bars? Then do that. Or play on the streets. And if someone throws you some dollars, then you can go get a soda. But you could also help somehow merge the soda business with the music business in a way that is creative.

These sorts of mergings of the music business with other businesses are becoming increasingly popular, as musicians try to find new ways to use their music to create economic value.  Another example comes from rap, where the Black Keys are collaborating with Damon Dash, Mos Def and some others on a new album called BlakRoc.  How is the record company commemorating this new partnership? By building a custom BlakRoc Cammaro and selling it alongside the album itself.

Brian Eno curated this year’s Vivid Sydney Music Fest in Sydney, Australia.  During a press conference, he discussed his idea of the “scenius” in contrast to the “genius.”

So, as I told you, I was an art student and, like all art students, I was encouraged to believe that there were a few great figures like Picasso and Kandinsky, Rembrandt and Giotto and so on who sort-of appeared out of nowhere and produced artistic revolution.

As I looked at art more and more, I discovered that that wasn’t really a true picture. What really happened was that there was sometimes very fertile scenes involving lots and lots of people – some of them artists, some of them collectors, some of them curators, thinkers, theorists, people who were fashionable and knew what the hip things were – all sorts of people who created a kind of ecology of talent. And out of that ecology arose some wonderful work. The period that I was particularly interested in, ’round about the Russian revolution, shows this extremely well. So I thought that originally those few individuals who’d survived in history – in the sort-of “Great Man” theory of history – they were called “geniuses”. But what I thought was interesting was the fact that they all came out of a scene that was very fertile and very intelligent. So I came up with this word “scenius” – and scenius is the intelligence of a whole… operation or group of people. And I think that’s a more useful way to think about culture, actually. I think that – let’s forget the idea of “genius” for a little while, let’s think about the whole ecology of ideas that give rise to good new thoughts and good new work.

I find the idea of “scenius” as an ecology of activities that activate new possibilities to be beautiful.  Something like it underlies my and others’ efforts to map the “scenescapes” of cities in order to discern how different forms of scenius – different constellations of ideas, establishments, audiences, networks, venues, industries, cafes, bars, and more — encourage, so to speak, different forms of genius.

My only concern would be that we take care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Certainly the scenius of a place provides the ferment out of which something wonderful and new arises.  However, it takes special insight and talent to take that ferment, give it shape, and make it speak both within and beyond the scene.  And it is probably also the case that scenes frequently emerge through the efforts of a few people with special talents (“geniuses”) who plant the seeds that grow into scenes.  That is, scenius needs genius as much as genius needs scenius.

H/T: synthtopia.

And, to see some scenius in action, check out this youtube clip of Eno’s performance of “Pure Scenius” at the Sydney Opera House.