Every song should be a hit.

I got turned on to an artist today. An artist that had me hooked on words alone—if they delivered as promised, they had me as a guaranteed fan.

Turns out, they’re every bit as good as the review said.

The downside is I have to steal their music.

I’m not sure if they ever even sold it, or if they were just giving it away free. Doesn’t matter. Somebody threw a takedown notice at them and they complied.

But anyone with half a brain should know you can’t take anything off the internet. Maybe ten years ago, but people are wise to that shit now. Torrents make it easier than ever, and believe me—when something gets taken down by force, people flock to it. They want it ten times worse than before…but by acting so stingy and selfish, copyright holders are throwing away money. How is that, you might ask? Let me explain, and then you can decide for yourself whether the current system works best.

What this artist is doing is brilliant. They’re called Team Teamwork and so far they’ve released three albums. One is a set of standard mashups, but the other two are incredible mashups of rap and videogame soundtracks. This type of thing will never be a mainstream hit, but there are nerds everywhere who would die to get a copy of Busta Rhymes rapping over the Gerudo Valley theme music. And as much as nerds like to “cheat” the system to get free music, they also show incredible loyalty to what they perceive as a quality product. Something like “Ocarina of Rhyme” would, at the very least, solicit a couple of bucks in a PayPal donation.

But the rights holder says no, forget it, you’re violating our ownership of the original songs. Take it down, scrap it. What happens from there?

1. The artist takes it down.
2. Someone (maybe even the artist?) puts up a torrent. It takes 30 seconds.
3. Someone in the media writes about the takedown. (Pretty much guaranteed these days.)
4. People SCRAMBLE to get a copy. Demand is through the roof.

You mean an artist has produced music that people want? Well, to hell with that! Ownership trumps everything, apparently.

The problem is, rights holders (don’t even get me started on intellectual property in the first place) are operating under a set of legal precedents that were established way, way before anything like the internet ever existed. There was no way to predict what would happen now that information can be shared globally in an instant.

So, traditionally, the school of thought is that when someone violates a copyright, you shut them down in order to protect your business. That works if someone is hand-printing copies of your book and selling them cheap on the street corner. It doesn’t really work the same if someone is scanning a digital copy of your book and selling it on the internet…you’re talking about two very different things now.

“No,” the rights holder would say. “They are still stealing my copyright and should be punished.”

Not so fast. Remember, people will only seek to provide goods and services that are in demand. If you only publish physical books, and do not sell electronic copies, then it’s clear that people want something you are not providing, and are being forced to look elsewhere.

The same logic applies to music. The artist that produces a mashup of rap and videogame music is not stealing either one. They are creating an entirely NEW product, for which there is SIGNIFICANT demand.

If a rights holder has done the research to know an artist is using their copyrighted material, then the rights holder already knows exactly how much is being used, and what a fair amount would be to charge for it. It’s called licensing. Clearing the sample. Whatever.

It would be to the benefit of the artist AND the original rights holder to negotiate a payment structure moreso than it would be to just demand that they stop creating something that people obviously want.

I don’t know the backstory of this particular situation, but I do know how record companies and other rights holders operate. And they don’t seem to care about the little guys, the up and coming artists. But I would argue that they should, because yeah, maybe they only make a hundred bucks off of Team Teamwork. But the mentality of working WITH an artist rather than AGAINST them will soon pay off, and when there are 40 more artists out there using your material, all of a sudden you’re making $4,000. And it can go up from there.

The solution is mandatory sample licensing, the same way that we already have mandatory mechanical licensing. You can record a cover of any song you want—as long as it’s been released commercially in some form—and no one can stop you from selling it. You just have to pay the licensing fee of a couple cents per track sold.

I know there’s all kinds of arguments about why sample licensing is much more complicated than ordinary mechanical licensing, and it’s not. It isn’t. Just set a price that everyone can agree on—yes, you have to pay the owner of the song and the owner of the sound recording, but who cares? That’s petty shit. Just work out the details, stick a price tag on it and let the artists go to work. That’s where the record companies can recover and begin to earn some trust back from artists as well as consumers.

Say the fee is 10 cents per track, to simplify things. And let’s say each Team Teamwork track has one rap vocal and one piece of videogame music. The guy who owns the rap song gets 10 cents. The guy who owns the videogame music gets 10 cents. Team Teamwork sells the tracks for 99 cents each, and the store takes 15 cents. The artist then earns 44 cents from every sale, and EVERYONE gets paid. And EVERYONE WINS, because now fans can buy the music and the artist doesn’t have to cower in fear just because they want to sample a killer track.

No one wants to hear about some stuffed shirt exec clamping down on a creative artist for stupid, backwards reasons. I don’t care what the reason is, to the consumer it just looks mean.

I wish I could point you to an online store where you could buy Team Teamwork. But sadly the powers that be have decided that’s not a worthy option. So you can download everything for free at the following link:

http://8tracks.com/teamteamwork

Click on each album, and you’ll see a download link right below the audio player. If that fails, there’s always the torrents…

(Disclaimer: I realize this is just one person representing one show, and in no way do I mean for this to be taken as a generalization of producers and music supervisors, most of whom are willing to pay a fair amount for the music they use.)

For all the talk about piracy, no one has said much about what goes on inside the industry. TV shows can be a great opportunity for an up-and-coming artist, but should we throw all our rights out the window just for the chance to be featured? Here’s an e-mail I received the other day:

Hello,

We are looking for background music for the next round of episodes for [name of show removed]. Our goal is to give exposure to as many bands as possible through our selections.

If your song is used, the selected track will be tagged with a lower third graphic when played in show which will include the artist’s name, title of track and label. The song and band will also be posted on the [show] website as further promotion. You can see examples here:

Tagged Track: [link removed]

Links to Band: [link removed]

The music must be instrumental only. Ideally, we are looking for songs with the vocal tracks removed that is good mood music, high energy rock, pop songs, ect.

All songs (publishing and masters) must be licensed to us gratis, worldwide, in all media and in perpetuity as this is a promo trade.

If you are interested in working with us, please contact me at [e-mail removed] with streams to potential tracks, contact info and band websites (myspace is acceptable).

Thank you
[name removed]
Series Producer

I don’t care how the music industry is supposed to work. From where I am, I can look at their practices and decide for myself if it’s something I want to go along with. And this is a bunch of shit.

“All songs (publishing and masters) must be licensed to us gratis, worldwide, in all media and in perpetuity as this is a promo trade.”

So what you’re telling me, as the series producer for a MAJOR show on a MAJOR cable network, is that it’s in my best interest to give you a professional-quality song for you to use for free, forever? That I am supposed to be happy with a “promo trade”, whatever the fuck that is?

Let me ask you something: does your camera crew work for free because it would look good on their resume? Did you get the show host to work for free by convincing him that you were actually doing him a favor by giving him free screen time? Of course not. You pay them, and you pay them well. And it sickens me that you think music should be any different.

I understand the concept at work here. I don’t have a problem with the idea of trading services, or doing something for free if it’s in the mutual interest of both parties. The problem I have here is with a professional music-based show that has advertisers and a budget based around this concept—and yet they don’t have the money to PAY for the concept?

You don’t even have the decency to offer $500 a song? That’s chump change in the TV world, but it’s better than nothing. Nothing is a slap in the face, an absolute insult.

And the worst part is, there are plenty of bands that will take advantage of this offer—because they are so used to getting NOTHING that even a small credit is worth a shot. And as long as bands are willing to give it up for free, there will always be situations like this.

But I don’t care. I work too hard to give anything away for free, especially to someone who can obviously afford to pay. At least people who torrent music have an interest in that music, something that could potentially benefit me as an artist. I doubt this guy gives a shit about the music, as long as he can throw it under a montage.

“Our goal is to give exposure to as many bands as possible through our selections.”

Bullshit. Their true goal is to get as much music as they can for free and exploit it for a profit. Show producers like this guy only care about the bottom line of their show, and they could give a fuck about the music. I would advise any artist considering a deal like this to think about what you’d really get out of it compared to what you are giving up.