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Support Grows For Blanket Music Licensing
Anti-Globalism sends in Ars coverage of a speech by Jim Griffin, who is a consultant for Warner, one of the big four music labels. Griffin is encouraging dialog on the idea of blanket licensing of music — a topic heretofore more likely to be heard from the EFF or the Barenaked Ladies. "Taking music without paying for it may not be 'morally voluntary,' Griffin says, but he admits it has become 'functionally voluntary.' No civilized society, he adds, can endure 'purely voluntary payment for art, knowledge, and culture.' So Griffin's job is to help Warner monetize digital music, and he's convinced that the issue of payment for music is nothing less than 'our generation's nuclear power.' Griffin's most intriguing idea, and one he's been pitching for some time now, is a voluntary, blanket music license; essentially, bringing the collection society model to end users. In this model, consumers would pay royalties into a pot (by paying an extra monthly fee to their ISPs, for instance) and would then have access to all the music from all the labels that participate in the scheme."
I think it's going to go the same route as wedding photography. In the old days, the photographer would shoot your wedding for a small fee or even free, but you had to pay like $20-$100 per print for the pictures. When scanners and color printers became widespread, people just started to make their own prints from the proof sheets. For a while the photographers tried to do things like print "SAMPLE" over the proofs. But now most of them have switched business models. They give you the prints (or a CD) at cost or even for free. But they charge you a substantial fee for shooting the wedding.
If you think about it, it makes a lot more sense than the old way. The cost to the photographer is not the prints, it's the time, effort, and equipment used at the wedding and in post-processing. Once those costs are paid, they can run off as many prints as they want for almost no cost. So all that's happened is that the cost for the customer is now more closely aligned with the cost for the photographer. I can see the same thing happening with music, where most of the artists' revenue comes from live and commissioned performances. The music itself would be distributed at minimal cost or even for free as advertising for the performances.