Fingerprinting, Watermarking, ContentID and all that

[Lupo]

I’m starting this thread because I just saw a poll here where the majority of people (60+%) said they were in favor of watermaking their music as opposed to ‘business as usual’.

A few questions for starters:

– is watermarking available to individual composer?

– can we intend a service like Youtube ContendID or Tunesat as watermarking?
(actually the word ‘watermarking’ is perhaps used mistakingly, there’s no watermarking as such right now, but content recognition)

– how do people here see the business evolving in the light of widespread watermarking adoption?

[markholden]

There’s an article on the fundamentals of watermarking and fingerprinting I penned for Film Music magazine, posted at http://www.filmmusicmag.com/?p=653

Additionally, an article on TuneSat posted at http://www.filmmusicmag.com/?p=3052

This effort to automate music performance detection has a fascinating history that’s still in play, both in terms of advocacy and resistance.

Mark Holden

[Lupo]

great articles mark, thanks.

regarding watermarking, it would seem to be a powerful tool in the hands of composers. put a watermark detection system at the network’s output mouth and devise a system to fill in cuesheets automatically.

one sentence by ‘composer’ was not entirely clear to me Composer: Maybe as an unintentional effect of controlling distribution, this has left millions of American music copyrights twisting in the wind when it comes to continuing benefit to the people who actually wrote the music. Composers under work-for-hire agreements may be cut out of the income stream entirely when it comes to a digital world. Of course, that remains to be seen. But from where I sit, it doesn’t bode well at all for media composers

why would that be? I understand that retitling would be gone, but wouldn’t exclusive work for hire libraries still have a place?

[markholden]

I’ll do my best to address your question, but as you noted, you excerpted another composer’s observations from an interview and I can’t speak for that person.

However, I believe one of the things the composer was alluding to was the fact that the customary 50-50 writer/publisher split of royalties in a US work for hire (WFH) agreement is just that – a custom. There’s nothing in law that requires a copyright owner to honor that practice in a WFH agreement. In many instances, composers are being asked to split a portion of the writer’s share with the legal owner or surrender it entirely.

With nothing in law to prevent that subjugation, and with little or no industrial advocacy or collective bargaining for score composers, I think that was the thrust of the interviewee’s “twisting in the wind” concerns.

As I’ve written before, people without representation tend to lose their rights.

No insult intended to the PMA and other organizations who really are trying to build advocacy.

Hope this helps!

MH

[Lupo]

thanks for taking the time to reply Mark, much appreciated.

Are you talking about licensing fees when you are quoting 50/50?

Perhaps ‘composer’ issue was more with Ascap than fingerprinting per se. It’s also hard to translate all those innuendos to this side of the pond where licensing, PROs and network seem to behave a little bit differently.

[markholden]

Oh yeah – standards, practices, copyright law and behavior can vary wildly per territory. The 50/50 split I was referring to (customary between a U.S. writer and publisher) was specific to public performance royalties. But it would also affect sync & master licensing for a U.S. composer if he or she signs a work-for-hire (WFH) agreement assigning those rights and income to the employer. A U.S. writer can sign away mechanical earnings, public performance rights and any other benefit of U.S. copyright in a WFH. Of course, such deals can be illegal in parts of the EU and elsewhere in the world.

As it relates to performance detection, an employer may object to a composer embedding a watermark or having a track fingerprinted because the master recording AND the underlying work would not be the property of the composer if copyright and related income has been contractually assigned to the employer. I’m trying to be as clear as possible.

On a different matter, ASCAP has a fingerprinting system as described in the article links earlier in this thread. To the best of my knowledge, MediaGuide is deployed primarily for radio detection – but if anyone has any additional info in that regard, I hope they’ll post.

Finally, I don’t mean to infer any innuendo – just trying to be precise.

MH

[Lupo]

Hello Mark, my apologies, the ‘innuendo’ remark was directed at the original interviewees words.

It’s interesting what you say because here my PROS have always told me you cannot give away more than 50% of your mechanical and performing royalties. The only way to give up that 50% would be for the composer not to register their work with a PRO or sharing authorship with another individual (not a publisher). As an example this can happens when said individual offers the composer a TV placement in exchange for a writer’s share.

Thanks for the clarification re watermarking. I still don’t see it as an impossible problem. You would need a central system that manages watermarks and keeps track of what they stand for. IE watermark for tracks ‘X’, by composer ‘Z’, has been assigned to publisher ‘Y’ from the year 2013.

Probably if you’d want to avoid retitiling you’ll have to use a combination of watermarking and pattern recognition, like Tunesat.

Thanks again for your replies

Lupo

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