[Mark Lewis]

“Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

” I don’t understand where all the anger and pseudo-revolutionary talk is coming from.”

I wish MLR could have a meet-up sometime. The intelligence level here seems to be generally higher than in other forums. Might be cool to hang out for an evening.

[Mark Lewis]

“You will never know, if you never try” – BIGG ROME!”

That’s true Bigg Rome.
In Spain we say “el no ya lo tenemos”
Directly translated it means “the no we already have”
but basically means “no harm in asking”.

[Mark Lewis]

@big rome
The fact that you hunted down a phone number for the library you had the argument with to confront them about something that is simply their way of doing business means that you would probably not think twice about looking up the phone numbers of clients of that library and bothering them for more work or for more royalties.
Exactly what do expect to gain from contacting another company’s clients?

[Mark Lewis]

exactly Art. That’s why these are my preferences and not a business policy. I completely understand that I am working with creative people, not people with MBA degrees. I enjoy working with the former rather than the latter 🙂

[Mark Lewis]

youtube contentID allows the artist to earn revenue whether the people get scared or not. they have no choice.

[Mark Lewis]

Just to put a finer point on it.
The problem comes just from the legal end of things and puts more work on the library owner when issues arise.
If a consumer finds your music on an RF site and then does a search for that music and finds it for next to nothing on iTunes they can easily buy that version and use it in their youtube video or DVD and claim they have a license. And then you do not have youtube contentID to protect you in that case because you are playing both sides of the fence, and you are doing it for absolutely no profit. I know composers are artists and everything but sometimes the lack of business sense is astounding.
Real production music composers should take care to protect their music and not put it out there for every tom dick and harry to download for nothing.
Your catalog is your livelihood, you need to protect it.

[Mark Lewis]

“Sometimes licensing drive consumer sales…cross promotes the music.”

The comparison between Lady Gaga and most of the production music composers on this forum is beyond apples and oranges.

I prefer not to represent composers who sell their production music catalog to consumers for personal use as well. Personal use sales of production music always ends badly. I prefer to work with production music composers who are serious about just doing production music. no “bands” or “stars”.

And if you are going to generate nothing or next to nothing doing it why do it?

[Mark Lewis]

“We all have our whishes Mark, but pseudonyms can in some situations be a very smart way to run a business”

Sure, as I said it was just my personal position.
I’m all for brand names, like some composer placing their music by their publishing company name or their library name. Claiming your music is composed by “Outstanding Production Music” is fine.
What I don’t understand is when a composer named Mark Lewis sells his music on another site as Mark Smith and on another site as Zack Lewis.
Makes me think they are trying to get away with something and in my experience (which I have 17 years of) they usually are.

[Mark Lewis]

@angopop
I find my lawyers (and just about everything else) on elance.com. There are some good ones there at all levels including anything to do with music involving international copyright and local and international litigation.

I think if you post a copy of the proposed agreement that you have questions about directly in an elance project you will get lawyers bidding on your project, you can check out their past projects and reviews before you decide who to choose and then you can probably get an inexpensive and thorough review of what you are getting into my agreeing to the contract in question.

I have paid $250 just for a letter of complaint and intent to litigate if a matter was not resolved.
Lawyers aren’t cheap. Clarification: Good lawyers aren’t cheap.

[Mark Lewis]

@lupo
I’m not really the guy to ask about that. You would need to check with each individual library and see what their view on the situation is.

The quote you have from me above is just my personal take. I would prefer that our composers (composers that work with ML) not use pseudonyms and not retitle their tracks. But that’s just personal and is not policy. If it was policy we wouldn’t have many composers in our library. I understand why composers do it, I just wish they wouldn’t.

We currently have composers who are selling their music for $49.95 on our site and for much less than $0.99 on iTunes via AS compilation albums. I don’t like that at all but as they say here in Spain ‘es lo que hay’.

[Mark Lewis]

Now my take on contentID is a different matter altogether.
My gut feeling is that is something that could be crucial to redefine copyright as we know it.

I think you need to do some more research on what the youtube contentID system actually is.
Good luck.

[Mark Lewis]

@lupo
I think this would be the more appropriate quote to pull from the article you pointed to:

“Robert Levine, a former executive editor at Billboard who wrote the book “Free Ride,” said most artists who use Audiam will generate only a handful of cash, but it could be a successful business for Audiam if it gets a lot of customers”

Since Audiam is an exclusive deal I really do not understand the confusion. I guess if you want to pull all of your music from all non-exclusive music libraries and solely depend on possible earnings from Audiam then that is a risk you would have to take.
I think you might have trouble convincing many of the composers in this forum who are actually making a living with their production music catalogs to jump ship and bet the farm on youtube “royalties”.

PS- if you think you are getting millions and millions of plays of your music on youtube that you can monetize why not simply sign up for the youtube contentID system yourself instead of splitting the earnings with Audiam?
That is the part of this situation that is really confusing to me.

-Mark

[Mark Lewis]

I don’t know if it was purchased, ripped from Soundcloud or what,

What does it say in the copyright claim info area for this video in your youtube account? Since youtube upgraded the contentID system it now always shows the song title, composer name and the company name of the people making the false claim.

Sending a calm but strongly worded email to the company will usually get the false claim removed fairly quickly.

-Mark

[Mark Lewis]

@#tag
“RF libraries who prevent you from IDing will have to deal with it,”

since the youtube contentID system is an exclusive one I’m not sure what point you are trying to make.
Only libraries that have exclusive rights to the content they represent can enter content into the contentID system. That’s what some libraries, like AS, do now. And other libraries choose not to be involved with the system at all.
Just read the youtube contentID terms of service, it’s pretty straight forward.

I’m not sure what your issue is with this.

[Mark Lewis]

This was discussed previously here

Content ID… Round 2?

As far as I can tell Audiam is offering an exclusive deal. That is completely in line with the youtube TOS. If you join their program you can’t sell your music anywhere else. No problem at all.

Mark Lewis
http://www.musicloops.com
http://www.partnersinrhyme.com

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