Thursday, January 12, 2006  

[The things people come up with...]

I saw an article in the papers today that I just have to comment about. I couldn't get the online version since they require a paid subscription, so I'll type out some of the main points of the article here.
Bloggers and personal website owners may soon be pressed to license the background music that they have on their online journals or websites.
This was announced by Dr Edward Lam, chief executive and director of Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (Compass), yesterday.
"We increasingly see more bloggers who upload music onto their webpages," he said.
"We want to encourage them to come forward to our one-stop centre to get licensed, for a reasonable fee."
As always, the papers were not very clear, and I'm not going to waste time online to find out more about this, so here's my understanding of the article.

This applies to site owners who have background music when you enter their sites. Not talking about podcasts here...I'm sure they'll come up with another way to squeeze you guys dry on that one.

The license? S$1,000/year for 10 songs and below. S$5,000 for 11 to 49 songs, and S$10,000 for over 50 songs. (No, I did not make a mistake copying the rates. Non-exhaustive rates, yes.) I would imagine that site owners childish enough to implement background music in their sites would be those in the primary/secondary school age bracket. Very reasonable fees, indeed.

A popular local blogger named "Mr Brown" says he's "not sure this will endear fan bases who like the music so much they've given you free publicity on their websites".

That's basically all the information in the article. Here are my thoughts.

It wasn't very clear whether or not Compass act on behalf of the RIAA/RIAS. If they do, why start now? RIAA has been "suing" folks all over the world for copyright infringements/piracy for a long time now. Why start this little "licensing program" now? Something to think about. But if they do not act on behalf of the RIAA/RIAS, this whole article would be quite irrelevant since I honestly doubt you'll find background music on anyone's website that was composed by a local musician.

Background music on websites, by itself, is extremely irritating. The only thing that's more irritating would be video that automatically plays. Popups irritate me less since I can easily close them, while I would have to hunt for the damn embedded music or video player somewhere to stop the audio/video. Yes, there are settings in your browser that can stop them from playing altogether, but who the hell goes there?

That said, does Compass honestly believe they can make money by "encouraging" one of the most irritating and hated occurrences online?

Maybe in the years to come, we can thank Compass for single-handedly eradicating background music on local websites altogether.

^^^ by Locksley @ 9:41 PM. 4 comments.
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[Comments]

Since when was $1,000 reasonable?

However, if it gets rid of background music on blogs, then by god I'll be happy :)
They're just trying to tap into the profits of blogging. Blogging is now becoming a business, and some people are full-time bloggers.
Actually "blogging" is an overhyped term coined in recent years. People have been making personal webpages for a damn long time.

Anyways, when we purchase the music, it's only the right of consumption and not right of distribution (how unfortunate). I'd agree with Mr Brown about how fans operating blogs are actually giving free publicity. If the music played are by local musicians, all the more music streaming gotta continue because we know we only get MTV junk on radio these days. (I hold the same opinion with distribution of indie band music through P2P).

If you ask me, all these fight against music piracy booogeyfuckhoo is just a huge conspiracy of music monopoly where big labels shut down all the quality music produced in garages and home studios.

But yea.. I find blogs streaming music extremely annoying. Especially now that I broke the codec, they screw up my browser with error messages.

(Longest comment ever, Peace
\/^-^ )
peanuts? They're interfering our rights in the blogosphere!

If you want to read the full article or see a full insight into the issue, you can visit http://alchemistglobetrekker.blogspot.com/2006/01/pay-to-play-when-i-first-read-article.html
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