Fwd: I found LicenseQuote and I think it is a great site for composers and songwriters to help license music. You have your own music licensing...

I agree. It's a great site to control the sale of your material for sync licensing.

I love great art, no matter the medium.

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From: Music Supervisor Bulletin Board <groups-noreply@linkedin.com>
Date: June 22, 2014 at 4:16:46 PM EDT
To: Herb Gart <yes@therainbow.com>
Subject: I found LicenseQuote and I think it is a great site for composers and songwriters to help license music. You have your own music licensing...

 
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I found LicenseQuote and I think it is a great site for composers and songwriters to help license...
Bill Madison
Bill Madison
Owner, Bill Madison Music
Music Publisher Profile: Bill Madison Music - LicenseQuote
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Cars with propellers

The "Helicron" (1932) is an interesting example discovered in France not long ago, hidden in a barn. It was completely restored; the original horizontally opposed two-cylinder four-stroke engine was replaced with a four-cylinder air-cooled Citroen GS engine (with the propeller coupled directly to the crankshaft). It was deemed safe for French roads, and can reach a top speed of 75mph.



I love great art, no matter the medium.

It ain't broke, so let's fix it!

News Flash'-The Music Business Has Been Fixed"

That’s not really true. Let me start differently. The music business is not broken. If I hear one more artist complain about the broken music industry and the small digital payouts, I am going to pull my hair out. (Luckily I am already bald so it is not a real concern.)

If you are successful, the music business is amazing. Lots of fun, money, drugs and alcohol (if you choose and I am not endorsing this behavior) and of course the opportunity to make music that people enjoy. If you are not popular, the problem is that there is not much money. Still lots of fun, drugs and alcohol (but you have to pay for them) and still plenty of opportunities to make music. But no money. And it has nothing to do with Spotify payouts or the quality of the music.

I used to hear complaints about the broken business back in the 20th century.

Here is a list of a few of the common ones:

1. I need to get signed by a label to release my music.

2. Recording is too expensive.

3. I have no way to reach potential fans.

4. I can’t get distribution.

These problems don’t exist anymore. Solved. But still there is a lot of complaining. The system must be broken. The business just doesn’t work. I can’t make enough money to survive with my music. Digital services just don’t pay enough.

SSShhhhhhh. Let me tell you a little secret. It is a secret that all the successful artists know. Are you ready? You need to become popular. Then you earn a lot of money. People that knew this: Elvis, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Madonna, every rapper that ever existed, Taylor Swift, Jarvis Cocker, Oasis, and the list goes on and on and on.

The last time I checked there was still only one number 1 single every week. Make it to number 1 and you will see that the system pays out a lot of money. Don’t get hung up on your numbers of streams, downloads, views, etc. It is only the amount in relation to the other artists. So 100,000 video views may seem like a lot but it really doesn’t stack up to the billion views a top artist receives. Same with streaming payouts. Even 1 million streams is not a lot. There’s no money in 1 million streams.

So please stop blaming the system. It is hard to make money in the music industry. But it is not because the industry is broken.

I love great art, no matter the medium.

The enemy in Iraq

The American and French revolutions had their pamphleteers. Soviet dissidents hadsamizdat. Jihadists spread their message on audio and video cassettes, before switching to YouTube. Every generation’s rebels and insurgents have used the medium of the day to get their message out. So it should be no surprise that ISIL (or is it ISIS?) uses Twitter.

But as the Sunni militants continued their assault on Iraq this week, we’ve learned just how sophisticated they are. Not only does every wilaya (administrative district) in Iraq and Syria have its own Twitter feed (pdf, p. 3); the organization is also adept at gaming Twitter. One method is an app ISIL supporters can download—named “Dawn of Glad Tidings”—which then tweets on their behalf, magnifying the group’s visibility. And compared with other extremists, ISIL isexceptionally prolific, flooding the social web, often with extremely graphic images. ISIL alsoissues a rather slick annual report that lists every one of its thousands of attacks as methodically as the US State Department.

All this provides a wealth of intelligence on ISIL and its allies, including how other Islamists think of them (not very highly, it seems). This is a headache for social media companies, which try to shut down accounts filled with pictures of beheadings, only to have intelligence agencies ask them not to. Indeed, it might seem a little odd for a body that depends on evading the authorities to be so very public about itself.

But this barrage of activity also serves to intimidate foes, whip up fans, and get funders reaching for their wallets. Like corporations, NGOs, and governments everywhere, ISIL is playing in the global information space, and it’s playing to win. —Gideon Lichfield


I love great art, no matter the medium.