Two years ago, as Billy Bragg tells it, the founder of British social networking site Bebo came to him for advice about avoiding the same music licensing pitfalls that Bragg had railed about during the evolution of MySpace. As I wrote previously, Bragg’s lobbying resulted in MySpace clarifying its terms of service so artists could [...]

It’s a $42 million price tag for Pump Audio, the little independent music rights clearing house that could. I remember that, when they first launched, Pump Audio looked dangerously like one of the song sharks we often write about here. But they reached out to the independent music community and did a great job building [...]

I was working in radio, and part of a team that was running what was, at the time, one of the ten most-listened-to live streams in the world, when the RIAA and the PROs steamrolled streaming radio with some pretty hefty licensing fees. I certainly don’t begrudge anyone the right to earn some royalties, but [...]

Hem has been honing their sound — a blend of etherial vocals and Americana — for close to seven years now. DreamWorks signed them in 2003, but couldn’t make their records click at radio. Luckily, they’ve moved on to Rounder, and they’re selling all three of their albums at their site.
“Half Acre,” a song from [...]

Bob Mould, Thievery Corporation, and other great folks are profiled in this WaPo profile of musicians that are making more money from licensing works for film and television. Agencies love the friction-free process of getting a deal cut without twelve concentric circles of major label red tape. Artists love getting “in the low five figures” [...]

Scottish band Looper is asking exactly this question.
A snippet of their song wound up in a commercial, earning them enough money to stop worrying about selling records. They’re focusing on composing more music for film and television to pay the bills, and releasing their crowd faves for free as a byproduct of the creative process.

Track [...]

BMI Podcasting And Licensing Podcasters: BMI has just joined ASCAP to make it a little clearer for podcasters to include BMI songs in their downloads… More on this topic to come…
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I’m still gearing up to jump into the podcasting game — I think it’s a very clever application, and a way of expanding to the general public what Audible’s been doing with their subscription service for a while now.
The HUGE, 800 pound gorilla on the table is music licensing. As folks are using tools like [...]