Images

RELEVANT:How Netflix is demanding a pardon from the White House

A dash of pop-culture, a touch of presidential politics and this story becomes really interesting.

Have you seen the “We the People” website? I think it’s an amazing resource that should be leveraged more often. Basically, people can create a petition there and gather signatures. If your petition reaches 100,000 signatures or more within 30 days then the White House Administration will respond to it directly.

As soon as I learned about it, I had a feeling this could be amazingly hilarious. The Christian Post has a nice summary of really funny petitions and awkward responses from the White House.

In this case, the petition is real, but it’s informed primarily by a Netflix series called “Making a Murderer”. Forbes Magazine calls it “Netflix’s most significant show ever” primarily because

This feels like the first truly national conversation Netflix has started about one of its shows… this feels like something much more profound. A genuine phenomenon, possibly the service’s first.

So combine an amazingly unique and anger-inducing documentary series on Netflix, with a population-driven mechanism to demand a response from the White House and you’ve got a really interesting story.

Here’s the whole petition (which you can still sign if you like).

Source: Relevant Magazine

Advertisement

Engadget: Spotify pledges to fix the music industry’s royalty problems

Streaming services can’t fix artist salaries. Musicians should go straight to market IMHO

Paying artists for streams isn’t just Spotify’s problem — the whole industry is stuck with a royalty model that’s better suited for physical sales than streaming. Spotify is the one that’s pledging to fix that

As a musician I’m always excited for any and all ways in which musical artists can be more adequately compensated for all the hours of music they provide.

I also love streaming music, but it’s been a problem for a lot of artists. Have you read this piece? “My song was played 168 million times on Pandora. I Received $4,000…” It’s a really damning piece on the inherent problems with copyright, record labels, and streaming services.

So if Spotify is saying it’s going to remedy that issue, then I’d go out an by stock in Spotify today. But based on this article, so far all that they are saying is that Spotify is committed to solving the problem at some point.

What Spotify (or Pandora) currently pays in royalties to me is not as important as making sure money from song plays gets into musicians pockets. I personally don’t think that’s a problem a streaming service can fix. It’s a record label issue. The more musicians are enabled to go direct to market the better.

Similarly to WordPress plugin shops, musicians should start considering running their own online shops where end users can purchase mp3’s and streaming services can purchase licenses.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/25/spotify-pledges-to-fix-the-music-industrys-royalty-problems/