Major UK Music Body Sues SoundCloud Over Unpaid Royalties

http://www.engadget.com/2015/08/27/prs-for-music-soundcloud-lawsuit

Better save those RDJ SoundClouds kiddos...

how much can moneyz?

Why oh why

What decade is this?

Bad press about soundcloud is really piling up the last months... Really wonder how long this will last, some inevitable changes have to be made (unfortunately).

Soundcloud > Bloodsucking lawyers

Can we do a kickstarter to kill the PRS pls?

Does PRS have a leg to stand on here?

The terms of service are pretty clearly laid out by Soundcloud. Uploads are voluntary no?

I never signed with the local artist royalty service, they never paid smaller artists which had been proven time and again by small radio stations that tested it, but never publicised, published or prosecuted (cause who has the money right), take a nasty cut, have said many things that I entirely disagree with and are not representative of the majority of artists views (like about downloading as a crime) and in the contract you are stuck with them in perpetuity, it's beyond onerous. Fuck them all to hell. Where there's easy money, an opaque administrative system and a disconnected membership, you are going to get sheisters lining up to take control. Just like with so many chairties these days.

The overwhelming majority of experiences I've had with labels / copyright / royalties when releasing my own music have been awful. Buy shit off Bandcamp directly from the artist or pirate it and let this old model finally die off as it slowly has been for the last decade and a half.

Does SC have any investors? I'm sure there is some VC behind it, and things like this are going to make current (and potentially future) investors very nervous...

If Richard still hasn't admitted that account is his, then how can Chrysalis make a copyright claim? Also doesn't unreleased = non-copyrighted?

  On 8/27/2015 at 9:48 PM, Rubin Farr said:

If Richard still hasn't admitted that account is his, then how can Chrysalis make a copyright claim? Also doesn't unreleased = non-copyrighted?

No, unreleased != non-copyrighted - you couldn't go release the SC tracks yourself, could you? Where you here for the CWLP stuff? We had to pay the publisher a hefty percentage of the Kickstarter income for offering up the digital version of the CWLP, even though it was never released.

And I don't think Chrysalis is making a copyright claim, but they may have issues with Richard releasing hundreds of tracks for free versus releasing them and they get their customary cut of the sales...

dude that's all you, I won't even to pretend to understand UK copyright law, although I did take a copyright law class in college. I vaguely remember either you or Grant mentioning the MFM tapes, and that it wasn't copyrighted bc it was never released, am I hallucinating? who knows how the SC debacle will shake out. I'm just a bystander.

but again, Richard has probably registered Caustic Window as an alias with Chrysalis, whereas the SC account could get into a messy court battle if he never admits to it, wouldn't that get into tracing IP addresses and so on, at least under US copyright law? Again, that wouldn't apply to an artist living and registered in the UK right? He would be under the domain of BMI, am I mistaken?

If he didn't release the soundcloud tracks under any name associated with chrysalis, what legal recourse do they have?

In other words, why would you need to go through a publisher if you just "published" them yourself by uploading them to soundcloud. A bunch of tracks that didn't belong to anyone but RDJ...

Richard is one of the highest profile artists on SC that has no problem torpedoing his own career, he is unpredictable and that's why some of us love him. Who else would upload a dozen tracks the same week as a new commercial release? although they're modular tracks with a niche audience, only maybe Radiohead would have the same ballz to do as such.

  On 8/27/2015 at 10:34 PM, Rubin Farr said:

dude that's all you, I won't even to pretend to understand UK copyright law, although I did take a copyright law class in college. I vaguely remember either you or Grant mentioning the MFM tapes, and that it wasn't copyrighted bc it was never released, am I hallucinating? who knows how the SC debacle will shake out. I'm just a bystander.

 

but again, Richard has probably registered Caustic Window as an alias with Chrysalis, whereas the SC account could get into a messy court battle if he never admits to it, wouldn't that get into tracing IP addresses and so on, at least under US copyright law? Again, that wouldn't apply to an artist living and registered in the UK right? He would be under the domain of BMI, am I mistaken?

No, the MFM tape (specifically the tracks on it) were (and are) subject to copyright, since RDJ produced them under his publishing agreement with Chrysalis (I'm not going to keep assuming I know the details and conditions of that contract, since I don't), and most likely the SC tracks fall under that as well.

MFM also has the distinction, like the CWLP, of being pressed (a test pressing) and assigned a catalogue number, which I am sure they filed with the publisher as well. Whether it was ever released or not is secondary.

It might be the case that Chrysalis doesn't like the whole SC setup because they cannot accurately track income from the plays of these tracks (and thus generate revenue for themselves and Richard).

i forgot mfm had a vinyl acetate. online streaming must be a nightmare for publishers. especially with peeps like afx who keep enabling/disabling downloads at will.

  On 8/28/2015 at 1:09 AM, Candiru said:

 

If he didn't release the soundcloud tracks under any name associated with chrysalis, what legal recourse do they have?

  On 8/28/2015 at 5:47 PM, Joyrex said:

 

  On 8/27/2015 at 10:34 PM, Rubin Farr said:

 

dude that's all you, I won't even to pretend to understand UK copyright law, although I did take a copyright law class in college. I vaguely remember either you or Grant mentioning the MFM tapes, and that it wasn't copyrighted bc it was never released, am I hallucinating? who knows how the SC debacle will shake out. I'm just a bystander.

but again, Richard has probably registered Caustic Window as an alias with Chrysalis, whereas the SC account could get into a messy court battle if he never admits to it, wouldn't that get into tracing IP addresses and so on, at least under US copyright law? Again, that wouldn't apply to an artist living and registered in the UK right? He would be under the domain of BMI, am I mistaken?

No, the MFM tape (specifically the tracks on it) were (and are) subject to copyright, since RDJ produced them under his publishing agreement with Chrysalis (I'm not going to keep assuming I know the details and conditions of that contract, since I don't), and most likely the SC tracks fall under that as well.

MFM also has the distinction, like the CWLP, of being pressed (a test pressing) and assigned a catalogue number, which I am sure they filed with the publisher as well. Whether it was ever released or not is secondary.

It might be the case that Chrysalis doesn't like the whole SC setup because they cannot accurately track income from the plays of these tracks (and thus generate revenue for themselves and Richard).

if the company doesn't like it they should just get the artists to remove the tracks....

The big companies are really digging their claws deep into Soundcloud. They've started removing unofficial remixes and giving users warnings. I know exactly why they're doing this and I completely understand, but that was kinda what was so great about Soundcloud.

mixcloud is better for mixes imo

posting mixes has always been bending the rules

why not post a playlist and then a link to mixcloud for the mix?

  On 9/1/2015 at 3:05 PM, MDM Chaos said:

mixcloud is better for mixes imo

 

posting mixes has always been bending the rules

 

why not post a playlist and then a link to mixcloud for the mix?

I was talking about remixes. Not mixes :)

  On 9/1/2015 at 3:05 PM, MDM Chaos said:

mixcloud is better for mixes imo

It's really not if you're a producer who DJs their own tracks. Any mix containing more than 3 tracks from one artist gets blocked from being listened to in the USA even if the uploader is the copyright owner.

Not to mention you can't rewind or fast-forward, or relisten to a mix you've played whilst logged in (again, only in the USA).