LOS ANGELES -- Dean Kay put the Digital Distribution and the Music Industry audience to bed on a happy note when he sat down at a baby grand and performed his song "That's Life," which was immortalized by Frank Sinatra.
Kay, the president and CEO of Lichelle Music and a member of the ASCAP board of directors, said he considers himself a songwriter first and an executive second. He cautioned that the rights of creative artists must be protected as the music industry moves into the online world because the entire business is "built on the backs of songwriters."
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"Every sale that doesn't get made because of pirating is money that doesn't go to the non-performing songwriter," said Kay. "Performers can recoup their money on merchandising or performances, but for songwriters there is no other way."
During his presentation comparing the strengths of traditional storefront commerce to Internet retailing, Digital On Demand president Scott Smith criticized the Internet for its exclusivity. Smith said Net music "is basically a rich white kid's game. You've got to have a T1 line paid for with dad's tuition dollars and a Rio" to make it work.
"It's a tragic comment about America that poor urban kids [who are a significant music market] don't have access to computers."
Digital on Demand is creating in-store systems for on-demand compact disc burning and digital downloads for people without home computers.
One of the more disturbing trends made apparent at this conference is the movement by Sony Music and possibly other big music companies to demand that new acts sign over ownership of their band's URL to the record company in perpetuity. For example, Myband could fulfill its three-album contract on Sony and move to a new label, but no longer be able to use the their own band-name domain.
Manatt, Phelps, and Phillips attorney Joe Bogden decried the practice saying, "They have no more business owning that domain name than they do owning an artist's merchandising rights."
Brian Brinkerhoff of Emusic called the practice, "A classic reaction of a smokestack industry that doesn't know what the hell is going on and is just grabbing at things."
