I later was the music editor at OUI. And while I dutifully interviewed and promoted the likes of Billy Joel, KISS and Hall & Oates, I also spent time (and pages) on Martin Bailey, Anthony Phillips, Steve Hackett, Mari Wilson, Lene Lovich, Katy Moffatt, Lita Ford and a variety of eccentrics and visionaries.
I still follow the music scene.
Perhaps the most talented and versatile performer you'll ever see doing a solo show on stage is ELEANOR MCEVOY. She has written some great songs, too. She's on my (very) short list of singer-songwriters whose CDs I instantly buy, and who I will always go to see.
So, CONGRATULATIONS to Eleanor McEvoy, not only for her continued releases and her never-ending tours, but for this:
What timing.
Not long ago (Halloween, 2016) I put out my first music album. This, after 19 books, editing several national magazines, writing columns for many periodicals over 30 years, etc. etc.
Now, like Eleanor McEvoy, Tift Merritt, Anne McCue and Andy Pratt, I see my music given away for a low number of hits on YouTube! I should be glad somebody might get to hear "Lawyer in Hell" while staring at my album cover!
I have the bragging rights of saying, "Oh, you can buy my stuff on Amazon or iTunes," while realizing that most cheap bastards will, at best, listen to me free on Spotify. And I should be grateful, right? There's so much stuff out there, like pitch-challenged bints covering Taylor Swift. Instead they can hear my imitating of a forlorn singer/songwriter imitating Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Warren Zevon as "The American Singer/Songwriter Werewolf."
Oh, you can't get past all the damn SAM SMITH crap on YouTube? HERE! HERE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVIraLVND34
That was shameless. (To quote Barbara Payton, who said it in a much different and even more disgusting content, "I am not ashamed!")
Hey, don't forget "The Monkey's Paw," a goofy take on those songs like "I Want My Baby Back" and "Tell Laura I Love Her" etc. etc. It features an amazing guest vocal from Susan Davies, who sounds totally undead.
Where was I? (Nowhere, in terms of a music career. But we can't all be Allan Sherman. Not without an appetite for a 2 pound corned beef on rye from the Stage Deli, which doesn't exist, and neither does Allan.)
I digress.
Eleanor McEvoy has already made some headlines by calling attention to how most of the money from a creative person's work slips into the pocket of somebody in a suit who works in a corporate office.
It's an irony that Spotify, YouTube and other Internet abusers (such as blogs, forums and torrents) were seen as "the new paradigm" for the music industry. We were told that artists should be glad to see record stores shutter, and record companies go under. The future? THE INTERNET!!
The INTERNET was supposed to break new artists, reward the stars, and make it convenient to buy music.
To quote the title of a William Shatner track, "It hasn't happened yet."
Most artists start out accepting they will live a modest life, financially. They know they're not likely to have a best seller or make millions, and they will be making far less than a plumber or a teacher. Their Faustian deal is that they get to do what they enjoy...even if everyone is a boss, scabs are eager to do their job for even less pay, health insurance costs a fortune and there's no retirement plan. They try not to think about a bleak future, and ignore the fact that many a writer or singer or actor ends up needing a benefit to pay the hospital bills (Dave Van Ronk comes to mind) or ends up a charity case (like Al Goldstein).
Most people make more in a week than the average author makes with a book advance, or the average singer-songwriter makes in a month of arduous gigging in small venues.
Now it turns out that even top stars are making chump change with Spotify or YouTube, and if they get 100,000 "hits" in a month instead of 1,000 or less like most struggling indie singers, they still make one cent on the dollar.
My stuff on YouTube was hoisted by some outfit called TOPIC, who embarrass everyone from Raun MacKinnon to Sarah Kernochan to the estate of Benny Bell, by dumping audio with a photo, and taking a share of whatever pennies come in via this mass vomiting of material. My solace is supposed to be that a few hundred people surfing YouTube or Spotify may have enjoyed "Lawyer in Hell" or "I Cremated Mabel." And that's better than payment.
It reminds me of what Spike Milligan used to say after he was greeted with applause: "Any money?"
But here's the optimism: Eleanor McEvoy and IMRO will once again take up the musical question, "Why is it THE SUITS only offer THE ARTISTS a piddling percentage?”
It's a question raised several times by famous artists who have been shocked by their Spotify royalties.
It's a question raised, in a different form, by some guy named Don Henley who vowed to take on U.S. copyright laws via the Recording Artists' Coalition. Remember them? No, I didn't think so.
Every now and then there's a Little David who gets some press coverage by threatening Goliath. Goliath in this case, includes the creepy, shadowy owners of Google, the sleazy CEO of eBay (devilish Devin Wenig) and the second richest man in America, Jeff Bezos. Bezos, who owns a home in Washington D.C. now, down the block from Trump, started on his way by cheating authors and musicians via bookstore-killing pdf Kindle files and record store-killing mp3 downloads at a percentage good for HIM more than the artists. He was so powerful he could even tell off Disney, and spit at iTunes and book publishers. Payola anyone?
The richest man in New Zealand? That would be a Nazi who re-named himself Kim Dotcom. He merely stole music, movies, ebooks and TV shows, and set up MEGAUPLOAD to distribute them to greed heads, Communists and self-entitled spoiled brats chanting "Copyright is copy WRONG."
He offered his free downloads on pages loaded with banner ads that made money for himself. Pirate Bay does that trick, too. The Fat Man had the nerve to sell "premium" accounts so "freedom of speech" fans could download bootlegs faster. PAYPAL helped. When Dotcom knew he was about to be arrested, he offered a stunning bargain: "Three months of Megaupload for the price of ONE. Order now!" People did. A week later, he shut down, taking all the money with him. PAYPAL denied refunds, insisting they only refund "goods, not SERVICES." Nyaaaa.
When I made my belated debut as a singer/songwriter last Halloween, I knew that my novelty album, “HA HA HALLOWEEN” would not be a hit. I didn’t have a record label’s publicity machine behind me, and I don’t tour. Not only would it take me forever to memorize even a half dozen songs, how often would I have to pay to play a venue? Or duck from a tomato? I mean, I'm not Bobby Cole (my late friend whom Sinatra admired, and who needed a lot of booze and cigarettes to play 3 nights a week at a swank NYC bar-restaurant to pay the rent).
One does hope for decent royalties from Spotify or YouTube, to at least help pay SOME of the rent, and SOME of the costs for the time it takes to produce music.
So far Spotify has come up with excuses more than money. They've made token gestures of abatement for the mass-amount of downloads and streaming they profit from. We need them to stop mass-abating.
We also need to put a stake through the chests of heartless zombies who act as if piracy is like jaywalking; a minor crime if a crime at all.
Many honest citizens who'd never shoplift a grape, have no qualms about hitting the torrents for the newest album or movie, or an illegal stream for a Pay per View sports match.
A few weeks ago Rolling Stone cheerfully mentioned that there was a tribute to Jimmy Webb...and instead of paying or licensing footage, ran a link to some balcony bootleg. Ethics, anyone? At one time, Rolling Stone even ran reviews of blog sites, pointing out where you could go for the best new song downloads (Tofuhut! Whee!!) or brazen concert bootlegs.
Spotify didn't invent Internet indifference. The RIAA played their part 14 years ago, when THIS blog turned up and they did nothing to squash it. Yes, this blog boasts 14 Years of daily thefts of copyrighted music:
Guys like this aren't "sharers." They make money via banner ads. Their hosts (formerly Rapidshare or Megaupload, now Zippyshare or Rapidgator) pay them off with free accounts or pennies-per-download. They and their parasitic admirers consider themselves heroes, Assanges, Robin Hoods, and hip music insiders.
The RIAA, BPI, BREIN and the rest have played a laissez faire game with bloggers, hoping they'll just get bored and quit. "It hasn't happened yet." Or often enough.
Just recently, Willard's Wormholes ceased. Why? The owner simply got bored. While sometimes a notorious torrent site actually is prosecuted, or a website intimidated into ceasing, we are assured that Willard simply had better things to do and other money-making enterprises:
You'll note that the blogger posting the news is one of those "if you like it buy it" types who doesn't believe in piracy. He just believes Willard did a great service in offering up any record album you could think of, as well as bootlegs. Our 14 year-blogger, Zin-Alzheimers or whatever he calls himself, has a silly caveat on the blog that his files are only for evaluation. He's just putting copyrighted music up or grabs because...WHY? Because he can't mind his own business, he's a fame whore, and he makes money at it. He's a 60-something delinquent with less morality than a 13 year-old gutter sneak-thief.
But, "it wouldn't interest anybody, outside of a small circle of friends." Obviously not. It hasn't interested the RIAA in 14 years.
There are some artists (Prince was one) who are outraged and indignant about piracy and abuse, and fight RIAA apathy by bringing their own lawyers or an outfit like Web Sheriff into the fight. They pay to whack the moles. Some simply deputize interns or fans who volunteer to take a few hours a week to send in takedown requests on a "good faith belief" the items are unauthorized. Yes, the Internet Fascists do allow for narrow hoops where, if you give your name, address, phone number and other details, you can stop anonymous creeps who didn't need to prove that they had the right to upload the copyrighted material.
A particular outrage was how Google would actually PUBLISH takedown requests via an insidious site called "Chilling Effects." It was blatantly designed to chill copyright owners into worrying that they'd be harassed by vengeful delinquents. As in: "If you spoil our fun, we will GET YOU." By hacking your private photos, list-bombing your e-mail, tying up your phone, and tormenting your relatives.
The music business isn't the only place creative people suffer. Now that Jeff Bezos made KINDLE popular, authors have found that people like FREE bootlegs of ebooks. Getting an ebook for $4.99 or $9.99 instead of $19.99 for a hardcover ain't good enough. FREE is better. Bootleggers give FREE books away on torrents and in forums, and on eBay you can type in an author's name and add ebook or PDF or KINDLE and often find a $3.99 bootleg.
Rich pudgies like E.L. James and George R.R. Martin would rather Tweet what they had for lunch than take a minute to stick up for themselves and all artists. They don't care that when somebody spends all week reading a FREE James or Martin book, they are not supporting any author, any bookstore, or even the public library.
The rights owners who have the power to drive the spoilers out, and don't, are truly as despicable as the ""short-sighted businessmen" Joni Mitchell once sang about.
PS, few bootleggers steal from Joni. Or Paul Simon. Or the Rolling Stones. But you can easily Google, Torrent, YouTube or take a look at Zin-ALzheimer or whatever that blogger calls himself, and see who doesn't care.
I hope Eleanor and her friends can find a way to twist the arm of SPOTIFY or Jeff Bezos or YouTube to secure good bookkeeping or fair rates.
I hope this may lead to more protection for all copyright owners. Intellectual property rights shouldn't be scorned in the same manner the KKK believes that Black lives don't matter.
How frightening is it that politicians are scared shitless of GOOGLE?
Let's face it: The Internet giants (Google, Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia) are more powerful than movie and TV studios, or book publishers or record companies.
There’s no movie mogul that could get in a pissing match with Bezos of Amazon.
The Big Internet bullies squashed the bills from New York’s Senator Schumer and Vermont’s Senator Leahy that attempted to protect copyright. Everyone from Wikipedia to Google threatened to "go dark" when the U.S. government considered adopting SOPA, a bill intended to stop forcing rights owners to remain slaves and dance through hoops.
If Lennon was around now, seeing how he and all his colleagues are being stolen from, he might be writing a song about Copyright Owner being...somewhat of a second class citizen in the world? Perhaps?
Scorn and hatred raged all over the Internet when SOPA threatened to "ruin the fun." The mob mentality was so insane that people were insisting it was a "freedom of speech" issue, as if stealing copyrighted music and books was an entitlement.
IMRO, now run by McEvoy, is concentrating on the unfair way legitimate businesses (as opposed to pirates, or sneaky blogger-bastards) operate. To wit:
Hopefully, this insane business of buck-passing will not obscure the big picture, which is that copyright is being massively abused.
As a 15 year veteran of VeRO (eBay’s Verified Rights Own Program) I’ve watched bootleggers thrive on eBay in the most blatant ways. Why? Because eBay (like YouTube, Internet Forums, Internet Blogs, Internet Torrents) is protected by the “Digital Millennium Act,” which protects Internet companies and merely asks that they honor “takedown requests.”
Google not only owns BLOGSPOT (aka BLOGGER) but YouTube. Thanks to the DMCA, they are not required to red flag obvious violation or ask uploaders for proof of a licensing agreement. Ebay lets bootleggers get away with insane caveats like "I own resell rights" to J.K. Rowling or George R.R. Martin. It's up to Rowling or Martin to get the fuck off Twitter and DO something. Or have their publishers do something.
As irritating as Spotify is, in terms of chintzy royalties, at least they don't openly look the other way as crooks steal from rights owners. Ebay and its twisted step-sister PayPal make a fortune off bootlegs. If a pirate is caught often enough, he might get suspension instead of slaps on the wrists and restrictions, but he gets to keep EVERY cent he stole.
What's needed for IMRO (and the RIAA and MPAA etc. etc.) is legal pressure (lobbying or prosecuting and filing suit) to change the balance of power. Most artists on Spotify are union members. They belong to AFTRA or AGVA or at least have BMI or ASCAP behind them. Even the sly Harry Fox people surely are greedy enough to want a bigger slice of the SPOTIFY pie.
Why the RIAA has let some idiot blogger go for 14 years, I have no idea, and there's no excuse for it. But I've seen the Penguins of Penguin Books (and Random House) stick their beaks in the sand instead of at least getting a few interns to file some takedown requests on eBay parasites.
How BAD is it on eBAY? Take a look at this. Here's a seller blatantly bootlegging J.K. Rowling's complete HARRY POTTER books. It's "legal" on eBay to stick PDF files on a DVD! Just say "I own the resell rights" because, ha ha ho ho hee hee, eBay can hide behind the filthy skirts of the DMCA and say, "We believe the seller. We don't require the seller to provide PROOF."
Those of us who choose to be creative, and choose to be part of the entertainment world, have often made humiliating sacrifices and paid the price of not being paid a decent price.
We've seen our leaders be mute, or worse, be part of the problem. That includes so-called Writer's Unions that might offer a nice dental plan if you join, but don't fight against piracy or a fair price for an Amazon download. Ronald Reagan, as President of SAG, shafted his fellow actors by signing off on agreements that limited royalties for re-runs, and in some cases, didn't allow artists to get royalties at all for work performed before a certain year.
I get paid for every book I sell. I technically get paid SOMETHING by YouTube for accumulated "hits" on YouTube and who knows, maybe one day I'll get a check from Spotify. But would you be surprised to know that there's a limit on royalties for a TV script writer? Yes, oh miserable novelist or pained songwriter, if you write a script for a hit show that goes into re-runs, the royalties DECREASE to the level of NOTHING! NOTHING! After a certain number of re-runs, the studio still makes money, the star might still make money, but the writer of the episode: NOTHING.
Nothing but good thoughts and optimism for the appointment of the sensitive, feisty, energetic (this woman tours A LOT) Eleanor McEvoy. To quote a song title from my late friend Steve Allen, "This Could Be the Start of Something Big."
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