Tag: Metadata's Growing Role in Artist's Compensation

Peter Jenner-it's a worldwide business, there are thousands of databases that contradict each other maybe what we need is a barcode number on every piece of music that tracks it wherever it goes, somewhere there needs to be a registry which matches the number with a file that has the music that would resolve conflicts. Do we agree that there should be a central numbering database like an ISBN

Barrie Kessler: This is a high volume, low number business. For Sound Exchange we have a fairly significant amount of royalties that is tied up in bad data. I don't think the industry as a whole understands the costof crappy data. Also, unregistered artists we can't find to pay.

Kristin Thompson: Does the problem start with the data the radio stations are using?

Barrie: We're supposed to get all our data from the services, we have spent massive amounts of money writing code deciphering the data that comes in. Then we can decide who we are going to pay and who we need to reach out to.

Audience: Is there a negative reaction to Peter's proposal out there? There is a major label that did digital watermarking.

Brian Zisk: Why should splits be made public? Some crazy is going to track me down if they find out I own 75% of this track.

Barrie: I think we need to get away from the notion that the data has some kind of value. The services around the data have value. The facts of a song, who the featured performer is, who the background musician and the session player is, what the title is; what changes is the owner, the splits. The facts don't change and are public, the other information could be private.

Peter: I think that's what's going to happen, more and more blanket uses and less licensing. There needs to be an archive that is availble to all professional people that has this informatino.

Robert Kaye: A lot of what MusicBrainz is trying to do is this. It is all in the public domain. One of the things I want to do, and Musicbrainz is starting to get the credibility to have these conversations with Sound Exchange and others that we have this information. I don't need to know where the owner lives or what the splits are, but I want the PROs to use this information.

Jim Selby: ISBN is a nightmare, it's a prefix and there are tons of duplicates.

Robert: People ask me why I don't work with the labels more, because their data isn't the same as the people maintaining the data


How deep should you go with the metadata?
Peter: this is why it should grow and grow and grow.

Robert: I'm going to challenge the idea that this is complicated or expensive?
Barrie: How do you ensure the accuracy?
Robert: Peer review, that's why I send it out to all these other systems and databases.
Peter: There is going to be so much more music done online by kids on their phones and mashups, but there is no label to ask for this information



Peter: I think I opened up a can of worms, I doubt in ten years there will be a system that can get an artist his money to France or Africa or India, I think this is a long-term international problem. At the end of the day there is also the problem of getting it travelling internationally, who owns it, licensing it, people who have changed addresses. There are going to be more and more piles of money and more and more people raising their hand saying "It's mine".

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stupid computer network is cranky, sorry this will be delayed
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We thought 5TB would be adequate, with compression now we think maybe 10-15TB would be adequate. (think about price 10 years ago) Right now we can do what would have cost a million dollars for under a thousand now. There probably is a limit to how cheap they can go. Ed Felten of Princeton has cracked every data security thing within hours (ohh, check out his blog, it's nerdy)

Rick Karr: Sometimes with a sharpie (DRM on CDs, look it up)

Sandy: Soon enough, this will be on a portable infinite library disc. A year ago I walked up to William Gibson and asked him about the implantable library, he said "that's too weird for me."

I have reservations about the cloud, for instance, I can't get online here.

Sandy: I don't trust Google. I don't want them monitizing my information

Audience: At SF Music Tech attitude was no one will want to own data, just access
Sandy: Torrents make up most internet traffic. A lot is video. Still, every one of the subscription services will be a failure.




(and sorry I was gone, but that conference center was a dead zone)