Since the days of Napster, record labels have recruited recording
artists as allies in their fight against unauthorized music services,
arguing that what was good for capital was also good for labor.
But as Teresa Nielsen Hayden says, “Just because you’re on their side, it doesn’t mean they’re on your side.”
Since the rise of streaming services, recording artists have complained
bitterly about the pittances they receive in royalties, while the
streaming services countered that they were sending billions to the
labels, who were pocketing all the money without passing it on to the
talent.
Last year, the record industry gained an extra $1.4 billion in
new revenues, mostly from streaming, restoring its overall revenues to
pre-internet levels, when the labels had grown accustomed to reselling
the same music every couple of years in new formats (vinyl, 8-track,
cassette, CD). Overall, streaming services remit $7.4 billion to
rightsholders.
But musicians’ median income continues to fall, and it’s not hard to
understand why: it just takes a basic grasp of supply and demand. The
number of labels has dwindled to four, meaning fewer bidders to put
musicians under contract, and thus ever-worsening basic contract terms.
Signing with a label isn’t necessarily optional for artists: if you want
to make music that incorporates samples, you’ll find that you need to sign up with a label or you’ll likely be refused a license.
Meanwhile, there has been a concomitant reduction in the number of
online services that would help indie artists survive without a label,
thanks in part to higher compliance costs demanded by the labels in the
name of fighting copyright infringement (despite the immense expense of
these measures, the labels would be the first to tell you that they’re
not working). These costs reduce the likelihood of new entrants into the
market – it’s one thing to start Youtube with a couple dudes in a
garage; it’s another altogether to start a Youtube competitor in 2018
and raise a couple hundred million dollars extra in order to put
together a Content ID-style system to forestall legal action from the
record labels.
As the number of online services has dwindled, the extent to which they
compete for musicians by offering better terms has likewise declined;
indeed, it’s now become customary for Big Tech and Big Content to sit
down and negotiate deals that indies are then forced to accept,
effectively binding everyone – regardless of whether they’re signed to
a label – into a sharecropper in the labels’ fields, with Big Tech
serving as crew boss and enforcer.
The fight isn’t – and has never been – about Tech vs Content. It’s
always been about labor vs capital – but in the early days, the forces
of capital on the tech side were fragmented, mutually uncooperative, and
competitive, and could be played off against each other. More than a
decade later and the copyright wars has helped Big Tech grow into a
unified front, jointly presented with the entertainment industry (with
minor, occasional skirmishes), arrayed against the working artists of
the world and the fans that love them.
Way to the Woods by Anthony Tan. Launch date in 2019.
Way to the Woods is the brainchild of Anthony Tan, an eighteen-year-old student from Melbourne, Australia. Slated for release on the PC and console in 2019, the game’s announcement trailer depicts a third-person adventure storyline, where the player controls a doe and her fawn traversing a post-human world to find their way home.
Tan first entered the public consciousness in 2015, when he posted screenshots of the game on Reddit, which led to widespread attention and an eventual publishing deal from the label Team17. Way to the Woods is powered by Unreal Engine 4 and is accompanied by a soundtrack from London musician Jeremy Warmsley. The scenes are hand-drawn by Tan, who maintains a stylistically graphic and elegant aesthetic throughout the trailer. Tan cites the Studio Ghibli films Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, as well as similarly post-apocalyptic game The Last of Us, as inspirations for Way to the Woods.
A newly discovered collection of notes written by Nixon aide HR Haldeman
reveals that during Nixon’s 68 presidential campaign, he illegally
conspired to convince the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu,
to scuttle the peace talks run by Nixon’s political rival, Vice
President Hubert H. Humphrey.
Nixon was advised on the maneuver by Henry Kissinger, and also
threatened CIA director Richard Helms with termination and political
ruin if the CIA didn’t cooperate with Nixon’s plans. It is a federal
crime to take steps to “defeat the measures of the United States.” It is
considered a form of treason.
Nixon later repeatedly denied having taken any measures to undermine the
peace talks, and directed his lawyers to spend their careers
suppressing the release of documents related to the 1968 election and
the talks.
As Hunter S Thompson wrote in his obituary for Nixon:
“If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket
would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty
into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a
jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed
servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral
was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been
burned in a trash bin.”
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger are complicit (you could make an argument that they are responsible, too) in the deaths of more than 30,000 Americans and over a million Vietnamese.
Because they wanted to win an election.
Never forget this.
reblogging the shit out of this every single time.
“Hundreds of top Hollywood actresses and executives, directors, producers, writers, and agents have launched a sweeping initiative to combat sexual harassment in workplaces across the US, with a focus on blue-collar industries.
The initiative, Time’s Up, includes a legal defense fund backed by $13 million in donations to assist women in low-wage industries, a campaign to advocate gender parity among corporate leadership, and proposed legislation to push companies to adopt policies on harassment and discourage the use of nondisclosure agreements.
The movement addresses a common criticism that the national conversation around sexual misconduct in workplaces has frequently excluded women who typically have less public influence and fewer resources to take on systemic abuse than Hollywood stars.
“Harassment too often persists because perpetrators and employers never face any consequences,” said an open letter from 300 women in film, TV, and theater. “This is often because survivors, particularly those working in low-wage industries, don’t have the resources to fight back.”
I know i was overwhelmed with all the information flying around and I didn’t really know what it meant and how it would affect me and how serious it is. But when I did understand, I realized, IT’S SERIOUS. So I hope this will help you. Tag ppl! Share it around!
BASICS: Net neutrality is good and it’s the internet as we know it. The FCC in the US wanted to get rid of it and as of recently they did, but changes won’t occur immediately after they have made their decision. So just because you haven’t seen any changes, doesn’t mean you wont.
WHY IS NET NEUTRALITY A BIG DEAL? Watch the first three short videos below. It really wont take long and each one brings some new information. After doing that, if you are in a hurry, just scroll down to the part that says what you can do.
“Kentucky Flood” by Margaret Bourke-White. The people in line were waiting for relief after the 1937 flood of the Ohio River in Louisville, KY. January 1937 was the month with the most precipitation in history for much of the Ohio Valley, and cities like Louisville, Cincinnati were devastated. This, of course, came at the height of the Great Depression, making an already awful situation even worse.
So Justin Trudeau’s Liberals just awarded a $23.1 million dollar contract to build a new jail for immigrants (replacing a temporary immigrant detention centre with a permanent one).
This is their statement on it:
“Our government is committed to investing in repairs and retrofits to its wide range of properties and buildings. This federal building will become an accessible and modern facility that meets today’s health, safety and environmental standards. This project will in turn create local business opportunities and jobs in the construction industry.” -The Honourable Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Public Services and Procurement
Make no mistake: BLACK voters in Alabama did that. I am sO proud of my people. Black voters in Alabama kicked Roy Moore and Donald Trump right in the teeth and had to overcome all kinds of voter suppression and dirty registration tricks to make it happen.
So can you please explain the suppression and dirty registration tricks ?
For the first time in 50 years, there is no functioning Voting Rights Act in place to protect disenfranchised voters. In Alabama, more than 66 polling places in Black voting precincts were closed. Drivers license offices in mostly black neighborhoods were also closed. Voter ID laws were then ramped up and in full effect. Voter rolls of registered voters have been purged of mostly eligible Black voters. Early voting (which Black people tend to use most) has been drastically reduced. Sunday voting (again, which Black people tend to use most) has been cut. Historically, Alabama uses the mass incarceration of disproportionately Black people as a form of Voter Suppression. The Civil Rights of Black people have systematically been targeted and eroded, especially in the “former” Confederate slave states.
BLACK people—especially Black Women—really pulled off a miracle in Alabama. And you better believe that right now, today, Republican lawmakers are closely studying Alabama’s Black voter turnout and planning where to tighten up voter suppression for the next election.
So yeah, once again, Black people stepped up. In a country where we can be innocent, unarmed, and gunned down, but our killers will still get away with our murder. So when you hear people say “progressives” won the day, or “slightly more than 50 percent of Alabama voters rejected Roy Moore,” it isn’t true. Black people did that. And even with all of that, Doug Jones only won by 1 percent. Because the majority of white voters in Alabama were more than happy to vote for a child molester. If Alabama were just a few neighborhoods whiter, Roy Moore the child molester would have won.
Bottom line: white people need to wake tf up and maybe stop voting for racists, rapists, homophobes and misogynists just because they claim to be Christians.
96 percent of black voters voted for Doug Jones, but we can’t be expected to keep saving white America from itself every election cycle.
1. white racists (like you “good” whites’ uncles, grandmas, neighbors, and friends) only change their behavior when they are confronted by other whites with more status.
2. when Black people confront the racists attacking us, they just pile on harder because they get a kick out of knowing they’ve gotten to us.
tl;dr - just like Black people have been telling you for decades, it’s up to whites to end racism and you can’t do it by remaining friends with your cousin and grandma who voted Trump because “fuck political correctness”.
