Annie Lin

Activision fires back at No Doubt in court

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:33:55 -0500

Activision fires back at No Doubt in court

"The infringer has effectively already admitted owing at least $50 million and the full claim could..."

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:58:47 -0500

“The infringer has effectively already admitted owing at least $50 million and the full claim could exceed $6 billion. If the dollars don’t shock, the target of the lawsuit undoubtedly will: The defendants in the case are Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada, the four primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association.”

- Geist: Record industry faces liability over ‘infringement’

Digital Music Start-Ups Sell For A Song

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:33:27 -0500

Digital Music Start-Ups Sell For A Song

Why He Gave Away His Company To Charity: Thoughts On Derek Sivers

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:59:07 -0500

Last week, this blog post from Derek Sivers on why he gave away his company to charity saw a lot of action on Tumblr and Twitter. My contribution of the week to the music blog Nonalignment Pact is a post about the night my tourmate and I crashed on Derek’s floor many years ago:

Why He Gave Away His Company To Charity: Thoughts On Derek Sivers

I decided to take CDBaby up on their offer of hospitality and reached out to see if they could help me find a place to crash. My email was circulated inside the compmany, and then a day later I received a note from the founder and CEO of the company. Derek offered to let me and my tourmate stay at his apartment in downtown Portland.
CDBaby, though small, was growing at that time. It was no off-hours garage operation, and Derek was the company’s head honcho and driving force. Even then, he was a headliner on the digital music conference circuit, and yet he still took the time to respond to me personally. I never forgot that.
My tourmate and I crashed in the living room of Derek’s modest downtown Portland apartmment. He offered us anything we wanted in the fridge, including beer. We were quite literally starving musicians, so we definitely took him up on his offer and ate well.
For a while, Derek stayed up late to talk with us about life, love, business and music. He showed us a plastic credit card swiper for a CD Baby program he was about to deploy. The program would allow musicians to accept credit cards at shows, a revolutionary and empowering development that predated Square and other Web 2.0 e-commerce startups.
When I mentioned to Derek that I was thinking of applying to law school, he handed a copy of a book to me and told me to keep it. It was, aptly enough, The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig.

Keys' Release the Latest Victory for Facebook in Music Arena

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:54:56 -0500

Keys' Release the Latest Victory for Facebook in Music Arena

"Commercial Album (1980) consisted of 40 songs, each consisting of a verse and a chorus and lasting..."

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:55:24 -0500

“Commercial Album (1980) consisted of 40 songs, each consisting of a verse and a chorus and lasting one minute. The songs pastiched the advertising jingle although the songs were not endorsements of known products or services. The liner notes state that songs should be repeated three times in a row to form a “pop song”. The Residents purchased 40 one-minute advertising slots on San Francisco’s most popular Top-40 radio station at the time, KFRC, such that the station played each track of their album over three days. This prompted an editorial in Billboard magazine questioning whether the act was art or advertising.”

- The Residents - Wikipedia

(via @deadeathedead)

From Pocket to Stage, Music in the Key of iPhone

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:52:01 -0500

From Pocket to Stage, Music in the Key of iPhone

Apple Reportedly In Talks To Acquire Lala

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:18:49 -0500

Apple Reportedly In Talks To Acquire Lala

Who Is Using Music In New, Creative and Fascinating Ways?

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:47:05 -0500

I’m excited to be presenting a panel on music licensing at SXSW Interactive 2010. The title of the panel is Music Licensing for Emerging Media: Apps, Widgets, Viral Videos.

I am now looking for people and companies (startups, gaming companies, ad agencies, etc.) that have been licensing and using music in new, creative and fascinating ways for emerging technologies, such as apps, games and widgets. Speakers sill get a free badge. More information about the panel session and the conference is here.

Do you know anyone who fits this description and might be interested in coming to Austin in March? Please chime in, as I would love to hear your ideas.

The Complications of Interpolations

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:42:00 -0500

My contribution to the Nonalignment Pact music blog this week is an post about the use of interpolations in music and the effect of interpolations on whether a song can be licensed.

Excerpt is below, and full article is here: The Complications of Interpolations

Today is the first day of December, and the commencement of the holiday season brings with it a cornucopia of Christmas music. As well, it brings an influx of songs that include snippets of well-known music: original holiday medleys that also happen to include “White Christmas”, Christmas-themed hip-hop songs where the rap singer’s melody suddenly breaks into “Silver Bells.”

These well-known songs are controlled by major publishing companies, and the choice inclusion of an interpolation from one of these songs can render a song unlicensable. Or rather, licensable only if the song is performed by someone or in some way that is worth the trouble.

"The band, REO Speedwagon, is teaming up with a digital agency, Curious Sense, to introduce an online..."

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:53:47 -0500

“The band, REO Speedwagon, is teaming up with a digital agency, Curious Sense, to introduce an online video game aimed at the adults known as casual gamers. The game, scheduled to come out on Wednesday, is titled REO Speedwagon: Find Your Own Way Home, after the band’s 2007 album.”

- REO Speedwagon Rocks On as a Game

"He was raw, only played a few songs and had just a couple interesting guitar riffs, but Bob Keane..."

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:08:28 -0500

“He was raw, only played a few songs and had just a couple interesting guitar riffs, but Bob Keane would say later there was just something special about the teenager he would rename Ritchie Valens and turn into one of the biggest stars in rock ‘n’ roll history.”

- Del-Fi Records Founder Bob Keane Dies in LA

"Consumers can turn the sleeve artwork around to view the band from alternative angles. The band..."

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:18:11 -0500

“Consumers can turn the sleeve artwork around to view the band from alternative angles. The band members move as fluidly as they would if they were physically standing on the piece of paper being held.”

- Augmented Reality Marketing Gives New Edge To Music Purchases

Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young covering the “The Fresh Prince...

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:19:09 -0500

Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young covering the “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air”

My contribution to this week’s Nonalignment Pact music blog is an article about sending music...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:29:30 -0500

My contribution to this week’s Nonalignment Pact music blog is an article about sending music for review and the amount of music you should send. Excerpt is below; article is here:

Notes From a Demo Review Session: The Principle of Diminishing Returns

When you as an artist receive explicit instructions to send one song for consideration, your very best song, you should generally follow the instructions. If your song is amazing and the listener or listeners want to hear more, you will be asked to send more songs. You may think that you are sending a message about your talent as a profilic and profound songwriter by sending five different and awesome songs from your catalog or even an entire zip of everything you have written. But actually you are sending a message about how you feel about your own music: indecisive and insecure. You don’t feel good about any of the songs to let them shine on their own, so you send more.

Of course, this may not be actually be what you feel. Perhaps you just want to maximize the opportunity for exposure, or you really feel that all of your songs are amazing. However, you may nevertheless inadvertently send this message by failing to follow the instructions.

Autotune Sony ad = WIN

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:47:36 -0500

Autotune Sony ad = WIN

"With the help of close friends and family, 16-year-old Charles Allatt, has launched Vye Music, an..."

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:31:10 -0500

“With the help of close friends and family, 16-year-old Charles Allatt, has launched Vye Music, an online meta search app for music files around the Net. The site pulls search results from other music sites — including Skreemr, MP3Codes, and 4Shared Music, sites which in turn index hundreds of thousands of sites, blogs and artist pages.”

- 16-yr old launches Vye music-sharing site. Another Napster?

"On that measure, Shazam places third — and not by a nose. Midomi and MusicID were both noticeably..."

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:35:48 -0500

“On that measure, Shazam places third — and not by a nose. Midomi and MusicID were both noticeably faster than Shazam on every search I tried, in noisy and peaceful surroundings. It took Shazam 16 seconds to identify Steve Earle’s “Sparkle and Shine,” for instance, which was four seconds slower than MusicID and eight seconds slower than Midomi.”

- Adding a Fee, Shazam Invites a Look at the Competition

Digimarc Sues Shazam For Patent Infringement

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:36:04 -0500

Digimarc Sues Shazam For Patent Infringement

Shakira’s Stats Don’t Lie: Facebook/Ustream Music Video Debut Is A Hit

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:09:58 -0500

Shakira’s Stats Don’t Lie: Facebook/Ustream Music Video Debut Is A Hit