You'd think that an artist would be happy to have others record "tribute" versions of his/her songs. And if the resulting "album" is free, then what's the harm? Well, the artist formerly known as whatever-he's-calling-himself-now evidently doesn't care for tribute albums. I think he's just bitter about turning 50...

Well, the RIAA is at it again, now taking on the NAB. The RIAA is now accusing AM and FM radio stations of "piracy" since they play songs but don't pay royalties to the musicians/performers. They do however compensate the composers and songwriters. The NAB counters with the argument that without AM/FM exposure, most artists would be unknown and hence they are actually providing "free" marketing for the labels and artists. Methinks we have a chicken/egg problem here.

I have a foot in each camp - I've long advocated overthrow of current copyright laws/norms, and am a fan of open source and amateur cultural production. But I also am an artist and feel that I should have some control over my art and should be fairly compensated. Most of all, I believe that the *artist* should have the *choice.* When we released the Simpleflower album, I specifically used a Creative Commons license and made it a free download. If someone wanted higher resolution tracks and/or artwork, then they had to pay money. This was back in 2003, and turns out I was ahead of my time.

So what of radio? Well, one could argue that it is becoming somewhat irrelevant with the blogosphere, myspace, and myriad distribution technologies and approaches. Sat radio still is a minor player, but interestingly enough they pay royalties to composers and performers. I would venture a guess that AM/FM still have a huge penetration into the ears of consumers.

Choices. At some point you have to make them. While I could wax philosophic about a variety of choices, a little news blurb today reminded me of one I made a few years back. As a musician and technophile (reformed), I have been fiddling with computers and music since the mid 80's. I remember doing sequencing early on with Performer (now Mark of the Unicorn's Digital Performer), but got "serious" about it in the mid 90's.

Pro Tools has been the de facto standard for many years, but back then the full version required PCI cards ($$$) and lots of horsepower ($$$). As computons became cheaper, other software alternatives emerged, and so-called "native" apps (ie those that did not require hardware add-ons) made a dent. Digidesign, maker of Pro Tools, responded with a crippled version called Pro Tools LE, and I used it back in the late 90's. But there were things that I didn't like, and I spent many hours/days/months investigating other alternatives.

I finally got to a point where I was going back and forth between Pro Tools LE, Digital Performer, and finally Logic. Each had their strengths and weaknesses (like all products). Eventually Apple bought Logic, and there was hope that they would fix this incredibly powerful yet mostly arcane software.

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