Hide Your Kids and Hide Your Wife: YouTube's Accidental Star of the Minute

Folks, it happened once again. YouTube has birthed an “accidental” musical sensation. The unlikely star is Antoine Dodson (commonly misspelled as Dobson) of the dangerous Huntsville, Alabama. If you have not yet come across the song on the internet or terrestrial radio morning drive shows, you can see the video here "Bedroom Intruder".

Dodson's song was produced by the Gregory Brothers, (Twitter: autotunethenews) who have prior YouTube success by producing videos that remix tv news stories to hip-hop music and the auto-tune effect. Using their successful formula, the Greggory Brothers edited a local news clip of Dodson explaining how he saved his sister from a life threatening rape. Horrifying and dangerous yes, but Dodson adds flair to the original interview that results in pure comedy. Dodson is equal parts hero, thug, flamboyant queen, with a third grader's command of the English language. Amazingly, the song has become so viral that it has bee reported on by the BBC, ABC News, and others. Google Antoine Dodson and the following articles appear: " Antoine Dodson: Riding YouTube Out of the 'Hood' (NPR)," "Antoine Dodson is an Internet Star But at What Cost? (Clutch Magazine)", and dozens of websites with postings titled "Homo-Thug is Back- Antoine Dodson."

Dodson has embraced is sudden fame despite being the butt of many jokes and having nothing to do with production of the song. Perhaps the reasoning is that Dodson has suddenly turned a tragic event into a small goldmine. Bedroom Intruder is available for purchase on iTunes and has sold enough copies to be listed at 89 on this weeks Billboard Hot 100. Dodson and the Gregory Brothers are splitting the proceeds of the song 50/50, and Dodson has set up his own website www.antoine-dodson.com where he sells t-shirts and solicits donations. Dodson has embraced his inner "ghetto" by posting the following on his site: "Hey guys! I just want a real talk session with you guys on why I'm doing the fan line. This fan line will help me and my family move out of the hood and a percentage of the earnings of the fan line will go to a Juvenile diabetes charity."

Accidental success, butt of a joke, 15 minutes of fame. We can all debate the good and the bad, but for the Dodson family tragedy may be their ticket out of the ghetto and into the American dream. Viva la YouTube.

Lala RIP

Its amazing what can happen in a day. On May 1, Lala posted a notice on its website that it will be closing down on May 31. Yesterday's post is now only a glimpse of what people could have experienced.

I hope to get more details on why the sudden close is occurring. Sit tight and keep the musing streaming.

Lala, Apple Owns its Stiffest Competition

Cloud computing is going to change the way we consume music. The revolution begins with Lala.com, a site offering ownership in place of streaming radio. Unique features offered by lala include the ability to try music before purchasing it, and the ability to purchase two different licenses that offer more or less user control over the music being purchased.

Step one; try your music. The days of the local music store are essentially gone. I recall going to a local chain store at the mall that allowed customers to listen to an album in store before purchasing it. Good luck doing this at a big box store like Walmart or Best Buy. Lala restores this feature by enabling users to listen to any song once in its entirety before acquiring a license. You can even listen to an entire album straight through without making a purchase. If you like what you hear, move to step two.

Step two; listen online. Particularly useful to persons who have internet access on their mobile phone, or who generally live their lives within reach of internet devices, lala offers a cheap license for unlimited lifetime internet streaming of its songs. For only $0.10 a song can be acquired. In most cases, the internet license for an album will cost less than a cup of coffee. As the internet slowly creeps into our on the go lives, from car stereos to mobile phones and tablets, this feature may be the best deal available for legal ownership. The only real downside of this feature is that you must have an internet connection to access your music account. Lala allows users to up their license, thus if you acquire the limited internet use license you can always splurge to buy full ownership of the music for ten cents less than it would otherwise cost.

Step three; take your music with you anywhere because you own it. If a limited internet only license is too hi-tech or too limiting for your lifestyle, go all out and buy the full use license. Lala charges $0.89 per song, remarkably less expensive than the iTunes price. At this price, you own the mp3 track and download it to your hard-drive. You will also have access to listen to the song online remotely, if you are away from home.

Apple, Inc. acquired Lala in late 2009. iTunes is currently the largest music retailer in the world (in sales), yet Apple offers lower prices through Lala. It is unclear whether the full purchase price of $0.89 will last, perhaps it is being used as a short term effort to boost consumer use of Lala. Since being acquired by Apple, Lala has expanded its music offerings and has licensing agreements with the big four record companies, EMI, Universal Music Group, Sony-BMG, and Warner Music Group. With several smaller labels on board, consumers have the opportunity to acquire lots of music for very little money. For the tech-savvy individual who likes having tangible ownership, Lala was practically made for you.

Benjamins, Dead Presidents, Mullah....

Billboard Magazine recently released its list of the top 40 money making artists for 2009. As usual, the top earners made their living money by touring. This trend is one of the primary catalysts pushing record companies to seek "360" contracts with their artists. The 360 deal allows record companies to keep a piece of the action not only from record sales, but also from tour income and other ventures such as sponsorships, publishing and merchandise sales.

This year the top 40 earners took in between $9,421,947 and $108,601,283. The nearly $100 million difference is remarkable. At the bottom end of the spectrum is Bette Midler. The aging diva has an ongoing 90-date Las Vegas engagement at Caesars Palace. The top dog on the list is U2, whose 360 tour was the most expensive tour project ever. U2's cost to run each show was a staggering $750,000 but the band more than made up for this cost by performing stadium concerts in the round. The band was able to sell more tickets at each venue by rotating the stage and playing to all angles. Remarkably, U2 earned nearly twice the amount of runner up Bruce Springsteen ($57,619,037). The top ten was rounded off by Madonna, AC/DC, Britney Spears ($36.4 million of 38.8 million was earned from tour), Pink, Jonas Brothers, Coldplay, Kenny Chesney, and Metallica.

Year after year, data shows that live music touring generates the greatest incomes. This has notably kept hip-hop artists off the top earnings list. The top earning hip-hop artist this year was Lil Wayne, ranking at number 30 ($12,855,174). Musicians looking to build a sustainable and profitable career should start by honing their skills as a live performance act. Album sales have been hurt by piracy and the growth of on demand internet radio. One principle remains: No matter how much technology advances, the live concert performance experience cannot be replaced.

Record Sales & Digital Steaming Cake: and Eat it Too

Wired Magazine recently wrote about a research project by NDP Group that suggested interactive music streaming sites such as Spotify decrease music purchases by consumers. According to NDP Group, users of interactive sites purchase 13% less music, while users of non-interactive tailored sites such as Pandora, actually increase music purchases by 40%. These numbers don't sound realistic, but the principle remains. As stated by Wired, Pandora provides internet radio, Spotify provides a record collection. The respective effect on sales of music is expected by the business model being deployed.
Both formats greatly increase music consumption, a benefit that increases consumer identity with the artists they listen to. Record companies, as the frequent owners of sound recording copyrights, receive a royalty each time a song they own is played on the internet. The rate is higher for interactive services than it is for non-interactive services. The Copyright office has provided this benefit with the understanding that interactive services have the potential of offsetting music sales. Point being, record companies are getting paid for the use of the music which is far more beneficial than pushing consumers back to acquisition by piracy. Piracy is a unilateral street, interactive services extend benefits to all interested parties.
Eliot Van Buzkirk of Wired writes: "But it’s not a bad thing for the industry that on-demand services like Spotify and Rhapsody replace sales — that’s what they’re designed to do. It’s no accident, and neither is the much-higher premium — a penny per stream — that labels and publishers extract from them, which is ten times more what streaming radio sites pay."
Internet streaming services are left to figure how to make the burden of paying a high royalty for sound recording broadcasts. Some like Grooveshark have chosen the advertising revenue model, others like Rhapsody use a subscription model, while services like Spotify use a hybrid. Rhapsody has only 700,000 subscribers compared to the 2.7 million users that signed up for Spotify in its first 6 months.
Ultimately, the threat of dwindling sales continues to rear its head and pose trouble for recording companies. The digital royalty serves to offset this problem. I predict a push by record companies to legislate non subscription interactive services out of business through license fee hikes and other restrictions. The true danger of interactive services replacing purchases will not occur until many more people have access to mobile plans that can access streaming services on the go. At that point the celestial jukebox will be a full reality and anyone with a connection won't need to purchase their tunes.

Wearing a Different Hat, Guantanamo Bay

We are all in the habit of living 24 hour days. For nearly three years my hours have been spent vigorously pursuing a legal education. This education has not been limited to class room experience, nor has it been limited to the traditional law school curriculum. In addition to the standard fair, two interests have consumed my focus. The first is exploring issues in law related to music and the internet. This interest is the broad subject matter expressed through this blog. The second interest is investigating the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.
As a research fellow with Seton Hall Law's Center for Policy & Research (CP&R)I have spent thousands of hours researching government documents and records relating to the military base. This work has been poured into several of CP&R's 17 published reports, many of which have been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress, European Parliament, New York Times, Washington Post, and many more sources. Most recently, CP&R published a report titled "Death in Camp Delta," exploring the events surrounding three alleged suicide deaths that occurred on base during the summer of 2006. The following article is a brief explanation of our lengthy report. On February 16, 2010, a 40 minute interview discussing CP&R's investigation into these events aired on NPR's "The Story." The interview which featured myself, student Kelli Stout, and Professor Mark Denbeaux can be heard here. Furthermore, I encourage you to read the March issue of Harper's Magazine, in which author Scott Horton significantly expands upon CP&R's research.


In Search of Truth at Guantanamo Bay
By Adam Deutsch (written for "The Cross Examiner," Seton Hall Law's internal student news paper)

Shortly after midnight on June 10, 2006, prison guards found three detainees hanging in their cells at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The detainees had been dead for at least two hours. Guards said they were stiff with rigor mortis, cold to the touch, with blue extremities and no pulse.
Later that morning, the Department of Defense (DOD) forced all of the detainees’ attorneys and press members to leave the military base while an investigation began. Contemporaneous to the forced evacuation of non-military personnel, the DOD announced that the detainees had engaged in “acts of asymmetric warfare” against the United States by committing suicide. The government issued this conclusive statement on the cause of death before autopsies were performed, and before persons on duty were interviewed. By holding the early press conference before performing its due diligence, the DOD skewed the objectivity of the subsequent investigation and forever altered the public’s perception of these deaths. It is now clear that the DOD’s final investigation was either grossly incompetent or a concocted cover-up of the truth.
How could three people commit suicide by hanging in one of the most secured prison facilities in the world? In 2008, more than two years after the purported suicides, the DOD released a three-page summary of the Naval Criminal Investigative Task Force (NCIS) investigative findings and a massive, heavily redacted file of investigative interviews and documents. Research fellows at the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research (CP&R), headed by Professor Mark Denbeaux, began analyzing more than 1,000 pages in redacted documents to better understand how the three detainees died.
What the research fellows at CP&R found is remarkable. According to the DOD’s interviews of Guantanamo personnel, each deceased detainee braided a noose by tearing bed sheets and clothing, made a mannequin of himself so it would appear that he was asleep, hung sheets to block guard views of the cell, tied his feet together, tied his hands together, placed cloth in his mouth or throat, hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall, climbed upon the sink basin, put the noose around his neck and released his weight to result in death by strangulation.
According to the base’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), the detainees should not have had possession of enough fabric materials to complete the suicidal act described above. Furthermore, it was an SOP violation to hang a sheet that would obstruct a guard’s view of the detainee cell for more than a few minutes while one used the in-cell toilet. These sheets, like the detainees, hung for more than two hours. The SOPs dictate that guards are to walk the cell block every 10 minutes and take visual count of each detainee. The guards on duty failed to complete this task a minimum of 12 times while the detainees hung dead in their cells.
These details are only the tip of the iceberg. While making sworn statements, several guards were accused of making false statements or failing to obey direct orders. However, not one Guantanamo employee was disciplined for failure to obey the SOPs. Even though the detainees were reportedly found dead beyond the point of resuscitation, they were given invasive medical treatment, which in some cases included use of defibrillating machines, tracheal tubes, catheters and intravenous injections. None of these procedures could have saved the detainees, and yet there has been no explanation as to why post-mortem mutilation of the bodies occurred.
In early December 2009, Seton Hall Law’s CP&R released “Death In Camp Delta,” a report uncovering discrepancies and issues with the DOD’s investigation. Since then, members of Congress have called on Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct a new investigation into the DOD investigation, and Harper’s Magazine published an article taking CP&R’s research further. Harper’s author Scott Horton spoke with several people on duty the night of June 9, 2006, who confirmed that the three detainees did not die in the way that has been alleged. Horton found that those guards who were stationed in observation towers, which provided a clear view of the entire camp, did not see any bodies carried out of their cells to the medical facility. Harper’s identified what it believes to be a non-DOD facility at Guantanamo that might be a CIA “dark cite.” It suggests that the detainees died elsewhere on the base, confirming the investigation as a probable cover-up. Horton has thus extended the investigation that Seton Hall’s CP&R began.
“Death In Camp Delta” is the sixteenth report published by CP&R that examines the Guantanamo Bay detention facility operations. These reports are researched and authored by Seton Hall Law students under the guidance of Professor Denbeaux. The reports have been cited in U.S. Supreme Court opinions, Congressional records, the European Parliament, the New York Times, Washington Post and numerous other academic and periodical sources. While the full truth of what occurred on June 10, 2006 has yet to be uncovered, public dialogue toward ascertaining the truth, with the help of Seton Hall Law’s CP&R, is as vigorous as ever.

Warner's Dillema

In early February, Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. announced that his company would not be issuing licenses to free (non subscription based) interactive music streaming services. Bronfman has arguably been the most outspoken of the major label CEO’s when discussing the life of music as it collides with new technologies and the internet. While Bronfman’s sound-bites are entertaining, one must ask whether they make good business judgment.
BBC News quoted Bronfman as saying ”free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry and as far as Warner Music is concerned will not be licensed. The get all your music you want for free, and then maybe with a few bells and whistles we can move you to the premium price strategy is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future.” Warner is singling out those services such as Lala, Grooveshark or Europe’s Spotify, which allow users to select specific songs and entire albums to stream on demand without paying a fee. It is the position of Bronfman, and many other recording industry executives that such legal services have the potential to permanently displace the sale of music.
Fear that record sales will continue to decline as the use of free on demand streaming services rise is rational. This fear was directly addressed by Congress more than ten years ago when they provide sound recording copyright owners with an exclusive right to digital public performance of music. Through this right, Warner collects a royalty each time music they own is played by a licensed webcaster or streaming service over the internet. In contrast, Warner does not collect money when their music is played over traditional radio airwaves. The royalty compensation provides a steady stream of income to copyright owners, while providing consumers a way to remain connected to music and to try music in advance of purchasing it. Furthermore, it is unlikely that streaming will completely replace music purchases because consumers do not have constant access to internet streaming.
According to NDP Group, a researcher of trends in the music industry conducted a study analyzing the use of internet music among the key teenage demographic of 13-17 year olds. Teenagers purchased 19% less music in 2008 when compared to 2007. At the same time, the demographic also acquired less music through illegal means during this period. Use of Peer to Peer networks declined by 6% and the “ripping” of music from friends dropped by 28%. One area of music consumption that dramatically increased was the use of internet radio and streaming services. 52% of teenagers listened to online radio in 2008, compared to only 34% a year earlier.
Trends clearly show that the legal consumption of music over the internet is increasing, while illegal means of music acquisition is declining. The rational consumer will always seek to acquire product at the lowest economic cost. Although the theft of music via peer to peer networks has been stigmatized enough to decrease the practice among consumers, the practice of acquiring music for free remains in high demand. The copyright code has been adjusted to provide royalty payments and therefore incentivize record companies to participate with and encourage new technologies such as streaming. If it chooses not to allow consumers to acquire music through the most economically efficient legal means, Warner runs a significant risk of alienating consumers. Alienation may result in a return to illegal acquisition of music, or simply moving consumers away from the consumption of musical recordings owned by Warner. The remaining big three record labels are unlikely to follow Warner’s example, and this increases the potential self-inflicted wound Warner is chasing.