London Alternative Copyright Choir

Traditional copyright exists in order to protect the rights of creators. The idea is that if they know their work will be protected and they can profit from it, there will be an incentive for them to create new works. This in turn means that consumers or audiences have a wide range of works to choose from. We all benefit from the cultural richness of a diverse range of artists creating a large number of works.

That's a nice theory, and an admirable goal. But in real life, things don't always work smoothly. There are several problems with the laws of copyright as they exist today, and with the business models that emerged around them in the 20th century.

In the music world one of the biggest problems is that of getting your music heard. It's not enough to write music and then leave it in a desk drawer where nobody will hear it, or not if you want to make a living. Before mass communications were around, the way to get your music heard was to perform it as much as possible and try to get your friends to do the same. The printing press and increasing literacy changed that a fair amount, but performance was still a very important factor. Audio recording and playback technology, paired with the broadcasting possibilities of radio and television, changed it profoundly. It was possible, if you could raise the funds, to have your music played to hundreds, thousands, even millions of people at once. It was possible to play your music once, twice, ten times until you got it nearly perfect, and then sell a duplicate of that nearly perfect recording without having to do it again. Word of mouth became less important than airtime.

High-quality recording equipment was still relatively expensive in the 20th century. To have a song recorded was simply beyond the means of most musicians. So a system emerged where publishers and recording companies would enter into a partnership with composers and performers. The creators of the music would give up some control over their work in exchange for money, and the recording companies would worry about the details of recording equipment and distribution of the finished product.

Again, this is alright in theory. But what happened in practise was this: recording technology got cheaper. Mass distribution got cheaper. Recording companies got better at marketing, and at making money. It was very difficult to get your music heard in the mass media unless you had a deal with a recording company, and very difficult to get a deal with a recording company at all, and even then you might not make much money unless your track was a hit. Depending on the details of the contract you might not make money even if your track was very successful. And the mass media was the only one where you were likely to make significant amounts of money. The widespread availability of cheap recorded music meant that live performances weren't so easy to fix any more. Copyright became something the recording companies would defend in order to preserve their profits, but which didn't necessarily benefit artists, and which actually reduced the average audience's access to a variety of music. If you wanted something different from the offerings of the mainstream media, you had to go out of your way to find it.

This, too, is changing: technology has moved on. The biggest change is that the mass media is becoming more and more audience-controlled. I'm writing this to post on a website; I'm willing to bet that many of the people reading it will have websites or blogs of their own. People are creating, for the sake of it. Some may get paid in advertising revenue or support themselves through other means, but many don't bother. Some of the best bloggers out there have day jobs. A significant portion of people are starting to question or outright ignore what the mainstream media says, whether that's in journalism or visual art or written fiction or music. The thresholds to mass broadcasting are much lower than they have been before, and a lot of us have something to say.

What that means, in practical terms, is that we're back to word-of-mouth again, but in a much different environment than the one where personal, face-to-face contact was the main form of communication. Word of mouth has gone global. And it's noisy.

For creators this has some interesting implications. Broadcasting is cheaper than it has ever been, but so is copy&paste. Artists who try to keep their copyrighted works out of the public domain have only limited success in doing so: do a Google image search for 'Gary Larson' if you don't believe me. Before the printing press if you wrote or told a story and someone stole it and claimed it as their own, there wasn't a lot you could do, but you could try to tell the same story more than they'd have a chance to, and probably still make some profit. Mass duplication makes that a technology race as well a social skills race, and ultimately the choice to say anything at all is also an acceptance of the risk that someone else might try to steal it.

The challenges for the music industry are similar to those for the written word; the technology is different, but not far behind. The technology that lets me record a music rehearsal at a reasonable quality and put it online, should I wish, costs less than a month's rent. The expertise required to do so really well is something I can learn. The equipment to create a CD-quality recording, isn't much more expensive than what I've got. But once it's out there, I have very little control: I can't easily dictate whether it is duplicated or not. I certainly can't afford legal fees against someone who attempts to profit from my own work. Participation is an act of trust.

We need new business models to deal with this environment.

We can lean toward more control, more stringent laws to prevent the theft and piracy of intellectual property. That way lies stifling bureaucracy and an endless arms race against what technology can do. And as shown, it doesn't always benefit artists or audiences. If I hear something I like I'm going to try to show my friends by whatever technology I have available; making that illegal doesn't benefit anyone.

Alternately we can tread the careful path toward increased openness and trust. We can build communities where intellectual property rights are respected, but not in a punitive manner: where people create for the sake of creating, not for the reward, but where reward is still possible.

The London Alternative Copyright Choir exists to explore some of the alternative business models available, at least as far as choral music is concerned. Our concert, "Songs of Freedom", will be this Friday, 20th March, at St John on Bethnal Green Church.

London Alternative Copyright Choir

I'm running a very exciting project as part of my BMus degree. I am putting together a choir, which will do eight weeks of rehearsal and then a concert. The exciting part? All the music used will be acquired, copied, and performed using non-traditional alternatives to copyright, and the part of the proceeds will go to the Open Rights Group. You don't need to read music and there are no auditions.

We will be rehearsing on Thursday evenings from 7.30pm to 9.30pm on the following dates:
29th January
12th, 19th and 26th February
5th, 12th and 19th March.

Please note: no rehearsal 5th February!

The concert will be on 20th March at 8pm. Rehearsals and the concert are at St. John on Bethnal Green church, conveniently located at Bethnal Green tube station.

The website (still under construction, but it has the important details) is here:
http://www.etla.org/krose/lacc
The Google Group is here:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/lac-choir
There is a poster which you could print out here:
http://www.etla.org/krose/lacc/publicity/lacc-poster-002.pdf

So: Five Reasons Why You Should Sing With The London Alternative Copyright Choir!

1. It's only a small time commitment

Just one Thursday evening a week for eight weeks, and then a concert. A great way to try out the choir thing without committing to giving up an evening a week for the rest of your mortal life!

2. You will get to meet and spend time with shiny people!

Singing in a choir is a great way to meet new people, and to regularly see old friends.

3. Singing is great!

Singing is fun - and it's good for your well-being and mental health! Breathing to sing is physically relaxing, creating music with other people is one of those things which is amazing in ways that it's hard to put into words. Performing can be a buzz! (And it's legal, and you don't get a hangover).

4. You will get to learn some awesome music!

Purcell! He wrote the first opera in English! He wrote loads of music that was used as incidental music in contemporary productions of Shakespeare's plays! And now you can access his music for free on the internet! How cool is that?

Plus, we'll be doing some new music written specially for the choir. Honestly, there is nothing more exciting than getting to work on new music with the composer for the first performance - and amateur choirs are rarely able to do it, at least partly because commissioning fees are extremely expensive (after all, composers have to eat). We are lucky to be working with composers who believe that there are models which allow them to perform and spread their music differently, so that all sorts of groups have access to new music. Which leads neatly on to the big one:

5. The renegotiation of Intellectual Property Laws is one of the most important socio-political / legal debates of the Internet age.

This is about who has the power to profit from our music, our art, our ideas. This is about how we assign value. Some of you have already seen this debate go past, and already know how relevant it is to you. Some of you work with open source code. Open source music (and other forms of art) will have to work to a slightly different model, which we haven't quite got figured out yet.

Regardless of whether you see this like I do, I invite you to explore the Open Rights Group website, and think about why this is so important in an age when our methods for dissemination of ideas are becoming something new and unforeseen and glorious.

Great! I'm sold! Sign me up!

If you want to take part in the London Alternative Copyright Choir, see the website (still under construction) for more details: http://www.etla.org/krose/lacc/join.html or join the Google group at http://groups.google.co.uk/group/lac-choir

That all sounds amazing, but I don't have the time / don't live in London

There are still loads of ways you can help out!

1) Spread the word, and help us recruit singers! I'm sure you lot know musical geeks in London that aren't likely to be reading this. Let them know! Link to this post or point them at the website.

2) Come to the concert! It will be on the 20th of March, at St John on Bethnal Green, right by Bethnal Green Tube on the Central Line. Tickets will be sold on a 'pay what you think this will be worth' basis on the night, or you can get them in advance for a fiver. Details are on the website.

If you're feeling really enthusiastic, you can help publicise the concert nearer the time.