Reality Shows

Reality shows have been the craze or the “thing” to do for the last couple of years.  It seems that anyone can do it if they have a following and able to make money for a network.  I’ve tried to see what the ‘hype’ was about shows like Basketball Wives and Mob Wives, but it just seem like some of the most trashy and disrespectful women that I would never want to be around.  Especially when I watched Basketball Wives and most of those women were either ex-wives or girlfriends.  Not interested. 

But then I heard about a new show on the TVOne network.  It’s called R & B Divas.  Now I totally love the show because it features some of my favorite female artist of the 90s R & B scene.  To date the one that put it all together is Faith Evans.  She is the widow of the hip-hop star Notorious Big, AKA ‘Biggie Smalls’.  She has since worked on several albums that have brought her great success the last few albums. Evans says, “We’re not about jumping on tables and throwing bottles.” Which is something you’re most likely to see on the previously mentioned shows. Another creator of the show and featured on the show is Nicci Gilbert who is the former lead singer of the 90s group Brownstone.  Syleena Johnson is another artist featured.  She’s best known for her vocals featured on Kanye West’ song All Falls Down.  Monifah is another featured artist best known for her song “Touch It”.  Then finally my favorite of singer of them all is Keke Wyatt.  She’s best known for her duet with male artist Avant with a remake called My First Love, which was originally recorded by Rene and Angela in 1983.

As you can see the “cream of the crop” is featured on this show.  Sure, I could name a few more that could be considered R & B Divas also, but we’ll save that for later.

Now back to the positivity about the show.  It allows people to see friends and life behind the music.  All of them are wives and/or mothers, which is something maybe only fans may have known. The show is full of laughter and even tears as the ladies share their heart about what is really going on in their lives.  The last show is October 8^th and they are not sure if there will be another.  Evans says that there is also going to be a compilation cd coming out soon with these ladies and some others like Kelly Price and Fantasia featured as well. 

Industry Insights

This week’s blog touches on several topics based on some very interesting blogs I had a chance to listen.  In these blogs I’ll discuss a little information from each concerning the 360 Deal, Trademarks, and a copyright infringement case.

Podcast #1: Entertainment Law Update: This podcast discusses the legal aspects of the 360 Deal.  It takes a look on whether on the deal is in violation of the California Talent Agencies Act. It says only a licensed agent or agency can only procure or find employment opportunities, except record deals, for their talent. If you are working with a licensed agent that the licensed personal and you were requested, then it’s ok to procure employment.  The website has the full article written by Firemark’s guest.

It goes so far that if the Act were violated, one would have to give back all commissions for any items that you needed a license.   My company wants to represent artist, and as an independent label and manager, I would first have to look to see how a 360 Deal would benefit me as a label, then how it would benefit my client.  I believe if the deal is based upon grooming my client to be a huge artist, then I believe the 360 Deal will be in that client’s favor.  As a label, that’s not something I’m interested in that will work for my company.

Podcast #2:  This Week in Law 176:This podcast talks about the legal perspective of copyright infringement.  The conversation goes into how technology has definitely advanced, but actually hurting our copyright owners.  Denise Howell called it the “Whac – A – Mole” mentality, meaning once there was success at handling how songs were getting out for free then something new came along that needed to be figured out.

Laws are still being developed on whether it will be okay to just give music away free.  Licensing has been more of an option through venues like Spotify and MOG. Licensing still does give some money to a songwriter, but nothing gets paid barely any money.  The example given by guest Loren Mulraine puts it in perspective when she gives an example of a songwriter who sees their royalty statement with 200,000 units, but received $.40 of income.  Her college students didn’t really see the significance of why it’s NOT okay to take free music.  Why pay for because it’s free?  But she said the students sang a different tune when they realized that they wanted to make a living at it.  Hopefully there will soon be some progress so that we as creators will benefit. This law applies greatly to my business plan because it seems that I’ll have to be even more creative with finding ways to get my music out there and get paid for it. I can see it’s already hurting the industry, so it will be important to my business to have great marketing strategies to find out who is actually buying music and then marketing to them.

Podcast #3:  This Week in Law 119: The legal issue deals with the trademark law with a real life court case in session. Five years in the running because Apple feels that Kokin used part of their trademark to create his brand.  Daniel Kokin is the creator of Video Pod.  Kokin said he wanted to invent something that would be more for the home and not the conference room.  He talks about how he didn’t even think Apple at the time as being a threat since they were focused on audio.  Unfortunately, this has been holding his small company from gaining success and Kokin feels trademark laws don’t really support him.

This case was instrumental in helping me make better decisions when developing my trademark for my company. It is important to conduct the proper research to ensure your idea for your business is secure and not infringing on anyone else.

That's My Song!: A Look at Plagiarism

Collaborating is one of my favorite ways to write a song. Its nothing like getting together with fellow musicians, song writers, and singers that you respect.  Although, you might feel like this is the circle where you can trust everyone, its not always the case. Whether its who wrote the song or are you giving credit to parts of a song you've used.  It's necessary to get these things street from the beginning.

There was the court case between a song writer Janne Suni and super producer Timbaland.  He produced a song for Nelly Furtado called Do It. Suni was suing for the usage of samples from his song Acidjazzed Evening.  Timbaland denied all claims and said he heard the music on an old Commodore 65 Game System.  He also said he didn't know who it belonged to anyone. In the end, the case was dismissed for the plaintiff because it was found that the song was never sent for copyright.  Huh? I was a little confused.  I was trying to find more information other than Wikipedia, but it was interesting to me that Timbaland, knowing it wasn't his music on that Commodore 64, didn't check for the owners of the music.  I'm just wondering. Not cool in any instance.  

In the gospel genre of music there was this great song performed by Vashawn Mitchell and written by Darius Paulk. The song rose to the top of the charts and everyone loved it.  It even won a Stellar Award for Song of the Year.  But there was another person claiming to be the other writer on this song, Travis Malloy, and he's suing EMI Gospel and Darius Paulk for have of the earnings.  According to Paulk he wrote the song by himself and Malloy says that Paulk sang the song to him and he wrote the music to it.  The case is still open and I'm very interested to see what the outcome will be.  I do believe that if they were together working on this tune and Paulk didn't pay Malloy for his services, they should share the copyright.  

The last example I wanted to point out is why its important to understand the contract and follow it.  Matthew Knowles company Music World Entertainment, also the father of superstar Beyonce', is being sued by Cathy Hughes, owner of Radio One.  She is suing his company, BET, and MTV for violating the exclusive rights deal she has with the Essence Festival in New Orleans.  This article is interesting because it seems to have gotten personal with Ms. Hughes.  Since she knew that Matthew Knowles company has some of gospels great new stars, she had all 12 of her radio stations to pull all of the artist off of the their playlist.  Of course this seems evil, because Knowles is losing money.  Nevertheless, someone broke the contract and they'll have to pay regardless.

So there are more cases that we could analyze to give us examples to show us that in we always should have the proper understanding when collaborating and make sure we get permission to use any portion of creativity that we didn't create. Simple right?  Not in every situation, but at least you can cover yourself in the end so that you can have the proper back-up in case you ever come across a situation similar to ones above.  Go create!!