How does the licensing work in Take/Figure Sharing?

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EnochLight
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31 Jan 2015

Gaja wrote:I interpret it as follows (I'm no lawyer, so what I say might not be entirely accurate) The user grants anyone using the discover non exclusive publishing rights. That means that each collaboration partner has a right to publish the works (on discover and also other platforms) imcluding the right to make a shitload of money with it. That means if you create a loop and someone downloads it and uses it in a production (because you agreed to grant non exclusive rights), that becomes a massive hit then you as creator of the loop have can't claim ownership. The copyright remains yours, but you've already granted non exclusive rights, so you couldn't sue the dude and would have to put up with having contributed to a massive hit. You can find the ToS here https://www.propellerheads.se/agreements
rcbuse wrote:
The single reason I would never use discover for source material is because you have no idea who owns it or where it originated.
And as I have pointed out earlier, the same risk is inherent with using any Refill - community based or otherwise. You just "assume" the material provided is copyright free or licensed for your use.
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Gaja
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31 Jan 2015

Gaja wrote:I interpret it as follows (I'm no lawyer, so what I say might not be entirely accurate) The user grants anyone using the discover non exclusive publishing rights. That means that each collaboration partner has a right to publish the works (on discover and also other platforms) imcluding the right to make a shitload of money with it. That means if you create a loop and someone downloads it and uses it in a production (because you agreed to grant non exclusive rights), that becomes a massive hit then you as creator of the loop have can't claim ownership. The copyright remains yours, but you've already granted non exclusive rights, so you couldn't sue the dude and would have to put up with having contributed to a massive hit. You can find the ToS here https://www.propellerheads.se/agreements
rcbuse wrote:
The single reason I would never use discover for source material is because you have no idea who owns it or where it originated.  Sure, the agreement says whoever uploads it grants rights for use, but what if they never held that right to begin with? What if they just ripped off a bunch of loops and uploaded them to discover?  Or uploaded recordings of their friends work?  Then you as the end user end up looking like the asshole because you are accused of stealing and all you did was find and use cool loop on discover.
That's why I'd rather contribute source material, so it is easier for other people to find stuff they can actually use.
Cheers!
Fredhoven

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Upright
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31 Jan 2015

So I could do a "the Best of Figure and Take" sound pack and sell them for $20?  Hmmmm..... :sneaky:   :crazy:

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EnochLight
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31 Jan 2015

Upright wrote:So I could do a "the Best of Figure and Take" sound pack and sell them for $20?  Hmmmm..... :sneaky:   :crazy:


Assuming all content was curated from Discover, according to the TOS & EULA, yes - yes you could.  :s0230:
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Yorick
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31 Jan 2015

Upright wrote:So I could do a "the Best of Figure and Take" sound pack and sell them for $20?  Hmmmm..... :sneaky:   :crazy:
Sounds like a plan. The future is in curation right? DJ makes more than the producer and all that?

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Upright
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31 Jan 2015

EnochLight wrote:
Assuming all content was curated from Discover, according to the TOS & EULA, yes - yes you could.  :s0230:

hahaha!

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Upright
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31 Jan 2015

Yorick wrote:
Sounds like a plan. The future is in curation right? DJ makes more than the producer and all that?
Yeah that's it haha!  :D

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Gaja
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31 Jan 2015

Gaja wrote:But this discussion seems weird to me. The goal of the service is obvious and clear (to me anyway): sharing musical ideas for free, witth anyone. I understand the problem arises, when people demand a slice of the cake in the case that someone uses a loop you uploaded to make money. Which frankly doesn't make sense to me, because why would you upload to a sharing service, if you're not ready to share?
Yorick wrote:
I thought it was a collaboration service. 7 billion bandmates and all that. 
How many bands have you been in Gaja?
If your bandmate takes a phrase you wrote and writes a song, you split the songwriting. He doesn't just take it all and you don't give it freely. 
If everyone in the band comes up with a jam-idea, everyone in the band is listed as a songwriter. And each bandmember individually owns their own performances. Until they sign off on them. They still have the moral right to be credited. There are still rights each member has. It's not like you join a band and just sign away all your rights for no money.
Well I thought it was about sharing first. Collaborations can arise and no mechanisms I am aware of can stop you from monetizing as you see fit. But to answer your question I have not been in any bands that did actual gigging.
But I know what it's like to not get your work protected. Foley or sound design is not protected in any way (except of course it's your intellectual property, which is practically worthless in that regard) and it is not possible to monetize it properly, and get royalties from plays in the theatre. And directors are explicitly trying to make it illegal to get royalties from sound fx and foley (in germany that is). That means we have to raise our prices in order to get our stuff covered. Which in turn means we have less time for the work we need to do, because in germany we make films for the kind of money that US producers wouldn't even touch a script for.
Would I be able to monetize my performances through royalties, like you can, I would be able to to contribute a better quality product.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I live that scenario you describe and it's perfectly doable and not the end of the world. In the end of the movie the producer gets a piece and the director gets a piece and the rest of the cakes belongs to the distributors. Oh and the film composers get a tiny portion, but that's music anyway...
It's super unfair, but this is business. future industry models might favour more of the involved people through royalties, or royalties might be discarded alltogether.
Wow sorry. This was supposed to be about discover.
So I'll say again that nothing stops you from accrediting collaborators in any way you see fit. But nothing forces you as well. If you want to promote decency then set an example by action.
Cheers!
Fredhoven

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normen
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31 Jan 2015

Yorick wrote:I take it you're unfamiliar with Beck's latest album? Which is only sheet music, no audio recordings? Or the publishing industry that still publishes sheet music just as it has for centuries? Or that believe it or not, there are peopke that buy sheet music to play others songs for their own enjoyment? Or to sing in church? Or to sing/play in a piano bar? I don't consider any human a "non-musician", everyone speaks with pitch, walk in rhythm, have a heartbeat and cry. There is a huge difference between a synth preset, and composing a melody - one is a facet of technology, the other needs no technology. One only works with said technology, the other just needs a brain, perhaps a voice, ears, some air & some time. One exists so other people can create a sound. It's a tool. The other is a form of expression. You're comparing a screwdriver setting with a poem. You're comparing a drill bit size with a speech. You're comparing a lathe with a conversation. A preset is a tool. Music is expression. You honestly can't see the difference? Nowhere have I denigrated the craftsmenship that goes into creating a lathe, drill bit, screwdriver setting or synthpreset. It's disingenuous to claim I am. But to equate tool-making with music-creating is false.
You're distorting the topic. Beck didn't sell as many copies of his sheet music as he sold CDs of his albums (simply because not as many people can read it) but thats irrelevant. The initial question was "why is it fine to distribute synth presets licenses for free and at the same time people (like you) get upset when music licenses are distributed for free?". Where is the difference? You try to argue that music is simply a theoretical construct and hence different. Thats why I brought sheet music into play. But a synth preset is still the same, you have waveforms, filter settings etc. You don't need that synth to use it, you can do it with another synth as well (or with a brain and a synth as you put it). So its still exactly the same.

You heighten music (and poetry) above everything else humans ever did which is false. You don't distribute sheet music with Discover, you distribute *performed* music. You don't distribute theoretical synth settings with a preset pack, you distribute readymade presets. Both contain the theory as well as the final product.

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Faastwalker
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31 Jan 2015

Yorick wrote:I uploaded from Take & Figure without seeing the licensing stuff in the TOS. 
EnochLight wrote:
You belong to a PRO.  You should probably make it a point to read EULA's and TOS before signing up for new services that involve sharing your music.  Just say'n.. 
What would be the implications of uploading to a music sharing service if you were a member? I'm just curious because Aphex Twin recently upload 110 tracks to SoundCloud recently. Presumably he's a member of some sort of organisation like this. Is he going to get into any kind of trouble?!

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EnochLight
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31 Jan 2015

Faastwalker wrote:What would be the implications of uploading to a music sharing service if you were a member? I'm just curious because Aphex Twin recently upload 110 tracks to SoundCloud recently. Presumably he's a member of some sort of organisation like this. Is he going to get into any kind of trouble?!
Beats me - I don't belong to one. I think Yorick left because he's not supposed to post religious stuff here.
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Faastwalker
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01 Feb 2015

Can anyone else shed any light on the Aphex Twin thing with regards to the legal standpoint? I keep reading that artists who are members of organisations such as the PRO shouldn't be using services like Discover or SoundCloud to share their work. So, as an example, what are the implications of the recent Aphex Twin uploads (101 previous un-released tracks) to SoundCloud?

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platzangst
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01 Feb 2015

Faastwalker wrote:Can anyone else shed any light on the Aphex Twin thing with regards to the legal standpoint? I keep reading that artists who are members of organisations such as the PRO shouldn't be using services like Discover or SoundCloud to share their work. So, as an example, what are the implications of the recent Aphex Twin uploads (101 previous un-released tracks) to SoundCloud?
Well, without knowing the full nature of any deal he might have, it's really impossible to say for sure, isn't it?

If he registers things he releases with his publishing company on an individual basis, that is, when he makes a "professional" album he sets just that album up with BMG/Chrysalis, then he's free to do whatever he wants with things he hasn't so registered.

If he has a deal where everything he ever makes is covered by his deal with BMG/Chrysalis, then they have a stake in collecting royalties, and technically each time someone downloads a track, Aphex Twin owes himself and BMG/Chrysalis royalties. (If this is early work, then it's possible it was made before he signed to any publishing house, and the material is not legally entangled.)

Publishing houses and Performance Rights Organizations seek to collect money for their members and clients whenever someone plays their music, including online downloads and streaming plays. So someone who uploads their music to SoundCloud, if that music is registered or owned by one of these organizations, faces the awkward prospect of having to pay their own organization royalties (which supposedly would come back around to the artist, but through accounting shenanigans that doesn't always happen). This assumes that the SoundCloud material attracts enough attention and plays that the organizations notice; people who only get a few plays a week probably won't have this problem.

But all this depends on what the nature of his deal is and how, if at all, it covers this uploaded material. It could be a problem, or not.

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Faastwalker
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01 Feb 2015

platzangst wrote:If he registers things he releases with his publishing company on an individual basis, that is, when he makes a "professional" album he sets just that album up with BMG/Chrysalis, then he's free to do whatever he wants with things he hasn't so registered.
Okay. So if it's a release to release basis he can pretty much do whatever he wants outside of that contract? Also this stuff is uploaded as user48736353001 and mostly tagged with his AFX pseudonym. So nothing actually bears the name Aphex Twin. So is that a way around any contractual / legal obligations as well - just release your material under a pseudonym to dissolve all official responsibility?
Publishing houses and Performance Rights Organizations seek to collect money for their members and clients whenever someone plays their music, including online downloads and streaming plays. This assumes that the SoundCloud material attracts enough attention and plays that the organizations notice; people who only get a few plays a week probably won't have this problem.
Sure. This stuff appeared in the last few days. Of the 110 tracks uploaded we're talking anything from 10,000 to 100,000 plays. Also about this time yesterday everything suddenly became downloadable. From what I've read streaming royalties down amount to a particularly large hill of beans anyway. More of a small, pathetic scraping of beans from an empty tin!
But all this depends on what the nature of his deal is and how, if at all, it covers this uploaded material. It could be a problem, or not.
So getting back to Discover - The legal obligations to users, as depicted by Propellerhead, is really all about personal circumstance as to how you should approach the services. I've read things like, 'if your signed up to the PRO then you shouldn't be using services like Discover'. But that might not be the case depending on the nature of the deal you have with your music publisher? 

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platzangst
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01 Feb 2015

Faastwalker wrote: Okay. So if it's a release to release basis he can pretty much do whatever he wants outside of that contract? Also this stuff is uploaded as user48736353001 and mostly tagged with his AFX pseudonym. So nothing actually bears the name Aphex Twin. So is that a way around any contractual / legal obligations as well - just release your material under a pseudonym to dissolve all official responsibility?
...maybe? Again, it depends on the deal. If he's only made a deal for his Aphex Twin alias, that's one situation, but if he's made a deal for everything Richard D. James does, that's another.

Faastwalker wrote:So getting back to Discover - The legal obligations to users, as depicted by Propellerhead, is really all about personal circumstance as to how you should approach the services. I've read things like, 'if your signed up to the PRO then you shouldn't be using services like Discover'. But that might not be the case depending on the nature of the deal you have with your music publisher? 
First off, it's not "the PRO", it's a PRO. Performance Rights Organization. BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, and so on, there are several. These are the organizations that get paid by places like radio stations and concert halls for the right to perform music. They basically make it convenient, so that a radio station doesn't have to cut a billion checks to each individual artist to play records. They gather these royalties and then through their individual formulas, divide that money between their songwriting members.

That's somewhat different than a music publisher, which is really a legal entity designed to take in money from royalties. These can be large corporate organizations, or they can be some guy with a business license and a P.O. Box. Some songwriters handle their own music publishing, some prefer to let other companies do it. Some have had to share their music publishing rights with the larger companies as a condition of signing to a record label.

Any difficulty one might face with regards to Discover is in whether any organization they belong to or are contracted with will feel obliged to pursue royalties on their behalf. A PRO is going to have a "one size fits all" style of operation, and to be frank I don't really know how they would view something like Discover. A music publisher could have different policies from organization to organization, but as a general rule the larger and more corporate they are, the more likely they'll be willing to be hardasses about pursuing revenues from people publishing "their" music.

This is something that a musician ought to be aware of before they ever upload anything to Discover, or SoundCloud or anything. They should be aware of how their business partners will want to handle things, and conduct themselves accordingly.

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