Music History

But like Bernstein, Viardot — born exactly 200 years ago, on July 18, 1821 — was far more than a Zelig. One of the supreme singers of her time, she was also a prolific composer, whose music is slowly being salvaged from obscurity; a savvy entrepreneur; a gifted visual artist; and a highly respected voice teacher.

“Built on a foundation of artist-centric principles, Streaming 2.0 will represent a new age of innovation, consumer segmentation, geographic expansion, greater consumer value and ARPU growth,” writes Grainge in today’s letter.

Di rigori armato il seno (‘With my breast armed with severity’—these words were lifted in their entirety by Strauss from the concluding ballet of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (Molière, 1670) for which Lully wrote the music).

In cases where the MLC is not able to match musical works to copyright owners, the MLC is authorized to distribute the unclaimed royalties to copyright owners identified in the MLC records, based on the relative market shares of such copyright owners as reflected in reports of usage provided by digital music providers for the periods in question.

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A month earlier, according to Music Business Worldwide, UMG acquired the remaining 51% of PIAS, Europe’s largest independent music company. These acquisitions illustrate Universal’s recognition that this is where the revenue growth in the music industry is happening.

The decision created a new form of liability known as “inducement”: the technology companies, the court ruled, had seduced the users — the teens, the kids, the fans, the pirates — into infringing copyright. It didn’t matter that these services never hosted any files or made a central index.

Grokster and StreamCast are dead. Even the iPod is no longer in production. They are buried and gone, like the Betamax and the Betamax “substantial non-infringing uses” standard — all relics of a bygone era, the ephemera of 2004. Copyright law barely made sense then. As you might suspect, 20 years later, it makes even less sense now.

And they didn’t mince around what was happening across the country. “I know perfectly well I could go out and buy a CD and put it on my iPod,” said Justice David Souter. “But I also know perfectly well that if I can get the music on the iPod without buying the CD, that’s what I’m going to do.” If that was the case, and the RIAA got its way,... See more

The story, Kelley writes, is “the tale of what happens when working-class consumption of popular culture overrides the interests or concerns of popular culture workers . . . a story about the limits of solidarity . . . [set by] consumers whose own self-interest may actually clash with the demands of laboring artists.”