Industry Liabilities

As I continue my Masters Journey this month I will look at three recent legal controversies affecting the Music Production industry, I will look at each one and give my opinion on how this might impact my future music production company. In the music business there are many lawsuits brought because of infringement of copyrights to illegal music piracy, so there are many to choose from.

I’ll start by examining the formally Homeless music intern who brought a lawsuit against Warner Music reported in Newsweek Magazine. While living in a homeless shelter in the Bronx Kyle Grant took an internship with Warner Music Group (WMG) in 2012, with dreams of starting his own label he figured that working at Warner Music Group (WMG) would be the right place to learn the industry. As is the custom when working as an intern you have to keep the studio clean, run errands, and whatever is needed to keep the studio running smoothly before you will be given the opportunity to learn.

According to Fact Sheet #71of The Department of Labor The Fair Labor Standards Act that an unpaid internship should be for the benefit of the intern to be trained. So after having to come in earl and leave late he was about to lose his bed at the shelter and the thought of getting fired form the internship was very awkward for him. After working there for eight months he was indeed fired because he took to much time for lunch, and never received any compensation for his time at the job.

I know what that feels like when you want to learn the business and take a position as an intern and all you do is manual labor and you don’t learn anything. On top of that no one who becomes an intern should not be given the opportunity to be trained in their field of choice when they are not getting paid, this is wrong and most people who become interns learn that it is a cut throat business and the one who devotes all their time to the company is the one who after years of interning that will get the opportunities.

Next I will take a look at MusicPiracy and how it has made an impact on the music industry, according to an article in Forbs magazine last year there are different opinions on music piracy, some believe that it has help drive sales and others who believe that people who illegally download music are cheap and don’t want to spend the money to buy it legally. There were two reports that the article looked at on by the European Commission that stated “all signs point to piracy leading to a slight increase in sales” and the other by OfCom‘s report that based on attitudes people have about paying for music.

I believe that all the streaming services (iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, and Amazon) and their cost to the consumer they are actually ripping off the music creators, and it is obvious because of the lawsuits being filed by ASCAP and BMI to get Congress to provide fair pay to music creators who want to profit from their creations. It is unfair to music creators when people illegally download music from the Internet without paying for it. People have been sharing music for a very long time even before the Internet by making tape copies for their friends, so I know this will continue to happen, but if music creators would price their music where it affordable we can see our sales grow.

Lastly I will look at trademark cases involving two record labels with the same name, but each “served different niches in the music industry”.  One label used “sTRANGEmUSIC” as its mark and recorded music combining classical and electronic and secured the domain name  “strangemusic.com” in1998, while the other used “Strange Music” while producing Hip Hop and Rap and registered “strangemusicinc.com.” in 2003, because “strangemusicinc.com.” was more commercially successful “sTRANGEmUSIC” asked for an injunction, but the courts refused finding that  “strangemusicinc.com.” “Appearance in the marketplace is unlikely to confuse consumers.” Even though both sound the same their mark differed in “font, color and design.” “sTRANGEmUSIC” lost the case because the court did not find the defendants to be in violation of “sTRANGEmUSIC” mark.

This case makes it clear that in the music business you need to know what constitutes infringement and trademarks are hard to infringe on because of the different categories. I will make sure to do my research when I look to protect my brand so that I don’t get sued.