Music Pirates Challenged by Rum Makers

At a time that the music industry is urged to learn from the ‘dark side of the internet’, Bacardi and dance artists Groove Armada have joined forces to release an EP that will be made available through an exclusive music sharing website .

"B-Live Share" is the rum brand’s  is a new online music application that has been designed to actually encourage and reward consumers who share music from Groove Armada through their own online communities such as social networking sites, MySpace, Facebook and Bebo.

Groove Armada's Andy Cato said, “Sharing music has always gone on. It's giving music away that's the problem. We wanted to come up with a 21st century version of what we used to do with cassette tapes. When you give music away for free it’s disposable. When you share it, it’s done with love.”

Recently music industry's critics said that executives need to relinquish more control of their music in the digital world. They could even pick up some ideas from the people who have created services to download music illegally, the very who they are now fighting. It must be remembers that Napster started life as an illegal file sharing site and led the way to the download revolution via legal sites such as iTunes, Amazon and of course Napster themselves.

The industry has moved to forge partnerships with online retailers as sales slump, after years of trying to protect its content and sue anyone who illegally downloaded it, Bacardi and Groove Armada are seizing the opportunity to cash in.

It is widely reported that in 2008, more than 40 billion files, that's 95% of the music downloaded from the internet,  was illegal, resulting in the overall music market down around 7 per cent on 2007.

The new website, www.bliveshare.com, aims to empower sharing as the future model for music content distribution. What makes sharing music via this method is legal because the rights owners  i.e. the artists, Bacardi B-Live Records and the publisher,  are all compensated for the downloads and shared files.

Groove Armada decided that when their last record deal expired to sign up with drinks firm Bacardi rather than stay with a normal label and this EP release highlights an eight-month first-of-its-kind collaboration between the premium rum brand and the music group. In April last year, Bacardi launched its ground-breaking global music agreement with Groove Armada. The music group side-stepped music industry tradition and worked with Bacardi in touring, recording, producing BACARDI B-LIVE -- the global experiential marketing programme.

It remains to be seen if this new business model of share/reward will encourage more people to turn away from illegal download sites.

www.bliveshare.com

greendragonuk has shared an exclusive Groove Armada track with 1 people on B-Live Share

Get the track for yourself and start sharing

Small firms have to face the music

Collection Agencies take shops and restaurants to court for fees

Your cornershop and local Chinese restaurant best be on the look out because they among a host of small businesses being targeted by the music industry for collection of “performance fees”.

Shop owners who play recorded music in their stores are being scrutinised by “music inspectors” from record companies and prosecuted if they do not have a licence to play background music.

Music executives are trying to boost their income as the industry loses out on traditional revenue sources because of internet piracy. Last year both Phonographic Performance Ireland (PPI) and the Performing Right Society for Music (PRS) initiated a policy of taking action against small firms that refused to sign up for its commercial background music licence.

The PPI like it's UK counter part, the PRS, has told its inspectors to examine company directories in all Irish towns and carry out spot checks. The agency collects royalties for record companies and has 15,000 businesses on its books. I

 The director of the Small Firms Association (SFA), Patricia Callan, said she had been inundated with complaints. “Businesses want to be compliant, but costs have increased over the past 12 months, and I know several have stopped playing music,” she said. According to Callan,  “Businesses can’t understand why they have to pay for multiple licences for what is essentially the same thing,” as most of the SFA’s members have already paid a fee to the Irish Music Rights Organisation (Imro), which collects royalties on behalf of composers. But PPI insists that it and Imro are separate organisations and businesses must have licences from both.

In Britain, the Performing Right Society for Music (PRS) has been accused of using aggressive tactics while targeting small companies and has forced more than 350,000 people to pay fees. In the last yeara lone it raked in more than £600m (€628m) in royalties, despite stagnating CD sales and widespread illegal downloading, an overall increase of more than 8% from 2007.

The PRS made calls to small businessmen and sent out 567,000 letters in 2008 seeking fees. Licences can cost from a few pounds to several thousand pounds depending on who is listening to the music. Pubs and clubs are obvious targets but thousands of letters and phone calls have gone to one-man businesses, including dog kennels and catteries, which play music to soothe their animals, and even police stations that help crack down on music piracy.

The PPI is even taking the government to court for granting hotels and prisons an exemption from royalties when they pipe songs into bedrooms and prison cells.