Recently came across another article by another guy who is knowledgeable about the industry. Which gave me an inkling to come back and reiterate a point.

It all stops with the artist or label who released the song. Somewhere prior to the streaming services (in this case, Spotify) getting the music and data - someone got the data wrong and its most likely the person who filled out the distribution!

That being said, I'm really quite curious as to why its only Ferrick vs Spotify and not also Ferrick vs Apple, Ferrick vs Deezer, Ferrick vs Tidal, etc. This lawsuit should be going after all the digital services, not only Spotify.

Maybe this is misdirected anger due to problems at Harry Fox, Music Reports who are having difficult times getting all the NOIs out. Why? Because the data, about many songs, is not properly filled out. Those that are currently suing for such things are attempting to take advantage of a part of the law that states a streaming service has to send out the NOI and wait 30 days prior to putting the music on the service. That's extremely antiquated for any artist that is interested in releasing a song in a timely manner.

What do I mean by that?

Lets say you decide to write a song and donate proceeds to Hurricane Irma relief. You write the song the day it goes down and release it that afternoon to all the digital services. Generally, you can have a song on within about 24 hours of distribution submission. You start racking up sales/streams, and then you get paid from your distributor. Then you donate the money. Yippee, everyone is happy.

Now, lets say that every service followed the current letter-of-the-law and made you wait the 30 days after you wished to have it distributed. In this current climate of short attention spans, its likely most people wouldn't give a rats ass 30 days afterwards. Your timely song now becomes untimely.

Granted that's not the general rule for songs being released.

But for those artists who truly hate the industry and the fact that streaming is the de facto standard, by all means do us all a favor and stop distributing your music digitally!! It will make the rest of us happier.

p.s. - the easy way to solve all of this is to have one giant database that has all the relevant writer, publisher information for every song released. Oh and require every distributor to gather that information at the source and verify it. But most distributors might be too cheap to do that and may not care since artists appear to be vilifying the wrong part of the equation (meaning they're vilifying music streaming services).

Jody Whitesides
A Funky Audio Lap Dance For Your Ears!
www.jodywhitesides.com