The RIAA Will Eat Itself

The Village Voice recently featured an overview of the American music industry's past year written by my Burning Man chum Douglas Wolk (who, along with his writing projects, runs one of the fabbest singles clubs ever). From amongst the usual news from the battle against file sharers this astonishing snippet leapt out at me:

The RIAA is also trumpeting its $200,000 settlement of infringement claims against Nashville's United Record Pressing, one of the few vinyl plants still operating in America. (If you bought an indie-label seven-inch single in the '90s, it was very likely pressed there.) It seems that they were hired to press some records that turned out to include unlicensed content ("more than 170 unauthorized sound recordings"). Everything that customers send to United is now "audio tested," and no samples of any kind are permitted. Fair use? The public domain? Out of the question.

Surely some mistake... but apparently not. As the copyright release says:

Samples are a copyright infringement. ALL samples require licensing. The licensing MUST accompany the order as to not delay production of your order. Licensing must be obtained from the copyright owner of the material being sampled. ANY sample must be licensed regardless of length.

In other words, if you're a young MC trying to make a start on the hip-hop scene with a homebrewed white label 12" to hand out to the local DJs, you can pretty much forget about it unless you're willing to spend several months (and several thousand in fees) coming up with licenses for the samples. Admittedly this is not, in itself, news; any kind of sampling without licensing is still illegal and not covered by the notion of "fair use". However, this is the first time it's been cut off at the point of pressing. Before this, our young MC could at least get his tune out to gather some buzz and wait until he'd got a record deal before worrying about sample clearance - which how so many dance and hip-hop legends got their start. (And I can't help but feel sorry for United Record Pressing, who are having to impose this nonsense while simultaneously trying to cater to eager DJs touting their tunes at the Miami Winter Music Conference. Of course, there's also the fantastic irony of their hideously-irritating loop samples playing on every page)

However, it's not only URP that's been forced into this: they're just the most notable of a huge number of CD, DVD and vinyl pressing plants across the world who've been certified by the International Recording Media Assocation's Anti-Piracy Compliance Program, an attempt to stamp on both unlicensed sampling and pre-release leaking at the same time. Those plants wishing to take part can look forward to implementing the APCP Standards & Procedures, a remarkably stringent set of processes which thrust the vast majority of the work and responsibility for license-checking into the hands of the plant staff, in return for which they get to pay several thousand dollars a year. And if, for some unimaginable and probably heretical reason, a plant doesn't want to join the APCP - well, let's just hope they're not pressing anything with uncleared samples, eh? Or they might get a visit.

To me, it just looks like another attempt by the RIAA to hammer nails into their own coffin by taking on the carriers in the middle - in this case, the carriers on who they depend. Those upcoming underground artists who were still hoping to have their own white labels pressed are getting used to CD burning and MP3 swapping, and those MP3s are starting to make it all the way to the other end of the chain without money changing hands in the middle. I'm particularly frustrated because if there's one aspect of music that fascinates me, it's sampling. As Strictly Kev's recent, extraordinary Raiding The 20th Century demonstrated, sampling is not a new or underground phenomenon. It's a fundamental and essential component of contemporary music, and until the law (which is meant to protect and cultivate music) reflects that, then many new artists are are effectively being charged for every note they play. But ultimately, who cares? The RIAA doesn't, and neither do the artists for whom the legality of sampling is about as relevant as the Ivor Novello awards. For them, the music industry is both damage to be routed around and more grist to the mill. As Pop Will Eat Itself said: Sample It, Loop It, Fuck It and Eat It.