All she wants to do is tax?

Ben Sheffner has a great piece on his Copyrights and Campaigns blog about a video parody of Don Henley's "All she wants to do is dance" courtesy of California state assemblyman Chuck Devore. Devore, who is running for Democrat Barbara Boxer's Senate seat in 2010, uses the combination of "animation," alternate lyrics and stock news footage of Boxer to make painfully clear his opinion of her as a "tax and spend" liberal.

Fair use? Maybe.

Poor taste? Probably.

Entertaining? Definitely.

At any rate, it looks like we could be in for another political season featuring litigation over the use of music and other intellectual property in political campaigns. See Professor Justin Hughes' recent article for a look at how the use of songs by Jackson Browne, the Foo Fighers, Heart and others created controversy (and in the case of Browne, a federal lawsuit) during the 2008 Presidential campaign.

Trent Reznor interview on Digg Dialogg

Digg.com founder Kevin Rose recently interviewed NIN front man Trent Reznor for the Digg Dialogg series. The interview featured questions submitted by Digg users on topics ranging from future NIN projects to Reznor's favorite video games.

Reznor speaks directly and openly about what is happening in the music industry today and about his recent projects that have been released without a major record label. Some recent NIN music has been made available for free or for purchase directly from the band's web site and their most recent Ghosts I-IV project was the top selling album of 2008 on Amazon's MP3 store. Reznor has much to say about this direct distribution model and what it means for both record labels and artists trying to make a living in the future of the music industry.

Regardless of whether you agree with what Reznor has to say, to me there are two pretty amazing things going on here. First, you have someone who experienced a very successful career in the "old world" music industry now following a completely different business model. Of course NIN is not the only established act to try this type of distribution (Radiohead, Prince) but the Reznor interview makes clear that this is not a publicity stunt but rather a working model for how to bring art and commerce together.

Second, not only is an artist like Reznor willing to try something different, but he's also telling about how he does it and plans to do it going forward. This too has the feel of something far different than publicity or promotion. It's more like an open-source, collaborative effort to both entertain and interact, to teach and to learn. Kudos to Reznor for sharing and to Rose for giving him the platform.

How Marshall Mathers (almost) changed the music business.

Had the recent jury verdict in the case filed by Eminem's production company gone the other way, many believe we could have been looking at a very different digital music landscape.

The case challenged the way digital copies of artists songs are treated when calculating royalties and could have paved the way for other artists to receive millions of dollars more from their record labels. While more recent contracts clarify how these transactions are treated for royalty purposes, contracts that pre-date the onset of digitial download services such as iTunes were typically silent on the issue. FBT Productions, the producers who first signed Eminem, argued that digital downloads should be treated as licenses rather than distributions. Had the Eminem camp been successful, this earlier generation of contracts would have been subject to a new interpretation that could ultimately have led to record companies owing millions of dollars to artists. Such a victory would have created waves felt throughout the industry.

Given that the jury determined that the digital downloads were not licenses of the work, but in fact distributions as the record labels have long contended, does this go back to being a non-issue in the industry? Will labels, artists and other stakeholders now accept that this new form of content delivery is really not all that different from old-fashioned transactions in which a physical product changed hands?

Perhaps for purposes of calculating royalties that will be the case, but then again the finer points of that have already been worked out for record contracts going forward. The real question is have any of the main players in the music industry begun to give serious consideration to how music will be consumed and enjoyed in the years to come? A fight over how to treat digital downloads may seem like a big deal now, but it may pale in comparison to how the world of music is changing every day. Slim Shady may have lost this battle, but the eventual winner of the war is far from certain.