If I am only sharing with my family, then fine. But it looks like this software allows you to create a pod and share with whoever you invite. Which my purchase doesn't cover, right?
Seems like you are being sarcastic, but yes, if you play loud enough and to a big enough audience you do indeed owe royalties. In fact bars and restaurants are required to pay for this exact reason.
Exactly. Most often this is covered by the fact that the restaurant or bar is playing satellite or other radio which bears the broadcast permissions. And, the obvious—most people aren't horrible selfish goblins.
There's a definite difference between providing atmosphere in a restaurant, and providing the content as some sort of production, or providing others with broadcast-quality copies from a single master without permission of the artist.
> I just don't uncritically accept them, let alone act as a volunteer copyright-cop for them.
It seems like you are implying I am. When all I'm trying to do is make sure musicians get fairly paid for their work. So yeah, I'm not super concerned about playing music loud in my car as you sarcastically suggested I should be.
I am concerned about joining a music platform where something I purchased can be shared for free to millions of people with the musician getting nothing.
If there is a service that pays musicians directly and cuts out ASCAP and RIAA, then even better.
You are here talking down the tool and implying software you have not used is not legal while uncritically repeating their claims, which are more aggressive than many copyright lawyers believe is accurate.
I'm sorry if you find my flip characterization uncharitable. If you need a less off-the-cuff one, you are uncritically lending your voice to the legacy copyright cartel's continuing attempts to monopolize music distribution.
That does do several things. Promoting fairness for musicians is not one of them.
OK, that does require an apology; I missed that, and it does change the tenor of your argument. It is unclear to me how to combine supporting musicians' abusers with supporting musicians, but this is not a productive conversation, so I'm dropping it.
The sad thing for me, is that even if something like that were to function, and no matter how well, people would find another reason the artists don't deserve payment.
So as it stands, organizations like that are how artists get paid at all.
And not as any hard defence of the RIAA in all aspects, but it's not like they don't do anything. They did help set the standards for effective vinyl mastering and playback...
> a music platform where something I purchased can be shared for free to millions of people
That doesn’t seem to be the intent or reality of how Funkwhale is used. All of the public pods I saw had less than 200 members. I imagine you’d run into scaling problems with larger pods.
Without even looking at the law I'm going to guess there's some kind of clause about "within reason". As in, you can't reasonably claim that all 350,000 people who've downloaded the music you uploaded can be classified as "friends". That would certainly fall under broadcast or distribution licensing and legal terms.
My goal is that musicians get fairly paid for their work as opposed to making sure I am following every subtle licensing technicality in my own home, which is only an exercise in pedantry and accomplishes nothing practical for musicians.
I don't talk with the attorneys who create these complex licensing rules at Amazon, iTunes, etc. I talk to musicians. None of whom have ever had a problem with listening to their music with a small group of friends or family. The problem is with a platform that allows me to fire up a server and then invite thousands or millions of people to listen to someone's music for free.
People who run servers will probably fall under the Music Modernization Act.
Every DSP (Digital Service Provider) is required to register with the Mechanical Licensing collective, and the administrative fee is $5,000 per year if you fall under the threshold number of streams. If you pass that, then it's $60,000 to unlimited...
Of course you'll have to file monthly reports and pay the royalties due under the blanket license as well.
Donations I think. They should be able to add links to their homepage, PayPal, patreon, etc. Or maybe that's an upcoming future, I can't remember exactly.
If this is an existing feature, or when they add it, the platform becomes way more interesting to me. I'd love to pay musicians directly instead of the embarrassingly low payouts from services like Spotify.
A feature would be nice to have, but right now you can just go to an artist-friendly shop (such as Bandcamp or Qobuz) and buy an album of the artist you'd like to support.
