The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) is a new, wholly independent non-profit organisation…We have come together to campaign for artists’ rights in the new digital environment at a time when governments are acting to frame laws on copyright that will affect our industry for years to come.

Ownership – we believe that all artists should own their own work and only sign licensing deals with labels. Since its inception less than a month ago, the FAC has already argued our case at the highest levels, gaining a seat at the table alongside the BPI, AIM, PPL and MU to discuss with government ministers the planned extension of copyright in recordings from 50 to 70 years. We are arguing for all rights in recordings to return to the artists 50 years after their initial release.

Monetisation – we believe that the music industry is wrong to prosecute those who download music for personal use. We argue that, so long as they do not profit from this practice, they should be left in peace. We do not wish to encourage illegal downloading, but seek instead to monetise it, either through a blanket license which allows a user to access as much music as they want or by taking a fair cut from the advertising revenue of a music or video website. It is those who are making money exploiting our work without paying us a fair royalty who should be the target of industry anger. Where money is made, artists should be paid.

Transparency – we believe that deals recently signed between major labels and internet platforms have not been done in the best interests of artists. Most are covered by non-disclosure agreements that make it impossible to find out where the money is going. The evidence we have so far is that although millions of dollars have changed hands, none of this has been paid to artists. We are campaigning for a more transparent industry, discussing with government the possibility of introducing into law a fiduciary duty on rights owners to notify artists when they monetise catalogue.

Digital royalties - we are deeply concerned that many of us are still being paid royalty rates left over from a time when the record companies had to physically manufacture and distribute our material. Now, our music can be sent around the world by the click of a mouse. We demand royalty rates that reflect the true cost of digital distribution.

Visit Frizion.com

How Frizions Work:

The first filter polarises the light, causing all the rays to vibrate in the same plane. Ice crystals split polarised light into two rays which travel at different velocities through the ice, so when the rays are recombined at the second polarising filter there is a phase difference between them. This causes interference, creating the startling colours in the image. The colours are determined not only by the lattice structure of the ice, but also by its thickness. By controlling the thickness, for example by varying the temperature of the surrounding water, Wasilewski produces a wide variety of different patterns.

From New Scientist.

Mp3Realm Is a search engine devoted to audio. Listen, download and find lyrics. Searches can be based on title, artist, genre or album. Nice work.

Does exactly what it says on the tin!

(Photo sourced from Wikimedia Commons)

Back in 1991, music entrepreneurs Norton York and Simon Pitt wondered why pop musicians didn’t have the same access to graded exams that classical music players had enjoyed for more than a century. This simple question led them to create the world’s first popular music grade exams. (Rockschool)

Rockschool offers pop music exams from Debut up to Grade 8 in Guitar, Bass, Drums, Popular Piano and Vocals within a fully recognized and accredited framework, and that means the same UCAS points system as taking classical exams with the Associated Board Of The Royal School Of Music, in case you want to get into University off the back of it.

Unlike many other music exams, candidates can even perform a piece of their own choosing from outside the syllabus books so long as they fit the requirements of the exam, and that includes pieces of your own.

Fan-freakin-tastic.

Let’s see how well this has worked…

Create a blog that requires minimal technical skill since I can no longer operate as a web developer

Chronic fatigue Syndrome killed my abilities as a web developer, so this was very important and it’s a success. Posting about building this blog has drawn plenty of traffic, the most popular post was about a spambot called jacob73kolp, so I have to say ‘thanks’ to them for being such a pain in the ass to some many people.

Create a showcase for the drawings that I have produced

This has worked a treat too. I have been able to upload pictures on flickr and then insert a post into this blog from there. Two flickr users have each added one of my pictures as favorites. (see all my drawing posts)

Create a showcase for the songs I have written and a revenue stream from them

I have been able to use Last.fm to upload the mp3’s and use their embeddable player to make them available on the blog. This player and last.fm radio plays can earn me money by opting into their Artist Royalty Program (the results are below) . Only a few posts for this unfortunately. I have a pile of riffs and song parts but have not been able to put them into a coherent form for the blog as yet, which is a little silly since I can earn money from them, even in a very rough state. (see all my music posts)

Generate some income from this

I tried to do this via adsense and the Last.fm royalty scheme. It is hard to find information on how much these are worth so I’ll put some facts and figures for this blog here and you can have a guess what it would be worth to you.

Last.fm Artists Royalty Program

Even my efforts get radio play on last.fm and since I opted into the royalty scheme I get paid quarterly for this (see their FAQ). Royalties are calculated as a percentage of the revenues last.fm get for having my music available to them.

The first statement came out on October 31st and last.fm clocked 96 streamed radio plays and this produced the grand total of £0.03. This roughly equates to 4p per tune per year. Which is more than I expected for a completely unmarketed unknown.

Google Adsense

According to Google I have had 1,981 page impressions and a click through rate of 2.57% (this is a similar percentage rate of take up that would be expected from a mass mailing). This equates to a grand total of $1.76 but I have to wait until I reach $100 before I can cash it in. The video units and tall banners have been a complete disaster, its the relevant advertising next to the posts that have yielded the revenue.

I have contacted the Long Now Foundation to help me figure out which of my descendants will benefit from these efforts

It leaps out at me in a similar way that Daniel Zeller’s microart does, I won’t blab on, you can draw your own conclusions.

(This picture was sourced from an article in New York Entertainment)

Big props go out for this video of him at work which served as inspiration and motivation to me to get on with my own work.

The link on my blog’s dashboard takes me to the main Wordpress site where I find a link to the Upgrading information. It also mentions the ‘one click install’ that I used to install the blog with my Media Temple hosting so I check to see if there is an upgrade feature too. There isn’t, in fact there is a warning about using the one click installer again will break and erase my current blog.

The Wordpress upgrading instructions make the point that there are more detailed instructions that should be used if you have third party plugins and themes. These instructions include important information on backing up your files and database, installing the upgrade and updating plugins and themes.

The upgrade documentation is excellent so I have just noted a few points specific to this blog.

Step 1: Database back up

There are lots of ways to do this, the simplest and least technical requires the use of a database back up plugin that can be found at http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup. It installs in the usual way and worked first time for me. There is also an option to schedule back ups if you use the Wordpress cron plugin.

While at ilfilosofo.com I notice that the donation button comes with the legend, ‘Is it worth a latte?’ which it most definitely is. This is a great pitch so I’m going to use it myself, maybe someone will give me the price of a cup of tea for something on this blog.

Step 2: Backing up the Wordpress files

Since we have made changes to Wordpress files and customised it with plugins and themes it is very important to make a back up of these files. There are instructions available at http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups#Backing_Up_Your_WordPress_Site. I am simply going to take a copy of the whole site using ftp.

Step 12: Reactivate plugins

Wordpress.com Stats requires that my Wordpress API key has to be re-entered. After doing this I have to choose to continue using the old stats with this upgraded installation. All I have to do is choose the name of my blog from the combo box at the bottom of the page listed under the heading ‘Replace’.

I also had to re-choose the bookmark options for obsocialbookmark plugin and set it up to appear at the top of the posts again.

Step 13: Add security key definitions to the wp-config.php file

The first time I did this I downloaded the wp-config.php from the server, used the secret key generator tool, added the keys and ftp’ed the modified wp-config.php back up onto the server. All the admin parts of the blog failed with ‘headers already sent’ errors, so I had to undo the changes I had made. I tried a couple more times before concluding that something was broken.

After having a look at the support information it turned out that I had somehow added some white space after the ?> at the end of the wp-config.php and this was causing the problem.

painting with smoke, originally uploaded by ablichter.

Not one of mine but definately inspiring. Nice work, and there is loads more at http://www.flickr.com/groups/artsmoke/pool/