Day 4 SXSW

Yesterday was the second day of the Continuing Legal Education. The panels were on music litigation decisions and issues facing major label lawyers, among other topics.

There are high hopes among the record label attorneys that Congress and the Obama administration will pass the performance rights act, which would compensate the owners of master sound recordings for performances on terrestrial radio (and broadcast television) for the first time. Currently, the U.S. is among North Korea and Iran as countries that do not compensate the owners of sound recordings for public performances on terrestrial radio. Since the U.S. does not pay such royalties, U.S. artists are unable to collect their own royalties in other countries (aka reciprocity). If this act passes, it will be a serious boost to the music industry.

I was interested to hear that the major label attorneys did not really have a take on the impending 2013 termination of copyright issue (I will post a detailed blog about it at some point in the future.). All of the attorneys whom I asked either said that they are not thinking about it or that it is a problem and they just don't want to draw attention to it. This leads me to believe that the issues is pretty serious after all. (The basics are that in 2013, recording artists who assigned their sound recordings "masters" to record labels in 1978 will be able to terminate the assignment and get their masters back, allowing the artist to profit from the master instead of the record label.)

I saw a little bit of music and comedy last night too. I checked out a few bands at the Park the Van showcase, a label founded by the team behind all of the Sublime records. The Peakers were very good. They sounded like Rilo Kiley with more instruments. The best band of the day for me was Parachute, from Charlottesville, VA. I have a feeling we may hear from them again. Finally, I saw Third Eye Blind play new material. It is surprising how bad Stephan Jenkins' lyrics have become.

Today is the softball tournament and BBQ.