SXSW 2012

From the Austin Chronicle:

In a world where bands teem like bacteria, how does anyone tap into the real goods? You look to digital musicologists. They're behind a large portion of the music content on the Web. Suggestions you see on music sites ("If you like Van Halen, here are five other bands you may enjoy") aren't just computer-code magic. That's actually the work of music writers.

"Music is something that is used socially," says Chuck Eddy, celebrated music critic, new Austinite as of last year, and current musicologist for Rhapsody. "Humans have a much wider scope of knowledge than computers, and digital musicologists are providing a service. I find it kind of exciting that if I plug in albums, the next day someone clicks on something I put in there and discovers new music."

The job entails a lot of different content creation, explains Eddy, "general metadata." Metadata?

"Metadata is hard to define, but in this context, it includes band bios, album reviews, popular tracks, and similar artists. When I write, 'This band is similar to these other 10 bands,' the similarities might be artists they influence or related projects, some form of overlap," says Eddy. "Again, the idea of a digital musicologist is that people benefit from having an actual human being guide them to music they might like. This isn't some mathematical algorithm. You have to put bands in a context. Another part of metadata is placing artists in subgenres and even sub-subgenres. It takes human beings to do that."

How does this affect the climate of music writing?

"The definition of what I do as a freelance music critic has expanded in so many directions," muses Eddy. "Until a couple years ago, I was just a writer or an editor. Sometimes I miss writing 4,000-word reviews, but I have the short pieces down to an art form. It's almost like writing a haiku. How much information and opinion can you pack into 600 characters? I like figuring things out – like where does country rap come from? Making connections is always what I've done."

From the Austin Chronicle:

Whether you're going through divorce, disease, or despair, Gloria Gaynor's worldwide disco smash "I Will Survive" is a triumphant anthem for all adversities. The song, written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris, recently became one of 25 recordings inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for 2012.

"It's still popular, it's still being played, and the record company is still making lots of money on that record, very little of which I am getting," says Gaynor.

That may soon change thanks to a provision in the 1976 Copyright Act that took effect in 1978, the year "I Will Survive" was released. Under the act, artists like Gaynor can reclaim ownership of their post-1977 master recordings after 35 years. That makes 2013 something of a zero hour in the music industry.

The issue of reversion rights still brings up more questions than answers. Congress didn't specify who constitutes an author of a sound recording, and the already reeling major labels aren't going to give up their lucrative back catalogs without a fight. The Recording Industry Association of America, which lobbies on behalf of labels, has argued that most recordings are works for hire and are therefore not subject to reversion.

Gaynor, who will provide her decidedly different take on the matter as a South by Southwest panelist, thinks Congress needs to step back in to protect artists' rights.

"We need to convince them that a recording is not a work for hire," she asserts. "The artist doesn't sing a song and then walk away, which is what a work for hire is.

"We're constantly out there promoting. If I hadn't been there singing 'I Will Survive' around the world and if I hadn't recorded it in the first place, it would not be constantly played and it would not be making money for the record companies. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever that I should be making a pittance from it while the record company makes all this money just because they put up the initial money."

Although Gaynor has not filed to reclaim ownership of her own master recordings, calling it "premature," her animosity toward labels isn't hard to discern.

"I see it as the record company having had their hands in the cookie jar for many, many years and now we're asking them to take it out," she says. "They see it as a loss. I see it as termination of a theft."