Well, the APRA/GEMA thing didn’t go away or get smooth as I thought it may have. My releases – Signal Artifacts and phantomshadows – are both unavailable until I can sort that out. Kind of no one to blame, just bureaucracy. I’m trying to get more music up and around. Will update soon. Mood – sad.
The New Flesh
My story “While he lay crumpled” has just been published by the new online magazine The New Flesh. It’s pretty new, so there are few stories there at the moment, but somehow I’m expecting big things.
Read While he lay crumpled.
Automated Service is out
234 or so words – Automated Service – published in Flashes In The Dark for August 11th. Funny? Horrorific? Quirky? Quick read? I thought for a moment adding a bit of a rant here about modern technologies and customer service, but the story kind of says it really.
QuasarDragon
Discovered a very cool blog called QuasarDragon with lots of links to free fantasy, science fiction, horror and so on stuff – mostly online fiction. It’s a good way to keep up with goings on in the world of genre fiction on the web. Full Disclosure – some of my stories have been linked to from the site.
Automated Service – new story coming out soon
A quirky little story is coming out in Flashes in the Dark on August 11th. Horror with a mix of humour. Will post again when it’s out.
Static movement
That ultra-short story Not Today Cheree is out now in the August issue of Static Movement. Loads of other great writing to check out in the magazine too.
99 word story coming out in August
I wrote an ultra-short flash story – fits in the under 100 words category. It will be coming out in the August issue of the fabulous Static Movement magazine. Check out earlier editions – there’s heaps of great writing there. I’ll post a full-link when the edition is published.
New horror story published
Funny, I don’t know that I’d intended to become a horror writer, but about half my output this year has fitted in the genre. Latest story is Second Visit, published on July 23rd in The Daily Tourniquet. Hopefully a sufficiently complex tale in under 1000 words.
Copyright resolved …
Well, after more investigations it looks like all the below is not applicable. I still have the right to do as I wish with recordings – release on a netlabel is fine and those older recordings will stay available.
mood: joyous, excited
Copyright problems
Edit: now on 23 July – the below has become redundant in view of new information that has come to light … ah well.
Over the last couple of years I’ve released some music as digital downloads through international netlabels. The music has been covered by a Creative Commons licence – which means that I give up certain rights (ie. royalties) to make the music available. The licence is an Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
Sounds simple, huh? I sign the licence and people can download for free, nobody pays, nobody receives payment. Except, uh-oh, I joined APRA, which protects copyright for New Zealand artists (eg. if a copyrighted track gets played on the radio, APRA ensures that any fees get to the artist). That seems like a good idea in case I release some copyrighted (as in not Creative Commons) music. Except that some of the music was released on a netlabel in a country where APRA’s equivalent asks for licence fees for members. Meaning that the label owner may have to pay them, who I presume would then pay APRA who would then pay me. Except that I’ve relinquished my rights to payment quite clearly. Apparently that doesn’t wash. The label owner can’t pay (of course not, s/he does this as a hobby, for the fun of it, not for money) so will have to take my music off the label. So here’s the craziness:
Because I belong to APRA, which protects the abuse of my music, my music is going to be unavailable.
Believe me, I think APRA do great work (which is why I joined). It’s too easy for artists’ work to be used for the benefit of others (eg. ambience in a cafe) without any reward for the artist. Many people depend on this kind of remuneration for their livelihood and APRA’s work, along with other agencies, is great in protecting that. But the irony here is that my work will become entirely unavailable because of APRA’s protection as it applies internationally.
While the netlabel scene is small time when related to the music industry as a whole, I feel sad that this little bit of New Zealand culture on the international stage is going to be hobbled by what is really a technicality.
It looks as if I will have to resign my APRA membership in order to make my music available in the future. Even then, it also seems that because of being an APRA member at the time the music was released it’s now going to be permanently unavailable through the netlabel.
mood: sad, disconsalate
Sean Monaghan - Writer 