A Tale Of Two Michaels

Will she be...?

Last week’s Bonus Round: “Little Wonders” is a song written and performed by Rob Thomas (lead singer of Matchbox Twenty), produced by Danny Elfman, for the 2007 Disney movie “Meet The Robinsons”.

“"Little Wonders" is a song by American singer-songwriter Rob Thomas, recorded for Disney's animated feature Meet the Robinsons in 2007. It is the second single from the Meet the Robinsons soundtrack. It is featured on the film's soundtrack and in the ending of the film itself, and has been released as a single. "Little Wonders" debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at number 78 and subsequently peaked at number 58. The song also became a top-20 hit in Australia, Austria, and Germany.

Background

Rob Thomas revealed on April 1, 2017, via his Facebook page, that the song 'Little Wonders' was written about him and his wife Marisol's first dog Tyler, who was born on that same date.^{[2] “}

Credit: Wikipedia Link: Little Wonders

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Welcome, new subscribers!! (For some reason when I write that the cover art from The Fountains Of Wayne album “Welcome Interstate Managers” always pops into my head….). The tradition here is when we have new subscribers, I share a picture of my adorable cat. It’s sort of like buying a round for the house, but way cheaper….

Thanks for subscribing!! Here ya go! Tell your friends…

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For today, there’s this - in a previous career, I used to work with a lot of aircrew. They had a lot of sayings, some that included some version of the term “S1”. The first letter in S1, also known as V1, or VS1, is an abbreviation for “Speed” or “Velocity” or “Velocity Speed” in aircrew language. “S1” and the other abbreviations refer to the speed and point on takeoff beyond which the aircraft is committed to take off - in other words the aircraft is at a speed and at a point on the runway where there is not enough remaining runway to safely stop, so it has to go. It sort of evolved, among the aircrew folks I worked with, in the way a lot of workplace jargon of all sorts does I suppose, into a broader euphemism. In this case, it worked as an analogy for a point past which an action was not reversible. For example, in talking about the dubious wisdom of various administrative or higher headquarters decisions, it was often lamented that “We’re already past S1 on that one”, or something like that. Handy saying for lots of things, though your aviator friends and acquaintances may look askance at you. Just tell them “If you’re not already absolutely convinced you’re the best fighter pilot in the bar when you walk in, you’re not”. They like to say stuff like that a lot, too.

So I talked about that so I could talk about this:

Some developments from the recording world lead me to believe the attempted reversal of an earlier Waves Audio decision resulting in a giant kerfluflle is “already past S1” for a lot of previous customers. Apparently now Waves Audio will not implement their galactically stupid decision to try to charge subscriptions/license updates/reregistration (I’m not sure and don’t care what name they finally decided on) for audio plugins that customers had already purchased. As this developed, it appeared they were trying to sell, for plugins already owned by customers, an expensive license update, now it looks like that shakes out as a subscription scheme.

Anyway, it seems to have caught fire with users and this week the premier recording studio in my city made it clear that while Waves may have reversed at least a portion of their decision, that studio is dropping use of their Waves Audio plugins. This is a good news/bad news sort of story. It’s bad that customers (like me) who may have been new to recording, especially recording in a home studio, bought more than a few plugins from them for their DAW (Digital Audio Workstation - like Logic Pro X or Avid Pro Tools or something else). I, like many others I’m sure, wanted to experiment with projects and the relatively low cost of some interesting products caught our attention. We also wanted to use some of those plugins in a mix we could send around to others for overdubbing drums, guitars, keys, etc, with at least some confidence those folks would be using some of the same plugins (pro tip - always check they have the same plugins, or send your mix in an .aiff, .m4a or other high quality audio format, but not as an overly compressed .mp3, just sayin’). Waves also usually had a “buy more, get some free” deal going. “Third one free” now seems like a sort of twisted take on the old “First one’s free” saying.

The good news is really just old news that most of us already knew deep down - the stock plugins that come with your DAW are perfectly capable of producing all we as beginners could ask for in audio performance. Yes, if you get phenomenally better on your own, or are pursuing a career as an audio engineer, you’ll probably purchase some plugins beyond the stock ones that come with your DAW. And you should if you reach that level.

Meh, I’m done with Waves, your mileage may vary, but if you’re considering purchasing from them, at least search “waves audio subscription”, in whatever search engine you prefer, first. Plenty of better epic rants than mine there.

I wrote about my disappointment with them in this February 3 (this year) post - scroll down to the bottom (but check out the J.S. Ondara song while you’re there if you missed it) for my epic rant…

Somethings Gotta Sell

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All right, I have more than whiny, but epic, rants in my arsenal. Yesterday I talked about a couple of things in the Thursday “Links” post that I want to expand on here. I keep track of my stats for these posts and usually, but not always, the Friday posts get the most engagement. Using these data, I kind of informally divide you all into “Thursday people” and “Friday people”, though I recognize there is a lot of overlap. A sort of “It’s a simple Venn diagram, and you’re in it!” thing, I suppose.

Yesterday I mentioned the exploratory nature of an idea by Big SubStack, that of writers, and potentially by extension, readers, making a direct investment in ownership of SubStack. Interesting idea, worth reading if you missed it cuz you’re a Friday person, at the link here: SubStack Funding

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The other thing I sort of teased about was my positive interaction with the U.S. Copyright Office, and I wanted to expand on that a bit further today. We’ve talked about the various types of copyrights a songwriter should own to protect their works from uncompensated infringement. Those are pretty much three copyrights: Composer, Publisher, and a Sound Recording of your work (there may be other things to consider, such as a trademark for your band’s logo, or something, but I’m not gonna wade into that particular swamp today). A copyright is essentially (relatively) cheap insurance against the possibility someone will claim your work as their own. Anyone can “cover” your work, they just have to pay you a portion of the revenue from their cover for using your intellectual property. The amount of that portion is a percentage set by law.

So the thing I learned from a very courteous and helpful email exchange with a copyright specialist at the U.S. Copyright Office is that my attempt to copyright a sound recording of my work to maximize my potential royalties can run into some legal hurdles. I have a song (actually one of a number of songs) that I have copyrighted as a Composer. In order to copyright as a Publisher, I created a “legal entity” in the form of a Limited Liability Company, an “LLC”. In legal terms, even though I am the sole owner and managing member of the LLC, the LLC itself is a separate “person”. So it’s kind of like I’m standing next to myself in Legal Mirror World when I claim that I am the Composer, and right beside me is Legal Mirror World Michael, claiming to be the Publisher. For sound recording copyright purposes, I can either be me, or Legal Mirror World me, but not both, as I actually am in Reality World. Okay. so that sounds weird, but it actually makes a sort of odd legal sense.

The basic purpose of a business entity such as an LLC, or corporation, is to limit potential liability to the assets of the entity, and shields personal assets, such as your car, house or cat (I’m pretty sure “my” cat would claim me as an overvalued asset in Legal Cat Mirror World).

So if I slander or defame someone in my work, as the publisher I may be liable as either myself, or Legal Mirror World Michael, or both, but the plaintiff’s lawyer probably only wants to sue the one with the most assets. Lawyers divide defendants into two sorts of folks: “turnips” or “watermelons”. It’s a “can’t get blood from a turnip” sort of analogy, so they want to sue the juicier watermelon.

Ok, so that’s nice, but how does that affect my Sound Recording copyright? The answer is apparently only one of the Michaels can own that copyright. Either Composer Michael or Publisher Michael, LLC. but not both. After several very courteous and professional email exchanges, where I asked some questions and the copyright specialist patiently answered, the copyright specialist offered a simple and elegant solution - change the actual holder of the sound recording copyright from both Michaels to only Composer Michael (an alternative - writing a letter to myself that transferred rights from Composer Michael to Publisher Michael was also an option, but seemed unnecessarily cumbersome). So that’s where things stand as of a couple of days ago, I agreed to the copyright application change and hopefully I’ll be the owner of all three copyrights (albeit in a sort of schizophrenic manner) in the near future. So, lesson learned, and that’s how I’ll be wording future Sound Recording copyright applications.

One point from all of this is though we tend to think of government offices as faceless, impersonal entities, there really are a lot of genuinely empathetic, professional and courteous government employees who are very helpful. I think a lot of that depends on how courteous and professional we ourselves are when we interact.

word…

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A playlist of songs I’m listening to today. This one is from some memorable times…

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Bonus Round: Acoustically Marooned….

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Cheers and keep playing!!

Michael Acoustic