Edwyn Collins has been barred from streaming his own song through MySpace. Management for the former Orange Juice frontman have been unable to convince the website that they own the rights to A Girl Like You, despite the fact that they, er, do.
"MySpace are not equipped to deal with the notion that anyone other than a major [label] can claim a copyright," complained Grace Maxwell, Collins's wife and manager. Maxwell made the unpleasant discovery after trying to upload A Girl Like You, the singer's 1994 hit, to his own MySpace page. "Lo and behold," she wrote in a blog, "it would not upload. I was told Edwyn was attempting to breach a copyright and he was sent to the Orwellian MySpace copyright re-education page. Quite chilling, actually."
The trouble with accusing Collins of copyright infringement is that he's not infringing. "He owns the copyright," Maxwell underlined, "as he does for most of the music he's recorded in his life (preferring to go it alone than have his music trapped 'in perpetuity' to use the contract language of the major record company)."
"I naturally blew my stack and wrote to MySpace on his behalf demanding to know who the hell was claiming copyright of Edwyn's track? ... Eventually, after HUGE difficulty, I was told Warner Music Group were claiming it. I found a nice lawyer guy at Warners, very apologetic, promised to get it sorted, but all these months later it isn't."
For Maxwell, this has been emblematic of everything that's wrong with the music industry. "[We are] aware of who the biggest bootleggers are," she said. "It's not the filesharers." While Collins has worked to make A Girl Like You freely available to his fans, she alleges that the same track is sold illegally "all over the internet". "Not by Edwyn, [but] by all sorts of respectable major labels whose licence to sell it ran out years ago and who do not account to him."
"Attempting to make them cease and desist would use up the rest of my life. Because this is what they do and what they've always done. And it's not just majors. If I had a fiver for all the dodgy indie labels we've been involved with I'd have £35 or thereabouts. (Exceptions: Heavenly and Domino)."
Maxwell, however, believes a different kind of digital music service could save the industry. "Now let's get on with working out a wonderful new way for music lovers to enjoy music for free or for a small subscription that makes it legal and easy to hear ANYTHING and allows the artist to reap the rewards of such freedom of access," she wrote. "Viva la revolucion!"