‘Rock The Net’ Pushes Indie Musicians’ Net Neutrality Stake
Campaigning to mobilize musicians for net neutrality, the Future of Music Coalition (FMC) Tues. announced a Rock The Net campaign and website, FutureOfMusic.org/RockTheNet. Rock The Net -- endorsed by House Telecom & Internet Subcommittee Chmn. Markey (D-Mass.), 26 bands and others -- maintains that indie musicians will suffer unless Congress stops AT&T, Verizon and other ISPs from charging websites for extra bandwidth. The campaign is “big, powerful and going to rock,” Markey said.
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The Internet seeded an “incredible flowering of independent music’s power to reach people,” indie rocker Ted Leo said. CD sales of mainstream music have shrunk in recent years, while independent music sales have been climbing and are up 30% from last year, said Derek Sivers, founder of indie music Web store CD Baby, citing media reports. CD Baby doesn’t offer paid placements on its front page or in search listings, and the Internet shouldn’t provide advantages to those with more money to spend, either, Sivers said.
Independent music Web distributors also will be hurt if there are no govt. controls, said Andrew Schwartzman, Media Access Project pres. A major music store like Apple’s iTunes has far faster download speeds than a startup, he said.
Others said the regulation Rock The Net encourages is a bad idea. “With apologies to Sarah McLachlan, ‘Building a Mystery’ seems a pretty good description of neutrality regulation,” Hands Off the Internet coalition co-chairs Mike McCurry and Christopher Wolf said in a written statement. “Net users need faster, cheaper choices for Net access. Vague government regulation that doesn’t keep up with the Net’s changing technologies just interferes with both goals.”
The Rock The Net website discusses net neutrality and offers website banners and other tools to bring people into the fight. It uses Google Maps to track cities where touring musicians are spreading the message. Rock The Net may create a compilation album by allied artists, FMC communications dir. Justin Jouvenal told our affiliate Washington Internet Daily.
The FMC expects the campaign to attract musicians major and independent, since the issue is “close to artists’ hearts,” said FMC Exec. Dir. Jenny Toomey. The possibility that ISPs will hinder access to culture and non-mainstream material is “frightening and very real,” Leo said. “The Internet had open architecture built into it from its inception,” Markey said: It’s important to “fight to build principles of non-discrimination back into the law.”