Opinion
Heritage Foundation's hip-hop-happenin' intertube joint for kidz will be 'da bomb,' yo
The predominately white middle-aged white buttoned-down white irons-their-socks white fully-clothed-when-having-sex white guys at the Heritage Foundation have surveyed the internet landscape and -- porn sites aside -- have found it wanting.
Sure a few new sites have sprung up in the last few months: Nate Silver's Gay Math Hogwarts FiveThirtyEight, Ezra Klein's wordy version of Ask.com, and Glenn Greenwald's more-paychecks-get-signed-than-articles-get-written whosis whatsis. But still there is an emptiness, a void, when it comes to delivering important updates to America's youth who are always on their smart phones looking for things like "10 Guiding Principles for Agriculture Policy: A Free-Market Vision" or "Financial Stability Oversight Council and Asset Management Firms."
Did TMZ cover either of those? No, they did not.
So the Heritage Foundation hired some down-with-the-kids trend surfers to help the create The Daily Signal (all the other good 'Daily' names - -Beast, -Caller, -Puppy, -Boobs - were taken) which will change the political landscape forever and bring millennials into the fold by introducing them to conservative ideals like hating the poors, the old, black people, immigrants, sick people, government workers, and black people again.
According to BloombergBusiness, the Daily Signal will deliver straight-forward just-the-facts-mam reportage of current events. but what will make it a viral must-read upworthy hangout will be the groovy opinion section:
The Daily Signal will also publish an opinion section aimed at a younger audience that isn’t thumbing through the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Heritage is betting that these readers, attracted to the Daily Signal’s news, will find themselves persuaded by the conservative commentary and analysis that will draw on the think tank’s scholars and researchers.
They forgot to add "....delivered over phat beats."
The past few years have seen a profusion of conservative media outlets, with titles such as the Daily Caller and Breitbart News joining standbys like National Review and the Weekly Standard. Although their content varies from red meat to sober policy analysis, all are aimed at fellow conservatives.
Wanting to differentiate themselves from the old school conservative websites listed above, the Heritage people moved trendster Rob Bluey into the Editor-in-Chief chair and stole away Katrina Trinko from National Review Online (which is Vibe for white people) and then they took a few tips from kool kids Nate Silver And Ezra Klein:
The Daily Signal’s clean design, mobile-first approach, and claim of journalistic dispassion suggest obvious similarities to Ezra Klein’s new site, Vox, and Nate Silver’s refurbished fivethirtyeight.com. “Like Vox and 538, we’re purposely branding ourselves not as a blog but a standalone site,” says Robert Bluey, who directs Heritage’s Center for Media and Public Policy and will be the Signal’s editor-in-chief. But Lysaught is leery of the comparison. “What Ezra is doing has got a wild liberal bias to it,” he says. “When we talk about the news, we’re just laying out the facts. We think that’s an important educational mission.”
Whoa, Bluey, you haven't even launched yet and publisher Geoffrey Lysaught is already interrupting your flow.
Caps into asses will be busted, as the kids say...
[Musician with large hat on Shutterstock]
Conservatives open up new front in War on Women: Castrating wage earners
You undoubtedly have misty water-colored memories that reach way way back to the Year of Our Lord 2012 when Republicans declared War on Women because ladies were all needy all of the time with their freakish lady plumbing and crazy hormonal talk about wage disparities and income inequality and not wanting to be raped and such and such. Republicans responded with: 'chill out babes, find yourself a man and make babies and, hey, can we prod you with this trasvaginal freedom wand?'
It seemed that conservatives had binders chock full of ideas about how to fix what ailed the gals, most of them tried and true methods developed during the 1950's when men were men and women were women and you could sit at a lunch counter and have an egg cream without bumping shoulders with a future president of the United States who was uppity enough to think he should get service too. Good times, good times.
In War on Women v1.0, the GOP set about saving America from sluts like Sandra Fluke who demanded that taxpayers pay for their whore-pills, communist rabblerousers like Lilly Ledbetter who thought women should be paid the same as a man for doing the same job, and ladies who didn't want a bunch of pasty white men in grey suits getting up in the girl grills with a baby flashlight.
Also, too: rape, what's the big deal, ladies? Just lie back and enjoy it and then use your magic lesbian witch powers to not get pregnant, but if you do: tough titty and, besides, it's a gift from Jesus.
So, yeah conservatives certainly had their hands full of babe booty in those days, when the wimmin's were all gimmee-gimmee-gimmee, me me me.
Fast forward a year or so later and the sisters are doing it for themselves; pulling themselves up by their own slingbacks and making bank. So long Needy Nellie, hello Big Bucks Beyoncé.
Obviously, this cannot stand.
According to people who say things on GOP-messaging shop Fox News, if a lady makes more than her man, she might as well just cut off his balls and hang them from her car mirror like a pair of fuzzy man-dice.
Kris Schoels of YoungMarriedChic.com opined that “problems can arise” when families do not follow “traditional gender roles.”“Is there a biological need for the man to take care of the women here?” Morris asked Miss New York USA 2013 Joanne Nosuchinsky, who recommended finding a man who was not insecure about his wife earning more.
Too late, you've been gelded! Now go make mama a nice Salad Niçoise - dressing on the side - and a mangotini, then get you cute little butt back in there and turn on Ellen, mama needs a little lesbian therapy.
Tucker Carlson, whose body contains over 40% of our nation's testosterone reserves, got his cha-chas in a swivet at the idea that a woman might pay for dinner [didn't Tucker's dad marry Swanson Frozen Foods heiress Patsy Swanson? Shut up and eat your Hungry Man dinner, jerkface]:
Carlson argued that men did not necessarily need to hunt and fish to be masculine.“Men, who on the second date, let their date pay for dinner, I’m sorry that’s disgusting,” he insisted. “And I don’t care. The new norms are — he shouldn’t allow it. Period.”
Co-host Sandra Smith pointed out that men could show respect for women “and not assume that he’s the macho man” who needs to pay for dinner.
“He should be the macho man,” Carlson shot back. “He ought to have respect for himself. Are you kidding? Let a girl pay? What are you joking?”
Katie Pavlich, who is being groomed by Fox to cater to the part of their audience who thinks Elizabeth Hasselbeck is 'too erudite,' explained that the first rule of feminism is not "Ex-boyfriends are just off-limits to friends," it's all about taking the 'man out of manliness':
“Because the feminist movement for decades has told men not to embraces their manliness, that is part of the patriarchy of our society. And that being a man is a bad thing. And that you should downgrade your manliness. And saying ‘man up’ is not acceptable because manning up is not based on gender.”“They have all these things where they take the man part out of being a man,” she added. “And then we wonder why men don’t act like men anymore.”
So, in War on Women v2.1, they're going after the women who aren't all gimmee-gimmee, but have become self-sufficient makers and not takers which -- Republicans would have you believe -- is their base and not angry old people, racists, gun nuts, and the men's rights crowd.
So sorry ladies.
But then you know what they say about conservatives: they can never make up their minds. Amirite?
They're adorable that way...
[Cute girl and money on Shutterstock]
Recap: 'Game of Thrones,' Season Four, Episode Five: 'First of His Name'
“First of His Name,” the latest episode of Game of Thrones, begins with the crowning of King Tommen, the first of his name, an event which is met with a rousing shout of “long may he reign, etc. etc. etc.” He's barely a king and you already feel for him, the poor bastard.
Especially when he attempts to exchange googly eyes with his former aunt and future wife, Margaery, only to be interrupted by his mother. Cersei then approaches her soon to be sister-mother and acknowledges that the recently deceased Joffrey “would have been your nightmare,” which is surprisingly honest for her. Clearly, she has no ulterior motives.
Nor does Jorah Mormont, over in Essos, who suddenly knows everything that's happening in Westeros. Ser Barristan recommends Dany take her 8,000 Unsullied and 2,000 Second Sons and storm the Blackwater Bay, because that has never not been successful. He also informs her that the slave-cities she's liberated are in the process of being unliberated by the very forces she thought she'd overthrown, indicating not only the fragility of freedom, but the potential emptiness of all of Dany's heroic moments of late.
Grand gestures are grand and all, but the changes need to be a little more permanent if they're to be anything more than just gestures.
“Why should anyone follow me?” Dany asks, and rightfully so, before adding, “I will not let those I have freed slide back into chains.” A superb idea, that is, and how does she expect to do that?
“I will do what queens do,” she says, beginning a thought that most free people wouldn't find auspicious.
“I will rule.” Because nothing says freedom like being ruled.
The scene then shifts to the gates outside the Eyrie, where Littlefinger leads Sansa Stark into a situation which the word “uncomfortable” doesn't even begin to define. It begins with a conversation that clearly isn't about sex, and certainly not about rape, but is entirely about the force that's required to pound through the Bloody Gate and lay claim to the Eyrie.
Sansa is then introduced to her aunt, Lysa Arryn, and her cousin, Robin Arryn, who was last seen suckling at his mother's breast while screaming for Tyrion to be thrown out the Moon Door. He has not grown much – intellectually or otherwise – since then, as his enthusiastic hug of “Uncle Petyr” suggests.
Lysa Arryn seems not to have grown any wiser with the passage of time, as she praises Sansa for “being of her blood,” as if that's an accomplishment, or something to be desired. It's worth pausing for a moment to note that the events being briefly discussed to in this scene are actually the most critical discussed in the episode, if not the entire series.
Robin Arryn tries to bond with Sansa by saying, “they killed my father too, with poison.” The line is tossed off, but its import shouldn't be – the death of Jon Arryn is what started everything, the veritable snowball at the top of a hill that grows ever bloodier as it wends its way down. Arryn discovered Cersei and Jaime's secret and was killed for it. Ned Stark was killed after he started investigating what killed Arryn. Rob and Catelyn Stark were killed and need I really go on?
Because the point here is that Lysa credits Littlefinger with having poisoned Jon Arryn, which if true, would make him the “Prime Mover” of the entire series. Of course, Littlefinger also took credit for poisoning Joffrey, so at this point, he's a little like Al Qaeda, claiming to have done all the bad things but having no proof besides the claiming. At this point, if he claimed to have hijacked Malaysian Air 370 but somehow botched the landing, the audience – and CNN – would be inclined to believe him, if only because he's made similar mistakes before.
Then, because everything wasn't already disturbing enough, the audience gets to watch Sansa listening to Petyr and Lysa re-consummating their marriage. Because, as I said, there's nothing about this trip to the Eyrie that isn't disturbing.
After two brief interludes in which Cersei is informed she's broke and Arya informs the Hound he's dead, director Michelle McLaren returns to the Eyrie for more disturbing “fun.” It was not enough that she previously asked Sansa whether Tyrion had “forced himself” upon her, now she's plying her with lemon cakes and demanding she tell her “the vile things” she's allowed Petyr to do with “her young pretty body.”
“Are you pregnant?” Lysa asks.
“I'm a virgin,” Sansa repeatedly assures her, to which Lysa responds, “Girl, you'll be a widow, soon.”
Cut to Brienne and Pod having an adventure in horseback riding:
He is really terrible at it. That's the point of this scene, his terribleness at horseback riding and Brienne's willingness to put up with it. The next scene makes a similar point, albeit with different characters, as the Hound chastises Arya for the delicacy of her water-dancing. The show continues its trend of replacing nudity with profanity as the Hound insults the memory of the beloved Syrio in language better not repeated.
Cersei schemes with Oberyn, who informs her that "in Dorne, we don't hurt little girls."
"Everywhere in the world they hurt little girls," she says, acknowledging both a sad universal truth and her own troubled youth. It's almost as if the show wants the audience to feel Cersei's pain, or at least feel enough of it to ignore all the pain she has caused, and will cause, others.
Like her brother, Tyrion, who is absent from this episode outside his penchant for wine. "I poured wine for him," Pod informs Brienne in yet another attempt to indicate that he really wants to squire her.
And with that, the episode moves to Craster's Keep and the seemingly inevitable reunion of Jon Snow and his half-brother, Bran Stark. But it is not to be, as the Bolton spy, Locke, is sent in first, damn it. At least, however, the audience is treated to his death, as well as the deaths of the other traitors of the Night's Watch -- many at the hands of Jon Snow.
Bran wargs into Hodor again, too, and it's against Hodor's will again, too. Is taking people's bodies against their will starting to become a recurring theme?
I'll answer that for you: Yes, it is.
Of course, this episode is not entirely bereft of reunions:
If you didn't tear up, just a little bit, at the sight of Jon greeting Ghost, something inside you is as dead as Craster, as ashen as the remains of his keep.
World health at risk if drug companies don't invest in new low-profit antibiotic research
We could now be entering an alarming "post-antibiotic era", warned the World Health Organisation last week. The relief that humanity has won through antibiotics that fight off attacks on our health seems to be running out, as bacteria are developing ever better defence mechanisms. We thought the era of infectious diseases lay behind us; instead, is it coming back?
Already 25,000 people die every year in the European Union from diseases of the blood and urinary tract, from pneumonia, TB and diarrhoea, all of which could have been treated by effective antibiotics. And this is in a region where there is widespread vaccination against infections and where public health is strong.
The bugs behind TB or gonorrhoea now routinely fight off antibiotics ever faster, and these mutating bugs travel globally. Everywhere people are having to stay in hospital for longer and face a growing risk of infection by others. Death rates are beginning to rise rather than fall.
Nor is the situation likely to get any better. Part of the problem is that people are too casual over how antibiotics are prescribed and used so the bugs aren't eliminated, but instead develop better defence mechanisms. On top, over the past 30 years the drug companies have developed no new major antibiotic types. The last one was carbapenem – a so-called last resort antibiotic – back in 1980. Now more than half the cases of K pneumoniae that used to be treatable by carbapenem drugs no longer respond. Dr Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant director general for health security, spelled out the danger: "Without urgent, co-ordinated action by many stakeholders," he said, "common infections and minor injuries, which have been treatable for decades, can once again kill."
The impact is felt across all of medicine. The effectiveness of drugs is interdependent. Cancer patients undergoing expensive chemotherapy need cheap antibiotics to handle the otherwise potentially fatal side effects as their immune systems reel from the impact of the poison to kill the cancer.
We are used to the notion that medical science is getting better; there is no need to fear an infected finger, let alone the diseases that traumatised earlier generations. Now it seems science is losing the battle we are accustomed to it winning.
But the crisis is much less in science than it is in the ways it is directed and organised. It is no accident that the failure to develop any major new antibiotics over the past 30 years has coincided with the roll back of the state and the accompanying collapse in self-confidence in public initiatives or in the beneficial affects of public spending.
Drug discovery, and with it the evolution of the entire complex medical ecosystem along with the science that supports it, has been driven by profit signals in the commercial marketplace. Because the easy to find antibiotic chemical compounds have been discovered, new research is complex and expensive – yet antibiotics are priced as low-margin commodity drugs. Worse, regulators – especially the FDA in the US which, as the gatekeeper to the richest drugs market in the world, is of pivotal importance – only license antibiotics for particular rather than generalised uses.
For a profit-maximising drug company such as Pfizer, there is an obvious conclusion. Don't waste valuable R&D on low-margin antibiotics that are never going to become super-profitable blockbusters. Instead, develop, say, Viagra (as it has), which is a high-margin, global money spinner. Exploit your financial muscle by avoiding as much tax as possible – other mutts can fund the infrastructure from which you directly benefit – and try to buy up other drug companies, such as AstraZeneca, which has been foolish enough to invest in drugs that are more integral to the entire medical ecosystem. You can harvest the results of their efforts, pocket your vast meta-bonus and buy an island in the Pacific. You may even be lucky enough to encounter a misguided, weak government – like the UK's – that believes this is the way to do business.
In the 19th century, one of the biggest catalysts to end laissez-faire was the lived experience of infectious diseases, lack of sewers, dirty air, contaminated food and unregulated quack medicine. The upper middle class built their pavilions on the windward west of English cities to try to limit their exposure not just to the stink but the risk of infection: is it no accident that the working class lived downwind on the east of cities?
But infectious disease does not respect the boundaries of class and wealth. Beginning with the 1840 Vaccination Act, the Victorians decided that public health had to come before individual freedom, and launched the interlocking efforts to build sewers, vaccinate infants and marshal ever better science to support their efforts. Anti-vaccination movements protesting against the extension of the state – the equivalent of today's Ukip – had to drop their resistance before the health need and weight of the evidence.
The WHO is invoking that same spirit today. Antibiotics are precious and the gains to public health precarious. Our culture does not respect these life-giving drugs enough; we use them like aspirin, not completing the courses we are prescribed or even giving unused drugs to friends or family for whom they were not diagnosed.
Nature is wreaking its revenge. Now we need a new collective effort to respond. It begins with each individual recognising and treasuring the miracle of antibiotics, but it also means that new antibiotics have to be developed faster and more effectively. We need smarter, more open forms of research collaboration between a multiplicity of drug companies around health strategies that understand that drugs are global public health goods, and that the medical ecosystem stands and falls as a whole. Antibiotics are as important as drug blockbusters to our health, if not to drug companies' profits. Governments need to reset the incentives and drug companies their priorities. The best scientists and universities know this and want their science to be deployed in that way.
Britain could take a lead but over the next few weeks we are to be robbed of one of our major pharmaceutical assets, AstraZeneca, which will probably be taken over by Pfizer, one of whose prime strategic objectives is tax avoidance. The WHO must call for changes in not just how antibiotics are used, but how they are researched and produced if the world is not to confront devastating consequences. Dangerous bacteria even infect the ideologues in Number 10 so anxious to sell out to US interests, and the AstraZeneca shareholders who declare no loyalty except to the highest, short-term share price. Our health demands a new seriousness of intent, and a recognition that it is a public good not a private plaything. Saying no to Pfizer would be a wake-up call for everyone.
- Will Hutton
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2014
[A Doctor is doing some drug research on Shutterstock]
Al Gore on corruption in politics and media
I just read a wonderful article about and interview with Al Gore on POLITICO. Worth your time, I believe. Al Gore is such an excellent communicator. One of the best out there on the topic of global climate change. However, if you aren’t drawn…
'Smashing Physics' a fascinating account of life at CERN and how the Higgs boson was found
The discovery of the laws that describe what is going on inside atoms has been one of science's greatest triumphs. It was achieved with remarkable speed, subatomic science having begun little more than a century ago as an academic backwater and developed into a quintessential example of "big science".
The first subatomic particle, the electron, was discovered by the Cambridge physicist JJ Thomson in 1897 using desktop apparatus that cost only a few thousand pounds at today's prices. Few people in the outside world knew what he had done, and still fewer cared. It was a very different story in July 2012, when scientists at the Cern laboratory in Switzerland announced their discovery of the latest subatomic particle to show its face, a so-called "Higgs boson" or "Higgs particle", named after the Edinburgh University theoretician Peter Higgs. The total cost this time was a few billion pounds.
This was good value, as Jon Butterworth implicitly argues in Smashing Physics, a delightful account of his life as a Cern experimentalist, based at University College London. He explains why he and his colleagues are so curious about the subatomic world, and gives a vivid glimpse of life on a huge international project in modern experimental particle physics. In the course of the book, we accompany him to Cern, to quite a few meetings, to an interview with John Humphrys and to conferences all over the world.
Guardian readers will be familiar with Butterworth through his lively and well-informed blog, which consists of dispatches from the frontline of particle physics research. He began writing it in 2010, soon after he lost much of his fear of the media, in the wake of the success achieved by his friend Brian Cox in bringing physics to TV audiences of millions. Smashing Physics reads much like his blog, with its conversational tone, its blend of explication and opinion, its self-deprecating humour and the occasional well-directed barb.
Butterworth begins with a brisk account of the standard model, which describes the fundamental interactions that govern the inner workings of atoms, though not gravity (the effects of which are negligible on the atomic scale). The Higgs particle was the model's only missing piece for a long time, and it was crucial to know whether it existed as it was expected to be a clear manifestation of the mechanism that explains why some fundamental particles have mass and are not as insubstantial as light. The theoreticians made several predictions about the Higgs and its behaviour, but its own mass was a mystery, making life exceptionally difficult for the experimenters trying to hunt it down.
To find the Higgs – or to rule out its existence – was one of the aims of the Large Hadron Collider, a huge machine that accelerates protons (sub-nuclear particles) to within a squillionth of the speed of light before smashing them together (hence the book's title). If the particle existed, it should have quickly fallen apart into other particles in ways that experimenters could study. This is much easier said than done: as Butterworth explains, it was always going to be extremely difficult to pin down the particle, as the evidence was expected to be largely – but not completely – obscured by huge numbers of tracks due to other subatomic processes. Several months after the collider was switched on, there was no clear sign of the particle, leading some theoreticians to get cold feet and even to doubt its existence.
Butterworth tells the story of how the particle was eventually tracked down, making clear the extent of the challenge. He is an engaging guide, generous to all his colleagues, especially in the media – "We should be more forgiving of some of the excitable headlines" – but is sometimes a tad harsh on theoreticians. "Experimentalists get ignored if they are right … and hugely cited if they are wrong," he writes, whereas "Theorists are ignored if they are wrong, but get a Nobel prize if they are right." In my experience, theorists soon find themselves on the scrapheap if they are trivial, let alone wrong.
It is hard to come up with truly innovative ideas that are not ruled out by combining the two great underpinning theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, and by the experimental data that support them. Yet it is plain that the standard model will not be the last word on subatomic physics – we need a better-understood, more comprehensive theory that can describe all the fundamental forces, including gravity. The only viable candidate for this is string theory, which has huge potential but "struggles to predict anything remotely measurable", as Butterworth puts it. He is one of many who disparage the theory, though I suspect he and his fellow sceptics will be proved wrong in the long term and that physicists will one day reap the benefits of the work now being done on string theory, even if it is superseded by another approach.
Like all good experimenters, Butterworth keeps his feet firmly on the ground. He was a "confirmed Higgs sceptic" until the closing weeks of 2011, but, after seeing a new display of data a few weeks later, he changed his mind – "I knew in my guts we had it." It is fascinating to read how the particle's existence was eventually demonstrated using a tiny proportion of telltale tracks in the detectors. Butterworth describes the problems he and his colleagues encountered as they repeatedly checked their analyses to avoid any possibility of career-ending mistakes. Only when the discovery of a new particle was beyond reasonable doubt did the Cern authorities announce it, triggering worldwide media "Higgsteria".
The discovery led to the sharing of last year's Nobel prize for physics by Higgs and his fellow pioneer François Englert. They certainly deserved it, but, as Butterworth says, it is a pity that the experimenters who actually proved the theoreticians were right have not yet had a share of the Nobel glory. I, for one, hope that the experimentalists – or, at least, Cern – will be rewarded with Nobel honours after they have made another exciting discovery, preferably one that the theoreticians did not expect. Theoreticians have been calling the tune in particle physics for too long.
In a bravura passage towards the end of his book, Butterworth extols the virtues of this kind of research and bewails the attempts by some bureaucrats to guess its impact on society in advance. The point of doing fundamental particle physics is – like great art – not specifically to improve our material wellbeing, but to enrich our understanding and appreciation of our place in the world. The spinoffs – including Cern's invention of the world wide web (Tim Berners-Lee was a scientist there) – are a bonus. All in all, it is plain that the UK gets excellent value from its support of this basic science, at an annual cost to each of us of a fancy cappuccino.
When reading Smashing Physics, I found myself reflecting on how much the world of subatomic physics has changed since its earliest days. Butterworth shows that the conventional image of experimenters working alone in a laboratory has long been superseded by huge international teams, in which individuals struggle to make their mark. Butterworth himself comes across as both a team player and a gifted individual, capable of doing first-class research; he is also a first-rate populariser. This rare talent is handsomely on display in this charming, enlightening bulletin from one of the most exciting fields of human endeavour.
• Graham Farmelo is the author of Churchill's Bomb, published by Faber.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2014
Modern conservatism is not fueled by rampant hate-every-black-person racism
When Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy laments that today’s “Negro” has not learned to pick cotton, is he merely a racist crackpot or instead an avatar of modern conservatism? The answer…
The morality police in your checking account: Chase shuts down accounts of adult entertainers
In the latest example of a troubling trend in which companies play the role of law enforcement and moral police, Chase Bank has shut down the personal bank accounts of hundreds of adult entertainers. We’ve written before about the dire consequences…
Watch: Darrell Issa’s Wall Street hypocrisy exposed
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is outraged that the IRS reportedly paid out $2.8 million in bonuses over a two-year period to employees who had been disciplined by the agency. That’s perfectly understandable, but Issa opened up a can of worms when he told…
The music industry is divided over streaming – and headed for a collision
Publishers and songwriters question why labels should get a much bigger share when a track is played on Pandora or Spotify
Publishers and record labels are heading for a collision over the huge difference in streaming royalty rates between master recordings (labels) and publishing (songwriters), with publishers and songwriters questioning why record labels should get five to 12 times as much as the writers when a track is streamed.
At the heart of the issue appears to be how important the songwriting is to an artist's success. Record labels maintain that the division of royalties is fair, as they have to invest more money in marketing, PR, recording costs and tour support (though the latter two expenses are recoupable against the artist's royalties).
Publishers and songwriters, however, say that labels are able to do 360-degree deals with artists where they get a share of merchandising, concert tickets and brand partnerships – but songwriters can only make money from the actual recordings. PRS collects a small share of ticket revenue, which gets split between all the songwriters that wrote the songs in the set, though it's less than what the credit card companies get from each transaction.
Songwriters also point out that, unlike sales of CDs and vinyl, labels don't have to pay for pressing the records and physically deliver them to the shop when it comes to digital sales. Also, there are no returned, unsold records that the labels have to foot the bill for, so surely the songwriters should get a bigger "slice of the pie" from digital music services – not less, as is the case with Pandora (songwriters get about $90 per 1m streams, 12 times less) and YouTube (varies, but in general a songwriter who's written 100% of a song makes about $90 per 1m streams, while a label can make $1,000 to $4,000 per 1m streams) .
One publisher claimed Lucian Grainge, the head of Universal Music Group, said at the PRS copyright tribunal between the labels and songwriters in 2006 that he considered songwriting to be a part of the recording process and so did not warrant a separate royalty.
Björn Ulvaeus of Abba would surely disagree. At the recent 40th anniversary of the group winning Eurovision, he voiced serious doubts that they would have had the same success if they started out today. "We broke through during the golden age of copyright," he said. He and his co-writer Benny Andersson were more interested in writing great songs than going on tour, but did not start out as fully formed hit songwriters, he explained. It took years of trial and error, fine-tuning and studying other songwriters. And, once they became successful, they'd still write every day, nine to five – and only end up with 12 songs a year.
Ulvaeus said he doubted spending all that time on writing songs would be possible in a world where Spotify is the main source of income (it's responsible for about 70% of revenue from recorded music in Sweden), as they would have had to spend much more time touring in order to make a living.
Abba's songs are still largely responsible for Sweden being one of only three net exporters of music in the world (the other two being the US and the UK) today, though those from contemporary hitmakers Max Martin and Jorgen Elofsson also play a part.
There are a lot of misconceptions about how songwriters make money from their music. One of the most common is that songwriters sell their songs to artists. While that is sometimes true in a handful of Asian countries, where copyright enforcement is almost non-existent, in the west they only get paid in micro-payments (royalties) when a copy of the song is sold, streamed, played on the radio – and, if they're really lucky, used in a commercial.
But, today, songwriters are feeling more marginalised and undervalued than ever – not only by music streaming services, but by record labels – and it's moving towards a breaking point.
Instead of supporting songwriters in their quest to get fair remuneration from big corporations such as YouTube, the major labels put pressure on songwriters' collecting societies to accept ridiculously low royalty rates.
Recently the US on-demand digital radio service Pandora won a court case against the American songwriters' collecting society Ascap, in which it claimed it couldn't afford to pay the society more than 1.85% of its revenue as it already pays record labels 49%. Meanwhile Pandora's founder has been cashing in stock at $1.2m a month for quite a while.
Both the PRS (UK's songwriters' society) and Sweden's Stim accepted very low royalty rates from Spotify to help the service to get off the ground. Meanwhile, the major labels acquired shares in the service and large upfront advances that exceeded the royalties they would have earned from usage.
When Spotify issue its IPO, expected later this year, those labels and the venture capitalists behind the service (including founder Daniel Ek) can cash in – as songwriters (and artists) have virtually subsidised them for five years while they've been building up to their big payday, expanding the service worldwide (which, by the way, is why it hasn't made profit yet).
But what can songwriters do about it? In the US, nothing, as they are not allowed to refuse the use of their music (incredibly, when it comes to songwriters, the US is far more socialist than Sweden was, even during its social democrat days). But here in Europe, they could organise into a united "no".
As one publisher said: "When you have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain. What we get paid by these streaming services is so insignificant that losing it won't make a difference."
As Ulvaeus concluded at the Abba anniversary, it all starts with a great song. Without it, it doesn't matter how much money you sink into promotion, no one will want to come and see a concert of awful songs – and certainly not use a service such as Spotify. And great songwriting is not part of the recording process, it's a craft that demands serious investment in both money and time.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2014
Child marriage could become law in Iraq this week, but it's a global scourge
When Iraqi voters go to the polls tomorrow they are likely to endorse parties that plan to legalise child marriage at nine years old. Based on Shia Islamic jurisprudence, what is called the Ja'afari personal status law was approved by the current Iraqi cabinet eight weeks ago. It describes girls as reaching puberty at nine, and therefore ready for marriage. The current legal age is 18.
This barbaric and regressive law would grant fathers sole guardianship of their female children from the age of two, as well as legalising marital rape. It has horrified Iraqi women and they publicly declared last month's International Women's Day an Iraqi day of mourning in response to the worrying developments. Hassan al-Shimari, the Iraqi justice minister who proposed the draft law, is a member of the small Islamist Fadhila (Virtue) party, which is allied with the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who is seeking a third term in office.
The move is a further loosening of protection for school-age girls. Even without the new law the number of child marriages in Iraq is rising. In 1997 15% of marriages involved women under 18, according to Iraqi government figures – jumping to more than 20% in 2012, with almost 5% married by the age of 15.
Activists are worried that because of financial hardship, families are forced to marry off daughters young when they are offered dowries. There are serious concerns that if this new law comes into force it would only escalate the trend.
But Iraq is not alone. Around the world 10 million children are not at school today as a result of being married off as child brides – a number that is rising in many countries. In the past few months Mauritania has been at the centre of allegations of genital mutilation to make it possible for girls of eight and nine to be married. The country has resisted pressure to introduce a legal minimum age for marriage. In Yemen, where the UN estimates that more than 50% of girls are married before they turn 18, there is also still no minimum age.
Nigeria has also been considering reducing the age of marriage. And India, where rape has brought millions on to the streets in protest, has been revealed as having 40% of the world's child brides.
The facts are that the one secure way to prevent child marriage is to deliver the right of every child to be at school. A girl with some education is not only unlikely to be married at eight, nine or 10, but is also six times less likely to be married by 18.
Child marriage-free zones, where girls get together and refuse to be married, are springing up on the subcontinent – the first in Pakistan, with several now in Bangladesh, and others soon to be set up in countries such as Malawi. We see that girls are no longer prepared to succumb to the fate that others have decided for them, or to wait for others to protect them.
Together with a group of high profile individuals I am proud to be part of the Emergency Coalition for Education Action. The coalition is committed to zero education exclusion, and this means zero child marriage. We are linking up with girls' rights movements across the developing world, including Nepal's Common Forum for Kalmal Hari Freedom, the Nilphamari Child Marriage Free Zone in Bangladesh, the Ugandan Child Protection Club, and Indonesia's Grobogan Child Empowerment Group.
Many are linked to the growing Girls not Brides movement spearheaded by Princess Mabel van Oranje of the Netherlands – more than 300 national organisations are already affiliated. They are attempting to stop child marriage by law, to register girls by their correct ages, to enforce existing banning regulations, and to get girls to school.
Children's rights must be protected across the world, and we call on all countries to put an end to the barbaric practice of child marriage and to ensure all children are in school and learning.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2014
Dems fret over midterms while GOP profits off Tea Party enthusiasm
Much of our political dysfunction arises from the fact that different parts of the electorate turn out to vote during midterm and presidential elections. Democrats rack up big wins in presidential years, when younger voters and people of color turn…
Copyright © 2025 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 |
Masthead
|
Privacy Policy
|
Manage Preferences
|
Debug Logs
For corrections contact
corrections@rawstory.com
, for support contact
support@rawstory.com
.