Pause/Play

Can we hit pause on the whole NFT thing for a minute the same way we hit pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine? Asking on behalf of a certain late visual artist who was famously inspired by music—I mean, swoon. The artist's estate had to step in when a digital art dealer with old ties to DAVID BOWIE tried to sell a non-fungibly digital reproduction of one of his drawings along with the right to destroy the drawing itself should the buyer want to assure only one copy remained in the universe. Which is not only obscene—if you want only one copy in the universe, maybe you should, like, keep the drawing and drag the digital thing to your trash folder—but also betrays a questionable understanding of copyright law. You, owner of a JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT drawing who came up with this dumb idea, do not get to sell reproductions of it, no matter how much you paid for it at auction. You bought a piece of paper, not the underlying intellectual property. To its credit, the digital agent, a company called DAYSTROM, scrapped the sale when the estate complained. Not to its credit, the company then told the Art Newspaper, "best copyright practices have yet to evolve for the digital economy." There's nothing to evolve, not in a case like this, inasmuch as no amount of evolving copyright practice is going to change the fact that you didn't own the copyright in the first place.

There are, of course, sellers of art and music NFTs who do understand how copyright works, and who know what they want to convey and how to convey it. They'll continue to experiment and develop their own best practices for the art of blockchain selling while prices drop from seven or eight figures to more like the $14.99 that can currently buy me a digital version of NOMADLAND at AMAZON PRIME or the $9.99 that will get me MADVILLAINY at BANDCAMP. But there's some clearing out of all those wannabe NAPSTER-circa-2002 cowboys that needs to be done, too, and a pause might help us do that. We can also use the time to argue about whether LARS ULRICH was right about Napster or not. And to work on a Green NFT Deal. And maybe do some copyright and licensing seminars on CLUBHOUSE or TWITTER SPACES. Then, and only then, we can begin to figure out how to make these things work for ordinary buyers, ordinary sellers and the extraordinary artists who make it possible.

Some Kind of Mini-Monster

"The first marital-drama documentary that has, at its crux, irreconcilable differences over a pre-chorus" is a helpfully accurate description of I'M GOING TO BREAK YOUR HEART, a feature-length documentary about the making of the debut album by Canadian husband-and-wife duo MOON VS. SUN and the marriage counseling sessions it grew out of. He (RAINE MAIDA, taking a break from his day job fronting OUR LADY PEACE) is a cold, clueless, inattentive, selfish husband with a gift for hooks, which I don't mean as a critique; that's how the movie wants you to see him. She (singer/songwriter CHANTAL KREVIAZUK) writes good hooks too, with or without him, and just wants him to notice once in a while. It's hard sometimes to tell if it's a documentary about musical therapy or a very well-produced promo video for the album of the same name, which came out last week. Alternatively, you can pretend they're characters on the old ABC series NASHVILLE and you're getting a season's worth of their story and a handful of good songs all in one sitting. Shoutout to my friend RICK KRIM, who's an executive producer. It's on Apple TV, YouTube Movies and Google Play... (And yes, if that title sounds strangely familiar, this was, and still is, a very good rock doc about the making of a classic album.)

Etc Etc Etc

SPOTIFY's average paid subscriber is paying less than $5 per month thanks to the streaming company's menu of discounts. Which may explain those upcoming price hikes... TENCENT reportedly facing a fine of more than $1 billion for antitrust violations in China... MIDNIGHT OIL, TAME IMPALA and the KID LAROI among top winners at Australia's APRA AWARDS... ROD WAVE at the (virtual) TINY DESK.

Rest in Peace

Australian singer/songwriter ANITA LANE, best known for her early collaborations with NICK CAVE in the BIRTHDAY PARTY and the BAD SEEDS. That link is to a compelling appreciation by Rolling Stone's ROB SHEFFIELD, who writes, "She was a lot more than a muse—she was the girl who schooled these boys in the art of badness, the queen of this underground"... PAUL KELLOGG, who led the GLIMMERGLASS OPERA and the NEW YORK CITY OPERA... Choral composer JAMES PRIMOSCH.