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D
avid Lowery is back defending artists in
the digital marketplace. A little more
than a year after penning a stern rebuke
of NPR intern Emily Whites confessional
column in which she casually described build-
ing a music collection by illegally downloading
copyright-protected songs, the singer, guitar-
ist, and songwriter for the bands Camper van
Beethoven and Cracker is taking on a less
obvious foefree lyrics websites.
In his capacity as a researcher at the Uni-
versity of Georgia, where he teaches in the
business school, Lowery released a study in
November examining the top 50 unlicensed
lyrics websites making money while the artists
whose songs they use to lure traffic go unpaid.
Using Lowerys research, the National
Music Publishers Association sent takedown
notices to the 50 sites in what the group
described as an anti-piracy initiative.
Lowery applauds the action.
Generally these lyric sites have ads on
them, so theyre not doing this out of the
goodness of their hearts, theyre actually
profiting from our words and our lyrics,
Lowery says. So the principle is that because
we are the content creators, and youre gen-
erating revenue off of us, we should have a
share of it.
Lowery got interested in the money the
sites were making after he noticed that
the auto-fill function for Google searches of
song titles regularly generated lyrics as the
first suggestion, suggesting that searches
for song lyrics were outpacing even those for
MP3s.
I thought, wow, if the new digital cur-
rency is page views, then lyrics are possibly
more valuable than MP3s, Lowery says. As
a content creator I want those kinds of things
to be part of a license system.
The point of Lowerys study was not to try
to make it impossible for fans to be able to
search out lyrics on the Internet, but to make
sure others werent profiting on content
artists had produced. The old music busi-
ness was called a business of pennies,
Lowery says. Well, in the future, with
streaming and page views and all this stuff,
its a business of micro-pennies, and its
important that we have legitimate players
in this micro-penny economy.
Over time, those micro-pennies can add up.
Its hard for me to pull out what percentage of
my publishing belongs to lyrics, but in general
its in the hundreds to low thousands per year
for me. Its not insignificant, Lowery says. I
dont want to see these sites go away. The idea
is to bring them under the umbrella of licens-
ing and consent. We dont know if lyrics sites
one day will become very valuable, but lets get
a licensing structure together now.
Lowery has also been a leading critic of
such streaming sites as Pandora and Spotify,
but he stresses that hes no luddite.
I think a lot of people see me as anti-
technology, but Ive never been that way,
Lowery says. I just disagree with this one
particular vision of this digital utopia that I
dont see being realized. Theres this notion
that to be ubiquitous for an artist or a musi-
cian is the actual goal. That your stuff is easily
accessible and people can find you very easily,
but thats not always good financially.
Being an artist who is ubiquitous and on
Spotify is great, but if it means that Im not
going to sell any albums, then it isnt so great.
AG
David Lowery Strikes Back
Camper van Beethoven singer and songwriter takes on free lyrics websites
By David Knowles
News Spotlight
Camper van Beethoven from left to right: Jonathan Segel,
David Lowery, Greg Lisher, Frank Furano, and Victor Krummenacher.
Inset: Lowery at home in Athens, Georgia.
022-023_254_.indd 23 12/3/13 12:5 PM