Apps

Instagram updates terms and gives itself the right to potentially sell your artist, band or concert photos

by Tony Zeoli on December 18, 2012 · 55312 comments2012-12-18+15%3A50%3A13Tony+Zeolihttp%3A%2F%2Fnetmix.com%2F%3Fp%3D5531

in Apps, Business, Digital, Internet, Media, Mobile, Tech

Allston Pudding

CNET reports this morning that Instagram, the popular social photo app for iPhone and Android that was recently acquired by Facebook, is updating its terms of service as of January 16th, 2013 to allow for the service to sell your uploaded photos to others without having to notify you or compensate you.

What does this mean for individual artists or bands that are touring, in the studio or at press events? It means that whatever you end up uploading yourself or whatever your fans upload, could potentially be sold to a 3rd party service without compensating you or notifying you that it did so. Here are a few examples:

A fan snaps a pic of your performance at a local club. The club scours Instagram for all photos of bands taken at the bar and purchases the rights to use those photos. The club then adds those photos to its Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest accounts and also uses the photos in advertising and marketing on flyers, or shares them with news organizations. While you may have requested no photos be taken during the performance, it will be extremely difficult for an artist or band to control the image once the picture is taken.
You’re hanging out late night in the studio. A superstar artists calls you up and says he wants to come lay down some tracks with you, but wants to also keep it on the down low. The artist shows up and you start jamming together. One of your groupies snaps a photo using Instagram. After January 16, 2013, Instagram has the right to take and sell that photo to a 3rd party without compensating you and without you being able to sue for damages. Of course, Instagram says in its terms that the person who uploads the photo must have the right to do so, but your groupie just snapped the pic without signing a non-disclosure. You’re quite possibly out of luck. Fox News has acquired the photo and you and the superstar artist are now splashed on the cover or home page of every major celeb rag.

What does an artist do? First, if you’re certain you do not want any photos from your Instagram account sold to 3rd parties, you must delete/remove all your photos from the Instagram application (I did that myself this morning). Second, consult with a music industry attorney who can advise you on what notifications to include on your tickets, flyers and other promotional material at shows and make sure to get folks hanging out with you in the studio to sign non-disclosure agreements. We’re not attorneys, so our advice is just that – advice. Make sure to get an attorneys opinion on these matters and make absolutely sure the attorney is well versed in digital rights and copyright.

Remember, once your photos are on Instagram, after January 16, 2013, you’ve lost control of your likeness and image. And it doesn’t matter whether you delete the photos on January 17th, Instagram can quite possibly use photos that were deleted after the date of the change in their terms of service.

Social media can certainly be advantageous for many artists. But, as more social services look for revenue, you – the user – must keep abreast of these changes to insure that you have as much control as possible over your images or you will be out of luck when someone snaps a photo of you and Instragram profits from your likness and image.

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Mixr for the iPad DJ

by Anthony Zeoli on May 11, 2010 · 22532 commentsMixr+for+the+iPad+DJ2010-05-11+18%3A17%3A49Anthony+Zeolihttp%3A%2F%2Fnetmix.com%2F%3Fp%3D2253

in Apps, Slider

The tool of the DJ trade are constantly in flux. From turntables (Technics 1200 MKII’s) and CD players (Pioneer CDJ’s) to digital hardware (Pacemaker DJ), DJ hardware and software, devices are getting smaller, while packing in more features than anyone ever thought possible. Today’s digital DJ has at their fingertips the ability to mix beats, set cue points, create loops and apply a myriad of effects that 20-years ago would take up half the rack space in a recording studio. Walk into any club or lounge today and the laptop with DJ software from companies like Rane (Serato), Native Instruments (Traktor Scratch Pro), Atomix (Virutal DJ), and M-Audio (Torq) reigns supreme.

Just when we thought the laptop, which disrupted CD decks that disengaged the turntable market, would be here to stay, along comes the Apple iPad. Weighing in at under a pound, it’s much lighter and more compact than a laptop. The iPad’s multi-touch capability brings vinyl emulation directly to the screen.

Until the recent appearance of touch-screen technology, digital DJs emulated the old school way of spinning records by employing the turntable to control the playback of an MP3.Â Using special digitally encoded vinyl plates and a MIDI hardware interface connected to a laptop running DJ software, information about the location of the turntable’s needle is sent to the software, which then plays back the MP3 based on the needle location.Â Since most laptops do not have touch screen technology, the screens face you, and are not flat, it was improbable to create an effective vinyl emulator without resorting to hardware controllers.

That is all about to change with the advent of Mixr, a new vinyl DJ emulator from Noe Ruiz & Ben Stahlhood II at iPadMixr.com. The ipadmixr.com web site states that they hope the Mixr app will become the first iPad DJ application in the iPad app store.

You can see from the screen shots below, Mixr features two turntables, cue, play, pitch, and volume controls. There is a cross-fader and switches to reverse the direction of the fader and controls for effects processing. We’re anxiously awaiting release of this application to see it for ourselves. There are a few DJs who are using two iPads to control currently available loop and beat creation software, but this is the first vinyl emulator we’ve seen so far.