To see and hear a dance music legend like Francois K speak in an intimate setting is wonderful for anyone who has sold his soul to electronic beats. No wonder Panel Room 3 at the luxurious Dylan Hotel is used to its maximum capacity this afternoon.
But Francois K is not completely happy with the way things are going in the music industry. The lack of flexibility of the majors when it comes to licensing tracks is bothering the Frenchman from New York. The majors are sitting on a huge pile of fantastic releases, but whenever any independent artist hands in a licensing request, the silence on the other side of the line is deafening. And that’s a shame, both from an artistic as from a business point of view. “At the moment, the majors are kind of behaving like a dear in the headlights, they don’t know what to do. And that’s a real shame, because there’s money licensing tracks for remixes: for the label, the remixer and the original artist. We should come up with an automated system for licensing, for instance by paying the original artist 9 cents per sold remix.” Sander Kleinenberg, sitting on the other side of the stage, could not agree more: “Maybe we should develop a system, an intellectual property number for automated licensing and put together a unified database, a catalogue with all the tracks that have ever been put out, available for remix artists. With a certain amount of regulation of course…” One of the questions from the audience is about current financial affairs: “Do you think the economic crisis will affect the music industry?” Sander is not worried at all: “What crisis? We’re not selling music anyway. It’s up to rest of the world to catch up…”