Seems the recording industry behemoth Universal Music Group was listening, as they’ve recently joined the multimedia blogging platform Tumblr. Problem is, they don’t seem to know what they’re doing (and are still in the process of hiring someone to “Participate in online social networking environments and develop viral marketing campaigns”).

Countless users are cringing at the notion that UMG is now participating in this social environment and “following” their contributions in this community: see here, here, here, and here, for example.

Perhaps the best account of this “mis-adventure” in social marketing is from convincingindie, who recounts the story here. You can read through the details, but it ends with Universal Music accusing convincingindie of being “scared” and “paranoid.” After they get called out on the ludicrousness of all this, UMG deleted their original posts, and posted their “final word” on the issue.

I’ve asked UMG why they deleted the posts in question, but haven’t received an acknowledgment or reply.

#Buzzkill.

UPDATE (04-19-2009): In the weeks since posting this, I’ve frequently re-visited UMG’s Tumblr site to see if they’d responded regarding the removal of their posts disparaging convincingindie. When I checked the site today, I discovered they had redesigned their Tumblr feed, removing the comments (and presumably all comments on all posts) altogether. Luckily, I grabbed a screenshot of the cache of the original post showing my inquiry.

So, to summarize, UMG has accused a fellow Tumbr user of being “scared” and “paranoid”, then they removed those posts, and then failed to reply to my inquiry as to why they removed the posts without comment, and then redesigned the site removing all comments (and preventing any future comments of any of their postings).

#Buzzkill.

Apparently Chinese Internet users have grown so accustomed to downloading music online, that piracy and illegal downloading has impacted music sales there more than even what the RIAA claims to be such a huge problem here in the U.S. Relatedly, Google has been struggling to take market share away from Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine.

The win-win solution seems to be for the music companies to join forces with Google to create a free music download option for the Chinese market. In the deal, Google will start directing music searchers to Top100.cn, a Chinese Web site in which Google owns a stake, which will provide free downloads that have been properly licensed from music industry. Top100.cn will sell advertising on its website, and the music industry will reportedly earn 50% of that revenue. Google hopes to get increased search activity due to the lure of free (and better quality?) downloads.

The obvious question: if this business model is good enough for the 300 million Internet users in China, why not adopt a similar model for the 300 million users in the EU, or the 220 million in the U.S.?

Kutiman has taken existing YouTube videos of people playing music alone, sampled, looped, mixed and mashed them together to make absolutely amazing new music. Here’s a sample:

These songs are genius. They are original. Yet, most interpretations of existing copyright laws would conclude that Kutiman violated the copyrights of the original uploaders (however, perhaps some uploaded with a Creative Commons license?).

The spirit and original intent of copyright and fair use is to encourage creativity, and it would be tragic to think that Kutiman’s creations aren’t transformative in such a way as to be allowed under our current intellectual property regime.

It’s hard not to agree with the sentiments expressed at P2P News: “Copyright is an unethical constraint on society’s cultural liberty and those societies who choose to remain bound by it choose cultural stagnation and obscurity.”