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Sony’s loss is Portland’s gain

Music money
By DEIRDRE FULTON  |  October 2, 2008

tji_music_money_inside.jpg

Three local music entities — the Portland Music Foundation, Josh Loring and SPACE Gallery, and the DaPonte String Quartet — are reaping the benefits of a major national lawsuit against big-name music institutions like Sony, Capitol Records, Tower Records, and BMG. 

Between 2003 and 2007, 40 states (of which Maine was one) settled with the record companies to resolve allegations of CD price fixing on the part of retailers and distributors. As a result, the states received millions of CDs to distribute for free to libraries and schools, a $13 rebate for each of 3.5 million consumers, and funds to be distributed according to the “cy pres” legal doctrine, which requires that the recipients reflect the original intent of the lawsuit — in this case, to bring both art and money to the people who enjoy it and the people who create it.

Maine’s cy pres funds — $23,000 — went to the Maine Arts Commission, which in turn will bestow it upon three grantees. Attorney General (and 2010 gubernatorial candidate) Steve Rowe was at Gateway Mastering on Monday morning to rub elbows with musicians and hand out the dough. Here’s where it’s headed:

The Portland Music Foundation will use its $6824 to fund a series of educational seminars aimed at professionalizing Portland’s music scene. This fall’s first such event will take place on October 8, when four “veteran music industry members” will tell an audience about “the best decision I ever made.” The participants — Lance Vardis of CSP Mobile recording; Taylor Mesple of Lewiston’s Maple Room and the Maine Songwriters Association; Chris Brown of Bull Moose Music; and Darren Elder, a musician and the owner of Halo recording studio — will share their career lessons at One Longfellow Square at 6:30 pm.

Local musician and SPACE “artist-in-residence” Josh Loring (Brenda, Cult Maze) will get $7500 to create a “multi-format audio-visual document” about Portland’s rockers. It’ll be a book, a blog, and an audio compilation about local acts including Metal Feathers, An Evening With, Honey Clouds, the Rattlesnakes, Vince Nez, Cursillistas, Gully, Huak, Moneycastasia, and Turn Down Day (formerly Modern Syndrome).

The DaPonte String Quartet, based in Damariscotta, already used its $6000 grant to put on a late-August Acadia National Park benefit performance at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

  Topics: This Just In , Entertainment , Music , Classical Music ,  More more >
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Comments
Re: Sony’s loss is Portland’s gain
A string quartet used $6000 to put on ONE show!?!?!? Damn, that must of been some great show! Did they serve caviar and champagne? A local "artist" gets $7500 to blog about some "rockers" no one's ever heard of? WHAT A COUNTRY!!!
By Fake Name on 10/02/2008 at 10:49:29
Re: Sony’s loss is Portland’s gain
So, a real estate agent deserves $30,000 for selling a house, showing it a few times and shepherding some documents, but four string players don't deserve $6,000 for entertaining hundreds of people? It's not the performance that's expensive. It's the hundreds of hours of practice it requires to put on that performance. So, a marketing agency deserves $30,000 for creating a 60-second commercial, but an artist doesn't deserve $7,500 for the hundreds of hours involved with writing a book, creating content for a blog, and creating an audio document of our current local music scene? How are we supposed to draw people to Congress Street to spend money in our bars and fuel our creative economy if no one tells anyone else about it? I guess it'll just be our little secret. But, you know, musicians and bars and instrument sellers and writers don't pay taxes. They're not part of the economy. It's only grocery stores and car dealerships that actually exchange things with other people for coin of the realm.
By Car in Lincolnville on 10/05/2008 at 4:33:27

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