Podcast Interview with Billboard's Glenn Peoples on FMC's Artist Principles

A few weeks ago (April 2, 2009, to be exact), FMC released the Principles for Musician Compensation in New Business Models” (or “Artist Principles”) — a set of guidelines for ensuring creator compensation in an evolving music landscape. Crafted by artist advocate Ann Chaitovitz with input from over a dozen industry experts, the Principles represent an important first step in ongoing discussions about musicians’ revenue streams. You can read the document (and a handy point-by-point translation) here.

One of the main reasons for drafting this item was to get a conversation going with some of the smart people in the music world about what they think are the most important issues facing artists in the digital age. While we don’t expect these principles to be embraced by everyone, we do want to makes sure those with something to add to the discussion had a forum in which to do so.

Hence our new series of podcast conversations with leading music industry minds about the Artist Principles. The first edition features Billboard Magazine’s Senior Editorial Analyst Glenn Peoples. Glenn recently finished a five-and-a-half year run at the highly respected music industry blog Coolfer, which he founded. Now, his whip-smart industry observations can be read daily at Billboard.biz, in addition to longer features in the print version.

Glenn recently wrote an article about FMC’s Artist Principles, which you can read here. Glenn’s piece praised the principles — which put forth some broad guidelines about how artists should get paid in an evolving digital music landscape — for their call to greater transparency in accounting for revenue generated by new services. Yet he had some problems with a few of the points, especially those having to do with the relationship between artists and labels.

We asked Glenn to spend a few minutes with us to further explain how he views these complex issues at in a tricky time for the music business. Click here to listen to an MP3 of our brief chat, and stay tuned for more on this subject. . .