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Psycho-Acoustic Simulation & Beatles Songs for a Quarter

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I’ve groused here many — perhaps, too many — times about the inability of the Canadian music industry to get it together so that we can listen to music over the internet like our neighbours to the south. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled on BlueBeat, a website streaming music here, when Pandora et al. are forbidden to do that. Now imagine my super-surprise when I discovered that BlueBeat is streaming free and marketing MP3s of the Beatles’ music at 25¢ a song. Apple Inc. is unable to strike a deal with EMI for the distribution of the Fab Four’s opus on iTunes — but BlueBeat pulls it off!?

Well, according to the story in ars technica, it turns out that this chutzpah is based on a truly… innovative legal justification. Evidently, Hank Risan, the man behind BlueBeat (and Media Rights Technology, behind it), told RIAA general counsel Steven Marks by email: “I authored the sound recordings that are being used by psycho-acoustic simulation . . . I hope this satisfies your concerns.” Come again? Risan explained in 2001:

Psychoacoustic simulations are my synthetic creation of that series of sounds which best expresses the way I believe a particular melody should be heard as a live performance.

Come again, again?

Unsurprisingly, a copyright lawsuit has been launched against BlueBeat. Stay tuned.

Oh, and for the moment, BlueBeat is still on the tubes.

Comments

  1. Theo
    November 6th, 2009 at 11:34 am

    I’ve found nothing regarding this so-called “psychoacoustic simulation,” and I work with audio (composing, mastering, etc.) all the time.

    Most of the lawyers making comments on this “controversy” have said that the argument won’t hold in court.

    The site will probably stay up, but don’t expect those songs to stay.