Black Music Month & Internet Regulation

It is the end of Black Music Month for 2014.

The BET Awards came on and is starting to get better. It started off excellent back in 2000, but lost its reason for airing some years ago. The year our lovely Queen Latifah hosted might have been the worst, but looks like we're starting to see the light again. Maybe it was the artists who took the time out to really put their all into the performance, or it could have been that Chris Rock was genuinely funny. Who knows, but everything was pretty good.

Via Twitter

Usher tried to perform his heart out in the small amount of time he was given. He was trying to do as R. Kelly did last year, but he's no R. Kelly. I wanted Usher to perform "I Don't Mind" since it was leaked and then taken back off the e-streets quickly. If you haven't heard "I Don't Mind" it's the best, most soulful tribute to strippers any singer has ever done. Usher makes you want to take poll dancing classes just for the sake of getting into a new career field just because he's saying he doesn't mind dating a stripper.

There were other great performances, but what I really want to get into is how music works on the internet. I salute music bloggers because they find the best artists out and try their hardest to make sure we hear the music. They take from Youtube, Soundcloud, Audiomack, and upload via their own private systems to ensure we hear the songs. However, sometimes songs hit the webs without permission from the labels. I'm guessing this was the case with Usher's ode to strippers. It just wasn't meant for us to hear it during this lovely black music month.

When the songs are unauthorized and bloggers post it, their whole post comes tumbling to pieces the minute the song gets pulled. They can get sued if they keep the song up without permission, but that's another story. The song is the basis of the post and if the song disappears the whole post disappears. For instance with "I Don't Mind," a lot of blogs that did post it added the message that there was a DMCA complaint. That means Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Now I've had fun posting music for the month, but this is one of the reasons why I usually stay away from music posts. The regulation is real. I can think I'm typing up some huge new song everyone will want to hear and next thing I know it's been taken down from the web and my post is useless. This problem has to be solved someway. In the mean time, all the artists need to continue to make good music.