September 2001 News from Planetmullins

september 2001

Welcome to the planetmullins september 2001 news.
Sorry about no update in August, but I've simply been too busy again.
Thanks for dropping by and as always, enjoy the news.

Rob Mullins Publishing joins 51 other publishers in copyright infringement suit against MP3.com via its publishing administrator.

Story below. This year's Black and Blue Ball
which was held July 21, 2001 in Santa Barbara was the most successful one ever! You Rob Mullins fans know that Rob was the musical director for the event this year. Click HERE for more. since our last update? Click here for recent updates to the site that aren't listed anywhere else.
Our staff reporter Laura Harrison catches up to the saxman from Late Night with Conan O'Brien for a candid interview. Click the picture.

Rob Mullins Publishing Joins in Copyright Infringement Suit Against MP3.com
by Laura Harrison-planetmullins staff writer

Los Angeles, CA-september 1, 2001
Rob Mullins Publishing Co, owner of the copyrights to songs copywritten by L.A. composer and keyboardist Rob Mullins has joined a host of other music publishers in a copyright infringement suit against internet website MP3.com. This copyright infringment suit is a sign of the growing fight by songwriters, publishers, and music industry people against theft of their collective property by internet websites. "I was very happy to be contacted by Copyright.net" said Rob Mullins from his recording studio in Los Angeles on August 30, 2001. "I have been working with various divisions of Copyright.net for over 10 years and one of their companies administrates my music catalog of nearly 200 compositions" he added. A publishing administrator is responsible for collecting royalty money for various uses of music owned by a songwriter and or publishing company. Copyright.net's collection branch, CMI (Copyright Management, Inc) has been the designated administrator for Rob Mullins Publishing and a host of other music publishers for many years. Now 52 music publishers have joined forces to take MP3.com to court
for its blatant disregard of copyright and songwriter's rights.
"The issue of the theft of my music has been of great concern since the web became a public trading ground for my songs" explained Rob. "The pain of this theft has been particularly acute in my pocketbook over the past few years, not to mention the emotional drain of knowing that there is a whole generation of kids out there weaned on the premise of free music. I wrote about this over a year ago on my website planetmullins.com in an article titled 'How MP3 killed the music business.' I have even received email from some fans complaining about no free MP3 files on my website. I had the feeling that one day I would be able to strike back against the pirates killing my sales base and ruining my living. That day has now come" he declared.
The lawsuit seeks damages of approximately 370 million dollars from MP3.com according to one source from Copyright.net. Copyright.net's press release about this matter defined the statutory damages sought as $25000.00 per song and includes a permanent injunction against MP3.com (click here to go to their site and get their press release and other information regarding the suit).
Rob Mullins continues: "I find myself often getting little support from fans when discussing this matter until I make certain analogies to them so they see how this would effect them if it were their livelihood. I told two fans about this situation just two weeks ago at my Spaghettini Club gig. I think that most people don't realize the difficulties in being a sonqwriter-especially in the jazz segment of the music business which is the worst paying segment of the industry" he added.
"It is not common knowledge for most people that those of us in the music community count on our royalties to survive. Would Microsoft make ten copies of its operating system and then allow 200 million computer users to just copy it and not say anything? Of course not. Look at how deep their pockets are. Unfortunately, songwriters and musicians such as myself rarely have the resources-i.e. the money OR the time- to even deal with these issues as they come up since we are too busy making a living, running from job to job, trying to collect on past jobs we have already done and hustling new work. I think I am in a unique position this time around because of the fact that I am affiliated with a copyright administrator who organized a group of us small music publishers so that we would have a reasonable amount of money to go after" he concluded.
At the heart of the complaint against MP3.com is the use of copywritten material being distributed through its "Beam-it" technology. MP3.com has copied hundreds of thousands of songs into its system allowing for free and easily traded songs stored on its servers. Jay Senter, president and CEO of Copyright.net said in their press release that MP3.com's unwillingness to address its legal obligations to the rights of songwriters and music publishers precipitated the suit

To the fans:

Thanks so much for visiting the site the past couple of months and for coming out to the gigs. I have been so busy with just non music stuff (which I don't like very much) that it really means a lot when you come out to hear the band. Attendance at all the gigs has been great lately..all year long for that matter. I really do appreciate it! I logged onto the site counter this week to find that we are over 67000 hits now! 1700 new people came to planetmullins in the past month. That really makes me feel great, thanks so much!

In August I ended up working every single weekend day and most nights, all Saturdays and Sundays during the day except for one Sunday and it was a brutal month. I am carrying quite a load at the moment. I had a ton of legal papers to fill out for some various situations....I discovered that my office help had not gotten seven months of bank statements for last years' taxes to the bookeeper, spent a day finding all that stuff and sorting it....I spent two days creating the annual investors report for the Joyful Noyz CD investors, there were a lot of personnel issues with Greg leaving town on five days notice and as always lots of bass player juggling around keeping the weekend gigs covered. I have had a ton of stuff to do for the publishing company..hours and hours of bookwork and reports and database stuff..none of which puts me in the mood to play music let alone have the energy for it.

On top of that stuff, my computer I do everything portable on took a dive and I have been trying to get music software to run on it so that I could do portable studio work for about 8 months. I got the software, but it never worked. The only way I could get things working was to format the hard drive of the computer which meant dumping a year's worth of important files that I simply cannot function without onto another drive or backed up to CDR. I bought the CDR machine and got it hooked up and dumped over all the data, re-installed the music software four times and still it didn't work. Four days later, I finally had everything up and going again. That took a whole week of August, I couldn't believe how much work it was. After I got the music software up and running I started re-installing all the Microsoft stuff-and of course after I got Word, Works, Publisher, and the lot of it back on the computer, the music software wouldn't run anymore so that had to be installed a fifth time. My god, I was ready to dump the thing in the ocean more than once LOL.

It was really cool that Wilton Felder and Jimmy Roberts filled in for Greg that one weekend a couple of weeks ago. Jimmy is just the greatest-and Wilton...well, you don't get any cooler than Wilton.

I did a couple tracks for a new Disney show in August in my copious (rofl) spare time. The show is called "The Proud Family" and it will come out this fall. It is an animated sitcom that is very Disney and very Hollywood at the same time. I did the symphonic cues for two episodes of the show, as well as some awards show style music and some blues.
While all this was going on, I spent several days and had several meetings about gigs in L.A. (as opposed to Orange County where I now play every weekend). The lack of decent venues here is terrifying. One major gig that I was planning on fell through, but one really cool one did get signed on the dotted line last week and I will be sending out an email update about that as it gets closer to the date.

I managed to cancel a doctor's appointment to get down to Yamaha Corp's software studio to attend the mastering session for my new Disklavier CD which is going to be titled "Welcome to Planetmullins." I was really glad I went to the session because I have never missed mastering on any of my albums for years and years. Mastering is the most important step of the process-it is where you decide how loud the songs are in comparison to each other and what the order of the songs is going to be. I am really happy with how this project turned out and will be telling you more about it and the release party for it in the comings weeks. Yamaha did a great job on this one. Thanks go to Cathy MacBride, Jim Leahy, Joel Plimmer (who did all the actual work at mastering),Tom Zinc, Lori Rogers, Cam Shearer and everyone else.

An added bonus on this one was that the people from Yamaha's keyboard magazine-ACCENT-called just as I was finishing the CD to talk about the Boys and Girls Clubs of Pasadena Concert from last year. I was hoping they would get around to doing an article on that event, it has been almost a year....lol. Anyway, I had a nice chat with Donna Bertoli all about that event and the new Disklavier project. They told me that the article will appear in the fall issue of ACCENT..can't wait!

Many of you have been asking about the Boys and Girls Clubs event for this year, and I'm sad to say that we were not able to find a venue earlier this year that was affordable and suitable. The Pasadena Civic price for the one night was over 10,000.00...we are looking for another place to do another show. I suggested a church to the Boys and Girls Club people, haven't heard from them in awhile...will keep you posted.

I did a cameo appearance at the High Hopes Benefit Concert at the Hyatt in July..if you follow the website schedule page you knew about it. It was strange not being in Eric's band anymore and coming on as a guest for one song, and then being done. I wanted to hang out and stay for the rest of the event but had to get back to work in the studio on the Disney stuff, so I missed the Phil Perry and Vesta Williams segments which I heard were really good.

It was a hard decision for me to make earlier in the year to stop touring with bands. I really loved the music in Eric's and Hubert Law's bands especially. It stung a little the past few months to hear through the grapevine that there was talk of me wussing out and not having the guts for the road anymore. The truth of the matter had nothing to do with that-I simply couldn't handle the time investment in other people's music and run everything here that I have to do and still make enough money to keep everything going. I think that few of you have ever been to the company portion of the planetmullins website to see what all we do here.Take a look sometime. It is a ton of work running a studio, running a publishing company, teaching part time, playing two nights a week in town and working on two or three TV series. My company is still small, and I do 90 per cent of all the work myself. When we grow to the next stage, I can have more help here and I am looking forward to that. Leaving the road bands was tough because I got close to those guys, and I miss them.

I think by now I have probably over-explained the missing August website update...rofl. I have to wrap up the web stuff and get some rest so I can make the weekend gigs fun for you and for me. Thanks again for dropping by and I'll hope to see you at a gig real soon.

All the best,

Rob

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