Rain Station: copyright infringers

We have had so much trouble posting videos to YouTube of our own music. They continue to think that our videos are copyright infringement, when it’s simply our music and our videos we are posting. The process to keep our videos up is complicated, and we are guilty until we prove we have the right to our own tunes. It’s frustrating. Somehow our distribution through The Orchard, iTunes, and Amazon makes YouTube think we are stealing the music, making videos, and then they hit us with infringement.

How does one prove they made something? I responded letting them know it was my music, but I got a form letter that didn’t address my email. Now YouTube tells me that it’s up to The Orchard to decide if I have the right to post my music videos. They sent me a form letter telling me to update my preferences if I no longer want them to distribute my music. Of course I want them to distribute my music, but not stop me from making videos. All I know is that I want to punch somebody. Who, who can I punch?

Ancient Beings ate my Hard Drive

sego canyonI was editing some video footage of the spooky pictographs and petroglyphs of Sego Canyon from our cross country road trip this summer, and suddenly there was a giant flash of white light. The Mac froze, iMovie froze, and nothing would work.

The hard drive had all the most recent Rain Station tracks Mark and I have been recording together. The hard drive is now with a repair and recovery service, so in a couple weeks I should have it back. For now the music project stands at 30 minutes. If the hard drive recovery folk can fix it for me, we can continue our project. If not, it is what it is.

I have been listening to these tracks a lot this vacation. I like them as they stand now, but there are a few tweaks needed here and there. I really hope we can get the drive fixed, and still add a little work to the tracks until they are more slippery than the average tonsil. I like these raw tracks as they are today, but I know deep down Mark would be bummed out to leave them as they stand. I just know he’s got a few surprises up his sleeve, if given the chance to shake them out.

I’ll just buy a couple new hard drives, record some new drum beats, and get on with simply making more music with Mark. I feel like we are half way there with this project. If we make as much music as we’ve already made, we’ll have a lot of great new tunes to decide which actually make it to the new release. In the future I’ll keep all haunted Indian petroglyph video footage off any hard drive with our important music files. Lesson learned.