Singer Suzanne Vega spoke at this year’s CREATE gathering, and discussed creativity, copyrights and marketing today as they relate to the music industry.

Vega kicked off her keynote with a little background info on herself and her family, amd mentioned that when she first began playing the guitar in her childhood she perceived it as a tool. She also spoke of  her role in the development of  MP3, noting that it was her track “Tom’s Diner” was used to test the quality of audio reproduced by the popular compression scheme. This is what earned her the title of “Mother of the MP3”.

 

With that, Vega discussed copyright issues she had to tackle early on, She detailing the first incident, involving an unauthorized house remix of Tom’s Diner, which her record company eventually acquired for a flat fee.

She continued by saying that copyright is a concern that involves two main considerations – creativity, and monetization, amd that she’d like to see more social change in respect to  the illegal downloading trend in the near future, noting such change is already beginning to occur

Vega said that she keeps up with new trends when it came to her profession – from more modernized instruments to social networking, nothing that social media facilitates exposure, but not monetization of an artist’s songs if not leveraged appropriately.

She also explained the hostility on the web towards artists defending their rights as a “generational thing,” and agreed that suing individuals for illegally download music can indeed backlash on record companies.