The formal com
ment period in the Federal Communications Commission’s set-top box proceeding closed this week after tallying 256,747 submissions. Most were canned comments submitted by consumers who had been rounded up for the purpose by interest groups on both sides of the issue. But the controversial proposal to require pay-TV providers to “unlock” the set-top box and make disaggregated elements of their service available to third-party device makers and app developers also drew over 1,000 substantive comments from rights owners, members of the pay-TV industry, technology providers and other agencies of government involved in telecommunications policy.
May, 2016
Pan-European Licensing Hub ICE Strikes Deal With Google Play
Desi
gned to enable faster, more cost efficient and simplified rights negotiations for digital music services operating in Europe, the licensing and royalty processing service collectively represents over 250,000 songwriters.
The organization bills itself as the world’s first integrated licensing and processing hub and claims to have the most comprehensive copyright database in Europe. It says it will process online music usage through a single matching engine that will eliminate “unnecessary processing” and significantly reduce disputed claims.
Source: Pan-European Licensing Hub ICE Strikes Deal With Google Play | Billboard
Spotify financials raise questions about streaming economics
The co
ncerning thing here is the margins involved: sales and marketing costs alone sucked up more than three quarters of Spotify’s €321.7m gross profit. In a market where Spotify’s key rivals are now Apple, Google/YouTube and Amazon – tech giants with hefty cash reserves and built-in marketing platforms to take advantage of – Spotify’s marketing costs are only going to increase.
Bright spots? Spotify’s subscription income grew by 78% in 2015 to €1.74bn, as it ended the year with 28 million subscribers. Its advertising revenues grew faster though: up 98.2% to €195.8m, although ads remain just over 10% of Spotify’s overall turnover compared to nearly 90% for subscriptions. That 10-90 ratio of ads-to-subscriptions hasn’t changed since 2013.
Source: Spotify financials raise questions about streaming economics
Spotify lost more money than ever last year — which is great news for Spotify
Filings show
that Spotify, based in Sweden and the U.K., generated revenue of $2.12 billion last year, up about 80 percent from the $1.18 billion it brought in the prior year (all prices in the story converted from euros to dollars at the exchange rate from December 31, 2015). Losses, meanwhile, hit $188.7 million — but that number was only up 6.7 percent from the previous year’s total of $176.9 million.
That’s a much, much better performance than 2014, when Spotify’s losses ballooned by 289 percent, and its revenue was only up 45 percent.
Source: Spotify lost more money than ever last year — which is great news for Spotify – Recode
Copyright Infringement Disputes? Blockchain Can Provide Solutions
An episode of Family Guy titled ‘Run Chris Run’, that aired on Fox on 15 May 2015, used a clip showing a glitch in the 1980s Nintendo video game Double Dribble. The glitch allowed users to get an automatic 3-point goal every time.
The clip was taken from Youtube, where it was uploaded in 2009. After the release of the episode of Family Guy, Fox complained to Youtube and had the video taken down on copyright grounds.
Source: Copyright Infringement Disputes? Blockchain Can Provide Solutions
Bunkerchain Labs Puts Gaming On The Blockchain
In an ironic twist of fate, an ex-military nuclear bunker and data center operation called BunkerChain Labs inc. has been tasked with enabling a “war games” protocol built entirely on a Blockchain, the software technology that began with bitcoin. This new project, code named “Peerplays”, uses a high speed program called Graphene to automatically connect players from all around the world and enable online gaming and wagering that is highly resistant against cheating.
In the 1983 hit movie “War Games” a supercomputer called WOPR mistook a computer game for real-life, and almost set off a Global Thermonuclear War. Lucky for us, Peerplays is programmed to remain neutral. This new Blockchain database will contain a public record of gaming history that allows auditors to prove afterwards that games are being played without manipulation.
Source: Bunkerchain Labs Puts Gaming On The Blockchain – Blockchain News
Blockchain Going for a Song: New Tech Tunes Up Music Industry
How can Blockchain change the industry’s revenue stream due to its ability to store, organise and share data based on a concept of transparency?
Blockchain panelists at Shoreditch House’s library in London gathered on Tuesday May 17. The technology is changing all the time and so rapidly as no one is quite sure what it will look like in a few months from now. But already music professionals – musicians, managers and labels – can use blockchain to fight fraud, create smart contracts and secure payments. Panelists also talked about many the issues involved, including transparency and copyright.
Source: Blockchain Going for a Song: New Tech Tunes Up Music Industry
Lisk to Move Developers from Blockchain to Sidechain
Lisk plans
to launch a modular cryptocurrency which it says would satisfy the growing interest to use the blockchain as a decentralized database for different use-cases outside of FinTech May 24.
According to its co-founder and CEO, Max Kordek, the platform will allow JavaScript developers to follow it by offering them necessary tools to deploy a blockchain application in its own sidechain on the Lisk network. They won’t have to learn complex languages of individual blockchains.
Source: Lisk to Move Developers from Blockchain to Sidechain
DistroKid Will Now Pay Everyone Who Worked On Your Song
DistroKid, one of the world’s leading digital distribution companies that gets artists and labels’ music into over 90 digital outlets (like Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Tidal, Deezer, etc) will now directly pay revenue from your releases to anyone you want.
What does this mean? Your producer gets 3% of revenue from your most recent single? Before, you would have to download your sales reports every month, calculate the totals for the designated release and write your producer a check for 3% of that. Every month. You did a YouTube collaboration with 5 other artists? Now, instead of one person having to figure out the splits and paying each collaborator directly, DistroKid will do all the accounting, reporting and payments directly to each collaborator.
Source: DistroKid Will Now Pay Everyone Who Worked On Your Song
Bandcamp Grew 35% Last Year, Monthly Transactions Top $4.3M
Th
e indie music community has embraced Bandcamp and its suite of direct to fan monetization tools. And unlike most music tech startups, Bandcamp, which launched in 2008, has been profitable “in the now-quaint revenues-exceed-expenses sense” since 2012.
Nearly 6 million fans have bought music from hundreds of thousands of artists through Bandcamp. Have of those fans are under 30, according to the company. That’s signification at a time when consumption by younger music lovers is supposedly dominated by streaming.
Source: Bandcamp Grew 35% Last Year, Monthly Transactions Top $4.3M – hypebot