Over the past decade, music synchronization licensing has gone from the occasional icing on the cake for songwriters and publishers to an important new layer of monetization as the use of music in video games, apps, and other new formats has exploded. But new digital platforms are also creating new avenues of 
exploitation for traditional audio-visual works like movies and TV show, such as placing clips on YouTube and other user-upload sites, which often also include the use of synchronized music.
May, 2017
Blockchain music service Aurovine has new features
The new feature is called ‘Listen, Rate, Share’, and involves rewarding fans with the cryptocurrency AudioCoins when they rate and share an artist’s work – with the same cryptocurrency used to pay artists when their music is listened to on Aurovine.
RightsTech Summit Joins New York Media Festival
The RightsTech Summit is joining the New York Media Festival this year. The one-day Summit will be held on September 27th as part of New York Media Festival’s three-day event series. Other events over the three days include 
the Digital Music Forum, the NY Games Conference, and the Future of Television. All events will be held at at the Museum of Jewish Heritage at historic Battery Place in New York City.
Epidemic Sound talks YouTube: ‘We’re a music company that really understands the platform’
The knowledge that a YouTube video can raise a song to prominence just like a traditional TV, film or game sync is leading more labels to wonder how they can get their tracks into those videos. Yet as they enter this world, they’re meeting established competitors.
Source: Epidemic Sound talks YouTube: ‘We’re a music company that really understands the platform’
Appeals Court Orders Expedited Hearing in ReDigi Case
The order comes just three weeks after ReDigi lawyers, on May 1, argued that Capitol attorneys were attempting to “sabotage” ReDigi’s ability to litigate its appeal by asking a bankruptcy court to convert the company from a Chapter 11 reorganization to a Chapter 7 liquidation.
Source: Appeals Court Orders Expedited Hearing in ReDigi Case
Scribd Reports 500K Subscribers, Adds Newspaper Content
Scribd CEO Trip Adler said Scribd’s latest content expansion comes in the wake of the service’s first year of profitability. Adler said he expects the service to generate more than $50 million in revenue in 2017, adding that Scribd now has
Source: Scribd Reports 500K Subscribers, Adds Newspaper Content
How a Plague on the Movie and Music Industries Became Their Chief Protector in China
Chinese search giant Baidu Inc. 
was once a scourge of Hollywood and the U.S. music industry, which accused it of being a pipeline for pirated content. Today when Baidu is involved in a copyright infringement case, chances are it is the one casting the blame.
Source: How a Plague on the Movie and Music Industries Became Their Chief Protector in China – WSJ
Digital Publishing’s Bar Code Revolution
The ISBN has been a groundbreaking identifier in many ways, and encoding it into a bar code is one of the smartest things this industry has ever done. Other industries have looked to the ISBN as an example, which is how we’ve gotten the ISSN, the DOI, the ISRC, and other identifiers.
Fair Use: Wikipedia targets Australians in bid to change the law
In an Australian first, the US-based crowd-sourced encyclopedia will launch on Monday a political campaign to change the Australian law, by displaying messages targeting Australians who visit pages it was able to create using a US provision known as “fair use”.
Source: Fair Use: Wikipedia targets Australians in bid to change the law
Blockchain and Music Data’s Byzantine Problem
While blockchain has emerged as a hot topic in the digital music space, the technical and operational aspects of adoption have been largely absent from the conversation. Most would agree that the music industry has an extensively documented metadata problem, but relatively few people realize that publishing metadata and metadata standard already exist today.
Source: Blockchain and Music Data’s Byzantine Problem (guest column by Annie Lin)