April, 2018

Describing itself as “Big Data for Music Rights”, Loudr was previously partnering with key platforms in the independent distribution space like CD Baby and DistroKid. But it also has software to identify, track and pay out royalties to music publishers, which is where Spotify comes in as these are leaks in its digital royalties bucket that the Swedish music service really needs to patch – and fast.

Source: Loudr Than Bombs: Has Spotify Finally Reached a Mechanical Licensing Armistice? – Synchblog by Synchtank

The Music Modernization Act passed the U.S. House this week and is headed for the Senate. Here Dae Bogan recounts how providing the Principle Analyst of the Congressional Budget office with a crash course in copyright law and music publishing left him very concerned about the economic future of DIY musicians.

Source: Concerns For DIY Musicians Income After Congressional Interview For Music Modernization Act

The major labels’ influence over over track placement on services like Spotify and Apple Music — and the formulas they use to calculate artist payouts — has left many music makers still struggling to make a living in the streaming ecosystem. Now, though, a growing number of smaller streaming services have emerged offering artists a better deal, using alternative ways to split up the pie.

Source: How Blockchain, Co-Ops and ‘Microsubscription’ Services Could Help Artists Earn More From Music Streaming

Critics say proposed amendments in European law would grant new “safe harbour” provisions that are favourable to the giant firms. Ironically, the new legal privileges come out of a well-meaning effort to help the music industry fight YouTube by plugging what the business calls a “value gap”.

Source: Under-fire Silicon Valley to gain new copyright ‘safe harbour’ in EU, fume critics

Village Roadshow and several major Hollywood studios have won a blocking injunction against a pirate IPTV service. HD Subs Plus delivers around 600 live premium channels plus hundreds of movies on demand, but the service will now be blocked by ISPs across Australia.

Source: Aussie Federal Court Orders ISPs to Block Pirate IPTV Service – TorrentFreak

Monkeys can’t own copyrights, and neither should computers or artificial-intelligence programs, but does that mean that all works created by monkeys and machines are in the public domain? Such a rule threatens computer-generated works that are indistinguishable in merit, value and originality from works created by humans.

Source: Monkeying Around With Copyright Law

In an application published Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Sony explains that current digital rights management (DRM) solutions that aim for interoperability “may not be very reliable and rely on one unique point of failure. If the rights locker provider or system goes out of business or otherwise fails, the user loses all the acquired content.”

Source: Sony Eyes Blockchain Use for Digital Rights Data – CoinDesk

A team of researchers from Microsoft and Kyoto University developed a poet AI good enough to fool online judges, according to a paper published Thursday on the preprint site arXiv. It’s the latest step towards artificial intelligence that can create believable, human-passing language, and, man, it seems like a big one.

Source: Artificial Intelligence Writes Bad Poems Just Like An Angsty Teen

The European Union is considering new rules governing how internet platforms interact with businesses that rely on them to reach consumers online. The new proposals from the European Commission, the EU’s executive wing, would require platforms such as Google to be more transparent with businesses about their placement in search engine results, which can have a huge impact on a company’s success.

Source: EU proposes regulating how web platforms treat businesses

The bipartisan Music Modernization Act, which includes several legislative reforms – including the CLASSICS Act – was unanimously passed the U.S. House of Representatives this afternoon. The news comes a fortnight after the broadly-supported Act was passed by the US House Judiciary Committee, and takes it one step further towards becoming law.

Source: Music Modernization Act passed by the US House of Representatives