Negotiations between the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) and the studios lasted over two years, but while the former did receive significant improvements in their contract with the latter, their members still will not be getting residuals for TV shows and movies that are streamed online.
Source: #BandTogether Musicians Reach Tentative Deal with Film and TV Studios
Across the world, there are lots of different initiatives afoot to tackle the music industry’s metadata problems – including accurately filling out the credits for songs and recordings. The latest example comes from the UK, where collecting society PPL has announced a new partnership with startup Sound Credit.
Source: PPL teams up with Sound Credit to improve recording metadata
The country’s largest educational publishers have filed a lawsuit seeking to stop pirate sites from illegally selling their e-books and have won a temporary restraining order. According to the lawsuit filed in the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the pirate sites are selling unlicensed e-books using Google ads which they place in response to searches for the publishers’ legitimate content.
Source: Educational Publishers File Suit to Block Sale of Pirated E-books
While the streamers and the rest of Hollywood have been writing nine-figure checks to top talent to attract viewers, a California privacy law going into effect Jan. 1 is shifting their focus to how much information they’ve collected from their users — and who they’re sharing it with. Everything from Warner Bros.’ online Harry Potter shop to ABC’s Freeform app will need to be in compliance.
Source: Streaming’s Data Compliance Headache: “Entertainment Companies Are Going to Be Targets”
When most people think about the potential legal issues around AI-created music, they tend to think about the output – the music itself, and questions like whether an AI-generated track can attract copyright protection. Sophie Goossens, counsel at law firm Reed Smith, thinks that just as much attention should be paid to the input.
Source: We need to talk more about the legal issues around training musical AIs
Technology company ConsenSys and mechanical licensing administrator Harry Fox Agency have been selected to manage the matching of data uses to musical works on the database; distributing mechanical royalties; and onboarding songwriters, composers, lyricists and music publishers and their catalogs.
Source: Mechanical Licensing Collective Selects Leadership, Partners for Copyright Database
A group of major music publishing companies doesn’t want 23 copyright law professors to be heard in a piracy case. The scholars submitted a brief in the ongoing piracy liability lawsuit against ISP Charter, warning that a recent recommendation could harm both ISPs and consumers. However, the music groups suggest that not all profs are completely neutral.
Source: Music Companies Don’t Want Copyright Profs to Be Heard in Piracy Case – TorrentFreak
The acquisitive company – which started trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in July 2018 – is committed to undertaking a semi-annual valuation of its song portfolio, conducted by an independent valuer. According to that independent valuer, Hipgnosis’ unaudited Operative Net Asset Value (‘Operative NAV’) was 108.46 pence per Ordinary Share on September 30, 2019.
Source: Merck Mercuriadis’ Hipgnosis Songs Fund is already worth over $850m
Sosa Entertainment claims that it has not been paid full royalties associated with over 550 million streams on Spotify. The tracks associated with these streams, says the company, were removed by SPOT in a process which began “in or about” May 2017, and were chopped from the service “without advance notice [and] without ever telling [Sosa and PMR] why their songs were removed”.
Source: Spotify faces lawsuit from indie music company claiming mistreatment
Impala, the European trade collective that represents both independent labels and publishers, announced today that it is “gearing up” to oppose Tencent’s buyout of a 10% stake of Universal Music Group, with an option to add a further 10%. The organization is also concerned about “who might buy the additional UMG stakes that are up for grabs.”
Source: Indie Label Collective Impala to Oppose Tencent-Universal Music Deal