Spurred by FTX’s collapse and the resulting contagion spreading to other companies, the icy crypto bear market is only getting colder—and the NFT market has lost considerable steam since earlier this year. Even so, some “blue chip” Ethereum NFTs still command sizable prices, as evidenced by today’s sale of a Bored Ape for just shy of $1 million.
Source: NFTs Are Dead? Even in Bear Market, a Bored Ape Sells for Nearly $1 Million – Decrypt
Warner Music Group categorizes revenue from a bunch of social, gaming, and video streaming platforms – Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Roblox amongst them – as “alternative” or “emerging” platforms. In September 2021, Warner Music Group was generating around$273 million annually from these platforms (on a run-rate basis) across recorded music and music publishing combined. A year on, that figure has an increased by around +$100 million.
The Top 5 biggest-selling artists at one of the major record companies, as a subset, has seen their cumulative share of generated revenue at that major record company slashed by two-thirds over the past 10 years. In any given year, an ever-greater share of total streams is drifting away from the Top 10 biggest hits, and towards a much wider array of ‘middle class’ artists with significant, but not necessarily chart-bursting, fanbases.
The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, and the U.S. Copyright Office, this week formally solicited public comments for their joint study on matters related to intellectual property and non-fungible tokens, as requested in June by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Written comments are due January 9, 2023.The offices also announced a series of three public roundtables on the study to be held on January 10, 12 and 18.
While creators and many collectors applauded OpenSea’s move, it wasn’t a clear-cut business decision for the company. Although the firm believes that royalties—typically a 5% to 10% fee paid by the seller and taken from the secondary sale price—are important to the industry, some traders are voting with their crypto at royalties-shunning platforms, cutting into OpenSea’s market share.
Source: Why OpenSea Is Sticking With NFT Creator Royalties – Decrypt
While the unlicensed and infringing use by the Door Christian Fellowship McAllen Church was quickly dealt with by Hamilton’s legal team, there have been other instances of recalcitrant producers who have only been held accountable for staging unlicensed theatrical works after years of infringement.
Spotify launched audiobooks in the US in September, stating that the expansion was proof that “audio and long-form content is a much bigger business than many would have thought.” While audiobooks represent just a 6 to 7% share of the broader book market, the company says that the category is growing by 20% year-on-year.
Source: Spotify Expands Audiobooks Into the UK – Catalog Tops 300K
Launched in November 2020, the company has made over 500 advances to artists and labels, ranging from $1,000 to as much as $2 million per artist for a limited share of revenues on catalog, and, if the artist chooses, on new unreleased music. These advances are repaid from a share of an artist’s streaming and airplay revenues, over a period of the artist’s choosing.
Source: Artist financing platform beatBread closes $100m fund to ’empower independent artists and labels’
Details about the negotiations remain speculative, but an ad revenue share model aligns all parties’ incentives: when the platform earns revenue, the music industry earns revenue. Yet this upside was not always so obvious to the labels, whose initial “value gap” argument was based around YouTube’s ad revenue share model. Now — if the reports are true — the labels’ new value gap argument focuses on getting TikTok to adopt exactly what was the basis of the first value gap.
Paramount’s blocked sale of Simon & Schuster marks an early win for an emboldened DOJ’s antitrust enforcement while a reported renewed look at Live Nation could be a worrying sign for media chiefs playing a scale game. “Anybody who is looking to do sizable M&As in the media sector where you’re going to lose a player should be concerned after this,” the head of a mid-major studio, speaking under the condition of anonymity, tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Source: Fear for Your Megamergers: The Justice Dept. Is (Finally) Taking Action