Tagsmart’s CERTIFY: ‘DNA Fingerprinting’ Technology Offers Security for Art Market

Tagsmart CERTIFY is a unique, technology-driven platform that delivers a secure and verified solution to artwork security for the global art market.

Developed by leading framer Mark Darbyshire and product designer Steve Cooke, Tagsmart meets the needs of the art world in the digital age. Over the 20 years spent in the framing and art fabrication business, it became clear to Mark that there was a real demand for increased accountability within the art market. Mark and Steve, along with a team of industry experts*, spent 18 months developing CERTIFY as a unique solution to artwork security issues.

Source: ArtDaily

Blue Raincoat Songs Inks Kobalt Deal

KOBALT-logoThe long-term worldwide administration deal will mean that Kobalt will provide a variety of publishing services to Blue Raincoat including copyright administration and royalty tracking.

Jeremy Lascelles said “Blue Raincoat Songs will be a very creatively driven operation, but we know how important it is to have really efficient registration and collection systems in place.

“Kobalt’s reputation in this area is second to none and they will provide a global resource and infrastructure that should be a perfect complement to our creative endeavours. Plus it will be nice having them on our team rather than as a competitor!”

Source: MBW

For Digital Art, Watermarks Aim To Bring More Aura—And A Hotter Market

Thanks in no small part to the Internet, digital art is having a moment, and it’s attracting collectors too. An auction last year of GIFs, digital paintings, and printouts at Phillips in London raised over $113,000, including $3,500 paid for a website by the Dutch-Brazilian Internet artist Rafael Rozendaal.

Along with money, the budding market has also raised some interesting questions: If digital art is built on a medium prone toward reproduction, how do you make a one-of-a-kind edition? You might hang digital art on your wall, but how do you prove who made it, or that you bought it?

“Sharing art online is a double-edged sword,” says Shambhavi Kadam, a cofounder of Depict, a San Francisco-based startup that is building a physical, 4K Ultra HD picture frame, along with “watermarking” software to protect works bought and sold on its platform.

Source: Fast Company

Copyright Management: What If Instagram Used The Blockchain?

Nowadays the market for art is increasing its power thanks to social networks and platforms that allow anyone to express and publish their artistic creations on the web. Omitting the fact that we cannot always define those creations as ART, the democracy of self expression is growing up.But on the other hand – with this system, on the web – anyone can save or copy content, cheating the real author.

Source: Coin Telegraph

Nikki Sixx Launches Campaign to get YouTube to ‘Do the Right Thing’ over Music Royalties

Mötley Crüe co-founder Nikki Sixx is the latest musician to criticise YouTube over the royalties it pays out for music video streams. Sixx’s call for the video site to pay more to musicians for using their videos is part of a campaign by a coalition of prominent musicians launching this week, with pressure to be put first on YouTube, then on US legislators.

Sixx and James Michael – partner in his current band Sixx:AM – are calling for more artists to speak out and put pressure on YouTube to match the royalty payouts of music streaming rivals. A number of big names are expected to speak out this week.

Source: The Guardian

Universal Wins Big Ruling in Copyright Lawsuit Over In-Flight Music

Getting record labels to sign off on licensing is tricky. That’s nothing compared to winning a case over the lack of licensing where the target is moving.

Universal Music and Capitol Records have navigated the complexities of international air travel to score a summary judgment ruling that when it gets to a jury next month to decide damages, could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The defendant in the lawsuit is IFP and parent company Global Eagle, a worldwide provider of in-flight entertainment from movies to songs.

Source: Billboard

RightsTrade Enters Spanish Market Through AssetMedia

The US maRT-2rketplace for film, television and digital media rights licensing, RightsTrade has signed an alliance with AssetMedia to develop its business in Spain.

For now, the RightsTrade online platform will be represented by AssetMedia in a bid to create business with content owners, distributors, sales companies and content buyers in the country. From the start, the service will manage around 1,000 titles for cinema and TV within the Spanish market.

Source: Rapid TV News

Inside Sony Music’s New Royalty-Tracking Portal

Sony Music Entertainment is rolling out a sophisticated online portal to its artists and their managers that will allow them to drill down and analyze each artist’s sales and streaming activity and royalties.

Sony has built on an existing portal dubbed eLink, launched in 2010. The new portal provides a tool that helps its artists and their business teams handle the overwhelming amount of information that comes with the dramatic growth in “micro-transactions” generated by streaming as well as new fractional licensing technologies like the one recently deployed by SoundCloud.

Recalling their early touring days, major label artists’ statements used to require a church van to move them.

Source: Billboard

‘The Music Industry Needs More Innovators and Fewer Lawyers’

Records lying on floor by 1970?s stereo systemNinety-nine percent of the data in existence was created within the past two years.

Yet, more than 99% of recorded music was created before the past two years. Recorded music was largely an analog phenomenon until the ’90s and the digital era.

The institutions that sprung up around the music – to record, distribute and monetize, even to secure copyrights and administer royalties – were all created as analog institutions, not forced to compete, or even exist, in a digital world until very recently.

The bulk of the data meant to help collect revenue for music rights holders is not ready for the digital world. Much of this metadata is incomplete. It is often in conflict with other data sources and does not form a complete picture of the recording it’s meant to describe.

Source: Music Business Worldwide

David Lowery Legal Team Files Motion Addressing Spotify’s Forthcoming Publishing Settlement

Attorneys representing David Lowery in his lawsuit against Spotify want to know what the music streaming service has been telling songwriters. In a motion filed this week in the Central District Court of California, Lowery and the other three plaintiffs have asked the judge for “corrective action to prevent misrepresentations to putative class members” in pitches to songwriters by Spotify and the National Music Publishers’ Association related to their settlement agreement.’

The new filing comes down to the plaintiffs’ lack of access to settlement agreement between Spotify and the NMPA. Lowery’s attorneys state that their requests to see the reported agreement have been rebuffed, leading to concerns the eventual class members are being given false statements about their litigation rights.

They believe the court has “both the authority and the duty to review and impose reasonable restrictions” on communications with potential class members to prevent Spotify from making misleading or inaccurate statements that would inform the songwriters about the nature of the litigation and their options for protecting their rights.

Source: Billboard

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