By changing the way music sales were counted, SoundScan changed the way music was sold. It established a clear and transparent way to count sales that couldn’t easily be gamed by stores, which in turn changed the practice of tabulating sales “from a subjective methodology to an objective methodology,” says Jim Caparro, former president of Polygram Group Distribution.
Source: How SoundScan Changed Music, Driving Metal, Rap and Alt-Rock Up the Charts
IFPI and WIN, working together on behalf of the global recording industry, have announced that their global repertoire data exchange service (RDx), built and run for Repertoire Data Exchange Limited by PPL, is now “fully operational.” RDx provides a supply chain for performance rights data among record companies and music licensing companies (MLCs) to help improve the accuracy of revenue distribution to rights holders when their music is used.
Source: IFPI and WIN’s new data exchange service RDx now ‘fully operational’
Antiquated crediting systems are now wildly out-of-step with today’s tech-driven music landscape. But most crediting solutions leave glaring problems unsolved: plug-ins, for example, struggle with low adoption rates and serve largely as a temporary fix for problems that require permanent solutions.
Source: Muso.AI Partners With Music Story to Overhaul Metadata, Crediting
When we look back on 2020, Hollywood will probably think of it as a pivotal time for the data produced by such things as streaming entertainment and social media but data analysts and strategists have been working with talent agencies for years to uncover powerful opportunities for their clients.
Source: Hollywood Agencies Use Analytics to Create New Revenue Streams
It’s the first time that journals have guaranteed that they will accept the recommendations of another body with no further review, says Chris Chambers, a neuroscientist at Cardiff University and one of the founders of the peer-review organization, called Peer Community In Registered Reports. The service will add to the existential questions facing journals, says Jason Hoyt, CEO of PeerJ, an open-access family of journals that has signed up for the initiative. “What are you paying publishers to do, exactly?”
Generation Z displays strikingly different entertainment preferences than older age groups, according to Deloitte’s 2021 Digital Media Trends survey. Among Gen Z consumers in the U.S. (those currently aged 14-24), video games are their No. 1 entertainment activity — and watching TV or movies at home comes in fifth.
Source: Gen Z Ranks Watching TV, Movies as Fifth Among Top 5 Entertainment Activities
Revealing grosses is only part of what people in the entertainment industry are interested in seeing. Distribution executives want their studio counterparts to divulge very granular levels of data behind the numbers, going beyond the splashy opening weekend figure that’s featured in headlines and across internal memos.
Source: As Moviegoing Returns, Will Hollywood Studios Continue to Hide Box Office Grosses?
YouTube is one of the only social-media platforms that managed to expand its market presence as a share of adult users in the United States between 2019 and 2021, according to a newly published survey from the Pew Research Center. 81 percent of participants said that they “ever use” YouTube as of 2021, against 73 percent in 2019.
Source: YouTube Is One of Two Major Platforms That Has Grown Since 2019
Synchtank claims the new, commercially available version of IRIS is designed specifically for use in the music publishing sector, with a unique ability to track data and identify royalties due across the broadest possible range of platforms and territories. It is a bespoke tool built by a team who know the challenges and needs of the 21st century music business, a scalable solution to the most pressing problem faced by companies and creators alike.
The Pact, a newly formed songwriting group, has called for artists to cease claiming credit on songs that they didn’t author. The debut message that The Pact directed towards the now-standard practice of giving songwriting credit to non-contributing artists (and, in some instances, others who are not involved with the writing process) consists of eight slides, the first of which features text asking: “How does an ARTIST make money?”
Source: Songwriting group tells artists to stop claiming credit on songs they didn’t write