Data

Steven Soderbergh says that among all the issues facing Hollywood during dual actors and writers strikes, the one that “keeps me up at night” is data transparency — or the lack of it — from streaming platforms. In an interview with Defector, Soderbergh said that while using artificial intelligence in the creative process is a serious issue, he’s more concerned that media companies are hiding something, whether good or bad, with their lack of transparency.

Source: Steven Soderbergh: Streaming Data Transparency a Bigger Worry Than AI

New audience segments in the Spotify for Artists interface give artists and their team powerful insights into their audience to help them grow and deepen their relationship with fans. Data until now has been high-level, focusing on total streams, monthly listeners, and followers. But that data doesn’t differentiate fans from super fans. As our mid-year music industry report reveals, super fans drive 42% of engagement with new artists.

Source: Spotify for Artists Introduces New Audience Segmentation

At a recent London gathering of DDEX, one topic rose above all others: the role that DDEX could play around the grouping or ‘clustering’ of sound recordings. Despite the somewhat benign description, it is a genuinely interesting subject that leads to several related topics, including the role of
music recognition technology, the nascent International Standard Content Code (ISCC), and even touches on the other hot topic of fraudulent streams. 

Source: ‘Clustering reduces the risk of the wrong rights owners being paid and assists in making performer line-ups as complete and consistent as possible.’

The UK music industry and government have released the much-anticipated ‘Get Paid Guide’ for music creators to help demystify music metadata. The guide provides songwriters, composers, and artists with quick and easy step-by-step guidance on what music data is, why it matters, and what to do with it.

Source: British Music Industry Releases ‘Get Paid Guide’ for Music Creators

ASCAP and BMI, the two largest performance rights organizations (PROs) in the United States, have joined together to create a task force to combat fraud. The force will address suspicious registrations associated with musical works across their collective management system, which includes over 25 million compositions.

Source: ASCAP and BMI Create Joint Task Force to Address Fraud

The deal guarantees Google receipt of metadata from Metabooks Brasil and Metabooks Mexico, as well as future MVB databases in Latin America. Google and MVB will work in cooperation with a goal of “improving the user experience for people on Google searching for books and authors, using quality metadata guaranteed by Metabooks,” according to today’s media messaging.

Source: London Book Fair: Google Becomes a Client of MVB’s Metabooks

Karine Pansa, president of the International Publishers Association, has two key priorities: defending copyright protections and the freedom to publish around the world. But the São Paolo-based children’s book publisher is adding another priority: collecting data to get an objective baseline of what is happening in the industry. “We will have a new beginning, driven by data,” Pansa said.

Source: London Book Fair 2023: New IPA President Sets Out on a Mission of Freedom, Copyright, and Data Protection

Now that the global recorded music business has slowed to single-digit growth, streaming services will have to work harder to attract new consumers and keep those they already have. As the March 28 launch of Apple’s new classical-focused streaming app revealed, one key to finding more growth is one of the least appealing facets of digital music: metadata. Ultimately, metadata impacts the dollars and cents of streaming. When streaming services can increase engagement, that tends to reduce churn, or the fraction of users who leave each month.

Source: Is There Money in Metadata?

The world’s richest company released a sleek new product this week that was years in the making and had to meet its exacting standards before it was ready to be used by millions of people. But it wasn’t a phone, a gadget or an AI chatbot. The latest innovation from Apple was a better way of listening to classical music. And it only exists because of a curious failure by the most successful music-streaming services.

Source: Apple Wants to Solve One of Music’s Biggest Problems

YouTube is launching a new product called Analytics for Artists that will help musicians adopt a multiformat approach to video, Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen announced. Cohen shared some stats that show just how big YouTube Shorts has gotten. As of December 2022, the TikTok competitor records 50 billion daily views, many of which come on videos that feature pop music. According to Cohen, the top 1,000 songs on YouTube Shorts got more than 280 billion combined views in January 2023.

Source: A new analytics tool helps musical artists harness YouTube Shorts and its 50 billion daily views – Tubefilter