Music rightsholders have long raised prickly questions about PRO expenditure and efficiency. At the same time, PROs have staunchly defended the chunk of cash they burn – pointing to, amongst other things, the trillions of lines of data they process annually in the modern era. Yet a storm might now be brewing at the heart of this conversation, propelled by two very topical factors.
Source: Is a reckoning coming to the way collection societies spend songwriters’ money?
In what Primary Wave describes as a “multi million dollar deal”, the acquisition will also see the publisher obtain a share in the duo’s master royalty income stream across Rihanna’s first seven albums. The deal encompasses master income for some of Rihanna’s biggest hits including We Found Love, Umbrella, Don’t Stop the Music, Disturbia, Stay, Rude Boy, and What’s My Name.
Merck Mercuriadis calls Andrew Watt “arguably the most important writer and producer in the world today”. Now, Hipgnosis Songs Fund has acquired 105 songs from Watt – including both the writer and publisher’s share of the compositions. A filing this morning (May 5) reveals that the Watt catalog acquired by Hipgnosis generated $1.27m in 2017, $3.41m in 2018, and $4.34m in 2019.
Source: Hipgnosis acquires 105 songs from Grammy-winner Andrew Watt in eight-figure deal
Twitter’s acquisition spree continues today with Scroll, a $5-a-month subscription service that removes ads from participating news sites. Twitter is working on building out a new kind of subscription plan that will include Scroll, the recently acquired Revue newsletter service, and other homegrown Twitter services.
Source: Twitter is buying Scroll, the subscription service that removes ads from news sites
The 48-year-old voiced his critical opinion of advances during UnitedMasters’ third SelectCon, which the four-year-old company broadcasted via Twitch. As an aside, Amazon-owned Twitch and UnitedMasters partnered to deliver the two-day livestream event to fans – a particularly interesting point, given Twitch’s ongoing licensing dispute with the major labels.
Source: Pharrell Compares Label Advances to ‘Illegal Loans’ — ‘No One Should Own You’
One the same day as Fortnite maker Epic Games goes to trial with one of the biggest legal challenges to the App Store’s business model to date, it has simultaneously announced the acquisition of the artist portfolio community ArtStation — and immediately lowered the commissions on sales.
Source: Epic Games buys artist community ArtStation, drops commissions to 12%
The company announced today that they’ve closed a $65 million Series B led by Mary Meeker’s firm Bond. NEA, Breyer Capital, Tull Investment Group, NetEase, Dapper Labs and Coinbase Ventures also participated in the deal. Mary Meeker will be joining the Genies board. The company didn’t disclose the Genies’ most recent valuation.
Source: Avatar startup Genies scores $65 million in funding round led by Mary Meeker’s Bond
The acquisition was for more money than expected, according to TMZ, which reports that Square paid $350 million to buy an 80% stake in TIDAL. That figure was $53 million bigger than the number the two parties announced in March ($297 million), when they said they had entered into a definitive agreement for Square to acquire its majority stake.
AT&T shareholders on Friday voted against a measure to approve executive compensation, according to preliminary voting results from the company’s annual meeting. The total compensation package for Jason Kilar, chief executive of AT&T’s media unit WarnerMedia, was more than $52 million, more than double the $21 million for AT&T CEO John Stankey, according to the company’s proxy statement.
Source: AT&T shareholders vote against approving executive compensation
Verizon will sell its media group to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion, the companies announced Monday. The sale allows Verizon to offload properties from the former internet empires of AOL and Yahoo. Verizon will keep a 10% stake in the company and it will be rebranded to just Yahoo.
Source: Verizon sells media businesses including Yahoo and AOL to Apollo for $5 billion