Finance

A new income-producing NFT offers a cut of all future mechanical, public performance and sync royalties for Lil Dicky’s “Save Dat Money.” Spearheaded by Royalty Exchange, the world’s largest platform for buying and selling royalties, the first-ever music publishing NFT allows investors to buy music catalogs and songs using the Ethereum cryptocurrency, bringing “real” value to the NFT marketplace.

Source: Lil Dicky Song Is First-Ever Music Publishing NFT

Even after the 2018 passage of the Music Modernization Act, the industry is beholden to laws written long before the advent of digital entertainment. On the tech side, the tools PROs use to track royalties are no match for those used by the streaming giants. And the industry tends to balk at the idea of change, in large part because the players at the top don’t want to tamper with the mechanisms that got them there.

Source: Most Content Creators Are Still Underpaid — It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way (Guest Column)

In a fresh newsletter sent to the music industry, YouTube’s Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen confirmed that YouTube paid artists, songwriters, and rights-holders over $4 billion in the last 12 months – money derived from both YouTube ads and YouTube Music / YouTube Premium subscriptions. Additionally, Cohen says that YouTube added more paid ‘members’ in Q1 21 than in any other quarter since launch.

Source: YouTube says it paid the music industry over $4bn in the last 12 months

Amazon apparently did this deal to beef up its content offerings so that its content menu would be more in line, size-wise, with its subscriber base. So, why is achieving “content tonnage” important in the big leagues of subscription streaming? Because even though a streaming service such as Amazon Prime, Netflix or Disney+ might seem as if they have more than enough content, the truth is, there is never really enough. The solution is to always be adding more.

Source: TVBlog: Trying To Make Sense Of Amazon’s Big MGM Content Buy

Speaking at Sony Corporation‘s Investor Relations (IR) day May 27, Sony Music chairman Rob Stringer confirmed the $1.4 billion figure while also discussing Sony’s investment activities and the wider music market. Grilled by an investor about what Sony Music Group plans on spending its cash on going forward – and where geographically it plans on investing – Stringer responded “everything and anywhere”.

Source: Sony’s spent $1.4bn on music acquisitions in the last six months… and Rob Stringer’s not stopping there

Chinese games and tech firm NetEase has unveiled plans to spin off its music streaming business NetEase Cloud Music into a company that would have its own listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It had 180 million monthly users at the end of 2020, making it the number two online music player in China.

Source: China’s NetEase to Spin Off Music Streaming Division

Royalty Exchange, a marketplace where music artists can offer shares of future royalties in exchange for immediate funding from investors, has opened its business to YouTube creators. Prankster CJ So Cool, who has 8.7 million subscribers and nets an average of around 30 million views per month, is the first YouTuber to make an offering on the platform.

Source: YouTuber CJ So Cool Is Auctioning 35% Of His Future Royalties For At Least $850,000 – Tubefilter

Fan funding platform, Corite – co-founded by Universal Music Sweden alumni Mattias Tengblad (CEO) and Emil Angervall (COO) – has inked a partnership with L.A-based HITCO Entertainment. HITCO, run by L.A Reid and Charles Goldstuck, has acquired a minority stake in Corite and will help the company launch in the US.

Source: HITCO Entertainment acquires stake in – and partners with – ‘revolutionary’ fan-funding platform Corite

“We are really excited about MGM,” the founder and outgoing CEO said, touting the library of over 4,000 films and 7,000 television shows. “The acquisition thesis here is really very simple. MGM has a vast, deep catalogue of much beloved intellectual property. And with the talent at Amazon and the talent at MGM Studio, we can reimagine and develop that IP for the 21^st Century.”

Source: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Says MGM Acquisition Thesis “Simple”: Studio’s “Vast, Deep Catalogue Of Much Beloved Intellectual Property”

The pairing of AT&T’s $43 billion spinoff of WarnerMedia with Discovery as well as Amazon’s $8.54 billion acquisition of MGM Studios presents the Biden Administration with its first major merger reviews. How will the examinations play out?

Source: How Will Biden Regulators Respond to Amazon-MGM and Discovery-Warner?