The jungle of music rights acquisitions has become a crowded and expensive place. But the game just changed again – as an 800-pound gorilla enters the fray. BMG and investment giant KKR have announced an alliance that will see them team up to acquire and manage music copyrights.
Finance
The Global Value of Music Copyright reached a record high of $31.6bn in 2019
When the major music companies publish their quarterly figures, analysts all too often take a blinkered view – exclusively assessing the impact of streaming and duly limiting their focus to revenue from recorded music. This is plain wrong: streaming services pay record labels, but they also pay CMOs who in turn also pay other licensors.
Password Sharing ‘Costs’ Streamers $25B Per Year In Potential Revenue: Analyst
SVODs have for years ignored beyond-family password sharing, viewing it as a variation on sampling that ultimately pays off in sufficient conversions. But facing intensifying competition and near saturation in the U.S. market, Netflix has recently begun testing methods to deter unauthorized password sharing, including some offers that include a 30-day trial.
Musicians Turn to NFTs to Make Up for Lost Revenue
Authors fear the worst if Penguin owner takes over Simon & Schuster
Authors have made it abundantly clear that they fear the fallout if the deal goes ahead. When it was first announced last November, the Authors Guild in the US was quick to register its objections. The acquisition would “creat[e] a huge imbalance in the US publishing industry”, it warned, calling on the US justice department to step in.
Source: Authors fear the worst if Penguin owner takes over Simon & Schuster
NFTs Are Spurring a Digital Land Grab—in Videogame Worlds
Source: NFTs Are Spurring a Digital Land Grab—in Videogame Worlds
Spotify Unveils ‘Loud and Clear,’ a Detailed Guide to Its Royalty Payment System
As more and more artists have learned in the nearly 15 years since Spotify first launched, the way that it pays out streaming royalties is very, very complex, based on a dizzying number of factors that add up differently for each artist. On Thursday morning, the company made a welcome step toward demystifying that process by unveiling “Loud and Clear,” a relatively straightforward explanation of the way its payment system and related factors work.
Source: Spotify Unveils ‘Loud and Clear,’ a Detailed Guide to Its Royalty Payment System
Musicians Protest Per-Stream Royalty Rate Outside Spotify Offices
A number of artists yesterday afternoon gathered outside Spotify offices across the U.S. and Europe to protest the company’s royalty rates. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) – which, in late October of 2020, rolled out a petition calling on Spotify to pay one cent per stream – organized the multi-city protest, dubbed “Justice at Spotify Day of Action.”
Source: Musicians Protest Per-Stream Royalty Rate Outside Spotify Offices
Big Music Needs to Be Broken Up to Save the Industry
For decades, corporate concentration and the rise of streaming music platforms has shifted power to tech giants, and to a conglomerate that, through the staggering failures of US monopoly regulation, has come to dominate terrestrial and satellite radio, concert promotion, ticketing, artist management, and venue ownership, essentially every revenue-generating slice of the industry.
Source: Big Music Needs to Be Broken Up to Save the Industry
NFTs for copyrights: Why non-fungible tokens could transform who gets paid from music rights
This Thursday (March 18), UK artist Big Zuu is selling 75% of the rights to a song on his forthcoming album, divided up into several different chunks and wrapped up into NFTs. Another Ditto-affiliated act, Taylor Bennett – brother of Chancelor ‘Chance The Rapper’ Bennett – is selling 75% of the rights to an upcoming recording, also through separate NFTs.