SESAC CEO & Chairman John Josephson argues that his company’s commercial imperative makes it more dynamic and hungry to strike the best possible deals for its ‘affiliates’, who include huge names like Adele, Bob Dylan, Mariah Carey, David Crosby, Rosanne Cash, Kings Of Leon, and very successful film and television composers such as Christophe Beck, Gabriel Mann and Randy Newman.
Source: ‘US regulation for songwriters is archaic – and it results in less fair outcomes.’
Starting today (August 14), creators and publishers can join AllTrack to represent them for the public performance of their songs in over 120 countries. AllTrack allows all types of creators to join for free, register songs, report live performances and receive global performance royalties.
Source: Former SESAC board member Hayden Bower launches new PRO, AllTrack
What would the television market look like if the NFL couldn’t pool all of the league’s out-of-market games and sell them as a package? What if NFL teams competed against each other and made their own TV deals? These provocative questions will be moving forward in a court of law thanks to a potentially huge decision on Tuesday from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Source: NFL, DirecTV Face Revived Antitrust Suit Over Telecasts of Out-of-Market Games
A group of textbook authors has filed a class action suit against Cengage, alleging that the company’s recent digital pivot violates their author agreements. The suit, filed yesterday in the Southern District of New York, claims that Cengage is cheating their authors out of proper royalties for sales through its digital products
While music publishers, songwriters and both ASCAP and BMI are urging the U.S. Department of Justice to reform the consent decrees under which the two performance rights organizations operate, and eventually allow them to expire, music users insist that the consent decrees are vital to the music licensing landscape and without them chaos would reign.
SoundExchange has teamed with SourceAudio to offer a solution to help secure music with fully integrated, global licenses, beginning in 2020. The collaboration will provide podcastmusic.com, a digital music marketplace for podcasters, with access to SoundExchange’s membership of music creators and offers licensing for label and publisher-owned music.
Source: SoundExchange To Offer New Music Licensing Service For Podcasts
It’s not too difficult to imagine in the near future, say, a digital likeness of an Avengers star appearing in Marvel Studios’ ever-expanding big-screen universe in perpetuity, even if the actor has long moved on from the role. And who profits from these digital copies of actors will likely spark union debates as usage grows more common.
Source: Will Smith, Robert De Niro and the Rise of the All-Digital Actor
Prior to 1964, books had a 28-year copyright term. Extending it required authors or publishers to send in a separate form, and lots of people didn’t end up doing that. Thanks to the efforts of the New York Public Library, many of those public domain books are now free online.
Source: Millions of Books Are Secretly in the Public Domain. You Can Download Them Free
How did a Swedish saxophonist from the 1980s transform into a leading entrepreneur in music’s digital transformation? Why are top technology VCs pouring money into a company that represents a roster of musicians? And how has the rise of music streaming created an opening for Kobalt to architect a new approach to the way the industry works?
Source: How a Swedish saxophonist built Kobalt, the world’s next music unicorn – TechCrunch
Facebook is offering news outlets millions of dollars for the rights to put their content in a news section that the company hopes to launch later this year. Representatives from Facebook have told news executives they would be willing to pay as much as $3 million a year to license entire stories, headlines and previews of articles from news outlets, the people said.
Source: Facebook Offers News Outlets Millions of Dollars a Year to License Content