Lickd, a service for accessing claims-free commercial music for video creators, has entered into a partnership with independent record label EMPIRE. The deal will enable YouTube creators to licence music from EMPIRE. EMPIRE has worked with well-known artists including Snoop Dog, XXXTentacion, Tyga and many others.
Source: Lickd partners with EMPIRE to make music available to YouTube creators
The Beastie Boys had never before licensed any of their songs for an advertisement, but that commercial blackout came to an end during Sunday’s Steelers/Browns game, when the sounds of “Sabotage” accompanied a spot for the Joe Biden presidential campaign.
Malta’s National Book Council has presented a proposed bill to amend the Copyright Act which seeks to bring it in line with modern realities of the cultural industry. The proposal intends to transpose the EU’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Market into Maltese law and address other discrepancies within our national copyright framework.
Source: Copyright in the digital age
The U.K. Parliament has opened an inquiry into whether artists are getting a fair share of income from platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and others. With streaming accounting for more than half of the global music industry’s revenue, the probe, announced last week (Oct. 15), will examine the question of how policy can “favor more equitable business models,” according to a statement by Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee, which is handling the investigation.
Source: U.K. Parliament Launches Probe Into Streaming Music Industry
Snap Inc states that it now has multi-year deals with a number of major and independent publishers and labels, including Warner Music Group, Merlin (which includes their independent label members), NMPA, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Kobalt, and BMG Music Publishing.
The Supreme Court of Canada will delve into the issue of fair payment for the use of copyrighted works in the classroom. The top court agreed to hear the case in response to appeals from York University in Toronto and Access Copyright, which administers reproduction rights for published works, collects royalties and distributes them to copyright holders.
Source: Top court to examine payment for classroom use of copyrighted works
The bill was published by Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) and has yet to be approved by the federal government. Lambrecht said the draft is a “fair balance of interests”, and an “important step towards meeting the implementation deadline of summer 2021”. However, the government had promised that such upload filters would be avoided when it agreed to the EU copyright reform in April 2019.
Source: German copyright bill includes upload filters, despite government’s promises
TikTok has signed a multi-year deal with Dutch Collecting Society Buma/Stemra, securing royalty payments for the songwriters, composers and publishers represented by the organization. The agreement follows last month’s news of TikTok’s 100 million monthly active user milestone in Europe in addition to a similar number in the United States.
Source: TikTok inks multi-year licensing deal with Dutch collecting Society Buma/Stemra
The company announced today that it’s testing a new podcast format that’ll allow podcast listeners to hear entire music tracks during a show, as opposed to a brief sample. Hosts will also be able to create shows in this format through Anchor, the Spotify-owned podcast creation app. The new format effectively makes Spotify the only podcast platform where hosts can include entire songs in their shows without having to worry about copyright.
Source: New Spotify format allows podcasters to place songs between talk segments in shows
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, musicians have earned over $5 million in commission-free sales of digital music, merch, livestream tickets, fan subscriptions, digital multimedia, and tip donations through their websites powered by hosting provider Bandzoogle, the company says.
Source: Musicians have earned over $5m through Bandzoogle since the pandemic began