Today, more than 98% of music repertoire usage is reported digitally. While the onset of digitization imposed obvious technology costs on PROs, songwriters should have long ago started benefiting from its improved efficiency. Yet, collection fees have continued to rise in terms of actual dollars and we’ve completely forfeited the potential benefits of globalization due to legacy back scratching.
Source: Pay It Again, Sam: We Still Need New Publishing Infrastructure (Guest Op-Ed)
A handful of auctions this month testing the appetite for a type of investment known as NFTs seemed likely to prolong the nascent fad for ownership of works that exist only in the digital world. Missing from those transactions, however, were the blue-chip collectors who typically drive the art market’s sales.
Source: As Auctioneers and Artists Rush Into NFTs, Many Collectors Stay Away
NFTs are a flashy new digital trend geared toward the über-rich. But some experts hope to harness their blockchain technology to prove the origins of artifacts taken by European nations—and potentially upend the stagnated pecking order of the art world.
For so long social media was about broadcasting content made off-platform. Now content is being created on platforms with increasingly comprehensive creative capabilities. These platforms ultimately rely on creators to supply content, and with the number of user-generated content (UGC) platforms increasing, the platforms with users who create the best content will attract the most users.
Source: The social studio will empower the next million producers
It turns out there are still more mysteries to uncover about the Dead Sea Scrolls. The latest discovery, made with the help of artificial intelligence, is that the artifacts were likely transcribed by two different writers, despite the fact that all the handwriting looks similar.
In the opening days of April, an artist operating under the pseudonym Monsieur Personne (“Mr. Nobody”) tried to short-circuit the NFT hype machine by unleashing “sleepminting,” a process that complicates, if not corrodes, one of the value propositions underlying non-fungible tokens. His actions raise thorny questions about everything from coding, to copyright law, to consumer harm.
For years, there has been a thriving market for streaming service accounts, with Spotify accounts selling for under a dollar. Many though not all of these are hacked. It’s so common that people commenting on their hackers’ music tastes has become somewhat of a meme and a quick search on Twitter pulls up countless examples.
How completely has streaming transformed the music world? The platform rose from 7% of the U.S. market in 2010 to a whopping 83% by the end of 2020 — and recorded-music revenues saw their fifth consecutive year of growth, topping $12.2 billion. It’s no overstatement to say that streaming saved the recorded-music business, and that global market leader Spotify led the charge toward the stability and growth that the industry is enjoying today.
Source: 15 Years of Spotify: How the Streaming Giant Has Changed and Reinvented the Music Industry
Live Nation Entertainment and livestream platform Veeps have started equipping over 60 concert venues across the United States with live streaming technology. Los Angeles-based Veeps was established in 2017 by Joel and Benji Madden of the band Good Charlotte, who sold a stake in their company to Live Nation in January.
Source: After selling stake to Live Nation, Veeps equips 60+ US venues with livestream technology
The man who once auctioned off the most expensive artwork in history, Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, for $450.3 million, is auctioning his first NFT on his app for fine art collectors, a 3D animation of an egg and a lighter modelled by contemporary artist Urs Fischer.
Source: Christie’s Former ‘Rainmaker’ Brings NFTs to Fine Art Collectors – Decrypt