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ASCAP, BMI Pump Up Volume In Consent Decree Fight. 

As the Department of Justice winds down its review of the consent decrees governing ASCAP and BMI without recommending any changes—to the cheers of broadcasters—the performance rights organizations are signaling they aren’t ready to give up their battle to have the guidelines updated.

“While the DOJ has expressed their views, this is not the final outcome of this process,” ASCAP chief executive Elizabeth Matthews says. “ASCAP strongly disagrees with the DOJ’s position, and we are carefully considering all of our options, including potential legislative and legal remedies,” she writes in a note to her company’s songwriters.

Source: ASCAP, BMI Pump Up Volume In Consent Decree Fight. | | insideradio.com

Content Companies Commend Box-Ditching Effort 

0502_washington_fccheadquarters_91Major content companies 21st Century Fox, Time Warner, Viacom, CBS and Scripps offered their support for the basics of cable operators’ “ditch the box” set-top proposal in meetings with top aides to Republican commissioner Ajit Pai last week but said it needed tweaking to insure content protections.

They told the staffers that of the “various alternatives” the FCC is considering for boosting competition in the video navigation space, the apps-based MVPD plan “offers a constructive foundation for providing consumers with an alternative to leasing set-top boxes, subject to certain additional protections for programmers and the clarification of particular details.”

Source: Content Companies Commend Box-Ditching Effort | Broadcasting & Cable

Download sales have fallen 24% in the past year in the US market 

According to a new mid-year report from trusted market monitor BuzzAngle, US single track download sales fell by a whopping 24.2% in the first half of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015.

Total digital song sales hit 410.5m in the six months to end of June this year, compared to 541.2m in H1 2015 – a loss of more than 130m downloads.

Source: Download sales have fallen 24% in the past year in the US market – Music Business Worldwide

Report: Tidal Failed To Pay Indie Labels In Norway For Months  

Tidal_logoAccording to a report from Norwegian news outlet Dagens Næringsliv, streaming music platform Tidal may not be paying out the royalties it owes to musicians and record labels in the company’s home country of Norway.

The article states that some 1,000 independent record labels haven’t been paid for the streaming activity connected to their artists since this past January. Most of the labels that are experiencing this issue receive their payments through an intermediary organization called Phonofile, which collects the royalties and disperses them according to reports that are supposed to be produced by the streaming platforms.  Apparently, Tidal has both failed to create the necessary day-to-day reports of what has been played, and it has also missed quite a few months of cutting checks.

Source: Tidal Failed To Pay Indie Labels In Norway For Months [REPORT] – hypebot

At W3C Event, Industry Seeks to Weave Blockchains into New Web 

Armed with sky-high expectations and seemingly boundless enthusiasm for how tech could reinvent industry in the digital age, the “blockchain” industry has been overwhelmed with blockchains.

Not only are there multiple open public blockchain projects, but legacy institutions and corporates are building exclusive permissioned blockchains. So far this year, there have been specialty blockchains created for everything from credit default swaps to managing global supply chains. It’s unclear how these blockchains will need to interact with each other in the future to prove its benefits.

Source: At W3C Event, Industry Seeks to Weave Blockchains into New Web – CoinDesk

The mad rush to own the rights to the blockchain 

Scanning global patent registries turns up dozens of active claimants filing patents on blockchain tech, including teams from major corporations. If granted, anyone who wanted to use a blockchain technology like any one successfully patented would have to pay that patent holder a license fee. And with major banking institutions looking to get in on the blockchain action, the money involved in those licenses would likely not be inconsiderable.

While proving a patent-level novel use of a technology is difficult, this has not stopped a digital gold rush from popping up around the blockchain. Banks, once threatened by the blockchain’s potential to do away with swathes of their business have instead started looking for ways to control the tech, making enormous investments in blockchain application development.

Source: The mad rush to own the rights to the blockchain | Fusion

Blockchain content sharing app LBRY declares independence

LBRY, the decentralised content sharing and publishing platform owned by its users, has released a Beta version of its app, coinciding with more content deals and a “July 4th Declaration of Independence from big media”. LBRY said today’s old order comprises, “the major record labels, book publishers, and movie studios that have managed to cling to their fiefdoms despite the potential of the internet to connect independent artists directly to their fans.

“It’s expensive to store and serve a bunch of content, so the market is dominated by the likes of Google’s YouTube, Apple’s iTunes, and Amazon’s Kindle Store. By combining several new open-source technologies and key innovations, LBRY is able to cut out the middlemen. The result is a platform that no one controls but everyone can access – just like the Internet itself,” said a statement.

Source: Blockchain content sharing app LBRY declares independent from Google, Apple and Amazon

Industry research papers highlight blockchain technology’s disruptive potential 

The potential uses for blockchains in all of their various forms are piling up, and everywhere you turn another multinational corporation, industry organization, central bank, or government has come out with a research paper extolling the benefits of blockchains, distributed ledger technology, and even Bitcoin itself.

Not having a blockchain strategy today is like not having an internet strategy at the turn of the century. If your corporation or group uses documents or keeps records in any official way, someone has come up with a way for blockchains to improve the efficiency and trustworthiness of your process.

Source: Industry research papers highlight blockchain technology’s disruptive potential » Brave New Coin

Blockchain Breakthrough: Peerplays Creates Open-Source Fee Sharing Module

After a successful first round of ICO funding, Peerplays announced today that they have innovated the Blockchain space with the creation of an open-source fee sharing module, allowing any Graphene-based Blockchain to distribute profits directly to its token holders.

“Peerplays is aiming to be the first truly Decentralized Autonomous Cooperative (DAC) and we have just added a major piece to the puzzle,” said Jonathan Baha’i, President of BunkerChain Labs and the Blockchain technology consultant for Peerplays, in a press release.

Source: Blockchain Breakthrough: Peerplays Creates Open-Source Fee Sharing Module

Department Of Justice To Deny Consent Decree Amendment 

The U.S. Department of Justice struck a major blow Wednesday to U.S. music publishers and performing rights organizations.

A nearly two-year process to amend the consent decree so that music publishers would have the right to withdraw digital licensing from the blanket licenses offered by ASCAP and BMI — the two performing rights organizations operating under a DOJ consent decree since 1941 — has ended with no changes to the consent degree, much to the chagrin of major publishers like Sony/ATV, Universal Music Publishing Group and BMG.

Source: Department Of Justice To Deny Consent Decree Amendment | Billboard

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