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Spotify, Musixmatch End Lyrics Partnership Over Unfavorable Terms

Lyrics disappeared suddenly from Spotify last Friday; and now we know the reason: the partnership between the music streamer and lyrics provider Musixmatch has ended. The partnership was terminated when the two companies could not come to terms over payments, according to sources with knowledge of the deal.

Musixmatch also suggested that unfavorable terms are behind the split. “We regret the end of this partnership, but we must keep to our product and our users above all else. We will not allow anybody to ignore our business model'” said Max Ciociola, CEO & Founder of Musixmatch. “We want to focus on what is right for us, to protect all of you, our users. We don’t want to run the risk of Musixmatch no longer existing… What we want is to create a stand alone experience with a healthy business model that allows us, to support ourselves and our rights owners.”

Source: Spotify, Musixmatch End Lyrics Partnership Over Unfavorable Terms: “We will not allow anybody to ignore our business model” – hypebot

The Playlist That’s Helping Spotify Win The Streaming Music Battle 

The quest to give people what they didn’t even know they want has been the holy grail for streaming services, and Spotify succeeded almost by accident.

Discover Weekly actually began as a Hack Week project, but it was the technology they had from acquiring “music intelligence” firm The Echo Nest which allowed the idea to flourish. What’s genius about Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlists is its personalization. It’s capable of delivering content from artists the listener hasn’t heard but should like based on their established tastes.

Source: The Playlist That’s Helping Spotify Win The Streaming Music Battle – Vocativ

Digital Music Rights, Metadata and the Blockchain

Blockchain is finding its way into a huge variety of industries. Plans and research from finance to postal delivery are considering the benefits of blockchain to improve operational efficiency and enhance security, and the latest industry to explore the concept is the music industry.

At a meeting of entrepreneurs, blockchain advocates and music industry experts at a Berlin Music Festival, will look to discuss ideas relating to metadata and the identification of rights for individual tracks and how blockchain can improve the current, less than efficient situation.

Source: Digital Music Rights, Metadata and the Blockchain

Kraftwerk loses hip-hop music-sampling copyright case 

After a decades-long battle, the Bundesverfassungsgericht (the supreme German Constitutional Court) has overturned a ban on a song that used a two-second sample of a Kraftwerk recording. In 1997, music producer Moses Pelham used a clip from 1977 release Metall auf Metall (Metal on Metal) in the song Nur mir (Only Mine) performed by Sabrina Setlur.

Pelham successfully argued that sampling is common practice in the hip hop genre and that in some cases “artistic freedom overrides the interest of the owner of the copyright.” The court agreed that imposing arbitrary royalty fees on composers could stifle creativity and that sampling should be permitted if it does not constitute direct competition to the sampled work, and does not damage the rightsholders financially.

Source: Kraftwerk loses hip-hop music-sampling copyright case | Ars Technica

Embracing Virtual Reality Could Enable Streaming Services To Finally Move Forward 

A few days ago, streaming service Rhapsody announced it was launching a VR app, with the initial content consisting mostly of performances shot at SXSW. The quality of the performances is fairly solid, and while the requirement that all videos be downloaded before being played means that live-streaming shows in the app is still not possible, it’s certainly a pleasant diversion and value add to be able to watch some shows and see what new artists might be like live.

But while this venture feels like a fun experiment, it also leads to much bigger questions — namely, is embracing VR the future of music streaming services? And if services get into the VR game, what does that mean for artists who planned on building and monetizing their own VR content?

Source: Embracing Virtual Reality Could Enable Streaming Services To Finally Move Forward [Cortney Harding] – hypebot

Open access should be the norm for EU by 2020, say research ministers 

EU research ministers have published a commitment to make “open access to scientific publications as the option by default by 2020.” The decision was taken during a meeting of the Competitiveness Council, which is made up of ministers from the EU’s member states. In addition, ministers agreed “to the best possible reuse of research data as a way to accelerate the transition towards an open science system.”

The formal “conclusions” of the meeting define open access to publications as “free availability on the public Internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers.”

Source: Open access should be the norm for EU by 2020, say research ministers | Ars Technica

Sen. Leahy: FCC Must Clarify Set-Top Proposal

Count Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, among the fans of the FCC’s set-top box proposal but only if it protects MVPD content and contracts.

Leahy sent a letter to Wheeler this week (there were no co-signers), saying he supported the need for competition, though he characterized the proposal as “beginning a discussion of how best to [spur meaningful set-top competition] in today’s environment.”

Source: Sen. Leahy: FCC Must Clarify Set-Top Proposal | Broadcasting & Cable

Spanish Police Seize 6 Bitcoin Mines in Crackdown on Stolen TV Content 

An investigation by Spanish authorities into the illegal distribution of paid television content has resulted in the seizure and destruction of six bitcoin mines used to launder proceeds from the alleged scheme.

European law enforcement agency Europol, which took part in the investigation, said today that 30 individuals had been arrested during an operation on 18th May. Thirty-eight homes across seven Spanish cities, including Madrid, were searched during the event, according to the agency.

Source: Spanish Police Seize 6 Bitcoin Mines in Crackdown on Stolen TV Content – CoinDesk

Blockchain Entrepreneurs, Musicians Test Ideas at Berlin Music Festival

A group of musicians, entrepreneurs and blockchain advocates is set to gather at a festival in Germany later this week with the aim of testing how the technology can change the music industry.

The Music Tech Fest Berlin is set to be held from 27th to 30th May. During this time, the MTFLabs: Blockchain initiative will bring together participants including Grammy Award winner Imogen Heap, who has been advocating for blockchain applications in the music industry since last year.

Source: Blockchain Entrepreneurs, Musicians Test Ideas at Berlin Music Festival – CoinDesk

Macmillan Buys Self-Publishing Platform Pronoun

ebook_buttonPronoun offered its suite of publishing services to authors at no cost, giving them a 100% royalty on their e-book sales. From the beginning, Brody has positioned Pronoun as an entrepreneurial platform aimed at empowering individual authors with a variety of digital tools and data on e-book sales and the book marketplace.

Brody said that Pronoun’s platform will continue to be offered for free to individual authors and that the service will also continue to “pay royalties on Pronoun’s existing payment schedule.” Pronoun authors will also retain, Brody said, “creative and financial control” of the books they publish through the platform.

Source: Macmillan Buys Self-Publishing Platform Pronoun

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