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Bandcamp Grew 35% Last Year, Monthly Transactions Top $4.3M 

Thbandcamp_logoe indie music community has embraced Bandcamp and its suite of direct to fan monetization tools. And unlike most music tech startups, Bandcamp, which launched in 2008, has been profitable “in the now-quaint revenues-exceed-expenses sense” since 2012.

Nearly 6 million fans have bought music from hundreds of thousands of artists through Bandcamp. Have of those fans are under 30, according to the company.  That’s signification at a time when consumption by younger music lovers is supposedly dominated by streaming.

Source: Bandcamp Grew 35% Last Year, Monthly Transactions Top $4.3M – hypebot

Bitcoin exchange Coinbase to add ether currency to trading platform | Reuters

The addition of ether comes given the surge in interest in the digital asset among major financial institutions such as Barclays and UBS as well as other enterprises worldwide like IBM, which are trying to explore the Ethereum network.

Ether is the digital currency for the Ethereum platform, a blockchain, or public ledger that can create decentralized applications. Ethereum, which uses ether to execute peer-to-peer contracts automatically without the need for intermediaries, was co-founded and invented by 22-year old Russian Canadian programer Vitalik Buterin.

Source: Bitcoin exchange Coinbase to add ether currency to trading platform | Reuters

Kobalt: New app is a ‘giant step’ towards transparency for songwriters 

Kobalt has today launched a new app for publishing clients which allows them to view their income in real time, broken down by individual works, type of rights or country. The launch translates Kobalt’s celebrated online portal to a mobile-friendly format, launching on iOS with an Android version set to arrive in the near future.

Kobalt founder and CEO Willard Ahdritz calls the new tech a “giant step” towards “the same transparent, on-demand access to their data that most other industries already have”.

Source: Kobalt: New app is a ‘giant step’ towards transparency for songwriters – Music Business Worldwide

Dubset signs deal for indie publisher rights with NMPA

Independent publisher and songwriter members of the National Music Publishers’ Association can now sign up to be paid royalties each time their compositions are used in mix content that’s distributed to digital music services by Dubset. The new deal is the result of a rights agreement between Dubset Media Holdings and the NMPA.

NMPA members who opt-in to the agreement will have access to Dubset’s MixBANK platform where they can set terms and rules around how and where their catalogue may be used in mix content.

Source: Dubset signs deal for indie publisher rights with NMPA – Music Business Worldwide

Rightscorp Revenue Plummets, Has ‘Substantial Doubts’ About Its Future

Anti-piracy firm Rightscorp is questioning its own viability after releasing some dismal first-quarter financial results. The company, which monitors and targets repeated copyright infringers with extralegal payment notices, reported an operating loss of $784,180 during the three months ended March 31, a slight improvement from the $930,000 loss a year earlier. Rightscorp only generated revenues of $68,283, a 78 percent drop from 2015 Q1’s $307,904, and its services accrued only $49,142 due to copyright holders — a third of the $153,952 gathered during the first three months of 2015.

“These and other factors raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” the company said in its 10-Q report, which later listed possible reasons for the sharp drop in revenue. “Management believes that the decrease in revenues was due to: a) changes in the filesharing software intended to defeat detection of copyrights being illegally distributed, b) less forwarding of the Company’s notices by ISPs and c) the shutting down of some filesharing network infrastructure.”

Source: Rightscorp Revenue Plummets, Has ‘Substantial Doubts’ About Its Future | Billboard

Apache Foundation Founder Named Hyperledger Executive Director

There’s a new man in charge of the Hyperledger Project, a group of more that 30 companies working together to build an open standard for distributed ledgers across industries.

Announced today, the founder of of the Apache Software Foundation, Brian Behlendorf, joins the open-source project as its first executive director and a batch of new companies joined.

Source: Apache Foundation Founder Named Hyperledger Executive Director – CoinDesk

Medianet, SOCAN, YouTube And The Kobalt Effect 

Sinscreen-shot-2016-03-22-at-16-56-17ce the demise of the long-running-but-never-launched Global Repertoire Database (GRD) there has been a lot of debate over what comes next for digital rights reporting. The songwriter class action suits in the US against Spotify are the natural outcome of more than one and a half decades of failing to deal with the forsaken mess that is compositional rights in the digital era.

The music industry needs a solution and now just like busses that never come, two arrive at once: Google’s Open Source Validation Tool for DDEX Standard (doesn’t sound too sexy I know, but bear with me on this one) and Canadian PRO (Performing Rights Organization) SOCAN has acquired Medianet essentially as a digital rights reporting play. So just what is going on in the world of digital rights reporting?

Source: Medianet, SOCAN, YouTube And The Kobalt Effect | Music Industry Blog

Vermont is Close to Passing a Law That Would Make Blockchain Records Admissible in Court 

A legislative effort in the state of Vermont to recognize blockchain data in the court system is inching closer to completion, and only needs a governor’s signature to become enshrined in law.

Buried inside an economic development bill recently passed by both the Vermont House and Senate is legislative language that, if approved, would make it so that “a fact or record” verified through blockchain technology is “authentic”.

Put more simply, a document notarized using a network like the bitcoin blockchain will have more legal bearing in court. This use case has emerged as one of the more notable applications of the technology, being used to certify physical objects like artworks, precious stones and even high-value footwear.

Source: Vermont is Close to Passing a Law That Would Make Blockchain Records Admissible in Court – CoinDesk

Revelator launches playlist analytics app 

Revelator_logoRevelator has developed a data management platform, with a dashboard to monitor individual or multiple tracks and artist playlist performance over time and across countries and cities.

The new Playlist Analytics function is available on Revelator’s web interface and is designed to track playlist activity on both Spotify and Apple Music, with other digital music services to follow.

“We are delighted to deliver another first to market with our Playlist Analytics offering, and honoured to be among the twenty finalists at this year’s MidemLab,” said Bruno Guez, Founder and CEO of Revelator. “Playlists are without doubt an essential marketing tool for rightsholders and successful playlist performance has become one of the key influencers of a track’s chart position and revenue-earning potential.”

Source: Revelator launches playlist analytics app | Music Week

Startup Touts Blockchain Exchange That’s as Simple as E-Mail

screen-shot-2016-04-14-at-3-50-59-am-1200x921Virtual-currency trading startup ANX International is opening up its know-how so that people can issue their own digital assets using blockchain, the underlying technology behind bitcoin, the digital money that has become a popular method of paying for goods and services and trading over the Internet.

.ANX says its new service lets anyone make a blockchain account in minutes and choose how many digital assets to create. Ken Lo, ANX’s chief executive officer, said the technology for issuing blockchain-based assets has been in development for the past three years. It has been used internally for some of ANX’s biggest clients, he said, including an e-commerce company that wanted to run a loyalty program. By doing so, companies are able to set up reward programs without complicated back-office processes and reduce the risk of fraud.

Source: Startup Touts Blockchain Exchange That’s as Simple as E-Mail – Bloomberg

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