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Yooya Exceeds 4 Billion Lifetime Views

May 10, 2016By rightstech

Onli Yooya ne video network Yooya announced that it has now achieved over four billion lifetime views, with more than 2.75 billion added in the last seven months. The combination of an increasing number of distribution partners and a growing stream of compelling new content on the platform drove this astounding 25% month-on-month growth.

Yooya has been instrumental in helping content producers monetize China’s fragmented online video market by providing a single platform for content distribution, rights management, and advertising solutions. Yooya brings together many key components essential to the equation, including licensing at scale, automated ad sales, consolidated data & analytics, and dramatically simplified content distribution.

Source: Mi2N.com – Yooya Exceeds 4 Billion Lifetime Views

Universal Music Group Hires Jonathan Dworkin Away from MixRadio to Help Lead Digital Strategy

May 10, 2016By rightstech

Universal Music Group today adds a 20-plus-year industry veteran to its digital team, announcing that Jonathan Dworkin will join the company as its new senior vice president of digital strategy and business development. Dworkin, most recently the Chief Marketing Officer at MixRadio, will start in his new position May 16.

The hire is the latest move in the restructuring of UMG’s digital department since the surprise departure of its president of digital Rob Wells in February 2015. Dworkin, who held a similar role at Warner Music Group prior to his tenure at MixRadio, will report to UMG’s executive vice president of digital strategy Michael Nash, another former WMG exec who joined in late 2015.

Source: Universal Music Group Hires Jonathan Dworkin Away from MixRadio to Help Lead Digital Strategy | Billboard

Evolution Of A Digital Broadcasting Giant: Pandora

May 10, 2016By rightstech

Pandora_app Since the CRB has raised the per-stream rate, it has made it harder for Pandora to survive. Scaling for Pandora was anyway a double-edged sword, always requiring higher payments to rights holders. Initially, those right holders had agreed on easier rates to allow growth and, back then, the establishment of Pandora. But Internet radio is now well developed, and the majors are not as easy going. The collective licensing agreement with SoundExchange is practical for Pandora though unpalatable, and unless Pandora can offer other services for a discount, such as the promotion of new releases, little will change.

It is in this context that Pandora has revamped its Artist Marketing Platform to support a direct-to-fan business.11 Its AMPcast feature now allows artists to target their Pandora fans by sending them audio messages about local concert dates, album releases, and other ‘behind the scenes’ content. AMPcast also provides links for the purchase of both albums and concert tickets. This new tool could be a market changer, for it would make the online radio provider not just a distributor of recorded music but an active player in the live music space.

Source: Evolution Of A Digital Broadcasting Giant: Pandora – hypebot

Kobalt’s AMRA increases YouTube publishing payouts by 34% in EU

May 10, 2016By rightstech

During the first three months of administering Kobalt’s digital catalogue in Europe – in Q3 2015 and compared to the previous quarter – AMRA delivered a 26% increase in earnings from Spotify and a 34% increase in earnings from YouTube for Kobalt Music Publishing clients.

Combined, AMRA collected 28% more money from Spotify and YouTube in Europe during the period.

Source: Kobalt’s AMRA increases YouTube publishing payouts by 34% in EU – Music Business Worldwide

Looking To Integrate Blockchain Into Your Business? Here’s How

May 10, 2016By rightstech

Companies in financial services, healthcare, energy and other industries are sprinting to begin adopting blockchain — the technology behind Bitcoin that promises to improve efficiency in numerous processes, plus create new business opportunities. But many are doing so simply because of fear of missing out, without a clear understanding of how it can be useful and when it should be applied.

As executives scramble to educate themselves while also leading their companies into what many acknowledge will be a blockchain future, one place to start could be “The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and the Application of the Next Internet Technology,” (Wiley, April 26, 2016) by William Mougayar, a venture capitalist at Virtual Capital Ventures and advisor to some of the more well-known blockchain organizations such as the Ethereum Foundation, which supports the development of a Bitcoin competitor, and peer-to-peer marketplace OpenBazaar.

Source: Looking To Integrate Blockchain Into Your Business? Here’s How – Forbes

Central music rights database would benefit songwriters

May 6, 2016By rightstech

Tim DuBois Today – in America and globally – the multi-billion-dollar music industry is mired in a Rubik’s Cube of rights administration and royalty payment systems. The current massive multiplayer infrastructure does not serve songwriters, record companies, digital services or consumers.

But what if Congress could ensure that music creators are paid more without increasing music users’ royalty costs? Imagine infringement risks reduced without diminishing creators’ rights. We – an award-winning songwriter and a longtime digital music advocate – believe these benefits are possible, and even probable, if music ownership data is effectively and efficiently collected, validated and utilized by industry stakeholders.

Source: Central music rights database would benefit songwriters

Ticket to Stream

May 6, 2016By rightstech

One of the business challenges that has held back the direct-to-consumer streaming of ticketed events — whether live concerts, Broadway shows, or first-run movies — has been the lack of an effective ticketing mechanism for over-the-top video. As there was no way to know how many people might be gathered around a particular screen rights owners and event producers had little choice but to charge an arbitrary price for the stream, usually high enough to account for the possibility of multiple viewers but at the cost of turning off people viewing alone or perhaps with only one other person.

Sean Parker’s Screening Room, for instance, plans to charge a flat $50 per movie for in-home access to first-run films, which research shows could limit the market for the service.

In-home ticketing may be poised to have its moment, however, due to some recent technological advances.

Source: Ticket to Stream | Concurrent Media

Commission’s digital single market turns one and has a big seven months ahead

May 6, 2016By rightstech

Under its digital single market plans, the European Commission has so far proposed a crowd-pleasing new law to allow people to use digital content subscriptions like Netflix when they travel to other EU countries. The executive also came out with proposals to reform online contracts and open the 700 MHz spectrum band for mobile internet and outlined non-legislative measures to make industrial manufacturing more digital.

Paul Meller, spokesman for tech industry association DigitalEurope, said the digital single market plans are “far more ambitious than any previous Commission efforts in this area”.

But there could be dramatic twists ahead: the executive’s announcements, still planned for later this year, are some of the most controversial ones in the strategy.

Source: Commission’s digital single market turns one and has a big seven months ahead – EurActiv.com

PRS for Music chief talks financials, blockchain and YouTube

May 6, 2016By rightstech

Robert-Ashcroft-150x150 Ashcroft was keen to talk up the significance of PRS for Music’s investments in back-end technology, from its core systems in the UK to its European joint venture with German and Swedish peers GEMA and STIM. PRS says the number of music ‘uses’ it processed rose from 975bn in 2014 to over 2tn (trillion) in 2015 – a reflection of the deluge of streaming data.

“These are highly-specialised systems. No other business has to store copyright data on the scale that we do, and then the matching of sound recordings reported to us by the DSPs with the songwriters that wrote them,” said Ashcroft.

Source: PRS for Music chief talks financials, blockchain and YouTube