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Prince, a Master of Playing Music and Distributing It 

20160422prince-mobile-slide-igd4-jumboPrince, who was found dead on Thursday at 57, understood how technology spread ideas better than almost anyone else in popular music. And so he became something of a hacker, upending the systems that predated him and fighting mightily to pioneer new ones. Sometimes he hated technology; sometimes he loved it. But more than that, at his best Prince was technology, a musician who realized that making music was not his only responsibility, that his innovation had to extend to representation, distribution, transmission and pure system invention.

Many advances in music and technology over the last three decades — particularly in the realm of distribution — were tried early, and often first, by Prince. He released a CD-ROM in 1994, Prince Interactive, which featured unreleased music and a gamelike adventure at his Paisley Park Studios. In 1997, he made the multidisc set “Crystal Ball” available for sale online and through an 800 number (though there were fulfillment issues later). In 2001, he began a monthly online subscription service, the NPG Music Club, that lasted five years.

Source: The New York Times

RightsTrade Enters Spanish Market Through AssetMedia

The US maRT-2rketplace for film, television and digital media rights licensing, RightsTrade has signed an alliance with AssetMedia to develop its business in Spain.

For now, the RightsTrade online platform will be represented by AssetMedia in a bid to create business with content owners, distributors, sales companies and content buyers in the country. From the start, the service will manage around 1,000 titles for cinema and TV within the Spanish market.

Source: Rapid TV News

Inside Sony Music’s New Royalty-Tracking Portal

Sony Music Entertainment is rolling out a sophisticated online portal to its artists and their managers that will allow them to drill down and analyze each artist’s sales and streaming activity and royalties.

Sony has built on an existing portal dubbed eLink, launched in 2010. The new portal provides a tool that helps its artists and their business teams handle the overwhelming amount of information that comes with the dramatic growth in “micro-transactions” generated by streaming as well as new fractional licensing technologies like the one recently deployed by SoundCloud.

Recalling their early touring days, major label artists’ statements used to require a church van to move them.

Source: Billboard

‘The Music Industry Needs More Innovators and Fewer Lawyers’

Records lying on floor by 1970?s stereo systemNinety-nine percent of the data in existence was created within the past two years.

Yet, more than 99% of recorded music was created before the past two years. Recorded music was largely an analog phenomenon until the ’90s and the digital era.

The institutions that sprung up around the music – to record, distribute and monetize, even to secure copyrights and administer royalties – were all created as analog institutions, not forced to compete, or even exist, in a digital world until very recently.

The bulk of the data meant to help collect revenue for music rights holders is not ready for the digital world. Much of this metadata is incomplete. It is often in conflict with other data sources and does not form a complete picture of the recording it’s meant to describe.

Source: Music Business Worldwide

David Lowery Legal Team Files Motion Addressing Spotify’s Forthcoming Publishing Settlement

Attorneys representing David Lowery in his lawsuit against Spotify want to know what the music streaming service has been telling songwriters. In a motion filed this week in the Central District Court of California, Lowery and the other three plaintiffs have asked the judge for “corrective action to prevent misrepresentations to putative class members” in pitches to songwriters by Spotify and the National Music Publishers’ Association related to their settlement agreement.’

The new filing comes down to the plaintiffs’ lack of access to settlement agreement between Spotify and the NMPA. Lowery’s attorneys state that their requests to see the reported agreement have been rebuffed, leading to concerns the eventual class members are being given false statements about their litigation rights.

They believe the court has “both the authority and the duty to review and impose reasonable restrictions” on communications with potential class members to prevent Spotify from making misleading or inaccurate statements that would inform the songwriters about the nature of the litigation and their options for protecting their rights.

Source: Billboard

European Commission Unveils Details on Digital Single Market

The European Commission (EC) has proposed over €50 billion ($56 billion) in investments as part of its strategy to create a Digital Single Market.

Included among the cross-industry initiatives are plans to coordinate national and regional strategies on digitising industry across the European Union’s 28 member countries. The EC will also set out to speed up the development of 5G communication networks and cybersecurity throughout the continent, as well as invest €500 million ($570 million) in a pan-European network of digital innovation hubs, supporting business technology needs.

Source: Billboard

Alibaba Releases Planet, a First-Of-Its-Kind, All-In-One Music App

Alibaba, the Chinese digital commerce giant with a market capitalization of $198.76 billion as of this writing (putting it just behind Visa and just ahead of Chevron, worldwide), has announced the launch of Alibaba Planet, a new music-focused platform the company says will facilitate fan-to-artist relations — and vice-versa.

The first “tier” of the new platform allows fans to buy merchandise, watch live streams of performances and stream music; things previously made possible on competing platforms like Spotify through its deal with Bandpage — at least, before its recent acquisition by YouTube. The company says it has licensing agreements with BMG and Universal Music Group. It makes no mention of either Warner Music Group or Sony Music.

Source: Billboard

RightsTech Summit set for New York City on July 26

rightstechlogo2On July 26 Digital Media Wire and Concurrent Media Strategies will hold the inaugural RightsTech Summit at the Japan Society in New York City, a 1-day executive leadership conference that brings together cross-industry leaders focused on furthering technology innovation around rights management and licensing across multiple media verticals.

One of the goals of the event is the establishment of industry best practices for the rapidly evolving RightsTech ecosystem.

Issues and discussion groups at the inaugural RightsTech Summit include:

  • Machine Readable Rights
  • Smart Contracts
  • Shared Responsibilities
  • Blockchain and Big Data
  • RightsTech in the Enterprise
  • RightsTech and Direct-to-Consumer Distribution
  • RightsTech and Piracy
  • Attribution and Provenance

For registration information and complete details please visit RightsTechSummit.com.

Email us at [email protected]

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RightsTech Summit

July 26, 2016

Japan Society

333 East 47th Street

New York, NY 10017

SoundCloud and Sony/ATV Announce Licensing Deal in Europe

SoundCloud, the user-driven streaming platform which recently announced a paid tier of its service, and Sony/ATV, the world’s largest music publishing company by market share, have announced a “multi-territory agreement for Europe” around the publisher’s vast catalog.

The deal will allow Sony/ATV’s catalog to generate money for its songwriters via SoundCloud’s bleeding-edge identification technology.

“These deals for the US and Europe create the best opportunity for Sony/ATV and its songwriters to maximize the creative and revenue benefits of SoundCloud’s multi-territory business,” wrote Sony/ATV CEO Martin Bandier in a statement on the news.

Source: Billboard

How Close Are Smart Contracts to Impacting Real-World Law?

Over the last year, the concept of a “smart contract” has received renewed attention in legal and business circles.

Advancements in blockchain technology have led some to believe that smart contracts could soon offer alternatives to traditional commercial and financial agreements, with dire results for the legal and financial sectors.

While this enthusiasm may be premature, the legal profession nonetheless remains mostly unaware of this important emerging technology and the long-term implications for their profession.In this context, “smart contract” refers specifically to the use of computer code to articulate, verify and execute an agreement between parties. Whereas a typical contract is drafted using natural language, the terms of smart contracts are expressed in code, similar to a programming language like javascript or HTML.

Source: CoinDesk

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