An awareness is dawning in the industry that blockchain—the technology behind (really, interwoven with) BitCoin—is the main story. BitCoin is almost a distraction, a sideshow to the real deal. Most people have heard of BitCoin, the “cryptocurrency.” In simple terms, BitCoin is value that resides in computer networks. It seems to be mysteriously reliable, partly because it is verified by multiple parties.
Source: Techonomy
Dubset Media Holdings has announced a partnership that will allow Apple Music to stream remixes and DJ mixes that had previous been absent from licensed services due to copyright issues.
Thousands upon thousands cool mash-ups and hour-long mixes have effectively been pulled out of the underground and placed onto the world’s second-largest music subscription service. Dubset is a digital distributor that delivers content to digital music services. But unlike other digital distributors, Dubset will use a proprietary technology called MixBank to analyze a remix or long-form DJ mix file, identify recordings inside the file, and properly pay both record labels and music publishers.
Source: Billboard
Advertising is 
big business and as increasing activity moves online, so too do the marketing dollars. While 2015 saw an estimated $170.5 billion (bn) spent on online advertising globally, this figure is projected to mushroom almost 50% by 2018 to $252bn. But can anyone apart from the big guys snap up a slice of this lucrative business and leverage the Internet of Things to achieve it?
Until recently only the big players were able to get into it. Software though has made it possible for some webmasters to serve adverts and generate revenues based on their own traffic. Yet profiting from the advertising sector more broadly was a complex undertaking out of reach to the ordinary punter and investor.
Now to solve the problem, a group of future tech innovators from Denmark and the US have used the power of ‘peer-to-peer’ platforms to throw the doors open to everyone. Effectively they are offering anyone who wants it a piece of a pie that isn’t getting smaller any time soon.
Source: Forbes
2016 is proving to be
tricky year for streaming rights. No sooner did it start to look like artists and labels were beginning to feel comfortable with streaming then along come a veritable flood of songwriter class action suits in the US, against TIDAL, Rhapsody and Spotify, twice.
At the heart of the legal action is the issue of streaming services not paying mechanical rights to songwriters because they have not identified and / or not been able to identify, all of the the songwriters.
The streaming services counter that they a) have been adhering to the rules as they stand and b) that it is difficult / impossible for them to track everything. It is a complex issue that may even have some of its underlying assumptions turned upside down (in favour of streaming services). For a good introduction to the issues see this balanced MusicAlly piece. Whatever the legal intricacies though, there is a crucial underling issue: bad data.
Or, to be more precise, a complete lack of data.
International music licensing is highly complex and anyone who tries to tell you differently is either wrong or lying. That is not to suggest for a moment that music services should somehow not have an obligation to invest time, effort and resource into licensing music, far from it. But it does mean that the current system is not fit for purpose.
Source: MIDiA Research
The music industry is about to change.
Everyone knows it.
Applied blockchain cryptography and new virtual reality systems are about to change digital entertainment more radically than what portable digital music players and streaming content platforms have in the last 20 years. I’ve been involved in the tech industry since the late 90’s.
I saw, participated in, and profited from the tech bubble of the first decade of this century, mostly as a developer. I’ve been involved with Bitcoin and blockchain development since 2013. I have been on the vanguard of the disruption as it rippled through the financial sector, and for the last two years I’ve been working with various entities within the music industry to educate and prepare them for the coming of blockchain cryptography.
From the sum total of those experiences, I think there’s three things of which the music industry should take note on the eve of its own disruption
Source: ZapChain
While m
ost of the discussions around blockchain have focused on its potential use in finance, startup Blockai is looking at something different — helping artists, photographers and other creators register their work so that they can protect it from potential copyright infringement.
CEO Nathan Lands is pitching this as an intermediate step between registering your work with the Library of Congress and doing nothing. Technically, your work is copyrighted as soon as you create the novel, drawing or whatever. However, registration is required if you want to sue someone for infringement.
Source: TechCrunch
Streaming services say that they can’t identify or find some songwriters in order to pay them.
That may be true — although Lowery can be found easily enough online — but the Copyright Act requires streaming services to get a mechanical license before they use a song. Indeed, in the event that Lowery’s case goes to trial, Spotify’s decision to set aside money for future royalty payments could potentially demonstrate either that the company has been acting in good faith or that it knew it did not have mechanical licenses for at least some of the songs it was streaming.
“The law is pretty black and white,” says Donald Passman, a veteran music business lawyer and the author of All You Need to Know About the Music Business. “If you’re using someone’s songs, you have to pay them.”
Rather than argue these cases in court, streaming services will probably try to prevent classes from being certified — Spotify already filed a motion to dismiss Lowery’s case on jurisdictional grounds. The high cost of federal litigation would make it impractical for the vast majority of songwriters to pursue legal action on their own.
Source: Billboard
Songtradr made its debut this week, a consumer-friendly B2B platform that simplifies what’s complicated about music ownership and rights.
The Songtradr team’s ambitious goal is nothing less than to redefine the value of music. It’s a one-stop shop for managing, licensing and selling music, simple and affordable enough for anyone to use.
“We see ourselves as connecting the fragmented world of music rights in one place,” explains Songtradr CEO, Paul Wiltshire. His company facilitates deals, matching songs with films, TV, video games, advertisers, YouTubers and others. Using Songtradr, composers and artists collaborate and then find buyers, publishers and labels—all of whom can use Songtradr’s free content management system to organize extensive inventory. It’s a marketplace where music assets are stored, discovered, curated, and monetized.
Unique features include Songtradr’s extraordinary variable pricing calculator, which helps rights holders determine market rate price points based on media usage, budget, term and territory. And for those looking for a personal touch, Songtradr’s matchmakers curate music for carefully targeted audiences.
Founded in 2014, Fluent is a blockchain-based financial network and payment platform startup aimed at providing a frictionless operating network for large enterprises and their global supply chains. The company unveiled their enterprise software platform today, the Fluent Network, which enables real-time, low-cost, simple and secure invoicing and payments along global supply chains via blockchain technology for banks, financial institutions, and global enterprises.
Source: Brave New Coin
Vid
eo licensing platform Rumble announced today that it will make its entire portfolio of social and viral videos available for license by Getty Images’ global customer base, making it the largest source of social video for Getty.
Rumble’s network of 18,000 video creators upload their videos to its platform via the web or iOS and Android apps, which then automatically post them to social sites including YouTube and Facebook. Videos can also be distributed to over 200 Rumble partner sites, including outlets such as Reuters, Yahoo and NBC. In 2015, Rumble creators generated over 74 million views on Rumble.com and 1 billion views across all platforms.
Source: VideoInk