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From Modeling To Measuring: A Blockchain Solution For Music At Political Events 

Certainly, music being played at arenas – particularly pre-recorded music – could easily be measured, rather than still being modeled. For example, a Shazam-like listening device could be deployed to capture which songs are being played in real time.

In this manner, artists would know precisely when and in what context their music is being used. This would not only allow for artists to have better information, but for venues too to be able to have a better sense of the precise cost related to their music use.

Source: From Modeling To Measuring: A Blockchain Solution For Music At Political Events – Forbes

Apple’s iPhone Sales Drop Again, but Services Are a Bright Spot 

The introduction of the 4-inch iPhone SE earlier this year appeared to hurt revenue and profits as some customers bought that device instead of Apple’s bigger, more expensive models.

“Apple is moving from only iPhones matter to iPhones and services matter,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst with Macquarie Securities, who estimated that nearly one-third of the company’s quarterly profits came from services like App Store purchases, Apple Music subscriptions and the iCloud storage business. Revenue in the segment rose 19 percent to $6 billion.

Source: Apple’s iPhone Sales Drop Again, but Services Are a Bright Spot – The New York Times

Warner Music Group Partners With Streaming Video Platform Vadio 

Warner Music Group and b2b music video platform Vadio announced a content agreement on Wednesday that will give Vadio’s partners easy access to WMG’s trove of artist videos. This marks the first major label partner for the Portland, Ore.-based company, whose network of partners spans 80-plus streaming video channels, including Radio.com, Vizio and MetroLyrics.

Vadio’s curation platform, ChannelMaker, allows its clients to curate music video channels from a library of videos. Ron Wilcox, WMG’s executive counsel of business affairs, strategic and digital initiatives, said in a statement that “Vadio’s extensive distribution network of video channels expands the potential for Warner Music artists to connect with new fans, while creating new revenue streams on our artists’ behalf.”

Source: Warner Music Group Partners With Streaming Video Platform Vadio | Billboard

Bitcoin ‘not real money’ says Miami judge in closely watched ruling 

A Miami court judge has sent ripples through the cryptocurrency community in a ruling in which she said bitcoin was not real money.

Defendant Michel Espinoza was on trial for illegally transmitting and laundering $1,500 worth of bitcoins to undercover agents who intended to use them to purchase stolen credit cards. His attorney argued that the charges should be dismissed because, under Florida state law, the cyber-currency could not be considered money. After extended deliberation, Judge Teresa Mary Pooler agreed in a ruling issued on Monday.

Source: Bitcoin ‘not real money’ says Miami judge in closely watched ruling | Technology | The Guardian

A quick reminder of the power of the tech biz vs the music biz 

All together, our generous valuations of the entire major music rights industry – including both recorded and publishing catalogues – comes to $27bn.

If you had ownership of the kitty Softbank used to buy ARM, that would leave you a measly $5bn in change to pick up as much of the independent sector as you could muster. Which would be nigh on all of it. In other words, the amount Softbank just paid for ARM would, by and large, buy you the entire history of music rights. Just like that.

Source: A quick reminder of the power of the tech biz vs the music biz – Music Business Worldwide

Tech Giants Boast an Edge in Music Streaming 

Because streaming music advances their other ambitions, Apple Music, Amazon, Alphabet’s Google and YouTube units, don’t need their services to be hugely profitable, though none of them are selling subscriptions at prices that suggest a willingness to lose money. That gives the tech companies a major advantage over smaller companies like Pandora Media Inc., Spotify AB and French counterpart Deezer, whose main businesses are music streaming.

“I think that any company that has some other motive [for offering streaming] is going to win,” said Paul Young, a music-business professor at the USC Thornton School of Music. That is at least partly because the music-only companies are burdened by heavy costs. The paid services typically spend 70% of their revenue on licensing music and much of the rest on acquiring customers.

Source: Tech Giants Boast an Edge in Music Streaming – WSJ

Broadcasters Back DOJ Plan To Leave ASCAP, BMI Consent Decrees Unchanged

The Radio Music Licensing Committee  (RMLC) commented today (7/22), writing, “The Department of Justice, after lengthy and thorough review, decides that ASCAP and BMI consent decrees should not be altered, as they continue to serve as a vital check against ASCAP’s and BMI’s anticompetitive market power.”

While the DOJ decision isn’t official — yet — THE RMLC noted, “after years of investigation into possible additional modifications to the decrees, the Division concluded that the decrees are not outdated, because the threat posed by ASCAP’s and BMI’s aggregated market power is as real today as it ever was. The Division agreed with licensees that ASCAP and BMI continue to wield sufficient market power requiring the continued application of the consent decrees and oversight of the Department of Justice.”

Source: Broadcasters Support Anticipated Government Conclusions In Antitrust Review Of ASCAP …

What does Spotify’s decision to share user data mean? 

A recent Spotify ad campaign plays on how well the digital music-streaming company knows its users’ tastes. The ads, found plastering New York City subways, showcase Tweets where listeners extoll how a Spotify playlist knows them well – “like former-lover-who-lived-through-a-near-death experience-with-me well.”

But Spotify will no longer just use this intimate knowledge of a user’s musical palate to generate personalized playlists. It’s now using that information as a powerful leveraging tool for advertiser dollars: Spotify announced this week that it is opening up user data collected from its 70 million free subscribers for programmatic, automated advertising.

Source: What does Spotify’s decision to share user data mean? – CSMonitor.com

An End To 4 Minute Music Videos: How The Music Industry Can Fix Its Their YouTube Woes

The artist-and-labels-versus-YouTube crisis is going to run and run, even if some form of settlement is actually reached…the divisions and ill feeling run too deep to be fixed solely by a commercial deal. What’s more, a deal with better rates won’t even fix the underlying commercial problems.

Music videos under perform on YouTube because they don’t fit YouTube in 2016 in the way they did YouTube in 2010. The 4 minute pop video was a product of the MTV broadcast era and still worked well enough when online video was all about short clips. But the world has moved on, as has short form video (in its new homes Snapchat, Musical.ly and Vine).

Source: An End To 4 Minute Music Videos: How Record Labels And Artists Can Fix Their YouTube Woes – hypebot

This Kobalt-managed fund has spent $200m on music rights in 5 years

Kobalt Music Group, the company that’s relentlessly disrupted the music industry since launching at the turn of the Millennium, is still very much based on the principle that its clients – across publishing, label services and neighbouring rights – get to retain their own copyrights.

“Kobalt’s mission has always been to take the music industry into the digital age as a service provider to rights-owners,” Kobalt CEO Ahdritz (pictured) tells MBW. “That’s what we are and what we always have been.”

Source: This Kobalt-managed fund has spent $200m on music rights in 5 years – Music Business Worldwide

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