As artists, record labels, music publishers and managers line up to lobby the US Congress and the European Union, it might seem as if YouTube is the worst thing to happen to the music business since Napster in 1999. The streaming service, the aggrieved parties claim, is causing a massive “value gap” that is unsustainable.
Meanwhile, every major artist has a channel on YouTube and wouldn’t dream of releasing a new record without YouTube involved in its launch.
Despite reliable sources telling Billboard that the Dept. of Justice’s (DoJ) ruling expanding the power of the consent decree is a done deal — with a written statement detailing its decision is expected sometime this summer — the head of that agency, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, testified before Congress last week, on July 12, that the DoJ’s review isn’t complete and that a decision has not yet been reached.
“My understanding is that the review is not complete… and the decision hasn’t been made and the discussion is still ongoing,” Lynch said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
The exponential rate at which Steem grows may put on fast track a solution to the scaling issue that the Bitcoin community faces.
Steem is a digital currency behind Steemit, a decentralized social media platform which rewards posters and voters online. Scaling Bitcoin has become a hot button issue in the community. This is the process to increase block size from its current form in which the network can only support up to seven transactions per second to process more like Paypal achieves with about 100 transactions per second, and as Visa does with about 4,000 per second.
Source: Steemit May Become Killer App As It Looks to Draw 1 Mln Bitcoin Users Yearly
Apple has submitted a preliminary proposal to the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board to simplify the way music-streaming companies pay songwriters and publishers — in a way that could make it more expensive for rivals like Spotify and YouTube to keep offering free streaming.
Right now, streaming companies pay songwriters and publishers between 10.5 percent and 12 percent of their overall revenue, according to a complicated formula. (Labels and other owners of recording copyrights negotiate their own terms.) The money is divided into public performance and mechanical royalties, then paid to collecting societies and publishers.
Source: Apple Proposes Simplified Statutory Licensing Scheme to D.C. | Billboard
The shortcomings of the Bitcoin technical architecture have led others to propose and create alternative versions that differ in important ways, such as how transactions are confirmed using different consensus mechanisms or algorithms (e.g., proof of work, proof of stake, etc.), the speed of transaction confirmation, the nature of the value/asset being exchanged, the confidentiality of transaction data, trusted nature of the participating entities (i.e., permissioned — or private — ledgers, and permissionless — or public — ledgers), customizability for business/market use cases, and so on.
We prefer the term “distributed ledger” to “blockchain,” because it affords architectural flexibility and supports the formation of businesses as “platforms.” It is this evolution beyond the current blockchain technology to alternative types of digital value exchange that will enable future scenarios in digital business.
The cyber attack, according to CEO Ned Scott, affected over 260 user accounts. As he confirmed further, the platform have also incurred a small loss – worth around $85,000 – in the form of their native cryptocurrencies Steem Dollars and Steem. While the origin (of the attack) and perpetrators behind it are still unknown, the platform is currently working with cyber security experts and law enforcement authorities to investigate the incident.
Steemit has successfully contained the security threat. As the team works on assessing the damage and investigate further into the incident, some of the features may be temporarily unavailable for the users. Steemit has comforted the community by announcing that the user accounts and wallets are not at any risk and the normal operations will be resumed soon.
Source: Blockchain Social Media Steemit Compromised; Investigation Underway
In recent months Russia’s once sin-binned social network, vKontakte, has inked licensing deals with Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, in part to power a new mobile subscription streaming app.
Today, bringing to a close a two-year lawsuit against VK, Universal has announced that it’s done the same. The major has reached a settlement with VK parent Mail.ru and licensed its social media platforms – VK, Odnoklassniki and My World – for future use of video and audio content from UMG artists like Taylor Swift.
Source: This deal will change everything for the music business in Russia – Music Business Worldwide
Is it fair that a 50-second song costs the same as a 20-minute composition? Back in the days of album-driven sales, track length didn’t matter much. If an album contains 50 tracks of 1 minute each (punk, grindcore), it would sell for roughly same price as an album with 3 tracks lasting 20 minutes each (post-rock, ambient).
Streaming services have changed this. Payouts occur on a per-stream basis. All songs treated equally. This means that if the amount paid per-stream is something like $0.005, Godspeed You! Black Emperor would make just 2 cents every time someone listens to Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (runtime: 1h27m).
Source: How Much Are Pay Per Stream Royalties Really Costing Musicians? – hypebot
On July 26, Digital Media Wire (DMW) and Concurrent Media Strategies will present a RightsTech Summit in NYC to address a digital blind spot you may not know about.
If you think attribution when the term “Rights” comes up in the context of digital media, then you’re not seeing an important aspect as far as how tech breakthroughs have impacted content distribution. For now, let’s chat with conference co-chair Paul Sweeting, Principal of Concurrent Media Strategies, LLC, to get a download on the subject.
Carla Hayden was approved 74-18 in a vote that unexpectedly came to the floor Wednesday afternoon. A hold had reportedly been placed on her nomination that prevented it from moving by unanimous consent. Hayden is a veteran of the American Library Association (ALA) and the current chief executive of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.
Hayden was nominated to replace James Billington, whose final years were marked by criticism that the library’s IT infrastructure was not up to par. Billington served for 28 years, which was seen as one reason why Congress recently reduced the term of the librarian to 10 years, instead of maintaining the previous unlimited appointment.
Source: Senate confirms first black female librarian of Congress | TheHill