Music

Soundstripe Simplifies Music Licensing for Visual Creatives

1457843258331Soundstripe is changing the way visual creatives (filmmakers, marketers, agencies, churches, etc.) access and obtain stock music, sourcing affordable high-quality video production music via their new platform, Soundstripe.com.

Music licensing has been a very complicated matter for many years. From multiple pricing tiers based on usage, to intimidating contracts and publishing agreements, Soundstripe aims to fix all of that.

“We want filmmakers to get in, get their music, and get back to creating,” says Travis Terrell, Co-CEO.

Songwriters Strike a Discordant Note Over Control of Their Music

Knowledge@Wharton: Set the backdrop as to how this decree came into play and why the U.S. Justice Department is looking to make this change.

Lawrence Gelburd: Let’s start with copyright. When you’re part of a team that writes a song, or maybe you’re the sole songwriter, you initially have a set of copyrights and there are multiple rights. One is to have the song performed on the radio. There are mechanical license rights. So you own the right to say, “You can make a physical copy,” like a CD or an LP, and sell it. You also have sync license.

So you have the right as the copyright owner to give someone who’s making a film or a motion picture access to use your song legally in conjunction with that picture.

There are also grand rights for theatrical performances and print rights.This copyright that you own is a set of rights, one of which is the right for performing rights organizations like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. They collect money, for example, from terrestrial radio, so that’s their focus. And they have strength in numbers. ASCAP has almost a half-million members, and BMI is quite large as well.

Source: Knowledge@Wharton

Music Reports Launches New Tool to Begin Solving ‘The Database Problem’

Music Reports has launched an unnamed rights administration platform aimed at clearing up publishing information for the millions of songs, largely from independent artists, that are digitally distributed through platforms like CD Baby and TuneCore.

Music Reports estimates 500,000-750,000 new recordings are released on streaming services every month; the company hopes to ensure that the publishing data on these songs is registered, up-to-date, and can be matched against commercially released master recordings.

Since most digital distributors don’t provide publishing information when placing music on streaming services, when the publishers and songwriters are not known those works are directed to a rights administration system, where songwriters or their publishers can claim those songs, allowing for publishing payments to be made.

Source: Billboard

Spotify Inks “No Copyright Claim” Royalty Deal with Music Publishers

money-protest-power-fist-biz-2015-billboard-650Spotify has agreed to do a better job at allowing music publishers and songwriters to claim and receive royalties from the streaming service. However there’s a caveat: to strike the settlement deal with Spotify, copyright holders cannot make an infringement claim against the company.

In recent months, Spotify has faced a number of lawsuits from musicians who have challenged the Sweden-based firm’s alleged failure to licence artists’ works before making them available for streaming.

On Thursday, US trade body the National Music Publishers’ Association said that the settlement deal it had struck with Spotify represented a “landmark industry agreement.”

Source: Ars Technica UK

Does Blockchain Hold the Key to Music’s Future?

A song doesn’t just happen. There are composers, lyricists, performers. Rights of ownership are divvied up across those parties, labels, publishers, distributors and possibly other entities. And the sale of one company to another means a small forest worth of paperwork to keep the records current and ensure all parties are properly paid for their work.

What if there were an easier way, one that not only allowed all the rights and ownership privileges of a song to remain together in an open, publicly readable and researchable database, but also gave artists the ability to post their song directly and collect payment every time a download or album was sold?Welcome to the world of blockchain.

Source: A Journal of Musical Things

Apple Music, Dubset Partner to Stream Previously Unlicensed Remixes and DJ Mixes

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

Bad Data Is The Worm In The Apple For Streaming Music

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

Three Things the Music Industry Should Learn from Bitcoin about Disruption

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

Between Rock and a Database: Streaming Services, Artists and Music Publishers Are Colliding

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 Plays Music Matchmaker to Products, Creators, and Consumers

341908LOGO 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.

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