Music

Video Could Save the Radio Star

Every artist should take a full inventory of themselves and their image, and then figure out how to monetize it.

They are missing huge opportunities if they don’t engage with the brands they love publicly, no matter how indie those brands might be.

In fact, indie brands are probably better — it’s a heck of a lot harder to strike a deal with Budwieser than it is to do something cool with a local brewery, and it feels more authentic in the end. It won’t pay the big bucks, but it’s a nice supplemental income and benefits all parties involved. If you’re an artist with great fashion sense, pair up with local indie designers and get some affiliate deals going.

Like food and have a particular take a cuisine — there are already a ton of those shows, but maybe a fresh spin will draw people in.Making interesting video content available serves all potential audiences — super fans will subscribe and consume everything, and casual fans can engage in a different way. The audio simply isn’t enough anymore — the video needs to be a key component of any artist’s career as well.

Source: Medium

Imogen Heap Wants to Use Blockchain Technology to Revolutionize the Music Industry

The singer’s experiment with “Tiny Human” is the precursor to an entire music eco-system she’s building called “Mycelia,” named after a thread of underground fungus that grows for miles.

Aside from enabling faster, direct payments for artists, Heap wants to create a free platform where musicians have control over the data created by their songs as they circulate among fans and other musicians, including the song’s credits, terms of usage dictated by the artist, where the song is played and when, and any transactions.

This information is tracked using blockchain technology, a method of recording digital transactions first used for Bitcoin.

Source: Quartz

What Happens If SoundCloud Bites the Dust?

SoundCloud’s disappearance would create a powerful ripple effect across the world of recorded music. The most immediate consequence would be the loss of a massive chunk of the world’s independent music available online.

And though there are other sites, most notably Bandcamp, that let anyone upload their music instantly for no fee, they neither have the user base nor the social media aspect that SoundCloud has to develop fans and sales. In fact, many SoundCloud users employ them in tandem, using Bandcamp as a store to sell collections of music, rather than a place to share their latest tracks one-by-one.

Where Bandcamp is the independent music store du jour, SoundCloud is its promoter, employed by musicians to drive awareness and sales.

Source: Digital Trends

TuneCore Pays Artists $142 Million in 2015

IndepenTUNE-COREdent artists on TuneCore earned over $142 million in 2015, a 7% increase from 2014. TuneCore artists also earned $36.8 million from digital streams and downloads alone in Q4 2015.Publishing revenue for TuneCore artists was up 47% in 2015 and sync revenue up 57%, with placements in major feature films and network TV shows.

Since its inception in 2006, TuneCore artists have earned more than $648 million collectively.

Source: Music Week

SourceAudio Announces Launch of “SourceAudio Detect”

12652SourceAudio, a prominent B2B technology platform for music publishers, labels, broadcasters, production companies and creative marketing agencies, has announced the launch of its newest service, “SourceAudio Detect.”

SourceAudio Detect uses a unique, robust and inaudible digital identity (watermark) that is redundantly embedded directly into a piece of audio itself.

It is different from other fingerprinting-based monitoring solutions in that there is never any guesswork or doubt about the track identity because a truly unique code is woven into the fabric of each file that travels with it indefinitely.

That code will only reference the true identity given to the track by its owner or authorized licensor.

PRS and Google Announce a ‘Shazam for Music Licensing’

UK-based performing rights society PRS for Music is purportedly working with Google to help report performance fees for music played in public more accurately.

Performance fees are paid to artists and publishers of copyrighted songs wherever they are played in public, whether that be on television, broadcast over radio, played over the stereo in retail establishments, or in venues like sports arenas and concert halls.

The traditional methods for determining these fees rely on radio logs, cue sheets created by television and film companies, or sample surveys, which randomly track songs for several hours in bars, clubs, and venues. When devised, these techniques were as accurate as technology allowed. Developments in the decades since, however, could greatly improve precision — and boost the payouts to artists.

Source: Dancing Astronaut

MUSE: Leveraging Blockchain Technology To Revolutionize Music Industry

While growing interest in blockchain technology from companies to governments shows little sign of abating and even the Chinese authorities are looking to create their own digital currency, the power of this technology is also being harnessed for deployment in other industries – including music.

Now fintech platform OpenLedger and Danish bitcoin exchange CCEDK are joining forces with MUSE, a music-tailored blockchain, to make monetizing music as easy as new peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms made distributing it 15 years ago.Just as music distribution was ripe for disruption back then with the rise of P2P file-sharing platforms, so blockchain technology is now offering new opportunities for its monetization.

Source: Forbes

Intellectual Property Issues in Film & Interactive Media

money-e-commerce-billboard-650“Content is king” may be an overused phrase in today’s media world, but the kind is more powerful than ever before, and the palace rules are changing. These days, content users and creators must navigate an ever-growing Web of intellectual property (IP) issues.Specifically, the interactive nature of the media content creation process has had a dramatic effect on IP rights of the participants.

Recently, significant changes in the nature of media content creation, content delivery methods, and celebrity status have contributed to shifts in the way content is created and monetized.Three IP leaders in the legal industry sat down with Inside Counsel to explore practical ways for companies to protect themselves in today’s rapidly changing media landscape.

Source: Inside Counsel

Three Startups Trying to Transform the Music Industry Using the Blockchain

Music was once scarce. Before the days of MP3 and P2P file sharing, you didn’t have the ability to hear songs whenever you wished unless you bought them.

Today one does not even need to download songs, as platforms such as VEVO and YouTube host many of the most popular songs of yesterday and today.

The industry was faced with a definitive problem in an age of liberal copy and distribution technology: finding new ways to monetize digital music files that lacked scarcity.

A gang of computer programmers – united by the Bitcoin technology – are trying to revolutionize an industry after 15 years of disruption which began with Napster and was cemented by BitTorrent.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine

Benji Rogers and Imogen Heap: Building the Music Blockchain

Music-Industry

Aren’t its most powerful members – the three major labels – exactly the kind of companies who have most to lose from an all-new, uber-transparent system of tracking music rights and paying for usage?

Maybe. Which is certainly one reason for being curious about how such a system would work. But the early evangelists for such a system – notably PledgeMusic founder Benji Rogers, argue that the blockchain would enhance the businesses of the BPI’s members, rather than destroy them.

That’s why the BPI invited Rogers in on a windy Monday evening for the first in a planned series of “thought-leadership events” tackling big topics and new technologies.

Source: Music Ally

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