Music

Wagging Music Publishing’s Long Tail

Bill ColitreLast week’s announcement that the U.S. Copyright Office had successfully accepted a bulk submission of notices of intent (NOIs) for compulsory mechanical licenses in electronic form marked a major milestone, both for the Office and for Music Reports Inc., which delivered the NOIs on behalf of music streaming service Guvera.

Music Reports has been working with the Copyright Office for more than a decade as part of the Office’s fitful, and at times halfhearted, effort to upgrade the creaky, pre-digital process for submitting and accessing music publishing information to at least 20th century standards if not quite 21st. Last week’s successful test run on the Office’s new, electronic submission system, involving about 100 tracks, is believed to be the first such hand-off.

“We’re now ready to start doing this at scale. It’s a big, big step,” Music Report’s VP and general counsel Bill Colitre told RightsTech.com.

But it was only one step toward solving what Colitre says is a much bigger problem: the vast and fast-growing amount of music being released on digital platforms today for which publishing information is not available, if it was ever collected in the first place.

Google Partners With LyricFind To Deliver More Lyrics In Search, Administer Rights 

LyricFind_logoGoogle Search and Google Play Music are diving more deeply into song lyrics via a deal with LyricFind. Lyrics as an add-on  have been getting attention lately.  Apple Music is adding them.  Spotify offered lyrics and recently dropped them, but insists their coming back.

Google has  partnered with LyricFind to expand its lyric offerings. Adding lyrics from over 4,000 publishers to Google’s search results and within Google Play Music, LyricFind now provides licensing for lyrics displayed in Google’s search results as well as in the music app.

Source: Google Partners With LyricFind To Deliver More Lyrics In Search, Administer Rights – hypebot

Spotify IPO Watch: Brexit’s Bubble Bursting Bang 

Hanging over a Spotify IPO is the $1 billion in convertible debt that the company recently borrowed from Goldman Sachs, Dragoneer Investment Group, and Texas Pacific Group (TPG is also a Pandora lender, coincidentally–if you believe in coincidences).  Let’s assume that loan is in dollars.

If you take into account the loan’s 5% interest rate and the value of the warrant coverage in the deal, Spotify is essentially paying credit card interest on $1 billion (that 5% rate escalates 1% every six months until it reaches 10%, or Spotify registers an IPO).

Source: Spotify IPO Watch: Brexit’s Bubble Bursting Bang – Artist Rights Watch

U.S. Copyright Office Clears Path for Digital Compulsory Licenses 

Until recently, NOIs had to be filed manually, by paper and under a prohibitive pricing structure. So if you started a service and had the publishing data for say 5 million songs, but did not have the information for another 500,000 songs, the service would need to file NOIs, saying it is licensing and using those songs with the Copyright Office. That process would cost $75 to register for the filing of all those songs, and $2 a song, or about $1 million. Also, the NOI for each song would need to be filed individually, although they could all be batch delivered to the Copyright Office.

But about two months ago, the Copyright Office revamped the way it is willing to accept NOIs and changed its pricing structure. Now, NOIs can be filed on excel spreadsheets, with something like 20 columns of relevant data needed to be completed for each song. This electronic filing still requires an upfront fee of $75 but it now only costs 10 cents a track. So now, filing NOIs for 500,00 songs will only cost $50,075, instead of $1.000075 million.

Source: U.S. Copyright Office Clears Path for Digital Compulsory Licenses | Billboard

Entertainment One signs global publishing admin deal with ole 

Global independent studio and music company Entertainment One (eOne) has signed a worldwide administration deal with ole – which is now dubbing itself ‘the world’s fastest growing independent rights management company’.

Under the partnership, ole will manage and administer eOne’s publishing catalogue, which contains commercial music, and music from film and television productions.

Source: Entertainment One signs global publishing admin deal with ole – Music Business Worldwide

Britain Votes to Exit European Union: Musicians and Celebs React 

A victory for so-called Brexit campaigners sees the U.K. depart from the 28-state economic and political union, which was formally established in 1993.

For the music industry, the outcome of the national vote carries huge consequences and has the potential to impact on everything from touring to record sales to copyright legislation. One thing is certain: the industry will be dealing with a new national leader by October. In the hours after the nation’s votes were counted, the prime minister David Cameron announced his resignation.

Source: Britain Votes to Exit European Union: Musicians and Celebs React | Billboard

How Media is Changing (Us)

Piracy was considered the music industry’s big problem. Now, piracy is no longer the hot topic, because licensed services have managed to stop the financial leakage and the industry looks like it has stabilized. These services, and particularly streaming services, have done a great job at understanding the reality of the networked age, in which information travels freely, and have built something that acknowledges that and adds value that certain segments of music consumers are happy to pay for.

The general industry never acknowledged the reality underlying piracy, instead seeing it as an obstacle to be overcome, and after dealing with the worst of piracy it has set its sights on something new: the streaming services. Yes, streaming royalties are low, because the real price of accessing content in the age of networks is zero. These services have figured out clever ways to inflate this price and now they’re under pressure. In our networked age, access to content was never the problem, and many have been suckered into thinking that if this problem can be solved, all financial woes will be behind us. Dead wrong.

Source: How Media is Changing (Us) — MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE — Medium

Sustainability And The Future Of Music

It should now be abundantly clear that the data identifying recorded music and its split ownership rights is a key component linking the money flow between Great Music and Engaged Fans.  Without clean data, no one knows who created what, how to license what from whom, who to pay, or how much.  The messiness of music rights data is our industry’s “hair shirt” and I’m not sure how much longer we can collectively stand to wear it.

Now that there is consensus that streaming is here to stay, it should also follow that systems need shoring up.  This particular problem is best solved from within the industry itself or at least by companies who view labels, publishers and artists as their customers rather than the DSPs – a fundamental requirement for business alignment in who is working for whom.

Source: Sustainability And The Future Of Music – hypebot

Tribune CEO Peter Liguori Talks Up Gracenote at Investor Conference 

At a Wall Street conference on Wednesday, Tribune Media CEO Peter Liguori wasn’t asked about a dispute with Dish Network that escalated the day before, choosing instead to talk up Gracenote, the company’s metadata service for identifying and recommending music and TV shows to consumers.

“Gracenote is currently in 75 million connected cars,” said Liguori. “We can give you a fantastic service and, I dare say, in a weird way, better than Sirius XM Radio.”

Source: Tribune CEO Peter Liguori Talks Up Gracenote at Investor Conference – Hollywood Reporter

TOTEM: Bad Medicine, No Spoonful of Sugar 

alan_grahamAlready, someone alive today, will launch in the next 2 years what is essentially the most powerful free music sharing service akin to a Spotify-like service, except unlicenced, because it will enter the world anonymously as part of some likely combination of blockchain technology, magnet links, torrents, smart contracts, AI, and so on. You can’t take it down and you can’t sue it because no one owns it or operates it. You can’t file suit against a bot and you ain’t seen “free” until you’ve seen what this thing will do to the entire market.

If there were such a thing as a singularity of copyright infringement and piracy, I’d say we were at the Outer Event Horizon, nearing the no escape zone.

Source: Guest Post: Bad Medicine, No Spoonful of Sugar | MUSIC • TECHNOLOGY • POLICY

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