Rights

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

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.

NBC Changes Contract to Adam Levine’s ‘Songland’ After Claim of Rights Overreach

NBC dialed back the rights it is claiming for applicants to Adam Levine‘s new songwriting competition, “Songland,” in the wake of a Wrap story that pointed out overreaching with potential contestants.

The words “if I am selected to be a participant on the Program” were added to the submission application signed by songwriters vying to be on the show after TheWrap published a story on Saturday pointing out that the network was claiming royalty rights for all submissions, whether or not they became contestants.

Source: The Wrap

We Can Work It Out: How Brands Can Master Music Rights

If a picture paints a thousand words, then a well-placed soundtrack can bring those visuals to life and create a lasting emotional connection.

Think of the use of The Velvet Underground’s malevolent Venus in Furs in a Dunlop TV spot for tyres. At the other end of the musical spectrum, soft and gentle cover versions by Lily Allen and Aurora are likely to become forever synonymous with Christmas, gifts and John Lewis.

However, if music appears to be an easy win for advertisers, this overlooks the complexities of what goes on beneath the surface, where the music rights business can often jeopardise the creative ambitions of even the best marketers.

Many brand teams fall in love with one song, for example, and are held to ransom on commercial terms. That or a they’re forced to accept restrictive licences that lack the permissions needed for the rollout of their global campaign.

From my experience brokering deals for brands, this disconnect is frequently the result of poor planning and leaving the licensing process to the last minute. However, it need not be a nightmare.

Source: The Guardian

The Coming Fight: Why the Next CBA Won’t Be So Easy

baseball-2There’s no question that baseball has been at the forefront of pushing technological advances, and its app has been the highest grossing sports application in the Apple ecosystem for six consecutive years.

But when Baer and others talk about MLB’s opportunity in digital, they aren’t just talking about the opportunity to separate consumers from $20 for a mobile app, or $140 for an MLB.tv subscription; they’re talking about the opportunity to turn their first-mover advantage into a business that profits from other companies attempting to get up and running in the digital streaming environment.

Over the last two years, MLB has pushed heavily in this direction.

Last August, MLB struck a deal with the National Hockey League that signaled an even more aggressive direction for its digital division. Instead of simply being a technology partner, MLB acquired the NHL’s digital streaming rights, paying $100 million per year for ownership of the hockey league’s digital broadcast rights, making MLB a full-on rights-holder.

That agreement signaled that Major League Baseball expects to be a player in the market providing live sports (besides just baseball) to the cord-cutting generation. The NHL deal gives MLB three sports—already cemented was an agreement with the PGA to provide early-round coverage of events, since traditional networks cover only the weekends—that it theoretically could package together in a bundle, and positions MLB to become a supplemental option for the Netflix crowd.

Source: The Hardball Times

Mediachain is Using Blockchain to Create a Global Rights Database

One of the biggest, still-dormant use cases for blockchain technology is in the field of media – the overarching term capturing a slew of creative professions whose traditional business models have been upended by lightning-fast digital file replication.

Across various fields, the problems are clear: writers, photographers and musicians lack the ability to prove and protect ownership of their works and ideas, a prospect that renders monetization in a digital environment difficult.In the face of this challenge, blockchain tech, with its ability to provide provenance, identity and micropayments has emerged as a potential antidote.

One of the more unique projects innovating in this area is Mediachain, a newly launched metadata protocol that allows digital creators to attach information to their creative works, timestamp that data to the bitcoin blockchain and store it with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a distributed file system incorporating aspects of blockchain technology.

Source: CoinDesk

Rumblefish Streamlines Rights Management for Digitally Imported

rf_logo_stdRumblefish, the nation’s leading provider of rights management solutions for the music industry, has entered into an agreement with Digitally Imported, the premier online radio destination for electronic music fans around the world. Rumblefish, recently merged with The Harry Fox Agency’s (HFA) Slingshot rights management service, will streamline Digitally Imported licensing and royalty processes, in support of its music streaming business model.

Tapping Rumblefish allows Digitally Imported to focus on creating an unparalleled listening experience by eliminating the need to manage thousands of licensing relationships, manage copyright administration staff and program complex royalty formulas.

Digitally Imported will rely on Rumblefish for its U.S. interactive streaming licensing needs, including the royalty calculations, statements and distributions.

This Company Thinks It Can Turn Music Pirates Into Paying Customers

The music business has traditionally taken a hard-line approach to online music pirates.

Once upon a time, of course, it sued them directly – but that didn’t work out too well for anyone. These days, the general consensus at rights-holders is that a stern but educative series of warnings from a user’s ISP is the best route to stopping individual infringers – whilst simultaneously forcing broadband providers to block torrent sites in the courts.

But could there be another, kinder approach? Is the music business missing out on revenues by trying to warn, rather than directly convert, torrent site users online?

Content protection and data-analytics solutions specialist MUSO believes so.

Source: Music Business Worldwide

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