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Download or stream a podcast today and it would not be uncommon to hear music, if only interstitially and in short segments. For the most part, however, those streams and downloads are not counted for the purposes of calculating and paying any royalties the music rights owner(s) might otherwise be due. Instead, most music used in podcasts today, where its licensed at all, is licensed on a royalty-free basis, often from stock houses or production-music catalogs, through a single, upfront payment that allows unlimited use of the music in podcast episodes for a specified period of time. As no backend royalties need to be paid, no effort is made to report back to the music rights owner how many times an episode is downloaded or streamed.

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Now that the initial bloom has begun to come off the NFT rose, thorns are starting to poke through. Among the prickliest: legal uncertainty around NFT ownership and intellectual property rights; and enforcement of smart-contract based royalties. Last week, crypto merchant bank Galaxy released a report for which it surveyed the top 100 NFT collections by implied market capitalization (floor price X collection size) to determine how and to what extent the listed terms and conditions of sale convey ownership rights in the digital object represented by the NFT.

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Many people in the music business are anxiously awaiting sales and streaming results from Beyoncé’s newest album “Renaissance,” released last week. As the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, fingers are crossed that Queen Bey can snap the recent streak of commercial and/or critical disappointments among recent releases from major artists, including Post Malone, Drake, Kendrick Lamar and even Adele, whose November release “30” fell well short of her previous record sales. Early signs were not encouraging.

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Copyrights, particularly music publishing rights, has been a hot alternative asset class over the past four or five years, as investors chased yield after a decade of low interest rates, and sought shelter from the volatility of equity prices. But with the post-Covid economy showing signs of slowing down around the world and central banks raising rates to try to choke off accelerating inflation, will smart money start to look elsewhere for returns, and what would that would that mean for the fortunes of songwriters, publishers and other rightsholders who haven’t yet cashed in?

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This week’s e-news is chock full of headlines about Web3 and the metaverse thanks to the blossoming enthusiasm and optimism around those concepts within the music, movie and television industries, to say nothing of the game business. Yet for all the optimism, one theme that comes through many of the discussions is the difficulty and complexity of licensing copyrighted content for use in those applications. That’s particularly true of music, with its dual copyrights and multiple rights owners.

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The Great Bored Ape NFT Theft Saga that temporarily derailed actor-producer Seth Green’s plan to cast his cartoon simian (BAYC #8398) in an animated series appears to have ended peacefully now that Green has agreed to pay nearly $300,000 for the safe return of the purloined primate. Why, exactly, the NFT’s adopted owner, DarkWing84, agreed to sell after rejecting previous offers is unclear. But the animated series project, presumably, can now proceed. While good news for Seth Green, the ape’s return does not really resolve the questions discussed here in a previous post concerning the relationship between NFTs and the IP rights associated with the assets to which they’re bound.

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We are very pleased to announce that the annual RightsTech Summit will be held this year on September 21-22. The 2-day, online conference will include sessions addressing emerging challenges facing rights owners and licensees, such as licensing content for the metaverse and other new, immersive applications, the evolving role of podcasts and other forms of non-music audio in creating and building IP franchises, NFT rights and royalties, and how the changing economic climate could affect IP catalog valuations and M&A activity, plus keynotes and special presentations. Contact Concurrent Media Strategies or Digital Media Wire for speaking and sponsorship opportunities.