Month: March 2021

About two weeks back, multiple musicians staged protests outside of Spotify offices in the U.S. and abroad, demanding a higher per-stream royalty rate. Now, the campaign’s organizers have revealed that the Stockholm-based streaming platform has refused to pay one penny per play.

To recap, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) organized the protests, which included a demonstration outside of Spotify’s World Trade Center offices. A number of individuals turned up at the latter event, photos and footage show, with the vast majority of the participants appearing to have either played an instrument or carried a sign.

Read More: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/31/spotify-refuses-penny-per-stream/

Three days after an anonymous songwriters group named the Pact called for artists to stop demanding credit for songs they did not write, the group has followed with a letter signed by Emily Warren, Ross Golan, Justin Tranter, Victoria Monet and others pledging that the signatories “will not give publishing or songwriting credit to an artist who did not create or change the lyric or melody or otherwise contribute to the composition without a reasonably equivalent/meaningful exchange for all the writers on the song.”

Read More: https://variety.com/2021/music/news/pact-justin-tranter-emily-warren-songwriters-letter-1234940341/

The Ivors Academy and the Musicians’ Union have officially warned composers about the perceived pitfalls associated with offering complete buyouts of their music.

The 77-year-old Ivors Academy and the 128-year-old Musicians’ Union relayed the warning in a newly launched campaign entitled “Composers Against Buyouts.” Said campaign’s announcement blog post begins by highlighting a trio of statistics on the subject, including that 35 percent of media composers have accepted buyouts or work-for-hire agreements and that some 41 percent have “had to give away more of their mechanical rights than they wanted to.”

Read More: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/30/ivors-academy-composers-warning/

Here it is: The MLC is about to hear those beautiful words. They will hear it in English. They will hear it in Spanish. They will hear it in Bantu, French, Portuguese, Pashto, Russian, Hausa, Berber and Czech.

And songwriters will say it like they mean it. They won’t want to hear about “connect to collect” they won’t want to hear about “play your part” or the ontological definition of “match.”

Read More: https://musictechpolicy.com/2021/03/29/the-metadata-hot-potato-the-mlc-enters-the-jerry-mcguire-reality/

The Pact, a newly formed songwriting group, has called for artists to cease claiming credit on songs that they didn’t author.

The songwriting group levied the demand in a pair of multi-slide Instagram posts, which, at the time of this piece’s writing, were the only two messages that had been published to the entity’s profile. Additionally, The Pact boasts 3,393 followers on the platform and hasn’t yet specified its members’ identities.

Read More: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/29/the-pact-songwriting-demands/

The major media companies are ready for a post-pandemic return to theatrical releases, familiar business models, a normal awards season, and most importantly, a hybrid streaming future that still does most of what studios have done for 110 years

Read More: https://www.nexttv.com/news/hollywood-gets-ready-for-its-post-pandemic-closeup

UPDATED: As the music-publishing market continues to heat up to unprecedented levels, songwriter groups have begun speaking out for more equitable treatment. On the heels of a “Pay Songwriters” petition launched in the U.K. last week calling for greater compensation for songwriters comes a social media post from an anonymous group calling itself “The Pact” calling for artists to stop demanding credit and publishing royalties on songs they did not write — a practice that likely dates back to the earliest days of copyright and has been particularly rife in the music industry.

Read More: https://variety.com/2021/music/news/songwriters-group-artists-stop-taking-royalties-pact-1234939379/

How much app privacy do you have with music streaming apps? Apple’s new privacy policy helps us find out.

Apple’s new privacy policy forces app developers to disclose how much data they collect. It also must tell users what data is potentially shared with third-parties. By using the new privacy labels in the App Store, you can get a pretty good idea of which apps collect the most data.

Read More: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/24/music-app-privacy-report/

The jungle of music rights acquisitions has become a crowded and expensive place. But the game just changed again – as an 800-pound gorilla enters the fray.

BMG and investment giant KKR have announced an alliance that will see them team up to acquire and manage music copyrights.

MBW understands that the result of the combination will see KKR and BMG co-invest in rights across both recorded music and music publishing. This will enable BMG to increase its spending power in the highly competitive catalog acquisition market, while giving KKR a global administrative/operational partner for music rights with a financial interest in maximizing returns.

Read More: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/a-new-music-acquisition-juggernaut-is-born-as-bmg-and-kkr-strike-deal-to-jointly-buy-copyrights/

A damning parliamentary inquiry into the state of U.K. broadcasters and their battle with American streaming giants has found that domestic channels are being “let down” by antiquated legislation preventing them from competing on a level playing ground.

Read More: https://variety.com/2021/tv/global/future-of-public-service-broadcasting-inquiry-findings-bbc-netflix-1234937246/

Over the past few weeks, the sales of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) attached to digital artworks and other content, including music albums, unique sports moments clips, and even Twitter CEO’s first tweet (!), has skyrocketed. Even though artwork-related NFTs are not new to the blockchain communities (see CryptoKitties), the few weeks old digital art-craze has started with the NFT sale of Nyan Cat, a GIF featuring a cartoon cat, for unprecedented amounts – 300 ETH (the cryptocurrency used in the Ethereum blockchain), equivalent to approximately $600,000 USD.

Read More: https://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2021/03/guest-post-copyright-nfts-of-digital.html?m=1

Cineworld has announced it will reopen US cinemas next month, followed by the UK in May, after signing a deal with Warner Bros to show films in theatres before they are streamed.

The company will open a handful of its Regal cinemas in the US in early April.

Godzilla vs. Kong will be the first film to make its debut in the theatres.

Cineworld said the deal with Warner Bros means films will have a period of exclusivity in cinemas before being made more widely available.

Read More: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56496213

After all the various discussions as part of Parliament’s review into the digital music market over how a stream should be defined, government officials at the latest hearing yesterday stressed several times that, in their opinion, modern streaming platforms were exactly the kind of services that the so called making available right was conceived to cover.

Read More: https://completemusicupdate.com/article/major-label-dominance-and-making-available-back-in-the-spotlight-at-final-parliamentary-session-on-streaming/

Dan Kelly loves to collect. His physical treasures live on a shelf in his Nova Scotia home: old records, vintage video games, an issue of WIRED from the ’90s. Whenever a new package arrives, his wife jokes about the assortment he’s amassing — another shipment?

Read More: https://money.com/what-are-nfts/?xid=iterable&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Recurring%20%7C%202021-03-23%20%7C%20Daily%20Money&utm_campaign=daily_money

Hundreds of members of music industry have signed an open letter to record labels titled “Pay Songwriters,” calling for better financial treatment of songwriters. The letter has been signed by songwriters, executives, and producers, including producers and executives, including Andrew Lloyd Webber, Giorgio Moroder, MNEK, Natalie Hemby, Stargate, Ross Golan, Savan Kotchecha Rick Nowels, Jin Jin, Tre Jean-Marie and more.

Read More: https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-and-More-Sign-Open-Letter-to-Record-Labels-Calling-for-Better-Financial-Treatment-of-Songwriters-20210323

Music metadata: it’s the oft-overlooked chore that can make a music career successful – or doom it to obscurity.

Today, music metadata impacts everything in an artist’s career, including distribution, discovery prospects, litigation prevention, and royalties. Consequently, many hardworking creators – particularly independent professionals – are missing out on compensation and career opportunities because of metadata oversights. Good metadata means getting discovered, building audiences, and getting paid; bad metadata could very well doom an artist to obscurity.

Read More: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/22/music-metadata-veva/

As soon as they crossed into Serbia, the map on his phone went blank.

Damon Krukowski was driving with his wife, Naomi Yang. They were two-thirds of the late-’80s indie rock band Galaxie 500, touring through Eastern Europe as a dream-pop outfit called Damon & Naomi. After years of war in the former Yugoslavia, Belgrade was still under economic sanctions, and off the grid; tech firms had no access to street maps. “We entered the noncorporate world, out of the reach of the West for political reasons,” Krukowski told me.

Read More: https://prospect.org/power/islands-in-the-stream-spotify-youtube-music-monopoly/?src=longreads&mc_cid=7d24018384&mc_eid=cb718b1a4e

TV actors and recording artists are pushing for a major change in California labor law, which is likely to draw stiff opposition from studios and record labels.

Read More: https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/sag-aftra-california-labor-law-lorena-gonzalez-1234934340/

A California lawmaker has introduced legislation (AB 1385) that would expand the state’s seven-year limit on entertainment-industry agreements to record label contracts.

California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez – who spearheaded the controversial AB 5 and subsequently authored AB 2257, which exempted many in the music community from the former’s restrictions – introduced AB 1385 last month, and an amended version of the bill was just recently published.

Read More: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/19/record-label-contracts-california-legislation/

Working in entertainment may never look the same again.

To hear numerous executives tell it, the past 12 months have shifted the paradigm for modern office life. Gone are the days of staying tethered to a desk until the boss leaves for the night. Showing up to work with a nasty cold no longer a badge of honor but a mark of disregard for your colleagues. And getting hired for a job that is headquartered in a totally different city or working remotely from a distant location might become more commonplace.

Read More: https://variety.com/2021/film/entertainment-industry/working-in-hollywood-after-covid-19-1234932406/

As more and more artists have learned in the nearly 15 years since Spotify first launched, the way that it pays out streaming royalties is very, very complex, based on a dizzying number of factors that add up differently for each artist. On Thursday morning, the company made a welcome step toward demystifying that process by unveiling “Loud and Clear,” a relatively straightforward explanation of the way its payment system and related factors work. (Speaking of working, the site does take a minute or so to load — don’t worry, it gets there!)

Read More: https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/spotify-loud-clear-guide-royalty-payment-system-1234933349/

Multiple artists protested outside of Spotify offices yesterday afternoon to demand a more transparent payout process as well as a more sustainable per-stream royalty rate.

The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) – which, in late October of 2020, rolled out a petition calling on Spotify to pay one cent per stream – organized the multi-city protest, dubbed “Justice at Spotify Day of Action.”

Read More: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/16/spotify-offices-protest/

While it was announced during the Grammy Awards on Sunday, the formation of the Recording Academy’s Songwriters and Composers Wing was not done in secret, and the Songwriters of North America, the Black Music Action Coalition, the Music Artists Coalition and the 100 Percenters responded quickly with an open letter to the new organization calling on it to eliminate the Minimum Delivery and Release Commitment (MDRC) requirement in music-publishing deals. It follows in full below.

Read More: https://variety.com/2021/music/news/industry-groups-call-on-recording-academy-to-eliminate-archaic-music-publishing-provision-1234930359/

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are all the rage in the music industry right now.

DJs like 3LAU and Steve Aoki have sold theirs for seven-figure sums. Kings Of Leon just racked up around $2 million selling them bundled with their new album. And, ever the auteur, Grimes recently sold a bunch of NFT-affiliated artwork for around $6 million in just 20 minutes.

Read More: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/nfts-for-copyrights-why-non-fungible-tokens-could-transform-who-gets-paid-from-music-rights-and-how/

In a reversal of traditional roles, the streaming giant is reported to have had talks with ViacomCBS and NBCU about running original shows and movies on their networks

Read More: https://www.nexttv.com/news/netflix-has-reportedly-discussed-licensing-shows-to-media-companies

In the hardest year, Hollywood’s unions had their finest hour. Together and separately, they navigated those first uncertain days of the entertainment industry shutdown a year ago this week and came together with the major companies to develop protocols to get their members back to work as safely as possible. Their rallying cry was, “We’re all in this together.”

Read More: https://deadline.com/2021/03/hollywood-unions-covid-anniversary-look-back-pandemic-1234711754/

The often controversial Spanish collecting society SGAE has been readmitted into global grouping CISAC nearly two years after it was temporarily expelled. The latter’s board decided to allow the former back into the club because of “a series of reforms that have transformed the society and its operations”.

Read More: https://completemusicupdate.com/article/cisac-readmits-spanish-collecting-society-sgae/

The producer of the old ‘Live From Abbey Road’ TV show has told a court that he could be £600,000 out of pocket as a result of a legal dispute over the sale of three master tapes that would probably have netted him no more than $21,000.

Read More: https://completemusicupdate.com/article/live-from-abbey-road-producer-says-costs-associated-with-universal-legal-battle-are-disproportionate-and-unjust/

Paris – 10th March 2021 – The Spanish authors’ society SGAE has been re-admitted to CISAC after implementing a series of reforms that have transformed the society and its operations.

CISAC’s Board of Directors decided to re-admit SGAE after a thorough review of all changes in the society’s practices that have been implemented with the support of CISAC over the last three years.

Read More: https://www.cisac.org/Newsroom/news-releases/sgae-re-admitted-to-cisac

Google has announced that it “may begin withholding U.S. taxes on earnings” deriving from stateside YouTube viewers as soon as June of 2021 for creators who reside outside the United States.

Google revealed its plans to withhold U.S. taxes on YouTube income in an aptly titled article, “U.S. tax requirements for YouTube earnings.” Creators enrolled in the YouTube Partner Program – i.e. those who monetize their videos – may see their worldwide earnings docked by a significant 24 percent if they fail to submit their tax info via AdSense prior to Monday, May 31st, 2021, Google emphasizes at the piece’s outset.

Read More: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/10/youtube-witholds-us-taxes/

CreativeFuture dispatched a letter earlier this week to every member of the new Congress.

A broad coalition of more than 350 leaders of Hollywood’s creative community has sent a letter to every member of the newly installed Congress asking for a stronger American copyright system.

Among other actions, the letter from CreativeFuture implored the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives to hold internet companies accountable for the widespread presence of illicit content on their platforms.

Read More: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-coalition-asks-congress-to-strengthen-copyright-laws

The landmark legislation includes an extension of unemployment and mixed earner benefits, tax relief and health care subsidies, among other provisions.

The House of Representatives passed a landmark $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill on Wednesday (March 10), including a mixed bag of legislation for the music industry’s hard-hit freelance workforce.

Read More: https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/politics/9538185/congress-covid-relief-bill-freelance-music-workers/

How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Our God Is Marching On!
March 25, 1965, Montgomery, Alabama

Read More: https://artistrightswatch.com/2021/03/09/user-centric-as-competitive-advantage-the-arc-of-the-moral-universe-is-bending-music-technology-policy/

The following MBW op/ed comes from Adam Parness, the former Global Head of Music Publishing at Spotify from 2017 to 2019. Parness left Spotify just as it was revealed that the service was appealing a 44% pay rise for songwriters and music publishers from streaming in the United States, a legal process that is still ongoing.

Read More: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/why-spotifys-ex-global-head-of-music-publishing-thinks-streaming-services-should-be-paying-songwriters-more-money/

Over the last 12 months the online concerts market has grown at an incredible rate. We’re seeing a huge variety of online events, from major live concerts reaching large audiences around the world to small intimate performances streamed from studios and bedrooms. There are events which are ticketed and non-ticketed, mandatory and voluntary donations and those that use bespoke streaming services, social media platforms or artists’ own websites.

Read More: https://www.prsformusic.com/royalties/online-royalties/online-live-concert-royalties/online-live-concerts-call-for-views?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=prsformusic&mc_cid=0d8a3773b8&mc_eid=3e246b27e7&mc_cid=1194ba0a52&mc_eid=9e47683264

LOS ANGELES — What awaits Hollywood on the other side of the pandemic?

As vaccines have rolled out around the world, many film executives and theater operators have been predicting — hoping, praying — that a huge surge of ticket buying awaits. They hope the masses, desperate to get out of their homes (and tired of watching television), will begin to pour into cinemas as soon as they feel safe from the coronavirus and big movies begin to repopulate the marquees.

It could happen.

Read More: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/07/business/box-office-hollywood-pandemic.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20210308&instance_id=27832&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=22562188&segment_id=52978&user_id=ab7982bc29b2c5ed9f71ccd5fbc61103

Pursuant to the Musical Works Modernization Act, title I of the Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act (MMA), and after soliciting public comments through a notification of inquiry and notice of proposed rulemaking, and engaging in clarifying ex parte communications with commenters as documented here, the Copyright Office is issuing an interim rule governing notices of license, data collection efforts, reports of usage and payment by digital music provider blanket licensees and related records of use, notices of nonblanket activity and reports of usage by significant nonblanket licensees, and data collection efforts by musical work copyright owners.

Read More: https://www.copyright.gov/rulemaking/mma-notices-reports/

News that the company overseeing the estate of Theodor Geisel—better known to generations of children and parents as Dr. Seuss—will stop publishing new copies of six of the late author’s books has sparked yet another debate over cancel culture and the insecure nature of older art in the face of modern sensibilities.

Read More: https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/mar/05/copyright-and-dr-seuss/?opinion

Jack Dorsey-led financial services company Square, Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a majority ownership stake in music streaming platform, TIDAL.

Square expects to pay a mix of cash and stock of $297 million for a ‘significant majority’ ownership stake. Existing artist shareholders will be the remaining stakeholders.

Read More: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/square-to-buy-significant-majority-stake-in-tidal-for-297m/

“We all just wanna be big rock stars / And live in hilltop houses, driving 15 cars.”

The wisdom of Nickelback, there, in the 2005 single Rockstar.

It’s a parody of a shallow musician’s ambitions – but there can’t be many singers who haven’t dreamt, at least in passing, of living in that hilltop house.

Read More: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-56242568

In a recent roundtable discussion, two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Paul McCartney said that artists’ streaming payments should increase, besides expressing the opinion that it’s harder for creators to stay financially afloat in the contemporary music industry.

Read More: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/03/paul-mccartney-streaming-payments/

One of the most hotly-debated concepts in the modern music rights business is user-centric licensing. This model sees streaming royalties paid out based on individual subscriber behavior – with a percentage of each subscriber’s subscription fee being distributed only to the artists/labels they have individually listened to that month.

Read More: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/soundcloud-is-about-to-revolutionize-streaming-payouts-launching-user-centric-royalties-for-100000-indie-artists/

Dangling $86.9 million in front of some big-ticket projects from Oscar winners and former Desperate Housewives, the California Film Commission was feeling particularly generous this morning.

Read More: https://deadline.com/2021/03/eva-longoria-coen-brothers-steven-soderbergh-reese-witherspoon-jason-bateman-tax-credits-california-film-1234703726/

Last year we identified a small but crucial metric from Spotify’s annual report: the share of all streams accounted for by majors and independent licensing body Merlin. It was crucial because it enabled us to segment the streaming market in detail, when combined with market data from majors and independent artist platforms. The key takeaway was that independents grew fastest, but that not all independents grew at the same rate. Now the 2020 figure is out from Spotify and the trends have accelerated.

Read More: https://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/2021/03/01/smaller-independents-and-artists-direct-grew-fastest-in-2020/

The British High Court has ordered internet service providers (ISPs) to block four stream-ripping websites – including Russia-based FLVTO.biz, which is also engaged in a years-running courtroom confrontation with the RIAA.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) recently announced its legal victory over the stream-ripping websites (singling out giants 2CONV.com and the aforementioned FLVTO.biz, both of which belong to Tofig Kurbanov) and, in a separate case, file-hosting service Nitroflare. Moreover, the former action is one of many suits that the music industry has pursued as of late against prominent stream-ripping platforms, which enable users to download videos’ audio.

Read More: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/01/british-high-court-stream-ripping-order/