World Music

Could Amazon sell secondhand digital music? By Tom Pakinkis - February 11, 2013 - From Music Week A patent for re-selling digital content has been granted to online retailer Amazon. The patent describes a service similar to ReDigi in the US, which has raised copyright concerns with Capitol Records accusing the company of infringement . The Amazon patent , which was filed in 2009 but granted last month, covers “digital objects including e-books, audio, video, computer applications etc” and could be implemented “when the user no longer desires to retain the right to access the now-used digital content. “The user may move the used digital content to another user’s personalised data store when permissible and the used digital content is deleted from the originating user’s personalised data store,” it says. The mechanism could be problematic for rights holders, if they are left out of the loop when it comes to gaining revenue from second-hand digital sales, which could cannibalise sales at ...

David Israelite We Need Strong Copyright Laws Now More Than Ever By David Israelite, the president and chief executive of the National Music Publishers’ Association Feb. 4, 2013 - From Forbes Life’s tough when you’re the Consumer Electronics Association and you have to deal with . . . songwriters. In a recent Forbes.com article written by CEA’s leader Gary Shapiro , the National Music Publishers’ Association is named as part of a “huge well-funded army of lobbyists whose sole purpose is to convince Congress that the interests of the massive content companies are more important than the interests of artists, musicians, innovators and ordinary people.” I’ll let the facts speak for themselves. The NMPA represents songwriters and music publishers. Most of our members are small businesses. In fact, many are a business of one. And NMPA works on their behalf to protect and advance music copyrights both here and abroad. Copyrights that ensure songwriters can pay rent, buy food, and cover med...

The dangers of seeing streaming music royalties as a ‘trickle’ By Stuart Dredge - January 30th, 2013 - From Music Ally For the most part, the debate over artists’ income from streaming music services has been conducted in trade publications and websites. It’s breaking out now though: check the New York Times’ feature headlined ‘As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle’ , which kicks off by focusing on an individual New Yorker who now spends $10 a month on Spotify rather than $30 a month buying music, and then jumps back to cellist Zoe Keating’s reveal last year of her Pandora and Spotify payouts. Cause for angry fist-biting from executives at Spotify, its rivals and the labels who are so invested in them? Well, don’t jump too fast. Read More: http://musically.com/2013/01/30/streaming-music-royalties-trickle/

Streaming and Micropennies: The Footnotes By BEN SISARIO - January 29, 2013 - NY Times Media Decoder Blog 1. The role of record labels. When it comes to royalties, the relationship between artist and label has long been fraught, but it has become especially strained in the streaming age, for two reasons. First, digital services generally don’t do business with musicians directly, but instead go through labels or distributors, which are then responsible for paying royalties. But exactly how those royalties are calculated is often in dispute. Older artists may have no provisions in their contracts for such streaming services , or digital music at all. And despite some major lawsuits , the matter is far from settled. Second, there is wide suspicion in the industry about the deals between labels and digital services. Labels own equity in some of these services, as a condition of licensing their content. (The major labels, for example, own a minority stake in Spotify.) Critics say this cr...

What Music Creators Should Know About Streaming Royalties By Etan Rosenbloom, Associate Director & Deputy Editor, Communications & Media , ASCAP - January 17, 2013 - From ASCAP.com When Spotify stopped offering European users the option of paying to download music in early January, it came as another piece of evidence of a sea change that many have predicted for a long time: music is migrating  to the cloud . Over the past two years, we've seen a four-fold increase in streaming music subscriptions in the US. The ability to stream any piece of music at any time is of course great for consumers. But as we usher in new technologies, we have to think about the way they affect the songwriters and composers that make those technologies possible. As noted entertainment attorney Don Passman recently told us , "Advertising dollars are migrating online in a big way, which means traditional media is earning less, and they're squeezing down the public performance license fe...

The Internet revolutionized the music industry with Napster, and continues to drive major changes within the music industry. It’s time to harness that power to monetize your music in new ways. Here are 5 great places to start.  5. Use social media to build a fan database. If you’re an artist, you need to realize that you’re also a brand which needs to be marketed. But who do you market to? Use every opportunity to get e-mail addresses of friends, family, people you met at other artist concerts, and of course EVERYONE who shows up when you play. Most important of all, get this info into a database of e-mail addresses. Then you can send out e-mail blasts and connect via Facebook friends, Twitter followers, etc. It's up to you to connect with your fans and create loyal followers who will pay money to hear your music. 4. Sell your music to popular YouTube channels. Now that YouTube pays royalties just like any other broadcast network, getting your music on a popular YouTube channel pr...

Music Royalties Explained From Round Hill  Performance Royalties Generated when music is performed publicly through broadcast on television, radio, cable and satellite, live performance at a concert or other performance venues (hotels, bars, restaurants, etc.) Read More: http://rhmusicroyaltypartners.com/resources/music-royalties-explained/

Broken Negotiations: YouTube and German Music Royalty Authority, GEMA, Still Can’t Come to Terms 3 Years Later January 11, 2013 From Digital Media Wire After 3 years, German YouTube viewers are still unable to watch certain music videos due to a copyright dispute. GEMA, Germany’s music royalties authority, declared today that they broke off their negotiations with YouTube, claiming that YouTube has violated their copyright laws by allegedly allowing the unauthorized use of 1,000 music tracks on its website. GEMA is now seeking a €1.6 million compensation. Read More: http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2013/01/11/broken-negotiations-youtube-and-german-music-royalty-authority-gema-still-cant-come-to-terms-3-years-later