World Music

YouTube Plays Now Factored Into Billboard Ranking, Helps Make "Harlem Shake" #1 By D.L. Chandler - Feb. 21, 2013 - Hip Hop Wired Billboard has teamed with consumer information company Nielsen and will now factor YouTube video plays when ranking songs on the "Hot 100" singles chart. Baauer's smash hit, “Harlem Shake,” has already benefited, landing at No. 1 on the aforementioned chart. A new venture was announced yesterday, revolutionizing how Billboard tracks the rise of hit songs in a variety of genres. Before the deal, Nielsen tracked digital sales, physical copies, radio airplay and other traditional means of media delivery. Now, Billboard will collect streaming data on all of YouTube's official music videos using Nielsen's information measurements. Essentially, a streaming video click on YouTube will be counted as a radio spin Additionally, user-generated videos that have official use of original music will also have their streams counted and factore...

Indie community welcomes Warner’s Parlophone acquisition Feb. 7, 2013 - From Complete Music Update Even though the remaining EMI assets have gone to another major label, the indie community – much of which opposed the sale of the EMI businesses to Sony and Universal – has generally welcomed today’s news that Warner Music is to acquire the Parlophone Label Group. Indie support for the deal is based on the principle that a stronger Warner will provide more competition for the two mega-majors – Sony and Universal. - See more at: http://www.thecmuwebsite.com/article/indie-community-welcomes-warners-parlophone-acquisition/#sthash.iyFrB8he.dpuf Read More: http://www.thecmuwebsite.com/article/indie-community-welcomes-warners-parlophone-acquisition/

5 Tips On How To Break Into Music Journalism By Dan Harfield - Feb. 12, 2013 - From Hypebot.com If you're passionate about music, then being a music journalist has to be one of the greatest jobs in the world, right? You get paid to review albums, get free backstage passes to gigs and festivals and hang out with musicians; well, yes, I suppose this is all true, but what they don't tell you in 'Almost Famous' is that it can be a brutal industry to break into and once you're in, you still have to prove yourself week in, week out or some other young buck will take your place. However, there are a few rules that you can follow that can give you the edge and as someone who has worked in the industry for over 5 years, please heed my advice! Read More: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/02/5-tips-on-how-to-break-into-music-journalism.html

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 ...

Warner Music Group Buys EMI Assets for $765 Million By Ben Sisario - February 7, 2013 - From NY Times Media Decoder Blog The Warner Music Group, the smallest of the three remaining major record companies, said on Thursday that it had reached an agreement to pay $765 million for the Parlophone Label Group, a collection of EMI assets that includes artists like Coldplay, Pink Floyd and the Beach Boys. The sale was mandated by European regulators as part of the Universal Music Group’s $1.9 billion purchase of EMI last year. “This is a very important milestone for Warner Music, reflecting our commitment to artist development by strengthening our worldwide roster, global footprint and executive talent,” Len Blavatnik, the founder of Access Industries , Warner’s parent company, said in a statement. The Parlophone group consists of EMI’s Parlophone, Chrysalis and other labels, along with EMI subsidiary companies across Europe. Universal will retain EMI’s Capitol and Virgin labels, including a...

Source: Warner Music Group "Will Be Scrutinized" by European Regulators By Paul Resnikoff - Feb. 7, 2013 - From Digital Music News So what's the difference between a Warner Music Group and a Universal Music Group, anyway? In the eyes of European regulators, the answer might be 'not much,' which is why according to a pair of sources, Warner Music's now-confirmed, £487 million ($762 million) purchase of Parlophone Label Group is likely to get a stringent review or even a direct challenge from the European Commission in Brussels. Read More: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130207eu

Nearly 50 Percent of Kickstarter Donations Come from Just 3 Percent of Fans By Paul Resnikoff - Jan. 31, 2013 - From Digital Music News The strange stat comes from Derrick Fung of Tunezy, a startup focused on helping artists sell unique experiences to fans. Tunezy is sort of like Kickstarter, but without the bidding and fundraising part . Which means that Fung has been spending a lot of time breaking down the typical types of contributors on Kickstarter, and figuring out how they behave. Eventually, Fung started noticing three distinct types of contributors, which he tagged as whales, dolphins, and minnows. Whales are just a tiny minority, but when it comes to donations, they are actually incredibly hefty. "Two- to three-percent of whales contribute about 40- to 50-percent of donations," Fung told us. Read More: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130130kickstarter

Universal Music Publishing 'Now Has the Power to Shut Pandora Down...' By Paul Resnikoff - Feb. 5, 2013 - From Digital Music News Perhaps the only question is why Pandora 's top executives aren't cashing out faster . Because it's becoming increasingly apparent that this company lacks a sustainable business model, even if they successfully force recording royalty reductions through Congress. Enter Universal Music Publishing Group, which now looks like the second publishing behemoth to independently negotiate its rates with Pandora. The first step involves the cancellation of digital performance contacts with ASCAP and BMI, already in motion. The next step is creating a new deal with Pandora, on their terms. Read More: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130205umpg#-k5VKaX6LZyfbRB042A-Fw

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...

South Korea leads world digital music consumption Feb. 5, 2013 - Telecompaper South Korea is leading the world in the transition from physical to digital music, with digital services accounting for 56 percent of all consumer spending on full-track music in the country in 2012, according to data from IHS iSuppli. The pace of South Korea's transition to digital music leads all other countries, including major economies such as the US, currently in second place, and the UK, ranked third. However, based on current trends, the US is expected by 2016 to ascend to the market's top spot, followed by the UK. Read More: http://www.telecompaper.com/news/south-korea-leads-world-digital-music-consumption--923085

For Many Digital Music Services, Free Is Not a Choice By BEN SISARIO - January 28, 2013 - NY Times Media Decoder Blog The competition among streaming music services is going global. It is also increasingly going free. As CD and download sales cool, the music industry is looking to subscription services like Spotify, Rhapsody and Deezer to provide an attractive alternative to pirated content. But the growth of these companies has been relatively slow, and to compete against one another, more of them are opening free tiers — a move that gets attention, but has always caused worries that it could undermine the value of music. Read More: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/for-many-digital-music-services-free-is-not-a-choice/

Amoeba Launches Digital Music Store for Rarities By Aubin - Feb. 1, 2013 - PunkNews.org Beloved California music store chain, Amoeba Music , has launched a new digital rarities store. Unlike other services, the company is focusing on older, mostly out of print vinyl. The owners explained: We've been digitizing a lot. What you see now is the lost-between-the-cracks, underappreciated, undervalued (music) from dead labels, (obscure) artists, stuff that we really stand behind. It's mostly in the rock genre, with a lot of jazz, a lot of blues, some country, some spoken word. There are some oddities for sure. In many cases the company was unable to find the original rightsholders so they're keeping sales proceeds in an escrow account and allowing songwriters to either take the profits or remove the music from the store. Along with actually digitizing the LPs, Amoeba is remastering the original records and have about 1000 recorss for sale now with more added every day. Read More:...

In the Last Year, Google Takedown Demands Have Increased 1,300% By Paul Resnikoff - Jan. 24, 2013 - Digital Music News In the last year alone, DMCA takedown requests have surged 1,300% (and for the mathematically challenged, 100% = double). In hard numbers, that's the difference between 202,297 demands in mid-January of 2012 and 2,857,808 demands in the latest week. So what happens next? If anyone has the resources to handle huge DMCA takedown volumes, it would be Google. But even this elephant is getting overloaded... Read More: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2 013/20130124takedown

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...

Over the Past Two Years, Streaming Subscriptions Have Quadrupled In the US... By Paul Resnikoff Tuesday, January 08, 2013 Digital Music News Actually, more than quadrupled. Which is quite astounding considering that most Americans had no idea that Spotify or Muve even existed two years ago. Muve Music was just getting started in early 2011, and Spotify crossed the Atlantic in July of the same year. Fast-forward to 2013, and both have a collective subscriber group of about 2.3 million, with Rhapsody tossing an extra million into the pot. Which means that paid subscribers have more than quadrupled over the past 24 months, a growth rate of roughly 340%. Which looks like this, according to public disclosures by the companies. Read More: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130108streaming

YouTube Educates Nashville Publishers about Site Monetization By Eric Parker January 15, 2013 From MusicRow.com The AIMP hosted Rightsflow/Google representatives yesterday (Jan. 14) in what was a second Nashville gathering to discuss monetizing published copyrights on YouTube. The sold-out presentation, titled Mo’ Money for YOUR Music, was held at BMI’s 6th floor theater as part of a series to inform and educate publishers about YouTube’s Content ID system. Scott Sellwood, Strategic Partner Development Manager, YouTube, led the Nashville meeting with help from Patrick Sullivan, founder of RightsFlow and now Strategic Partner Development Manager at Google. Since last year , publishers have been able to elect the Harry Fox Agency to manage YouTube revenue, or enter into direct agreements with the audiovisual provider themselves. Either way, a covenant to not sue is signed upon partnering, releasing litigation rights to pending or future suits against YouTube and its owner, Google. As exp...

Digital Notes: Measuring Growth in Dollars and Page Views By BEN SISARIO January 16, 2013 From The New York Times Media Decoder Blog Tracking the Industry, in Part: Next Big Sound, a company that measures the social activity surrounding online music, this week offered another encouraging glimpse of the market. In its year-end report , it said it measured 93.8 billion streams of songs last year, up 45 percent from 2011. Combing through artist Facebook accounts, Twitter feeds and other sources, it found find 17.1 billion profile views and 5.7 billion “new fans” of music. ... It also found that while independent acts tend to do very well on Facebook, Twitter and other sites (especially SoundCloud), that shrinks on Vevo and YouTube; Vevo is owned by Universal and Sony Music, and many independent labels do not have licensing deals with it. Read More: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/digital-notes-measuring-growth-in-dollars-and-page-views/

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

Beats By Dre Expands Into Digital Music Service With Daisy By Henna Kathiya January 11, 2013 From MTV New in Music News Dr. Dre has proven himself to be quite the businessman with his Beats By Dre brand landing him the top spot on Forbes highest paid musicians list . Now the legendary West Coast producer is looking to expand his business with a foray into a new digital music service called Daisy. Read More: http://rapfix.mtv.com/2013/01/11/beats-by-dre-expands-with-digital-music-service-daisy/

Labels Intensify Their War Against Vimeo... By Paul Resnikoff January 07, 2013 From Digital Music News He who lives by the DMCA, dies by the DMCA. And the latter may be the fate of Vimeo, the cleaner cousin of YouTube that never played the copyright game as slickly. Which is partly why the major labels are intensifying their attack on Vimeo on that grounds of loose-and-fast DMCA interpretations, and asking a federal judge to make a final decision against Vimeo, right now. The label group, led by Capitol Records (ie, UMG), has just filed paperwork demanding a summary judgment against Vimeo on the grounds that this is a company that knew, encouraged, and facilitated widespread infringement of musical copyright on a recurring basis.  Read More: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130106vimeo