World Music

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/

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...

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