Canadian Performance Rights Org SOCAN Collects $307.8 Million

The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) has topped $300 million (CAD) in total revenues from its membership for the first time since forming in 1990 after a merger between two PROs, CAPAC and PROCAN.

The performance rights organization collected CAD $307.8 million ($240.04 USD) in domestic and international royalties for the fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 2015, from the performance of music from more than 135,000 songwriters, composers and music publisher members. (A preliminary financial report released in January put the figure at $310 million).

Source: Canadian Performance Rights Org SOCAN Collects $307.8 Million | Billboard

Digital Music Era Ushers In New Rights for Veteran Studio Musicians

Paul Harrington, a leading session player on harmonica based in Rockwall, Texas, today announced that after a lengthy quest he has received digital session royalties for the Pitbull track, “Timber,” featuring Ke$ha.

Mr. Harrington was hired in 2013 to record the song’s signature harmonica riff, which kicks off the song and weaves through the entire tune. While he was compensated a meager amount for his time, Mr. Harrington, as with many session players, did not realize that there was money left on the table – a little known royalty owed to session musicians for digital airplay.

Source: Digital Music Era Ushers In New Rights for Veteran Studio Musicians | Business Wire

Pandora looks to avoid Spotify’s royalty lawsuits with Music Reports deal

Pandora, under new CEO Tim Westergren, has announced a new partnership with Music Reports, which it calls “the world’s most advanced rights administration platform”, to manage the mechanical licensing and royalty administration for its upcoming on-demand streaming service.

Spotify was hit by two $150m+ class action lawsuits last year over missing or inaccurate mechanical royalty payments to songwriters – since combined, and ongoing – and later offered a settlement to writers via the NMPA.

Source: Pandora looks to avoid Spotify’s royalty lawsuits with Music Reports deal – Music Business Worldwide

Google wanted to buy Michael Jackson’s $750m stake in Sony/ATV

For many in the music business, the repercussions of Google being allowed to get near a 50% stake Sony/ATV would be deeply worrying. Sony/ATV manages 4m music copyrights written by the likes of The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, Ed Sheeran, James Brown, Elvis Presley, Lauryn Hill, Oasis and Eminem.

Remember that those 4m copyrights are spread through countless recordings and, therefore, master rights deals with labels. That would have been the first headache for the likes of Universal Music Group.

Source: Google wanted to buy Michael Jackson’s $750m stake in Sony/ATV – Music Business Worldwide

Shamrock readies $250m acquisition fund – and eyes music rights

Shamrock Capital Advisors has announced a new $250m fund focused on acquiring or financing entertainment IP – with music publishing and master rights firmly on its shopping list.

The Entertainment IP Fund will be spent on a “diverse group of assets that have been through their initial window of release”, which may also include movies, TV productions, video games and other content types.

Source: Shamrock readies $250m acquisition fund – and eyes music rights – Music Business Worldwide

ConsenSys And SingularDTV Partner to Build Film & TV Rights Management Platform

SingularDTV (S-DTV), a first-of-its-kind Blockchain entertainment studio, is partnering with venture production studio ConsenSys to build a smart contract-based rights management platform for film and television on the Ethereum Blockchain.

Based on ConsenSys’ rights management prototype, Ujo Music, ConsenSys will support the S-DTV service, enabling it to attach usage policies and real-time revenue flow to its video and media content.

Source: ConsenSys And SingularDTV Partner to Build Film & TV Rights Management Platform – Blockchain News

Rights and the Set-top Box

The formal comment period in the Federal Communications Commission’s set-top box proceeding closed this week after tallying 256,747 submissions. Most were canned comments submitted by consumers who had been rounded up for the purpose by interest groups on both sides of the issue. But the controversial proposal to require pay-TV providers to “unlock” the set-top box and make disaggregated elements of their service available to third-party device makers and app developers also drew over 1,000 substantive comments from rights owners, members of the pay-TV industry, technology providers and other agencies of government involved in telecommunications policy.

Apart from those filed by technology companies and a few public interest groups, most of the comments from professional telecom policy circles — save one — strongly opposed the proposal. AT&T called the proposal “indefensible as a matter of law and nonsensical as a matter of public policy.” The Motion Picture Association of America said the proposal would violate content owners’ First and Fifth Amendment rights and called it tantamount to government-mandated copyright infringement.

The one official voice speaking up for the proposal, however, came from President Barack Obama’s bully pulpit. The White House not only publicly endorsed the proposal but made it a poster child for a broader initiative to increase competition in sectors of the economy where the administration thinks it’s lacking.

Pan-European Licensing Hub ICE Strikes Deal With Google Play

Designed to enable faster, more cost efficient and simplified rights negotiations for digital music services operating in Europe, the licensing and royalty processing service collectively represents over 250,000 songwriters.

The organization bills itself as the world’s first integrated licensing and processing hub and claims to have the most comprehensive copyright database in Europe. It says it will process online music usage through a single matching engine that will eliminate “unnecessary processing” and significantly reduce disputed claims.

Source: Pan-European Licensing Hub ICE Strikes Deal With Google Play | Billboard

DistroKid Will Now Pay Everyone Who Worked On Your Song

DistroKid, one of the world’s leading digital distribution companies that gets artists and labels’ music into over 90 digital outlets (like Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Tidal, Deezer, etc) will now directly pay revenue from your releases to anyone you want.

What does this mean? Your producer gets 3% of revenue from your most recent single? Before, you would have to download your sales reports every month, calculate the totals for the designated release and write your producer a check for 3% of that. Every month. You did a YouTube collaboration with 5 other artists? Now, instead of one person having to figure out the splits and paying each collaborator directly, DistroKid will do all the accounting, reporting and payments directly to each collaborator.

Source: DistroKid Will Now Pay Everyone Who Worked On Your Song

Rightscorp Revenue Plummets, Has ‘Substantial Doubts’ About Its Future

Anti-piracy firm Rightscorp is questioning its own viability after releasing some dismal first-quarter financial results. The company, which monitors and targets repeated copyright infringers with extralegal payment notices, reported an operating loss of $784,180 during the three months ended March 31, a slight improvement from the $930,000 loss a year earlier. Rightscorp only generated revenues of $68,283, a 78 percent drop from 2015 Q1’s $307,904, and its services accrued only $49,142 due to copyright holders — a third of the $153,952 gathered during the first three months of 2015.

“These and other factors raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” the company said in its 10-Q report, which later listed possible reasons for the sharp drop in revenue. “Management believes that the decrease in revenues was due to: a) changes in the filesharing software intended to defeat detection of copyrights being illegally distributed, b) less forwarding of the Company’s notices by ISPs and c) the shutting down of some filesharing network infrastructure.”

Source: Rightscorp Revenue Plummets, Has ‘Substantial Doubts’ About Its Future | Billboard

Medianet, SOCAN, YouTube And The Kobalt Effect

Since the demise of the long-running-but-never-launched Global Repertoire Database (GRD) there has been a lot of debate over what comes next for digital rights reporting. The songwriter class action suits in the US against Spotify are the natural outcome of more than one and a half decades of failing to deal with the forsaken mess that is compositional rights in the digital era.

The music industry needs a solution and now just like busses that never come, two arrive at once: Google’s Open Source Validation Tool for DDEX Standard (doesn’t sound too sexy I know, but bear with me on this one) and Canadian PRO (Performing Rights Organization) SOCAN has acquired Medianet essentially as a digital rights reporting play. So just what is going on in the world of digital rights reporting?

Source: Medianet, SOCAN, YouTube And The Kobalt Effect | Music Industry Blog

Report: New Euro law could put film, TV audiences at risk of substantial loss of content

The report calculates that changes to copyright and other initiatives at the EU level could result in substantially lower levels of investment in TV and film content, with consumer welfare losses worth up to €9.3 billion. This, it said, would be a direct result of those consumers losing access to content they currently enjoy, being charged more, or being priced out completely. It further asserts that up to 48% less local TV content in certain genres and 37% less local film production would be produced, with the most marginal/risky content at particular risk of being dropped.

The report was launched with the support of a broad group of sponsors, including film and audiovisual producers, distributors, broadcasters, platforms and film agencies throughout Europe and across the world. The group urges the European Commission to re-think its proposals to erode the territorial exploitation of film and TV content and avoid any proposals or other initiatives that would undermine film and television licensing and financing, including the decision to license on an exclusive territorial basis.

Source: New Euro law claimed to be putting film, TV audiences at risk of substantial loss of content | Media Analysis | Business

ASCAP scraps exclusivity clauses as it settles for $1.75m with DoJ

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has reached a $1.75m Settlement Agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice addressing two specific concerns raised during the Department’s ongoing review of the ASCAP Consent Decree.

Although ASCAP has admitted no wrongdoing, it has agreed to scrap exclusivity clauses in some historical agreements with members – while pointing out that such provisions have never been enforced.

Source: ASCAP scraps exclusivity clauses as it settles for $1.75m with DoJ – Music Business Worldwide

Evolution Of A Digital Broadcasting Giant: Pandora

Since the CRB has raised the per-stream rate, it has made it harder for Pandora to survive.  Scaling for Pandora was anyway a double-edged sword, always requiring higher payments to rights holders. Initially, those right holders had agreed on easier rates to allow growth and, back then, the establishment of Pandora. But Internet radio is now well developed, and the majors are not as easy going. The collective licensing agreement with SoundExchange is practical for Pandora though unpalatable, and unless Pandora can offer other services for a discount, such as the promotion of new releases, little will change.

It is in this context that Pandora has revamped its Artist Marketing Platform to support a direct-to-fan business.11 Its AMPcast feature now allows artists to target their Pandora fans by sending them audio messages about local concert dates, album releases, and other ‘behind the scenes’ content. AMPcast also provides links for the purchase of both albums and concert tickets. This new tool could be a market changer, for it would make the online radio provider not just a distributor of recorded music but an active player in the live music space.

Source: Evolution Of A Digital Broadcasting Giant: Pandora – hypebot

Kobalt’s AMRA increases YouTube publishing payouts by 34% in EU

During the first three months of administering Kobalt’s digital catalogue in Europe – in Q3 2015 and compared to the previous quarter – AMRA delivered a 26% increase in earnings from Spotify and a 34% increase in earnings from YouTube for Kobalt Music Publishing clients.

Combined, AMRA collected 28% more money from Spotify and YouTube in Europe during the period.

Source: Kobalt’s AMRA increases YouTube publishing payouts by 34% in EU – Music Business Worldwide

Commission’s digital single market turns one and has a big seven months ahead

Under its digital single market plans, the European Commission has so far proposed a crowd-pleasing new law to allow people to use digital content subscriptions like Netflix when they travel to other EU countries. The executive also came out with proposals to reform online contracts and open the 700 MHz spectrum band for mobile internet and outlined non-legislative measures to make industrial manufacturing more digital.

Paul Meller, spokesman for tech industry association DigitalEurope, said the digital single market plans are “far more ambitious than any previous Commission efforts in this area”.

But there could be dramatic twists ahead: the executive’s announcements, still planned for later this year, are some of the most controversial ones in the strategy.

Source: Commission’s digital single market turns one and has a big seven months ahead – EurActiv.com

In Possible Threat to Must-Carry, GAO Says Broadcast License Phase-out Feasible

The General Accountability Office has concluded that phasing out cable and satellite statutory licenses for the retransmission of broadcast content “may be feasible for most” participants, and the U.S. Copyright Office agreed. Must-carry rules could be threatened as a result.

GAO also said that increasing the individual negotiations could lead to broadcast “blackouts,” already a complaint by cable operators over retrans negotiations with blanket licenses. It would make sense that the more individual negotiations required, the more potential for disagreement and disruption, though some content providers argue there would also be more opportunity for a marketplace-set rate on their content rather than a government-set blanket license they argue is artificially low.

Source: In Possible Threat to Must-Carry, GAO Says Broadcast License Phase-out Feasible | Broadcasting & Cable

ASCAP Payout to Industry Falls by $16m, Despite Revenue Growth

US licensing body ASCAP collected more than $1bn for the second year in a row in 2015 – but paid out some $16.1m less to songwriters and publishers.

As a result, the collection society’s overall cost-to-income ratio moved in the wrong direction for rights-holders – despite its expenses actually dropping in the year.

Total receipts at ASCAP last year hit $1.015bn, up 1.3% on the $1.002bn collected in 2014. However, 2015 saw distributions of $867.4m to ASCAP’s 560,000 members in the US and around the world.

Source: Music Business Worldwide

Welcome to the RightsTech Revolution

Concurrent Media Strategies, LLC, publisher of the Concurrent Media blog, and Digital Media Wire, Inc., producers of Digital Entertainment World and the New York Media Festival, among other conferences, today announced the official launch of RightsTech, a new forum — blog, newsletter, conferences — for cross-industry global collaboration focused on furthering technology innovation around rights management and licensing across multiple media verticals.

The inaugural RightsTech Summit will be held July 26 at the the Japan Society in New York City. The newsletter, which you can subscribe to here, will keep you up to date on all the news and conversation around the emerging RightsTech ecosystem. This blog will be an evolving platform for discussion and debate among the various stakeholders.

Will We Ever Hear the Hundreds of Songs Prince Left Behind?

It’s important to understand that even unreleased songs are protected by copyright as soon as an artist writes them down.

“Once [Prince] created it,” says Mike Carrier, a law professor at Rutgers, “it was fixed. It wasn’t just in his head. He didn’t just sing it once; he recorded it.” Still, no one knows who owns those copyrights now. Given his history with, and distrust of, the music industry, Prince’s heir or heirs may well fully own the recordings. Copyright lasts the life of the artist, plus 70 years.

(Mark your calendars for 2086, when Purple Rain enters the public domain.)

But “copyright is so much more about contracts, than it is about federal policy,” Vaidhyanathan says. “A copyright holder has tremendous power over what happens, how it’s released to the world.” We can’t say anything for sure so soon after his death, when so much remains unknown, but we can speculate. So let’s speculate.

Source: WIRED