Songwriters struggle to get paid while the copyright system designed to protect their rights is partially to blame, but why? In this episode of Musonomics, Larry Miller takes a look at how the copyright and royalty payment system is failing a new generation of songwriters.
Continue reading “Songwriters, Consent and the Age of Discontent”
Spotify has been known since its launch in 2006 as a music streaming service, but with a move into video content, the streaming giant looks to be broadening its entertainment offerings.
In a new partnership with Disney, ABCNews, NBC, Viacom, TED, and Vice, and others, Spotify has added video content to its library. Daniel Ek, Spotify CEO, originally made the announcement back on May 20th, but the update went live on iOS and Android in recent weeks.
Continue reading “Spotify Adds In-App Video Content”
It’s Monday again, and that means another batch of important information to catch up on. On this week’s Monday Reading List, Billboard.biz explains new changes to webcasting rates, Spotify considers allowing artists to withhold music from the free platform, Tesco starts selling vinyl in the UK, Paul Pacifico tells Music Business Worldwide why artists must be at the center of a new music business, and rumors swirl that the Beatles catalogue may finally be available on streaming services very soon.
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On today’s Monday Reading List: Music Business Worldwide tells us why this week will be so important for the industry, Taylor Swift and Apple join forces (again), a new study suggests that streaming might actually help record sales, and the RZA considers stealing back the Wu-Tang album that recently sold for millions.
It’s Monday, and that means it’s time for another Musonomics Monday Reading List. This week, we check in on the Grammy nominations, Bloomberg explains why Spotify is so desperate to cling to their freemium model, Facebook launches a concert ticket service, Adele feels “eh” on streaming, and Music Business Worldwide releases their shortlist of candidates for the MBW Young Executive 2015 Award.
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Just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last two weeks, Adele has a new album out. As Adele’s 25 continues to break records at every turn, the album is just about the only thing that anyone in the music industry is talking about — ourselves included.
Hold onto your butts, this week’s Monday Reading List is completely dominated by England’s all-powerful pop songstress.
What if artists have been thinking about streaming revenues in the wrong way? Steve Aoki thinks we should be thinking of streaming revenues as a type of “pension plan” for musical artists. In other music industry news from last week, Beats Music gets an official date of closure, Apple Music launches on android, Jean-Michel Jarre issues a statement on behalf of CISAC regarding the tragic events that took place last week in Paris, and a French photographer’s concert photos from the Eagles of Death Metal show that was attacked last week are released.
Adele’s highly anticipated album, 25, releases November 20th, but questions still remain. Will she release 25 on Spotify and other streaming platforms on the same day as the physical release, or will she bait more sales by staggering the release on streaming platforms?
Continue reading “To Stream or Not to Stream: Adele’s Question”
Professional musicians know that royalty payments and the concept of transparency are mutually exclusive. As we mentioned briefly in our seventh episode , “The Transparency Moment,” the current performance royalty payment system is antiquated and fragmented. Payments can take months to be sent out and usually arrive via paper check. Some payments don’t even reach rights holders because records of who owns what are incomplete or incorrect. Those payments are trapped in what David Byrne called the music industry’s black box. Black box lost revenues are said to be in the millions of dollars, but we might not be locked out of that box forever.
Continue reading “How Bitcoin’s Blockchain Could Fix The Music Industry’s Payment Problem”
Season 2 of The Musonomics podcast kicks off today with the release of episode 8, “YouTube’s Big Red Elephant is Loose in the Music Industry’s Room.” We’ve talked a lot on previous shows about the streaming wars; Spotify vs Tidal vs Apple Music vs Deezer vs an ever-growing list of new faces — but there’s one streaming service whose user numbers dwarf the competition, and that streaming service is YouTube. In just 10 years, YouTube has become the biggest streaming service in the world.
Continue reading “YouTube’s Big Red Elephant is Loose in the Music Industry’s Room”
