Author: trichordist

trichordist

Pandora CEO says “Pandora is Radio” so Pandora shouldn’t pay artists at all

Oh Boy…

Music Technology Policy

Sometimes it pays to read the transcripts from earnings calls, especially for company’s like Pandora, our latest set of fake “friends” in the tech community.  Always striving to keep their executive salaries high, Pandora’s CEO let their true strategy slip out in yesterday’s earnings call (see the full transcript on Seeking Alpha):

For the landscape around content licensing remains a complex topic. We reached the important milestone related to content cost during Q1, with a decision in the ASCAP trial. In her ruling, Judge Cote, confirmed our longstanding belief that “Pandora is Radio”. An important finding was wide ranging legal implications for our company.

Additionally the court set a rate of 1.85% of Pandora’s revenue for the five years ending December 31, 2015, which was the upper end of our proposed range of rates. And this decision followed the court’s issuance of summary judgment in September 2013…

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by trichordist

Band “Adapts and Evolves” on Spotify, Get’s the Smackdown… Go Figure.

We’ve loved this story from the start of how a band creatively managed to raise money on Spotify by having their fans stream a silent album, overnight, as they slept. It appears that the Spotify is none to amused when artists are actually great innovators in developing new solutions to actually get paid…

After $20,000 Is Raised, Spotify Rips Down the ‘Sleepify’ Album…

Last month, Vulfpek released a completely silent album on Spotify to finance a free tour for fans. That was laughed off by Spotify at first, until Vulfpek earned more than $20,000 on the idea. That prompted a big response: according to the band, Spotify’s lawyers first asked nicely, then started ripping it down

READ THE FULL STORY AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/04/24/spotifyripsdownsleepifyalbum

RELATED:

 

#SXSW REWIND : Venture Capitalist Admits Artists Can Not Make A Living On Streaming Royalties…

 

Music Streaming Math, Can It All Add Up?

 

What YouTube Really Pays… Makes Spotify Look Good! #sxsw

by trichordist

Thievery Corporation’s Rob Garza on how “we live in a streaming world” | GIGAOM

Gigaom: You have an incredible vantage point. You are an artist yourself, you work with other artists; you also have a record label. You are constantly on tour. Can you talk a little bit about impact of things like Spotify, iTunes and all the digitization of music? There’s a lot of people who don’t care much about Pandora and Spotify.

Rob: It’s great that people can explore different artists, find music on Spotify, YouTube, things like that. At the same time, do I think that it’s sustainable for the music community? I don’t think so, because a lot of this money just goes back into the pockets of the tech companies. Before, it would go to major labels some things like that.

I’m not defending major labels, but at least major labels would take some of that money, and invest it to find and develop new artists, and trying to give artists a career. That’s the one…for me kind of missing link in this whole equation is that, that money goes to Google Play or goes to iTunes or goes to Pandora or Spotify.

The royalties are miniscule. Also, those companies don’t make it a habit to invest in new music, new art and new talent. It keeps a lot of resources from coming back into the community.

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW AT GIGAOM:
http://gigaom.com/2014/04/18/the-gigaom-interview-thievery-corporations-rob-garza-on-how-we-live-in-a-streaming-world%C2%9D/

by trichordist

Amazon’s Streaming Contract Is “Entirely Unacceptable” | Digital Music News

Amazon is trying to bypass US Copyright law and define its own royalty rates

Section 115 of the US Copyright Act is the rate, set by the government, that defines the mechanical royalty rates. Most people know that the statutory mechanical royalty rate is currently 9.1 cents per download or physical “phonorecord” under 5 minutes (and then 1.75 cents per minute thereafter), but few know what the rate is per stream. That’s because the streaming rate is based upon the streaming service’s number of subscribers and users. More subscribers to the service equals higher mechanical royalty rates.

For the record, Spotify, Beats and the other streaming services all follow Section 115 of the US Copyright Act and follow the defined mechanical royalty rates.

READ THE FULL POST AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/04/10/amazons-streaming-contract-entirely-unacceptable

by trichordist

Billy Bragg and Beggars Group Rethink YouTube & Streaming… | MusicAlly

We wonder if this is the future of music and artist revenue streams?

While Wheeler was positive about subscription streaming services, he opened both barrels on YouTube. “If YouTube launches a subscription service and it eats Spotify and Rdio, you’ll look back at these times as great days,” he cautioned. “They want to eat all the other music services and our business. That’s their plan.” He said the record industry was “caught out” in the early days of YouTube and didn’t realise the video site would become so big, initially thinking it was just about licensing music for a video of “a cat on a skateboard and then it became the biggest music service in the world”.

Bragg backed him up by saying, “If you want to talk about artists getting angry about the use of their music, YouTube is the place we should be looking at.”

Wheeler concluded, “We got caught out and that needs addressing. Otherwise they will eat our dinner.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT MUSICALLY:
http://musically.com/2014/04/07/beggars-group-recalibrates-50-streaming-payment-to-artists-and-attacks-youtube/

RELATED:

Exclusive: ‘YouTube Music’ Is Launching This Summer… | Digital Music News

#SXSW REWIND : Venture Capitalist Admits Artists Can Not Make A Living On Streaming Royalties…

What YouTube Really Pays… Makes Spotify Look Good! #sxsw

by trichordist

Online Piracy Finally In the Crosshairs | William Buckley Jr. HuffPo

Written in 1998, with the intent of protecting both copyright holders and website owners, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, quickly became a devastating problem for copyright holders. Not coincidentally, barely a year later, in 1999, Shawn Fanning launched Napster, marking the beginning of online piracy and over a decade of artist abuse.

Now, fifteen years later, most pirate sites are still operating under the protection provided by the DMCA’s Safe Harbor; a loop-hole that has enabled pirate sites to thrive in a quasi-legal gray area. A safe harbor from which online pirates claim compliance by engaging in what is commonly referred to as whack-a-mole, a process where infringing sites comply with take down notices by taking down the infringing content only to have the same content reposted almost immediately from another source.

The proposed change referred to as Stay Down strives to eliminate the safe harbor loop-hole. Copyright holders and administrators, while still responsible for policing their work, are only responsible for notifying a website operator one time. Once that is accomplished, the hosting site is now responsible for blocking the infringing content. A process that can be managed by software programs. If a service provider fails to comply they are in violation of the law.

READ THE FULL STORY AT HUFFPO:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-buckley-jr/online-piracy-finally-in-_b_5086820.html

by trichordist

Should Artists Hitch Their Royalties to Advertising in the YouTube Monopoly: @zoecello’s insights

A must read from Music Tech Policy!

Music Technology Policy

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
They say sing while you slave and I just get bored
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

From Maggie’s Farm by Bob Dylan
Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music
(Read more: http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/maggies-farm#ixzz2w2uoNmHA)

We’ve pointed out for years that the collision of the Web 2.0 advertising based economy creates an odd and unhealthy dynamic for artists.  There is no place where this is more prevalent than YouTube.

YouTube routinely delivers random advertising for a variety of products against artist videos (either the “official” video or user generated versions of the artist’s work).  This means that artists have lost control of a…

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by trichordist

Beggars said to have contributed more in UK Taxes than Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon combined. | Telegraph UK

The Government has been “seduced” by technology companies such as Google, and is “cosying up” to them, even though they keep their tax contributions to a minimum, leading music executive Martin Mills has warned.

Mr Mills, who founded Adele’s record label, Beggars Group, claimed his company pays more tax in Britain than Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon. But he said creative businesses like his receive less support from the Government.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE TELEGRAPH UK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/9844225/Government-seduced-by-tech-firms-like-Google.html

by trichordist

Why Streaming Music Isn’t Like Bottled Water… | Digital Music News

Streaming music is just like bottled water, right?  Not all, actually.

1. People happily pay outrageous premiums for bottled water (a glass of tap water costs about $0.001).
Relatively few people actually pay for streaming music.

2.  People are convinced that there’s a difference between bottled water and tap water.
Not enough people feel there’s a difference between ad-based (free) streaming and premium (paid) streaming.

3. Sometimes, tap water tastes funny.
Free streaming always tastes good!  You just have to wait for it a little longer.

4. Bottled water is a proven, $100 billion industry that’s been around for decades.
Streaming music isn’t a profitable industry, hasn’t been around for more than a decade, and remains financially speculative.

READ THE REST OF THE 11 POINT LIST AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/02/26/bottledwaterstreaming

by trichordist

Homegrown Music: The Challenges Of Running A Record Label in D.C. | DC Music Download

“I don’t think people understand the idea that music is someone else’s property because it’s just in digital bits,” Feigenbaum says. “It’s intangible. People who feel music has no value and want to steal from you will steal from you. It’s so ubiquitous—it’s so easy”.

“I have people come up to me and tell me how much they love what I do, and I’ll be like, ‘That’s great, where do you buy it?’” notes Feigenbaum. “And you can see they weren’t expecting that and they start to stammer. It’s like, ‘You’re not helping me. You’re not a fan-you’re a leech.’”

“I could go on and on about the things I don’t like about iTunes,” he says, “But they do pay. It’s not my favorite business model, but I get paid from them.” Spotify, however, is another matter.

“They don’t pay shit,” he says. “The only people who make money off of Spotify is Spotify. We were getting thousands of listens on Spotify, which added up to literally one and a quarter pennies. So we opted out.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT DC MUSIC DOWNLOAD:
http://dcmusicdownload.com/2014/02/12/homegrown-music-the-challenges-of-running-a-record-label-in-d-c/

by trichordist