Music Ally Startup Files: Mime takes the music business hyper-local
Made In Memphis Entertainment (Mime), launched in 2015, has a quietly radical idea at its core: ‘disruptive decentralisation’. It’s about creating a root-and-branch alternative to the traditional music business structure. And the company is starting local, in Memphis, Tennessee.
At present, Mime’s family of companies includes Beatroot Music, the only Black-owned music distributor in the US; Mime Records, an independent label; Heavy Hitters Music, a film, TV, and ad sync company; Royalty Claim, a platform to recover unclaimed royalties; and 4U Recording, a recording studio and central creative hub in Memphis.
Mime intends to roll out similar models in other cities, however, to create a network of hyper-local recording, A&R, distribution and artist development businesses. That’s the disruptive part.
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Source: Music ally
DiMA report hails music streaming’s impact in the US
The US-based Digital Media Association (DiMA) is the lobbying body for music streaming services from companies including Amazon, Apple, Pandora, Spotify and YouTube.
Its new ‘Streaming Forward’ report – produced with consultancy firm Midia Research – thus focuses on the positive aspects of streaming’s impact on the US music industry.
Its data from 2019 notes that there were $10.3bn of streaming revenues in the US (“$28.2m per day generated for the music industry”) and that by the end of the year there were 87.2m streaming music subscriptions in the US and 99 million subscribers.
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Source: Music ally
League Of Legends K-Pop group K/DA return with new track
Hot on the heels of announcing a big partnership with Spotify, the publisher of esports hit League of Legends is bringing its virtual K-Pop group K/DA back with new music.
Riot Games launched K/DA two years ago as a group of avatar characters – each voiced by a real singer. Their debut live performance at the League of Legends World Championship in 2018, with all manner of augmented-reality whizziness, has been watched more than 40m times on YouTube, while the official video for that track (‘Pop/Stars’) has more than 366m views.
Anyway, now K/DA are back, still with two members of real K-Pop group (G)I-DLE providing vocals for two of the characters. The new track is called ‘The Baddest’, and it comes ahead of a full EP with the same title, to be released later this year.
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Source: Music ally
Machine Gun Kelly’s new podcast is a Halloween-themed musical
Sure, music podcasts with artists talking about their music can be interesting, but wouldn’t it be more fun to make, say, a four-part Halloween-themed musical podcast instead?
Hey presto! Machine Gun Kelly has done just that. He’s working with production company Audio Up Media on ‘Halloween in Hell’, a four-part series which kicks off on 10 October.
“A story about the most horrific reality show ever dreamed up. Two mega stars from the world of music have mysteriously ended up on Satan’s newest game show stage,” as the blurb explains.
“This is over the top no holds barred singing contest requires them to sing or die. The devil is out for blood and ultimately gets to decide the rules and change them as he goes.”
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Source: Music ally
UK study explores class imbalances in the creative industries
A report published by the UK’s Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre yesterday suggests that more needs to be done to open up these industries – music included – to people from working-class backgrounds.
“Echoing wider research, we find widespread and persistent class imbalances. Those from privileged backgrounds are more than twice as likely to land a job in a creative occupation,” explains its executive summary. “They dominate key creative roles in the sector, shaping what goes on stage, page and screen.”
The study divides people into three groups: people from ‘privileged’ backgrounds, ‘intermediate’ backgrounds and ‘working-class’ backgrounds, based on their parents’ employment history.
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Source: Music ally
Pro artists are making $5k-$20k per livestream on Sessions
Sessions is the startup launched earlier this year by former Pandora boss Tim Westergren: a livestreaming platform for musicians to broadcast “with just a laptop and a microphone”. Now Westergren has been talking to Pollstar about how things are going.
“In the first 6-9 months when we were in beta, we recruited about 150 artists from around the world, and these were all amateurs, hobbyists, people with no fans. People at home playing music, big dreams but no presence. We put them on the service, gave them an audience and started letting them perform. And now, a significant percentage of them are making good money,” he said.
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Source: Music ally
TikTok sale announcement could come as soon as next week
Strap in: the TikTok sale process may be even speedier than President Trump expected. CNBC reported today that TikTok is “nearing an agreement” to sell its operations in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – as soon as next week.
Its sources claimed that the deal could be worth between $20bn and $30bn, but added that TikTok is still in talks with both Microsoft and Oracle over the potential sale. What’s more, those sources suggested a third US company has also thrown its hat in the ring.
“Walmart has been working with SoftBank on a potential acquisition, but because that offer doesn’t include a cloud technology backbone component, it is likely a nonstarter with the US government,” claimed CNBC.
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Source: Music ally
Amazon Halo sees tech giant get into the digital fitness game
Apple has quietly been becoming a digital health and fitness company for a while now, with wellbeing becoming a key selling point for its Apple Watch smartwatch. Now Amazon wants in on the fitness-wearables game.
It has unveiled a device called Halo, which is a fitness band (sadly not one that hovers above your head) with a companion app and subscription service. They’re launching in the US initially, with early adopters able to pay $64.99 for a band with a six-month subscription to the Halo service thrown in.
“Unlike smartwatches and fitness trackers, it doesn’t have a screen or constant notifications,” is the rivals-side-eyeing pitch. Instead, the wrist-worn band measures activity with a points-based system, as well as sleep and body fat percentage.
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Source: Music ally
Restream raises $50m to power multi-platform livestreams
Do you want to stream to YouTube, Twitch or Facebook? How about these and a couple of dozen more platforms simultaneously? That’s what the technology of a startup called Restream does, and investors are excited to the tune of a $50m Series A funding round for the company.
Sapphire Ventures and Insight Partners led the round, which will be used to continue developing a tool called Restream Studio.
TechCrunch described that as “a platform for creators to do more production around their videos: for example, writing captions and lower-thirds, adding watermarks, managing chats, and editing and repurposing excerpts of streams on other channels, and managing analytics” – adding: “Think of it as the Hootsuite of video streaming.”
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Source: Music ally
Spotify expands Discover Weekly sponsorship to EMEA countries
In early 2019 Spotify opened up its flagship algo-personalised playlist, Discover Weekly, to brand sponsorships. However, so far the option for advertisers to sponsor the playlist has only been tested in North America and Latin America, as well as the UK.
Now it’s crossing the seas to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Nine countries, to be specific: Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland and Turkey. So, not the biggest markets in mainland Europe yet, but an expansion nonetheless.
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Source: Music ally
Algoriddim launches tool to extract stems from music tracks
In June, we wrote about a pair of DJ apps getting ‘real-time stem separation’ features, so that DJs could mix with the individual elements of tracks (like vocals or basslines).
One of those apps was djay from Algoriddim, where the feature was called ‘Neural Mix’. Now it’s being spun off into its own software for Mac computers, called Neural Mix Pro.
“You can create beat-precise loops, change tempo, and transpose the key of a song, all while removing vocals, percussive, or harmonic parts in real-time,” explains its website.
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Source: Music ally
Fortnite’s new season is live… but not for Apple devices
The new season of Fortnite goes live today: Chapter 2 – Season 4 is a big tie-up with Marvel, with a bunch of its superheroes and supervillains added to the game, complete with their most famous locations – and an in-game comic explaining how they got there.
But one section of Fortnite’s player community won’t be joining in: people who use iPhones, iPads or Mac computers to play Fortnite. This is because of Epic Games’s ongoing legal battle with Apple over its desire to use its own in-app purchases system on iOS rather than Apple’s.
As things stand, new downloads of Fortnite as well as updates for people who’ve already downloaded it are both blocked. The latter means iOS (and now MacOS users too) won’t be able to get the new season.
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Source: Music ally
Joe Budden says he’s taking his podcast away from Spotify
For Spotify, as one ‘Joe’ podcasting era begins, another appears to be drawing to an ill-tempered close. The streaming service will soon be the exclusive platform for The Joe Rogan Experience, but what about the deal it signed back in August 2018 for hip-hop show The Joe Budden Podcast?
It’s not ending well.
“September 23rd, new episodes of this podcast will no longer be available on Spotify,” he told listeners in his latest episode. “September 23rd, I cannot tell you where this podcast will be, but as it stands I can tell you where it will not be, and that is Spotify.”
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Source: Music ally
Katy Perry’s ‘Smile’ album comes with its own video game
The new Katy Perry album comes out tomorrow (28 August) and ‘Smile’ will be accompanied by its own promotional game. It’s a partnership with computing brand Dell – or rather, with its high-end gaming sub-brand Alienware.
The game is called Katy Quest, and from the clip shared by Perry on her socials, it appears to be a collection of circus-themed mini-games, riffing off the theme of the video for the album’s title track.
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Source: Music ally
eMusic gets into livestreaming with eMusicLive launch
The last time we checked in on eMusic, it had just launched its eMU token as part of a blockchain drive, while its boss had joined the board of B2B firm 7digital. A few months on, the two companies are hopping aboard the livestreaming bandwagon.
eMusic is launching a platform called eMusicLive, which it says will be a way for artists to put on virtual concerts and earn money from them “by bundling ticketing, music sales, merchandise and collectibles” as well as signing sponsorship deals.
These performances might be hosted directly on eMusicLive, but artists can also embed their livestreams from YouTube, Twitch and Instagram.
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Source: Music ally
BPI and UK Music join UK’s creative industries trade advisory group
What kind of trade deal will the UK have with the European Union after the end of its Brexit transition period this year? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ is the best description, in the absence of an emoticon denoting ‘throwing hands in the air and running around screaming’.
There is some positive news though: the British government has created some new trade advisory groups to ensure it gets advice from key industries. One of those trade groups is for the creative industries, and two music bodies – the BPI and UK Music – are represented on it.
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Source: Music ally
Tidal makes social VR move with $7m investment in Sensorium
It seems to be the week for music streaming to meet virtual reality startups. VR firm MelodyVR announced plans to acquire Napster, and now Tidal is making an investment in VR company Sensorium Corporation.
It’s not a traditional deal though: Tidal has bought $7m in tokens issued by Sensorium – yes, that’s Music Ally’s blockchain klaxon you can hear wailing away: read more about ‘Senso Tokens’ here – as part of its Sensorium Galaxy social VR platform.
Due to launch next February, it’ll be a virtual world with an emphasis on music, dance and hanging out in VR nightclubs.
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Source: Music ally
Music distribution and services firm Stem raises $10m
Stem is the US-based company that combines tools helping musicians to track their royalties with distribution to digital music services.
It has just raised a funding round of $10m from investors including Coach K, the COO of label Quality Control Music; Mark Gillespie, founder of management company Three Six Zero; a number of managers working for Red Light Management; and former basketball star Baron Davis.
“With this new round of financing, we are focused on accelerating the portfolio of products offered to our artists,” said Stem’s CEO Milana Rabkin Lewis. “We’ve assembled the top players in music who have built careers of the world’s top artists to amplify our efforts.”
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Source: Music ally
TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer resigns three months into the job
We promised you twists in this tale. TikTok is taking to the courts to battle the Trump administration’s executive order forcing its sale or shutdown in the US, but it will be doing so without its recently appointed CEO. Former Disney executive Kevin Mayer has resigned barely three months after taking the reins at TikTok in May.
“In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require, and what it means for the global role I signed up for,” wrote Mayer in his parting letter to staff, which quickly leaked.
“Against this backdrop, and as we expect to reach a resolution very soon, it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to leave the company. I understand that the role that I signed up for — including running TikTok globally — will look very different as a result of the US administration’s action to push for a sell-off of the U.S. business.”
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Source: Music ally
How do social media camera filters work, how much do they cost to make, and are they worth the investment?
In 2020 you’re nothing in the music industry without your own custom AR filter, layering brightly covered digital swirls over camera displays. Legendary artists such as Prince, Pink Floyd and The Beatles have all launched their own filters on social networks – the Prince estate offering a Purple Rain filter on TikTok and WMG’s Firepit […]
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Source: Music ally
Skrachy launches livestreaming app for DJs – royalties included
News of a livestreaming app for DJs can’t help but spark questions about royalties for the musicians whose work those DJs are using in their sets.
Skrachy is a US startup which claims to have an answer for that: it will charge DJs membership fees, and pay royalties out from that.
“A Skrachy membership equips DJs with the tools to monetize their business, including a virtual storefront, gig scheduler complete with built-in calendar and payment processing, a virtual console for livestreaming, and royalty protection for their event mixes,” is how the company’s launch announcement described its plans.
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Source: Music ally
Good Splits is a streaming royalty calculator for musicians
A new site called Good Splits is promising to help musicians “quickly and easily calculate royalties from aggregator services”. The idea being that they can not just see how much they’re earning, but also split the revenues between their collaborators with the minimum of spreadsheet-wrangling.
“This app hides complicated accounting math inside a simple UI that lets you scan for the most important info and won’t overwhelm you with extra data,” explains the site, although the actual payments will still have to be done by musicians.
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Source: Music ally
Vevo explores demographic differences in digital video habits
Music videos firm Vevo has published a report called ‘The Anatomy of a Video Experience: a Multicultural Story’.
It analyses how people are watching video on various devices – TV, mobile and PC – as well as exploring whether there are differences in behaviour between demographics including Asian, Black / African-American, Hispanic / Latino and White viewers.
The report, which was produced with Magna and IPG Media Lab, unsurprisingly includes some findings that play neatly into Vevo’s business model: for example, 60% of each group is receptive to ads while watching music videos.
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Source: Music ally
Dua Lipa launches #DuaVideo fan challenge with TikTok
Dua Lipa is the latest major artist to launch a TikTok challenge, but in her case, she’s looking for fans to appear in her next proper music video.
The challenge is #DuaVideo and runs for a week, having been launched yesterday with a video by Dua herself. Fans are being challenged to submit clips showing their creative skills in one of three disciplines: makeup, animation or dance, accompanied by the audio from the new single ‘Levitating’.
Warner Music Group is running the contest alongside TikTok, and digital marketing nerds (like us!) may enjoy scooting through the terms and conditions to see how this kind of user-generated contest is structured.
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Source: Music ally
The latest BTS product is a Korean language-learning kit
In March, BTS launched a new video series online called ‘Learn Korean with BTS’ – 30 three-minute lessons teaching their global fanbase how to speak the band’s native language.
Now this has evolved into a physical package developed by the educational arm of Big Hit Entertainment, the band’s management company.
The new product includes four textbooks and a ‘sound pen’ that “lets you hear standard pronunciations when placed on text”, as well as keyboard stickers with the Korean alphabet and a notebook.
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Source: Music ally
Techstars Music goes virtual and promises founder diversity
The Techstars Music accelerator has announced its plans for 2021, including the addition of Amazon Music as a new ‘member’ partner.
The program will also run entirely virtually for the first time when it kicks off on 16 February 2021, including its selection process, which is underway now.
Its managing director Bob Moczydlowsky is also promising that the startups chosen for the next program will have a diverse range of founders.
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Source: Music ally
MelodyVR raises $15.3m to help fund Napster acquisition
Yesterday we reported on MelodyVR’s planned acquisition of streaming service Napster for $26.3m in cash and stock, and wondered why the company was describing it as a $70m deal. A separate announcement from Napster’s majority owner RealNetworks cleared that up: the deal also saw MelodyVR assuming “approximately $44m in payment obligations, primarily to various music industry entities”.
The cash portion of the deal is $15m, and shortly after our story was published, MelodyVR raised $15.3m from a new share placement – it’s publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM sub-market – to fund it. The acquisition is expected to be completed later this year.
MelodyVR boss Anthony Matchett talked to Rolling Stone yesterday about the company’s ambitions to combine livestreamed performances and a streaming music catalogue. “Historically, the major recorded music streamers aren’t content creators. They may get content from the record labels but they don’t create new content like we do,” he said. They may pay massive sums of money to broadcasters for exclusive rights to a show, but again that’s not their content. We come at this from a different angle.”
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Source: Music ally
Music Ally Startup Files: SoundStorming opens up the creative process
SoundStorming could be a lot of things, and at a glance the platform appears to begin a trek up that unassailable summit of music-tech: A Social Network For Music. But co-founders Alícia Rius and Arnau Bosch are keen to explain that their aim is simple.
“We want to get the fans on board earlier than the release date, and bring them to the beginning of the creative phase to make them fans sooner. Our mission is to build a more equitable ecosystem for artists and fans.”
Their big idea is that musicians should use music to communicate with fans, and that SoundStorming “helps them make music while they promote it. It allows them to use their musical ideas as a social post to connect with an audience to bring them along their journey.”
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Source: Music ally
Survey: 30% of musicians are planning weekly livestreams
Bandsintown has been one of the companies around live music that has pivoted during Covid-19 – in its case, turning its site and app into places for fans to discover livestreams by artists, as well as launching its own live channel on Twitch.
Now the company has published a report based on a survey of artists and fans using its platform. On the fan side, 73% have tuned in to a livestream during lockdown; 60% say they’d like to continue watching these events even after the restrictions on large offline gatherings are lifted; and 80% say they’d be willing to pay to watch a livestream in order to help their favourite artist.
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Source: Music ally
IFPI takes aim at more ‘music streaming manipulation’ sites
Global music body the IFPI is continuing its battle against ‘streaming manipulation’ services. Together with German body BVMI, it has secured court injunctions against the operators of five websites promising to inflate artists’ streaming counts artificially.
The sites are Socialnow·de, Socialgeiz·de, Likergeiz·de, Netlikes and Likesandmore, with a sixth site (Fanexplosion·de) having already removed the relevant service in response to a cease and desist letter.
“Streaming manipulation companies deprive right holders of revenue and mislead consumers. We are committed to tackling this problem,” said IFPI CEO Frances Moore.
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Source: Music ally
The mystery of Tasmin Little’s missing Spotify royalties
Pitchfork’s article about ‘how musicians are fighting for streaming pay during the pandemic’ isn’t new: it was originally published in June. However, after the site re-shared it on Twitter yesterday with some stats on classical violinist Tasmin Little’s earnings, it’s sparking debate.
There’s definitely something puzzling afoot. The article references a tweet from Little in May revealing that she was paid £12.34 (around $16.16) for six months of plays – “around 5-6 million streams” – on Spotify.
Here’s why we’re puzzled: according to the ‘2019-2020 Streaming Price Bible’ data shared by artist-rights blog The Trichordist earlier this year, Spotify’s average per-stream rate (for a mid-sized independent label) was $0.00348 – so around $3,480 per million streams on average.
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Source: Music ally
TikTok’s Trump lawsuit reveals it has 689m users worldwide
TikTok has followed through on its promise to sue President Trump’s administration over its recent executive order setting a deadline for the app’s US operations to be sold or shut down. The lawsuit includes some important new figures on TikTok’s business globally, as well as in the US.
Globally, TikTok grew from 54.8 million monthly active users in January 2018 to 271.2 million by the end of that year, and then 507.6 million by the end of 2019. As of July 2020, TikTok had 689.2 million monthly active users worldwide.
Over that same timescale, TikTok’s US userbase has grown from 11.3 million monthly active users to 91.9 million, meaning that in July – as talk of a potential ban ramped up – the country accounted for nearly 13.3% of TikTok’s global total.
The filing also includes a figure for August, revealing that TikTok has passed the 100 million monthly active users milestone in the US.
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Source: Music ally
Music VR startup MelodyVR announces plan to merge with Napster
Music-focused virtual reality startup MelodyVR has announced plans to merge with streaming service Napster. To be clear: MelodyVR is the buyer, although the Napster brand will live on.
“Under the terms of the Merger Agreement, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company will be merged with and into Napster (with Napster being the surviving entity),” explained MelodyVR’s announcement to the markets this morning.
“The Company will pay consideration totalling approximately $26.3 million to the vendors of Napster to be satisfied in aggregate by $15.0 million in cash, and the issuance of approximately 200 million MelodyVR shares.”
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Source: Music ally
‘Apple has become the navy, and different rules apply’
The row between Apple and Epic Games rumbles on, with plenty of commentary from external observers – some of it useful, much of it not. File in the ‘useful’ category this blog post by tech analyst Benedict Evans, which suggests that some of the criticisms of Apple carry weight. “When Apple launched the app store it had […]
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Source: Music ally
Oracle gets support for its TikTok bid… from President Trump
We do try to choose our words carefully when writing about the world of politics, but it seems increasingly uncontroversial to suggest that the process around the potential sale of TikTok’s US operations… well, it stinks. First President Trump suggested that the US Treasury should get a piece of the transaction that’s been enforced by […]
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Source: Music ally
YouTube’s latest originals include a GRM Daily documentary
YouTube has revealed its latest slate of ‘originals’ – documentaries commissioned by the video service – for the UK this autumn. They include a four-part series about GRM Daily, the Black British music channel. ‘Together We Rise: The Uncompromised Story of GRM Daily’ will debut on 28 September, with interviewees including Skepta, Giggs, Stormzy, Julie […]
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Source: Music ally
The Rolling Stones to open shop on London’s Carnaby Street
Soho’s swinging Carnaby Street (copyright: the 1960s) is getting a new boutique retailer from 9 September: RS No. 9 Carnaby. Otherwise known as a ‘world-first flagship store’ for The Rolling Stones. As part of their wide-ranging new deal signed with Universal Music Group in 2018, the band have worked with UMG’s Bravado subsidiary on the new […]
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Source: Music ally
Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion give away $1m on Twitter
Generally, if we see a celebrity giving away money on Twitter, we assume they’ve been hacked and it’s a scam (and pro tip: if Elon Musk is giving away bitcoin, it’s NEVER the real Elon Musk…) But here’s the exception that proves the rule: Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion really have been giving away $1m […]
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Source: Music ally
Apple Music Radio adds live country and hits stations
Spotify’s ‘audio first’ strategy involves an aggressive move into spoken-word content with podcasts (and soon audiobooks?) to compete with live radio. Apple Music has followed a different path, with the Beats 1 live radio station part of its service since launch. Yesterday it got a rebrand – to Apple Music 1 – and two new sister stations: Apple […]
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Source: Music ally
NME Asia goes live from Singapore after BandLab acquisition
The print edition of NME shut down in 2018, 66 years after its launch as New Musical Express. However, the NME brand has continued online, and in 2019 it was acquired by Singapore-based music/tech company BandLab Technologies. Now BandLab is launching a dedicated NME Asia site, promising daily music and pop culture news with an initial focus on Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. […]
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Source: Music ally
Report: Classical streams are booming for younger listeners
The Covid-19 lockdown has been very tough for classical musicians in the live sense, but if there’s a silver lining, it may be classical’s performance on streaming services. A new report co-published by Deezer, British industry body the BPI and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) aims to show the growth, using data from Deezer. Globally, […]
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Source: Music ally
Save Our Stages Act aims to help independent US venues
Even as Covid-19 lockdowns ease and physical concerts tentatively start to return, independent music venues are still facing a battle to survive. The level of support they’ve been getting from governments varies widely around the world, but in the US there are new moves afoot to help those venues (plus promoters and festivals) to stay […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify launches ‘Alone With Me’ microsite for The Weeknd
“Hey there, it’s Abel. How are you? So glad you could join me. I’ve been waiting for you. There’s a lot I want you to know,” The Weeknd told us this morning. Sadly it’s not an exclusive interview, but rather a new “personalised generative experience” launched for the artist by Spotify. Its ‘Alone With Me‘ […]
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Source: Music ally
Oculus VR headsets will require users to log in using Facebook
Facebook bought virtual reality company Oculus VR in 2014, and since then users of its headsets have been able to log in with their Oculus accounts, or their Facebook accounts. Now Facebook is making some changes, from October this year. “Everyone using an Oculus device for the first time will need to log in with […]
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Source: Music ally
Indian short-video app Moj has 50m users a month after launch
TikTok’s ban in India has created a feeding frenzy among other short-video apps, from Roposo, Zili and Dubsmash to streaming service Gaana’s new HotShots. One app we hadn’t written about yet was Moj, which was launched in early July by social networking firm ShareChat. It was downloaded more than 1m times in its first week, but judging by figures shared […]
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Source: Music ally
AWAL says ‘hundreds’ of its artists now earn $100k+ a year from streaming
Music distributor AWAL says that “hundreds” of its artists now earn more than $100k a year from streaming, and that this number (of artists) has grown by more than 40% in the last year.
The company also said that “dozens” of its artists earn more than $1m from streaming every year. This is all a step on from the announcement in March 2018 by AWAL’s parent company Kobalt that hundreds of artists were then earning more than $50k a year.
Speaking to Music Ally, AWAL’s CEO Lonny Olinick declined to say how many hundreds of artists are now breaking the $100k threshold, but said it was a “sizeable number”. He also claimed that the potential to earn these amounts while staying independent is driving business to AWAL.
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Source: Music ally
BTS fanfic meets mobile games as Netmarble preps BTS Universe Story
Netmarble is the South Korean company that launched the BTS World mobile game in June 2019, offering the BTS Army the chance to play manager to the K-Pop stars – complete with an original soundtrack album.
The game topped app store charts in 25 countries immediately after its release, and by the first quarter of this year Netmarble’s financials revealed it was 2% of the company’s sales, meaning that the game made around $9m that quarter.
Now Netmarble is working on a second BTS mobile game: BTS Universe Story. Due for release later this year, it’s an intriguing blend of gaming and fan-fiction.
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Source: Music ally
Spotify survey explores music listening trends in India
In India, Spotify is in the atypical position of being the non-dominant player in a fairly over-crowded audio-streaming market. The service has yet to update its figure of over two million MAUs for the country, announced shortly after its launch in February 2019.
Since then, local leaders Gaana and JioSaavn have both claimed listenership of close to 200 million. Spotify, however, is widely regarded to have higher levels of engagement than its rival DSPs, especially among fans of Indian independent music. Now it has stats to back that up.
Well, at least stats from a nationwide survey of over 18,000 people in 24 cities Spotify commissioned Nielsen to conduct in January and February this year.
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Source: Music ally
A tale of two synthetic reality startups: Hour One and Reface
We’re fascinated by the potential of ‘synthetic reality’, an area that brings together virtual reality, AI, ‘deepfakes’ and other technologies. Two more startups in the news this week offer some more sparks for thought on this score. Hour One is the first: a company that takes real people and turns them into virtual characters, with uses […]
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Source: Music ally
Fortnite publisher’s battle with Apple steps up another notch
Things are getting even spicier in the battle between Fortnite’s publisher Epic Games and Apple over the latter’s App Store rules. Apple booted Fortnite out of the store last week after Epic added a new non-Apple payment option, but now Epic is claiming that Apple has threatened to “terminate all our developer accounts and cut Epic off […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify wants to ‘imagine new possibilities’ for audiobooks
When Spotify bagged an exclusive on a new J.K. Rowling audiobook – a celebrity re-reading of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – we wondered if it hinted at ambitions to do more with audiobooks.
Now look: Spotify is recruiting a head of audio books for its Spotify Studios division, based in either New York or LA.
“In this role, you will be responsible for the creative oversight, content strategy, editorial and programming, and execution of our Audiobook strategy,” explains its job ad, which was spotted and tweeted by freelance strategy director Katya Kotlyar.
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Source: Music ally
San Juan Symphony launches $99 ‘digital season’ passes
If you thought getting concerts up and running again with four-piece bands was tricky, imagine doing it with an orchestra.
The classical music industry has been hit for six by Covid-19 lockdowns just like the rest of the music business, but there are also orchestras figuring out alternative, digital models to start their recovery.
The San Juan Symphony orchestra, for example, is launching a digital season pass called ‘Essential’, which will cost $99 and provide access to four concerts filmed at different locations.
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Source: Music ally
Warner Music acquires viral content firm Imgn Media
Warner Music Group’s latest acquisition is an intriguing one: of Israeli company Imgn Media, which creates videos and memes designed to go viral on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
TechCrunch reported that WMG paid “just under $100m” for the company, which claims that its content generates more than 3bn views a month, with more than 40 million subscribers (i.e. people who follow its channels on the social apps, not paying subscribers).
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Source: Music ally
Tencent’s WeSing is keeping China’s karaoke sector thriving
Karaoke is enormously popular with people of all ages in China, with millions flocking to ‘KTV venues’ [karaoke bars] to partake in singalongs.
The Chinese government’s 2019 China Music Industry Development Report valued the karaoke sector at RMB 101.07bn (nearly $14.6bn) in 2019, up 12.3% year-on-year with that rise driven in part by online karaoke services.
Tencent’s app WeSing (known as K Song in China) is the biggest player, estimated to account for 77% of online karaoke users in China, including a younger, wealthier demographic. 25-29 year-olds are 50.3% of its user base, with half of them having high incomes and living in major cities like Beijing.
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Source: Music ally
NetEase Cloud Music saw ‘triple-digit revenue growth’ in Q2
Chinese technology firm NetEase published its latest financial results last week, with no new figures for its NetEase Cloud Music streaming service. However, the service was mentioned in the subsequent earnings call with analysts.
“For NetEase Cloud Music, we continued to see triple-digit revenue growth in the second quarter year over year, with both membership and live streaming striking new highs,” said chief financial officer Charles Yang.
That revenue total wasn’t quantified, but NetEase Cloud Music sits within NetEase’s ‘innovative businesses and others’ category in its financials, which saw revenues grow by 39% year-on-year to RMB 3.7bn ($533.4m) last quarter.
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Source: Music ally
Trump sets new deadline of 12 November for TikTok US sale
Earlier this month, President Trump set a 45-day deadline after which transactions by US companies with ByteDance or Tencent’s WeChat would be banned.
That was seen as a deadline for a sale of TikTok’s US operations, but now a new executive order from the president has set a longer deadline for that.
ByteDance has been ordered do divest all its interests and rights in TikTok’s US operations, as well as permanently destroying any data on US citizens it has obtained from TikTok, or the Musical·ly app that was acquired and merged with it.
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Source: Music ally
Facebook launches paid livestreams (and takes a pop at Apple)
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, musicians offering livestreams have been exploring the different ways to make money from them. Paid ticketing has tended to be restricted to the smaller livestreaming companies, while on the bigger social/video platforms (Facebook/Instagram, YouTube and Twitch) it’s been more about free streams and revenue from virtual item sales and/or merchandise.
So, here’s news from Facebook. “Today we’re launching the ability for businesses, creators, educators and media publishers to earn money from online events,” it announced on Friday. “Now Page owners can create an online event, set a price, promote the event, collect payment and host the event, all in one place.”
The launch covers 20 countries, ranging from the US, UK, Germany and France to Mexico, Brazil, India and Singapore (the full list is here) and will be available to pages that qualify for Facebook’s ‘partner monetisation policies’. The social network said it will not be taking a cut of any revenues from paid events for “at least the next year”. That means 100% of the money will go to creators. Well, usually…
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Source: Music ally
TikTok rival Likee now has 150m monthly active users
TikTok isn’t the only short-videos app from China to be making a big splash. Tech firm Joyy’s latest financial results reveal the growth of its app Likee, which has a similar community of people creating videos with special effects and music.
The app, formerly known as ‘Like’, saw its average mobile monthly active users grow by 86.2% year-on-year to 150.3 million people last quarter, according to Joyy.
This isn’t just about users in China: Joyy’s chairman and CEO David Zueling Li said that the company had been focusing on “cultivating Likee’s global ecosystem by diversifying its content offerings, refining its product features, and tailoring its expansion initiatives to different regions”.
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Source: Music ally
Glass Animals created a music video with fans’ head-scans
Back in May, we wrote about an inventive digital marketing campaign for the band Glass Animals, letting fans poke around a virtual computer desktop and create stuff with their assets.
Now label Polydor’s ongoing campaign for their album ‘Dreamland’ has taken some new twists. Fans were asked to download an app called Trnio, which scans real-world objects and turns them into 3D models.
In this case, what they were scanning was their own heads, which visual artist Marco Mori then turned into a music video for Glass Animals’ track ‘Tangerine’. It’s… strange (but good).
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Source: Music ally
Spotify launches a website for Billie Eilish’s ‘My Future’
Billie Eilish’s latest single ‘My Future’ has been streamed nearly 42m times on Spotify at the time of writing. That figure may be boosted by the latest marketing partnership between the artist and streaming service: a website called ‘A Letter to Your Future Self’.
It encourages fans to “write a letter and send it to the stars. It will come back to you in the future”. That means typing a message, signing it and then choosing a return date up to two years’ away, at which point it will be delivered to your chosen email address.
“While your Letter is private on this website, some of us at Spotify will be reading these Letters – don’t submit any illegal, derogatory, defamatory, offensive or hateful content. We’re not interested,” explain the terms. “You acknowledge that your submission of the Letter is for Spotify’s marketing purposes.”
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Source: Music ally
Beggars Group financials reveal £63.1m revenues for 2019
Independent label Beggars Group has filed its latest annual financial results with Companies House in the UK. The company’s revenues fell from £74.2m in 2018 to £63.1m in 2019.
The report notes that the 2018 figure was skewed by Beggars’ revenues from the sale of Spotify shares after the streaming service went public. “Like for like we are pleased to note that the growth in sales is consistent across our key territories,” reported the label.
The financials offer some thoughts on the risks posed to Beggars Group (and by extension other labels in the UK) by the Covid-19 pandemic, and also the UK’s exit from the European Union.
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Source: Music ally
John Legend is meditation app Headspace’s new ‘chief music officer’
We’re big fans of famous artists being given spurious job titles as part of partnerships with tech companies, dating back to the glory days of Lady Gaga as Polaroid creative director and Will·I·Am as director of creative innovation at Intel.
But perhaps meditation app Headspace really did need a ‘chief music officer’ and John Legend happened to shine the brightest in the interview process.
Enough snark though: even if Legend misses the daily Zoom meeting, it’s an interesting partnership. He’ll be working with the company’s new Headspace Studios division, tasked with “creating and distributing mindful living content” for the app, which has more than 65 million users.
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Source: Music ally
Covid-19 sparked ‘boom’ in paid subscriptions in UK says ERA
‘How Britain entertained itself during lockdown’ is the title of the latest press release from UK body the Entertainment Retailers Association (Era). Surprisingly, the answer isn’t ‘doomscrolling Twitter in tears and making forts from panic-bought toilet rolls and flour’.
Era is understandably more focused on music, TV and gaming habits, and a “boom in sales of subscriptions”. In its latest tracking study, which began on 25 May, Era asked people which subscription services they had added since the start of lockdown.
Video hogs the chart: 10.5% of respondents had signed up to Disney+, and 8.4% to Netflix. But music makes an appearance too: 5.6% of people had added Amazon Prime (admittedly with free shipping and Prime Video the draws alongside Prime Music) while 4.2% had started subscribing to Spotify, 1.4% to YouTube Music and 1.2% to Amazon Music Unlimited.
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Source: Music ally
Chinese music subscribers have doubled to 60m in two years
Music Ally has just published our latest country profile, of China, and it includes some new figures on the growth of the recorded music industry there.
We already knew from the IFPI that in 2019 China’s market grew by 16% to $590.9m, becoming the seventh biggest recorded music market in the world.
For the profile, we talked to Warner Music Group’s president, Asia region, Simon Robson, who told us that there are currently 60 million paid music subscribers in China – the second highest total globally, but still less than 5% of the Chinese population.
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Source: Music ally
‘Apple One’ entertainment bundles could debut in October
Apple may be preparing to launch its long-awaited bundles of entertainment services, with music included. Bloomberg reported that the bundles – working title: Apple One – are “planned to launch as early as October alongside the next iPhone line”.
It went on to suggest that the basic bundle will include Apple Music and Apple TV+, with more expensive tiers adding in gaming service Apple Arcade, Apple News+ and extra iCloud storage.
“The goal is to offer groups of services at lower prices than would be charged if consumers subscribed to each offering individually,” added Bloomberg. “The offerings are designed to save consumers about $2 to upwards of $5 a month, depending on the package chosen.”
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Source: Music ally
Spotify has company as Fortnite maker sues Apple (and Google)
Spotify seemed well prepared when its EC antitrust complaint against Apple last March came with its own spin-off website detailing its issues. Now Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, has taken that up several levels.
Yesterday it sued Apple alleging “use of a series of anti-competitive restraints and monopolistic practices”, and that lawsuit came with its own launch trailer: ‘Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite’, a parody of Apple’s famous 1984 TV ad introducing its Macintosh computer. The trailer was published online, and also shown within Fortnite to players.
No, this wasn’t improvised on the hoof: Epic Games had been preparing for this dispute, and in fact it made a calculated move to provoke Apple into banning Fortnite from its App Store in order to fire the starting gun on the lawsuit. Not to mention Google, which Epic Games is also suing over its app store policies. And this is all very relevant to Spotify’s ongoing battle with Apple, and the formal EC investigation that last March’s complaint led to.
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Source: Music ally
How to successfully livestream a music event
*Learn more about Music and Livestreaming: reaching fans AND making money Another day, another livestream. Well, probably another thousand of them. A year ago, livestreams were defined by their rarity, now they are defined by their ubiquity. So how to stand out in a market that has suddenly become very busy? We speak […]
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Source: Music ally
Tools: Wavo. Marketing and Analytics for Music
With the huge number of platforms out there driving the success of modern marketing campaigns, it is increasingly challenging to get the full picture of how a campaign is performing and to then decide where to invest or what to amend. Wavo aims to solve this problem for those investing in artist development and marketing, […]
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Source: Music ally
China’s Twitch equivalent DouYu has 165.3m monthly users
We haven’t written about DouYu before, because the Chinese livestreaming video platform is focused on games rather than music.
The numbers are startling though: according to its latest financial results, DouYu averaged 165.3 million monthly active users in the second quarter of this year, including 58.4 million people on mobile devices.
Meanwhile, DouYu generated RMB 2.51bn ($354.4m) in revenues in Q2, up by 33.9% year-on-year. Of those revenues, only RMB 188.3m ($26.6m) came from advertising, while RMB 2.32bn ($327.8m) came from various ways that users/viewers pay.
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Source: Music ally
Beck teams up with Nasa for an AI-powered visual album
Beck released his ‘Hyperspace’ album in November 2019, but now it’s getting reimagined in an interesting way: as a visual album called ‘Hyperspace: A.I. Exploration’.
It’s a partnership with space agency Nasa, pulling in mission images, visualisations, animations and data, using several AI technologies (computer vision, machine learning and generative adversarial neural networks to be specific).
“Actual Nasa expeditions and data are transformed into vivid new universes ‘imagined’ by an emerging new kind of creative intelligence,” as the blurb puts it.
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Source: Music ally
Spotify launches ‘Day 1 Club’ for its RapCaviar playlist
“Have you been listening to your favorite rappers since Day 1?” asks Spotify’s latest spin-off website, complete with a big red button tagged ‘Prove It’.
Proving it involves signing in to Spotify to be told which hip-hop stars you were listening to early. “An exclusive group of fans that have been riding with an artist the longest,” in Spotify’s words.
“This isn’t a measure of streaming an artist the most. It’s a measure of how early you listened to an artist on Spotify… In this case, we look at the first 15% of fans who listened to an artist on Spotify, before others.”
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Source: Music ally
Country Profile – China 2020
A lack of reliable figures makes China a difficult music market to understand. Even so, its digital potential is vast.
The post Country Profile – China 2020 appeared first on Music Ally.
Source: Music ally
PubG Mobile, the world’s top mobile game, made $208.8m in July
The amount of money sloshing around in the mobile games industry continues to startle. According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, the top mobile game in July 2020 was PubG Mobile, published by Tencent.
It generated $208.8m in user spending via in-app purchases on Google and Apple’s app stores that month.
Comparison time: Tencent Music generated less than that ($186.6m) from music subscription revenues in the entire second quarter of this year.
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Source: Music ally
Muse to bring Simulation Theory show to virtual reality
Muse’s live shows are famously spectacular when it comes to the staging, so it’s no surprise that the band’s new concert film is out of the ordinary too.
Drawn from their ‘Simulation Theory’ tour in 2019, it will be released to IMAX cinemas on 17 August in full wraparound vision – yes, there’ll be lots of social distancing and sanitation at those venues – with a pair of deluxe box-sets with items including VHS-style packaging, fluorescent pink cassettes and a jacket, wooden-sunglasses and facemask combo.
What’s more, this autumn will see the launch of ‘Muse’s Simulation Theory: Virtual Experience’ by VR startup Stageverse. It’ll blend 360-degree footage from one of the shows on the 2019 tour with a virtual concert venue for fans to explore, including meeting one another as avatars, and buying virtual merchandise.
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Source: Music ally
Neil Young Archives site ditches Facebook and Google logins
Neil Young’s official archives site is getting rid of the ability for fans to log in using their Facebook or Google accounts. Instead, they’ll be asked to register their email address and a password to access the site.
In an article explaining the decision, Young – who’s been a prominent voice in the run-up to this year’s US presidential election – gave Facebook a pasting.
“Facebook knowingly allows untruths and lies in its political ads to circulate on the platform, while bots sow discord among users. Sowing dissent and chaos in our country via political disinformation is something we can not condone. Simply put, Facebook is screwing with our election,” he wrote.
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Source: Music ally
NetEase Cloud Music says it’s tops for Japanese music in China
China has become an important market for Japanese artists and labels in recent years. Now streaming service NetEase Cloud Music is staking its claim to be the “platform of choice for fans of Japanese music” in China.
It’s wielding a report published by research firm Small Antlers Think Tank as its proof: a survey of around 100,000 people in China. The report praises NetEase’s catalogue of Japanese music, from J-Pop and classical to game and anime music, as well as its features for commenting on music.
“The report concluded that 61% of NetEase Cloud Music’s users read comments and around 25% of users write comments,” claimed NetEase’s press release – these are useful stats to understand its service, beyond the Japanese angle, by the way.
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Source: Music ally
Aloha by Elk wants to improve remote music collaboration
We’ve written about a blizzard of new livestreaming startups in recent months, but Aloha – which is the work of Swedish ‘audio operating system’ firm Elk – is a bit different.
It’s described as “a virtual shared studio, rehearsal room, stage and or classroom with options to stream performances to audiences over social platforms” – so it’s a production tool for live, synchronised performances which can then be watched elsewhere.
“It enables musicians, producers and educators from different locations to create, rehearse and perform as if they were in the same room. The ultra-low latency service operates over high speed internet and 5G networks, allowing users to collaborate, play together live and in sync.”
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Source: Music ally
Judge sinks Genius’s lyrics-scraping lawsuit against Google
Last June, Genius accused Google of scraping its song lyrics without permission, and later in the year launched a $50m lawsuit against the tech giant and its partner LyricFind. It hasn’t gone well for Genius: a federal judge has now dismissed the lawsuit.
The Hollywood Reporter has the full ruling, and the gist is… well, it’s complicated. The case has essentially been thrown out because Genius’s claims “are preempted by the Copyright Act”. In other words: publishing lyrics without permission is copyright infringement, but Genius isn’t the copyright owner (that would be publishers).
So (in the ruling’s words) “the case law is clear that only the original copyright owner has exclusive rights to authorize derivative works”.
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Source: Music ally
NMPA hopeful of keeping songwriters’ top line rate increase
We reported yesterday on the ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on the appeal by Amazon, Google, Pandora and Spotify against new songwriter royalty rates set by the US Copyright Royalty Board. The decision was seen as backing the streaming services in ruling against the procedure used to set the new rates.
Now the ruling has been unsealed – you can read it here in full – and the National Music Publishers Association has been offering its opinion on why it’s not a clearcut victory for the DSPs.
In a statement, CEO David Israelite claimed that the ruling “supported the rate increase granted by the CRB to music publishers and songwriters, agreeing that writers have been underpaid and that the rate increase start date is January 1, 2018”.
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Source: Music ally
10 talking points around kids, music and technology in 2020
Last month, Music Ally took part in the BPI and ERA’s New Kids on the Block online event, looking at children’s digital habits and what they mean for music.
Research company Kids Insights produced a report for the event too, which has been published today. We contributed a section on some of the interesting stories we’ve been reporting on around kids and music.
Here are the 10 stories we picked out, with a link to download the free full report (which has bags of stats and trendspotting from Kids Insights) at the end.
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Source: Music ally
Campaign aims to support Deaf and disabled people in UK music industry
British organisation Attitude is Everything focuses on accessibility in the live music sector. Now it’s launching a new campaign called ‘Beyond the Music’ which aims to create more opportunities for Deaf and disabled people in the music industry.
The campaign will be “supporting Deaf and disabled people to gain the necessary skills, experience, support and contacts they require to work or volunteer in the music industry, while providing training, resources and guidance to help music businesses build a truly inclusive work environment”.
It kicks off today with a survey aimed at Deaf and disabled people who work in the industry (or want to) – their answers will be used to inform the three-year project.
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Source: Music ally
Metallica preps drive-in gig with $115 ‘per vehicle’ tickets
$115 to see Metallica? We know concerts are in short supply, but this is outrageo… Oh wait. Metallica’s upcoming concert does cost $115 for a ticket, but that ticket covers a vehicle with up to six people: potentially just over $19 per head, which is actually rather good value.
The band are the latest artist to take part in the Encore Drive-In Nights series of concerts at drive-in cinemas in the US and Canada – and the first non-country act.
Encore Live, which is running the concerts, says that it attracted more than 500,000 fans to its first two events, spread across the various cinemas where the concerts were shown.
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Source: Music ally
Separating TikTok from ByteDance won’t be done in 45 days
Who’d have thought it: untangling a company from its parent corporation takes time. Reuters is reporting that if Microsoft wants to buy TikTok within President Trump’s 45-day deadline, it will surely have to negotiate more time to actually separate the social app from ByteDance.
“A technically complex endeavor that could test the patience of President Donald Trump’s administration,” in its words. This task is about technological separation – from TikTok’s server code to the data powering its recommendation algorithm – as well as (if Microsoft only buys TikTok in the US, Canada and Australasia as it announced) geographical separation outside China.
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Source: Music ally
Report claims Amazon is adding podcasts to its music service
When we interviewed Amazon’s music boss Steve Boom earlier this year, we asked him if Amazon Music might follow Spotify’s push into podcasts. “I can’t talk much about it… we’ve been noting with interest how much time they’re spending on podcasting, but I don’t really have much to say on it,” he said.
That may change soon: media news site The Desk claims to have seen a copy of an email to podcasters from Amazon with a licensing agreement attached.
“Hello Podcaster, we’re excited to let you know that Amazon Music and Audible will be adding podcasts to our respective services, including Amazon Music’s free tier,” explains the email, which was republished by the website.
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Source: Music ally
UMG signs NetEase deal and launches label with Tencent Music
It was a busy day for Tencent Music, and for China’s digital music industry as a whole. Universal Music Group made two announcements about its latest deals there: one with NetEase Cloud Music, and the other with Tencent Music.
The NetEase deal is significant: a multi-year direct licensing agreement (rather than UMG’s previous deal that saw Tencent Music sub-license its music to rivals like NetEase Cloud Music.
The new deal will “increase the scope of premium offerings and experiences” on NetEase’s service. That’s not just subscriptions: it sells access to digital albums on top of that (as UMG knows well: Taylor Swift’s new album ‘Folklore did $1.2m of sales in three days on NetEase Cloud Music in July).
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Source: Music ally
More speakers for Sandbox Summit Global including mxmtoon, Spotify & Twitch
Music Ally is excited to announce more speakers and networking details for our forthcoming Sandbox Summit Global event. New Speakers mxmtoon, Artist (US) The Future of Playlists Lizzy Szabo, Editor, North America, Spotify (US) Genreless Playlists, The Future of Playlists Tracy Patrick Chan, Head of Music Product & Engineering, Twitch (US) Focus on Twitch […]
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Source: Music ally
Tools: Youtube Analytics for Artists
While each of the major DSPs has launched their own suite of analytics and data dashboards, the competition around who is providing the most actionable and unique set of insights is getting fiercer and fiercer, with each platform leveraging their own strengths and building on what they already offer. Hoping to raise the bar further […]
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Source: Music ally
The next Fortnite? Fall Guys is already a livestreaming hit
When people think about what ‘the next Fortnite’ might be, they often fall into the trap of expecting it to look and play a lot like Fortnite.
However, what if it’s less about guns, and more about a bunch of bouncy Minions-y characters bundling around neon-splashed obstacle courses like a cartoonish Takeshi’s Castle / It’s a Knockout (delete according to your age and/or game-show cultural background) though?
Meet Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout.
Released last week for PlayStation 4 and PC by developer Mediatonic and publisher Devolver Digital, it’s already neck and neck with League of Legends as the most-streamed game on Twitch; and has topped the chart on digital games store Steam, making it a bona-fide hit.
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Source: Music ally
Simon Fuller will launch his next pop group… with TikTok
Entertainment mogul and ‘Idol’ founder Simon Fuller has been busy with his multi-national pop band Now United in recent years, but now he’s got a new project on the go.
It’s a partnership with TikTok to put a new group together. The press release doesn’t have many details other than the promise of an “in-app audition process on TikTok”, and the focus on “extraordinary undiscovered artists”.
With a growing number of TikTok stars having signed label deals in recent months, it’s fair to say there’ll be plenty of interest in the project. Cue super-bullish canned quotes!
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Source: Music ally
Indian artist Badshah questioned by police over ‘fake views’
Remember the controversy last year when Sony Music India claimed that its artist Badshah had broken YouTube’s 24-hour viewing record with his new video ‘Paagal’?
After it emerged that views from Google ads were included in the total, YouTube did not accept the claimed record – and later changed its charts and 24-hour-record calculations specifically to exclude paid advertising views. Loophole closed, story over, right?
Wrong.
Badshah has spent recent days being questioned by the Mumbai Crime Branch’s Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) about the campaign – but in matters going well beyond Google ads.
It’s in connection with what the Mumbai Mirror describes as “an international racket involving the creation of fake social media profiles, the sale of ‘followers’, views and ‘likes’ to genuine accounts, and other fraudulent activities by websites presenting themselves as social media marketing agencies”.
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Source: Music ally
Jazz Re:Fest to stream with MQA and Bluesound partnership
Another festival forced to switch from offline to online this year is Jazz Re:Fest in the UK. Its 2020 version will be held on 23 August, with four hours of performances streamed from a two-stage set in The Mill studios.
That way, artists will be able to perform their 30-minute sets while the other stage is being sanitised and prepared for the next act.
The event will be streamed on the YouTube channel of its parent organisation Jazz Re:Freshed, but there’s also a partnership with hi-res music firm MQA and Bluesound.
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Source: Music ally
LiveXLive financials reveal revenues of $10.5m for Q2 2020
US music-streaming and livestreaming company LiveXLive has published its latest financial results, including a new record for quarterly revenues: $10.5m.
That’s in the second quarter of 2020 (its fiscal Q1), with those revenues having grown by 11% year-on-year. The company reported a net loss of $7.5m though, although at least that was down from $11m this time last year.
LiveXLive ran 45 music livestreams last quarter, which it said generated more than 76m live views. The bulk of those came from the 48-hour ‘Music Lives’ online festival in April, which was sponsored by TikTok and Facebook’s Oculus Venues, garnering more than 50m live views.
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Source: Music ally
Ride apologise after technical problems nix paid livestream
The music industry is increasingly excited about the potential for ticketed livestreams, but we can’t ignore some of the risks involved too.
For example, British band Ride were forced to abandon their concert last night and apologise to fans who’d bought tickets to watch it online, after technical troubles at the venue.
Ride: Live From London was due to be broadcast “loud and fully amped from an intimate, secret location”, with fans paying £12 via ticketing app Dice to watch then take part in an after-set Q&A with the band. After kicking off the gig and then having to restart it due to “streaming issues”, Ride were ultimately forced to call it off.
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Source: Music ally
Julianna Barwick releases three tracks on meditation app Calm
Julianna Barwick is the latest artist to release music through meditation app Calm, following in the footsteps of Moby, Above & Beyond and Kygo.
Barwick, who’s signed to Ninja Tune, is releasing three extended versions of tracks from her latest album ‘Healing Is A Miracle’, with Calm getting a 30-day exclusive on the new versions.
Calm is giving the tracks some promotional love within the music section of its app too: “Experience a distinctive meditation with these deep, reflective compositions brought to life by human voice and strings, enriched by reverb and complementary harmonies,” it explains.
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Source: Music ally
Spotify teams up with DJs for ‘track IDs’ dance playlists
“Do you ever dance to your favorite DJ and wonder what track they’re mixing?” begins Spotify’s latest blog post, seemingly blithely unaware that the Shazam app was ever invented.
Sorry, we’ll stop snarking: Spotify is actually doing something interesting around this question. It’s a new range of playlists under the brand ‘track IDs’ which are being created with DJs including Black Coffee, Nina Kraviz, Carl Cox, Kelly Lee Owens, Todd Terry and more.
The idea is that the DJs will regularly add the tracks they play in their sets to their playlists, ensuring that fans can find tracks that they enjoyed live (or, at the moment, livestreaming).
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Source: Music ally
Google launches tools for audio ads on Spotify and Pandora
Is there more money to be squeezed out of the ad-supported music market? Google hopes so. But for once, we’re not talking about YouTube in this context.
Google’s advertising business is also putting some more effort into ad-supported music, with the launch of some audio-focused tools in its Google Ad Manager service, and an audio section of its Display & Video 360 ad-buying platform.
“Advertisers can buy ads from Spotify, Pandora, AdsWizz, iHeartMedia, and Triton Digital, and Google plans to add brand lift, which tracks metrics like brand perception, awareness and purchase intent, for audio ads later this year, similar to what it does for YouTube campaigns,” reported Business Insider.
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Source: Music ally
Latest Bandcamp Friday looks to build on $75m sales so far
Independent artists and labels have sold $75m of music and merchandise so far on the ‘Bandcamp Fridays’ series of sale days, during which the D2C platform waives its revenue share.
Today’s the latest one, as part of Bandcamp’s decision to repeat the sale on the first Friday of every month – complete with an ‘Is It Bandcamp Friday?’ website to help people in different timezones know if the sale is still on.
As ever, it’s a marvellous chance to fling some money at independent artists you love, and also to take a punt on some emerging acts who might be up your street.
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Source: Music ally
TikTok rivals continue to see spike in US downloads
Events around TikTok and its proposed ban in the US are moving so fast, any data on how consumers are responding risks being out of date as soon as it’s published. Still, Sensor Tower has some new numbers on how TikTok’s rivals are benefitting from the uncertainty.
“As talk of a ban ramped up from mere conjecture during the week of July 27, four of the largest challengers contending to be the top social video-sharing app in the US saw their installs collectively grow 361 percent compared to the week before,” reported the app-analytics research company.
Those four rivals cited are Triller, Zynn, Dubsmash and Byte, which together saw nearly 1.5m US installs in the week of 27 July. “During this time, Triller reached No. 1 among the top free iPhone apps in 50 markets including the US on August 1,” added Sensor Tower.
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Source: Music ally
Executive order bans US transactions with ByteDance… and Tencent
As promised, President Trump has signed an executive order banning all transactions by US companies with TikTok’s parent company ByteDance. However, a separate order extends the ban to messaging app WeChat AND its parent company Tencent – including “any subsidiary of that entity”.
Strap yourselves in. Given Tencent’s web of investments in and from music industry companies, there may be some chaos ahead.
Here’s the TikTok/ByteDance executive order and here’s the WeChat/Tencent one. Both set a deadline of 45 days after which transactions with ByteDance and Tencent will be prohibited, and both note that the US Secretary of Commerce will “identify the transactions” covered by the order… in 45 days’ time.
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Source: Music ally
Midem and Nyege Nyege to shine a ‘Spotlight on East Africa’
One of the best steps forward for the Midem industry conference in recent years has been its expanded focus on Africa: not just booking a few speakers, but running events there and programming day-long strands at its flagship Cannes event.
Now Midem is building on that with a partnership with Ugandan music festival Nyege Nyege. It includes a two-day ‘Spotlight on East Africa’ event with sessions to be made available through Midem’s digital platform.
Midem says that speakers from telcos, collecting societies, labels, publishers, artists and managers, journalists and industry bodies will be taking part, although the programme has yet to be announced.
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Source: Music ally
Music Tectonics conference goes virtual in October
Last year’s Music Tectonics conference in Los Angeles was a welcome addition to the industry calendar, and it’s returning for its second year on 28-28 October.
As with other conferences, the event will be online, with the promise of “highly interactive small-group and one-on-one networking” and exhibitor/demo rooms, along with panels and keynotes.
Among the confirmed speakers so far: WMG’s Scott Cohen, Water & Music’s Cherie Hu, Roblox’s Jon Vlassopulos, Panache Ventures’ David Dufresne, and Feed·fm’s Lauren Pufpaf.
Tickets will cost $59, with a ‘VIP’ option for $300, and AdRev, Linkfire and Super Hi-Fi are signed up as sponsors. Find out more at the Music Tectonics website.
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Source: Music ally
Defected Records and Heineken get ready for a football party
The Covid-elongated European football season isn’t over just yet: the next three weeks will see the Champions League and Europa League tournaments play out their remaining rounds.
Now one of football body UEFA’s key sponsorship partners Heineken has teamed up with dance label Defected Records to soundtrack the rejigged tournaments.
They’ll be holding an eight-hour livestream called ‘The Kick Off’ this Sunday (9 August) featuring eight DJs broadcasting from their homes or special locations. Bob Sinclar (one of our go-to cheer-up livestreamers during the early weeks of the Covid-19 lockdown) is one of the DJs, alongside Idris Elba, Purple Disco Machine, Low Steppa, Melvo Baptise, Aline Rocha, Ferreck Dawn and DJ Monki.
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Source: Music ally
Amazon Music goes deep on catalogue: starts with Bob Marley
Amazon Music has announced a new initiative called [Re]Discover, which it says will focus on digging into artists’ back catalogues.
It’s kicking off with Bob Marley this month: there’s a [Re]Discover branded playlist drawn from his entire career, but also the launch of an ‘Official Bob Marley Store’ on Amazon’s main shopping service, bringing together music streams, downloads and physical editions, as well as merchandise.
However, there’s more to [Re]Discover than just Bob Marley: Amazon Music says that the first Tuesday of every month will see it pick a new ‘artist of the month’ for the initiative, as well as launching new playlists for others.
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Source: Music ally
SoundGym launches ‘a gym for the ears’ of musicians
A startup called SoundGym has launched a service called ToneGym, which it describes as “a new ear-training web application that uses deep gamification and deliberate practice methods to help musicians train, learn, improve skills, and unleash their full potential”.
Or, if you want the soundbite: “A gym for the ears”.
The web-based service will offer daily exercises, lessons on music theory, social features to connect with other musicians, and analytics to help track their progress.
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Source: Music ally
Sandbox Issue 258: KIDS’ STUFF. Music’s youngest and most powerful consumers
Lead: we report back on our recent New Kids On The Block: Insight Into A New Generation online conference that we ran in conjunction with UK trade bodies the BPI and ERA, drawing out the 10 key lessons from the different panels and presentations. These include: children are much more active (and increasingly so) than previously presumed; […]
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Source: Music ally
Country Profile – Singapore 2020
Singapore’s digital music business is small but – relatively – thriving, with a large number of streaming services, a strong tech scene and a high conversion rate from free to premium streaming.
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Source: Music ally
PlayStation Plus and Disney+ both report subscription growth
We like to keep an eye on subscription-based entertainment businesses outside music, and yesterday two big companies’ financial results offered us some new data to consider.
Sony Corporation’s results included the announcement that there are now 44.9 million people paying for the PlayStation Plus service, up from 41.5 million a quarter ago.
PS Plus costs $9.99 a month, $24.99 a quarter or $59.99 a year, and enables people to play PlayStation 4 console games online, as well as getting two free PS4 games a month and various discounts. Sony’s wider PlayStation Network (a decent measure of PS4 owners) has 113 million monthly active users, so that’s a conversion rate of 39.7%.
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Source: Music ally
NetEase Cloud Music ups moderation after ‘NetEmo’ meme
We’ve written before about one area where Chinese music streaming services like NetEase Cloud Music beat most of their western equivalents: they have a thriving comments ecosystem where listeners are giving their views on music.
The flipside of that: those western streaming services don’t have to worry about comment / community moderation, which can be challenging and sometimes controversial work. Just ask any social network.
By way of illustration, check the South China Morning Post’s article about the latest moderation challenge for NetEase Cloud Music. A meme called ‘NetEmo’ has been gaining popularity on its platform, focusing (seriously for some users, and jokingly for others) on feelings of anxiety and depression in 2020.
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Source: Music ally
Hipgnosis buys royalties for Blondie co-founders’ catalogue
This will soon be the Daily Hipgnosis Cash-Splashing News Site if the company continues at this rate of snapping up music catalogues.
This morning’s announcement concerns Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, the co-founders of Blondie, who have sold 100% of their writer’s share and neighbouring rights royalties to Hipgnosis for an undisclosed amount. This is a catalogue of 197 songs.
“Their singles have been not only massively successful but era and genre defining. Equally well they have made cultural albums of the greatest importance,” said Hipgnosis founder Merck Mercuriadis.
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Source: Music ally
Indian labels hit short-video apps with infringement notices
It’s not just the US where short-video apps are facing pressure from music rightsholders over their licensing deals (or lack of). It’s happening in India too, where a number of these apps have been spiking in popularity since TikTok was banned there in June.
Livemint reported that four music labels – including India’s biggest, T-Series – have been sending copyright infringement notices to short video apps.
“Many content sharing mobile applications such as Roposo, Triller, Takatak, Josh, Mitron, Snack Video etc are taking advantage of TikTok’s ban in India and to gain immediate success are using popular music, most of which belongs to T- Series without our permission,” said T-Series president Neeraj Kalyan.
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Source: Music ally
YouTube responds to Koda over Danish music takedowns
Earlier this week, we wrote about a controversy brewing Denmark with a dispute between collecting society Koda and YouTube.
Koda announced that YouTube would be removing its members music from its platform, after the society declined a temporary extension to its licensing deal (while a new one is being negotiated by pan-Nordic hub Polaris) that it claimed would “reduce the payment provided to composers and songwriters for YouTube’s use of music by almost 70%”.
Now YouTube has offered Music Ally its side of the story, saying that despite making good progress with Polaris, it has yet to finalise a deal. YouTube also says that the short-term agreement to cover interim licensing for Koda reflects the performance of the society’s members’ music over recent times.
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Source: Music ally
YouTube reveals Google Play Music will shut down in October
As long goodbyes go, Google Play Music’s has been LONG. It was July 2017 when YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen first revealed plans to merge Google’s music streaming (and cloud locker) service with YouTube’s equivalent – then called YouTube Red, but since rebranded as YouTube Music. Nearly three years later, in May 2020, YouTube […]
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Source: Music ally
WMG boss: ‘We’re very happy that Spotify is investing in podcasting’
Having published its latest financial results this morning, Warner Music Group held its quarterly earnings call this afternoon, with CEO Steve Cooper and CFO Eric Levin fielding questions from analysis.
One of those questions focused on Spotify’s podcasts expansion, and whether it’s causing tensions around the potential impact on royalties paid out to companies like WMG. It’s safe to say Spotify will be pleased with Cooper’s answer.
“We’re very happy that Spotify is investing in podcasting. It gives them an opportunity to create another vertical that they can create not only an ad/free service around, but presumably over time a premium service,” he said.
“I believe personally that there will be people that come to Spotify for a podcast and stay for music, and that there will be people that come to Spotify for music and stay for a podcast. It does not impact our economics either on the free side or the subscription side,” continued Cooper.
“But hopefully what it will do is create appeal to a broader audience… I am sure that there will be an overlap in those Venn diagrams to drive people from podcasting to music, and music to podcasting. I also believe that that being said, that Spotify’s basic foundation stone or basic foundation will always be music. I don’t see that changing anywhere near the foreseeable future.”
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Source: Music ally
WMG revenues down 4.5% year-on-year but digital still growing
Warner Music Group has published its latest quarterly financial results, for its fiscal third quarter (calendar Q2). They reveal the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic continues to have on its business.
WMG generated revenues of $1.01bn last quarter, down by 4.5% year-on-year. However, its digital revenues grew by 11% to $720m as part of that, accounting for 71.3% of the company’s total revenues.
WMG recorded a whopping operating loss of $433m, although that was due to ‘a higher non-cash stock-based compensation expense of $426 million related to the Company’s long-term incentive plan’ as well as $86m of costs associated with its IPO in early June.
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Source: Music ally
Clash Video short-video app signs up 200k users in its first week
It seems to be the season for TikTok alternatives to be staking their claims for young video creators. The latest example is a new app called Clash Video, which soft-launched last week for iPhones in the US.
“We’re building the first Creator-Founded social network, empowering short form video creators through innovative monetization options, inclusive communities, and fun, creator inspired features,” explains the blurb on its website.
News site Tubefilter has more details. Clash’s co-founder is Brendon McNerney, who was big on Vine back in the day – an app that has influenced Clash. The latter enables people to post looping videos up to 21 seconds long, although there isn’t (yet) a catalogue of music clips to use.
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Source: Music ally
Apple Music hosts virtual listening party for Victoria Monét
Apple Music is working with artist Victoria Monét on “an exclusive virtual listening party” taking place this Thursday (6 August) to celebrate the release of her new album ‘Jaguar’ the following day.
The event will be presented by Apple Music’s ‘Today’s Hits’ playlist and hosted by Beats 1’s Nadeska Alexis. According to Broadway World, this is the first in a series of these listening parties, which “could include everything from unreleased tracks, to special guests and surprise performances and will also give fans the opportunity to chat live with their favourite artists”.
Apparently up to 1,000 fans will be able to take part, by reserving tickets online, but they will need to be Apple Music subscribers.
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Source: Music ally
WMG appoints head of global equity, diversity and inclusion
Warner Music Group’s push for diversity and inclusion across its company has a new boss. Dr Maurice Stinnett will be WMG’s new head of global equity, diversity and inclusion, having joined from a similar role at BSE Global, owner of NBA team the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center venue.
Stinnett certainly has seniority: he’ll report directly to WMG chief executive Steve Cooper.
“Our business can and should lead the way in opening up a new era of diversity and inclusion. We’re at a turning point in history, and there’s a genuine commitment and desire for real transformation and transparency at WMG,” said Dr Stinnett in a statement.
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Source: Music ally
Motown’s latest artist accelerator will be run virtually
Storied label Motown Records is holding its second accelerator for artists this year, although thanks to Covid-19 the program will be virtual this time round.
The 12-week program will see four artists from Detroit – Madelyn Grant, Curtis Roach, B Free and Sara Marie Barron – sharing $20k in grants and working with the label and its mentors. Motown said they were chosen from 474 applications for this year’s Motown Accelerator.
“It’s crucial, now more than ever, to help artists navigate their careers,” said the program director Suai Kee. “We’ve had to make programming adjustments, of course, all meetings are virtual, including what would have taken place during trips to New York and Los Angeles in past programs.”
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Source: Music ally
Publisher Round Hill Music sues TuneCore and Believe
It’s clearly the time of year for lawsuits and legal threats. Publisher Round Hill Music is suing distributor TuneCore and its parent company Believe.
The lawsuit claims that the two companies “reproduced and distributed musical compositions owned or controlled by Round Hill… despite knowing that the Round Hill Compositions were never properly licensed. Moreover, beyond failing to properly license Round Hill Compositions, Defendants have not properly paid for the corresponding uses.”
219 of the songs in Round Hill’s catalogue are cited as part of the lawsuit. MBW reported that the works include ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ and ‘She Loves You’ by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, as well as songs written by Ted Nugent, Florida Georgia Line and Ari Levine. TuneCore and Believe have yet to comment at the time of writing.
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Source: Music ally
Snap strikes deals for licensed music in Snapchat app
Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc has signed music licensing deals with Warner Music Group, Warner Chappell, Universal Music Publishing, Merlin and a number of members of US publishing body the NMPA.
Bloomberg reported on the deals this morning, adding that Snap is testing a new feature in Australia and New Zealand that lets people add music to their Snapchat posts. Snap has confirmed the news of the deals to Music Ally.
“We’re constantly building on our relationships within the music industry, and making sure the entire music ecosystem (artists, labels, songwriters, publishers and streaming services) are seeing value in our partnerships,” said a spokesperson.
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Source: Music ally
Noah Cyrus’s new video was made using PS4 game Dreams
Shooting music videos is possible but challenging within the social distancing measures of this Covid-19 pandemic. The latest example of an artist getting a creative way around those barriers is Noah Cyrus, as part of the ‘A Sony Collaboration’ series of projects.
You may remember we wrote about a Nicky Jam TikTok video created through the scheme earlier this year. The idea is to connect Sony Music artists with tech from the wider Sony empire, and in Noah Cyrus’s case that means a PlayStation 4 game called Dreams.
Well, it’s more a creative application really: a tool that people can use to make their own games. Or, as it turns out, music videos. A team pulled together by Dreams developer Media Molecules built the music video for Cyrus’s ‘July’, with a separate behind-the-scenes video showing how they did it.
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Source: Music ally
Microsoft in talks to buy TikTok in US and other countries
Events have moved fast since Friday for TikTok’s business in the US, it’s fair to say. We’ll start with the latest news: confirmation from Microsoft that it’s in talks about an acquisition of TikTok in the US and certain other countries, with a mid-September deadline to reach an agreement with the app’s parent company ByteDance – not to mention the US president.
“Following a conversation between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President Donald J. Trump, Microsoft is prepared to continue discussions to explore a purchase of TikTok in the United States,” announced Microsoft yesterday.
“Microsoft will move quickly to pursue discussions with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, in a matter of weeks, and in any event completing these discussions no later than September 15, 2020. During this process, Microsoft looks forward to continuing dialogue with the United States Government, including with the President.”
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Source: Music ally
One Direction and Goldie get new anniversary websites
One Direction and Goldie? Now that’s a collaboration made in musical heaven, possibly. Sadly they’re not working together (yet!) but they have both just got new websites to celebrate significant anniversaries.
It’s 10 years since One Direction were formed during TV show The X Factor, and their 10 Years of 1D website offers an interactive timeline of that decade, even though the band went on hiatus six years in.
Fans sign in using Spotify or Apple Music, and browse the timeline’s videos, voice notes, lyrics and image galleries, clicking to ‘like’ things as they go. At the end, those likes are turned into a personalised playlist on the streaming service they signed in with.
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Source: Music ally
Blockchain music service Audius raises $3.1m funding round
We first wrote about startup Audius when it raised a $5.5m funding round in August 2018 for a service that was described as ‘SoundCloud on the blockchain’.
When it launched its public beta a year later, it was interesting, but its ‘censorship-resistant’ philosophy created some headaches in the potential for unauthorised uploads, and the difficulty for rightsholders to get them taken down.
Since then, Audius has launched an iPhone app, and now it has announced another funding round: this time for $3.1m. There’s another figure too: “Today, there are more than 250,000 fans using Audius every month,” revealed the company, adding that more than 40,000 artists have so far uploaded music to the platform – with Deadmau5 being the highest profile.
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Source: Music ally
Wire protest after Bandcamp ‘scam page’ sells their album
Bandcamp has been getting a lot of love from artists in recent months, thanks to its Covid-19 relief and Black Lives Matter sales. One artist who’s not quite so keen, though, is British post-punk band Wire, who’ve been having some problems with their albums appearing on Bandcamp without their say-so.
“You may have recently seen 10:20 for sale on Bandcamp. This was a scam page that was nothing to do with Wire, and is actually the second time this has happened on that site,” the band announced on Facebook – ’10:20′ being their latest album, released this year.
The post goes on to explain that Wire don’t use Bandcamp, so “you will never find legit Wire releases (digital or otherwise) for sale there”. A mailout to fans earlier this year gave details of the first time this had happened, with their 2017 album ‘Silver/Lead’.
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Source: Music ally
Twitch to feature artists in its first ever ‘music month’
Twitch is building on its recent growth of music livestreams by launching its first ever ‘Music Month’.
It’ll be spending August promoting some of the musicians who are operating on its platform, including featuring their streams on the service’s homepage and its own official channel. The latter will include a show every Friday called ‘Follow Fridays: Music Edition’ which will focus on clips from musicians.
Meanwhile, Twitch is also launching a ‘community development program for music’, which will offer advice and tips for people streaming in the platform’s Music & Performing Arts category to help them build their audiences and improve their broadcasts.
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Source: Music ally
Hipgnosis snaps up Barry Manilow’s global recording royalties
Another day, another big deal for UK-based Hipgnosis Songs Fund, which continues to enthusiastically splash its cash on music catalogues. The latest belongs (or rather, belonged) to Barry Manilow.
“Hipgnosis has acquired 100% of Barry Manilow’s worldwide recording royalties (excluding Sound Exchange royalties) in his Catalogue comprising 917 songs,” announced the company this morning.
We don’t need to list Manilow’s hits for you to know that it’s a significant catalogue for Hipgnosis to have snapped up, although we’ll settle for putting ‘Copacabana (At the Copa)’ in your head as a Monday earworm.
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Source: Music ally
ATC and Beggars Group team up for Driift online concerts firm
The founders of music management company ATC Management have launched a new firm called Driift, to produce and promote ticketed online concerts.
The team has already worked on recent livestreams for Laura Marling (who sold 6,500 tickets for her recent Union Chapel concerts), Lianna La Havas and Dermot Kennedy (who Driift says sold more than 30,000 for a show last week) and is planning upcoming gigs for Biffy Clyro and Sleaford Mods.
Driift says it will be handling ticketing, production, licensing, rights management and digital marketing for online concerts. Independent label Beggars Group is a founding investor and shareholder in the new company, which is being run by ATC’s Ric Salmon and Brian Message.
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Source: Music ally
YouTube under fire over music licensing impasse in Denmark
Something is kicking off in the state of Denmark, and it’s the latest music licensing controversy around YouTube.
Danish collecting society Koda issued a press release last week titled ‘Google removes all Danish music from YouTube’, although the first paragraph makes it clear that this removal hasn’t happened yet.
The background is negotiations for a new deal between YouTube and collecting societies in Norway, Finland and Denmark, operating jointly through their Polaris licensing hub to replace their existing individual deals. Koda’s expired in April, but the society says it was temporarily extended while the new Nordic deal was being thrashed out.
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Source: Music ally