PPL has broken its own records this morning with its financial results for 2022, which saw revenues grow by 7.8%. The post PPL posts record financial results with revenues up 7.8% appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

British collecting society PRS for Music has published its annual figures, reporting record-breaking revenues and distributions in 2022. The post PRS for Music reports record figures and 22.9% revenue growth in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Meta appears to have not just opened a can of worms, but tipped that can all over itself, with its music-licensing dispute in Italy. The post Italian watchdog AGCM investigates Meta over its music dispute appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

German collecting society GEMA has published its financial results for 2022, and they show strong growth in its collections and distributions. The post 2022 was a billion-Euro year for GEMA as revenues rose 13.4% appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Kobalt’s revenues grew by 22% last year, and that it spent more than $300m on advances and music catalogues. The post Kobalt revenues up 22% as advances and catalogue spend hits $300m appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

US-based PRO ASCAP has published its figures for 2022, revealing that its collections passed $1.5bn for the first time ever. The post ASCAP’s annual collections passed $1.5bn for first time in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The collecting societies sector in Spain has a chequered history. SGAE was expelled from global societies body CISAC in 2019. The post Unison files new lawsuit against Spanish collecting society SGAE appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

2022 was a good year for UK CMO PPL, which says its payouts to performers and recording rightsholders grew by 7.1% to £244.9m last year. The post PPL’s annual payouts grew by 7.1% to £244.9m in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The licensing and data firm is ending 2022 with a deal to provide a copyright hub for independent publishing licensing agency IMPEL. The post Blokur to build a copyright hub for licensing agency IMPEL appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Things are still going well for the ICE Core, the hub that licenses repertoire from collecting societies and various independent publishers. The post ICE Core breaks monthly distribution record as AKM signs up appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Santigold is the latest artist to experiment with NFTs in the context of an online fanclub. The post Music NFTs roundup: Santigold, Coachella, Pianity x Sacem… appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Collecting societies body CISAC has published its annual Global Collections Report this morning, revealing the latest figures and trends from its member bodies. The post CISAC and SCAPR publish their annual collections figures appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Accurate metadata is going to be the lifeblood for songwriters in the future (or, to put it less positively, inaccurate or missing metadata has been a big problem for them in the streaming era thus far). The post Songwriter tools: Session x SONA, and Bridger gets collaborative appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Collecting societies body SCAPR is opening up its IPN [International Performer Number] system beyond its PRO members. The post SCAPR opens up International Performer Numbers with UMG appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Collecting society GEMA has commissioned a report from consultancy firm Goldmedia on music streaming in Germany. The post GEMA-commissioned study explores Germany’s music-streaming economy appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

That controversy within the UK music industry over funding for PRS Foundation isn’t going away. The post MMF wants ‘greater transparency’ over black-box collections appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

British collecting society PRS for Music has published its annual financial results, revealing that its revenues grew by 22.4% to £777.1m ($989.6m) in 2021. The post PRS for Music reveals that revenues grew by 22.4% in 2021 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

A number of global music companies have been suspending their businesses and/or services in Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. The post Believe and CISAC explain how they’re dealing with Russia appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The publishing strand at last week’s NY:LON Connect conference included keynotes from Primary Wave’s Natalia Nastaskin and PopArabia / Reservoir’s Spek. The post Publishing innovation: ‘You can’t take a Ferrari engine and put it into a Model T!’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

European licensing hub Ice was founded by three collecting societies: PRS for Music, Stim and Gema. However, its ‘Ice Core’ also licenses repertoire from other entities: Imro, BMI and independent publishers including Downtown and Concord. Now the latter group has grown with the addition of Belgian PRO Sabam. “We pursued an exceptionally thorough process to […]

One of Spain’s collecting societies, SGAE, is coming in from the cold and being readmitted to global PROs organisation Cisac, after reforms that the latter say “have transformed the society and its operations”. SGAE was temporarily booted out of Cisac in May 2019, after well-documented controversies around how it was run, and particularly ‘The Wheel’, a […]

Canadian collecting society Socan has published its financial results for 2019. Its collections grew by 8.2% to $405.6m, including a 37.6% increase for its digital collections to $86m. However, distributions to its members fell by 6% to $296m, which Socan said was due to “the steep learning curve required for the company’s newly deployed technology to […]

The more music industry entities working hands-on with startups and developers the better, as far as we’re concerned. The latest example is US collecting society Ascap, whose innovation arm Ascap Lab has been running an 11-week ‘Seed Project’ challenge for graduate students in New York. Five teams were involved, exploring new ways to interact with […]

Germany collecting society Gema held its annual general meeting last week – online, of course, with around 1,000 of its songwriter, composer and publisher members taking part. The event included some blunt words from CEO Dr Harald Heker on why Covid-19 relief measures taken by the society this year can only go so far. “We are […]

Triller has been making the most of TikTok’s recent troubles, poaching creators, trumpeting its user growth and even pitching itself in the US as “a form of patriotic capitalism”. But with that higher profile has come scrutiny of Triller’s licensing status, not least from US publishing body the NMPA. On the other side of the Atlantic, […]

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 […]

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 […]

We reported earlier this month on plans by Indian collecting society IPRS to start charging licensing fees for music livestreams – and initial criticism that the plans could leave artists out of pocket. Now the plans are changing. Medianama reported that the introduction of the new tariffs appears to have been delayed until September, amid […]

The Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS) has signed a deal with Facebook for use of the repertoire it represents in videos, music stickers and stories on the platform. The deal also covers similar usage on Instagram, with IPRS saying it “will cover licensing and royalties whenever music represented by the IPRS is used on Facebook […]

UK collecting society PRS for Music is suing airline Qatar Airways for copyright infringement, and the case will be heard in the English courts – an early boost for the society. “The airline, which operates over 200,000 flights per year, and offers music as an integral part of its in-flight service with up to 4,000 entertainment […]

British collecting society PRS for Music has offered another warning that the Covid-19 pandemic will be delivering its biggest hit to songwriter royalties later this year. PRS has just paid out its July 2020 distribution, £132.4m, which was up by 3% year-on-year. However, CEO Andrea Martin warned the society’s members that there are tough times […]

US collecting society ASCAP has launched a new paid internship program for students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Five students will work for ASCAP (remotely) during July and August, with plans to repeat the scheme every summer in future years. “We have a responsibility to seek to nurture talent and empower the next […]

STIM is the main collecting society in Sweden, and like many of its counterparts around the world, it enjoyed healthy growth in its royalty collections last year. According to its annual report, STIM’s revenues grew by 15% in 2019, to SEK 2.4bn (around $259m), with SEK 1.8bn paid out to songwriters and rightsholders. 38% of […]

CISAC is the global body representing collecting societies. Its last president was Jean-Michel Jarre, and before him it was Robin Gibb from the Bee Gees. Big shoes to fill for its next president, right? Step forward… Björn Ulvaeus. The co-founder of ABBA will serve a three-year term as president of CISAC, having been elected by […]

There’s a change at the top for Canadian collecting society Socan, as its CEO Eric Baptiste has resigned and stepped down with immediate effect. Why so abrupt? “With the end of the current CEO contract approaching, Eric thought it was time to move on and a mutual decision was reached with the Board to end […]

There’s something of a domino effect happening as collecting societies sign off their plans for hardship funds and other measures designed to support songwriters and composers during the current pandemic. French society Sacem has announced a €6m ‘rescue fund’ for hard-hit musicians, with grants of €1.5k, €3k and €5k available depending on the situation. Sacem has also […]

The latest collecting society announcing growth in its annual collections is Canadian PRO Socan. It estimates that it collected C$405.5m (around US$305.1m) in 2019 – the first time its collections have exceeded $400m in its history. We say ‘estimates’ because the final figure won’t be published until Socan’s AGM in June. Assuming it’s confirmed, that would […]

“You can choose to grow one copyright at a time. That’s going to take a really, really long time. We went to look for solutions that would help us scale more quickly. And what drove that was really find likeminded people, find people with whom you have shared values… with whom you have a vision […]

Who said major labels were the only established music entities buying into the digital distribution market? German collecting society GEMA is joining the fun. It has taken a majority stake in Berlin-based distributor Zebralution, which it says makes it one of the first collecting societies in the world to ‘secure commercial participation’ in that market. Zebralution […]

Across the world, there are lots of different initiatives afoot to tackle the music industry’s metadata problems – including accurately filling out the credits for songs and recordings. The latest example comes from the UK, where collecting society PPL has announced a new partnership with startup Sound Credit. The latter company’s product is a plug-in and […]

CISAC, the global collecting-societies body, has published its annual ‘Global Collections Report’ setting out the collections of its 239 members in more than 120 countries. As ever, it’s a useful counterpart to the IFPI’s annual Global Music Report: while that publication focuses on recorded-music royalties, the music section of CISAC’s report quantifies collections for songwriters […]

Yesterday, Music Ally broke the news that social app TikTok has referred three collecting societies – PRS for Music, STIM and GEMA – and their joint-venture licensing hub ICE to the UK’s Copyright Tribunal, in a dispute over music-licensing terms. ICE issued a statement yesterday on the case, but this morning TikTok has also sent […]

Social app TikTok is set for a battle with three European collecting societies and their joint venture, via the medium of the UK’s Copyright Tribunal. That’s the body that resolves copyright-related commercial-licensing disputes in the UK. Copyright Tribunal Ref 132/19 will be of intense interest to the music industry, then. “Notice is hereby given of a reference […]

Perhaps we should start asking some pointed questions to any collecting society or label that *isn’t* announcing record royalties and/or payouts. New milestones are being set by the week in 2019, it seems. Canadian collecting society SOCAN is the latest example. In 2018 it paid out $320m to its members, representing 8% year-on-year growth, although […]

In May this year, the general assembly of collecting-societies body CISAC voted to expel Spanish society SGAE, temporarily, in the wake of the long-running controversy around ‘The Wheel’ (a system that saw some of the society’s members’ music played through the night on some Spanish TV channels, boosting their performance royalties). Now CISAC’s director-general Gadi […]

British collecting society PRS for Music has a new incoming CEO. Andrea C. Martin will be taking up the position on 17 June, with a background as president and CEO of three international business units with Readers Digest Association; MD of data services for the UK’s Royal Mail; and president of security-tech firm ADT Canada. […]

British collecting society PPL has announced its figures for 2018, revealing that its collections grew by 13% to £246.8m on behalf of performers and rightsholders. That included 5% growth (to £83.6m) for its ‘broadcasting and online’ category, although the biggest spike came with a 43% rise in international collections to £70.9m. PPL also paid out […]

“Maybe what I’ll say is this: I’ve done 10 years of this. I’m going to let someone else take on the internecine warfare that seems to be endemic to the music industry!” Even when he’s playing a straight bat to a sensitive question – in this case, one about whether songwriters deserve a bigger slice of […]

British collecting society PRS for Music saw its collections grow by 4.4% to £746m (around $965.4m) in 2018, setting a new record. £603.6m was distributed to members, down 0.2% year-on-year “caused by processing delays at our joint venture partners”. PRS said that its international collections were up by 9.1% to £280.6m, while income from digital […]

If you’re keen to follow the debate about which entity should run the soon-to-be-created Mechanical Licensing Collective in the US, fill your boots on the official Copyright Office regulations site: it has published hundreds of submissions from industry bodies and individuals in support of one or other of the two groups (the MLC and AMLC) competing […]

We reported earlier this week on moves afoot in the US to modernise / replace the longstanding ‘consent decrees’ governing licensing in the US. Now collecting societies BMI and ASCAP have published an open letter setting out their views on what should happen. They are calling for an “orderly transition” with new decrees that would […]

Even as the row over Spotify’s publishing licensing in India rages, so attention is switching back to the US, where the Department of Justice is mulling a shakeup of the long-established ‘consent decrees’. “The Justice Department in the coming weeks is expected to call for public input on whether it should modify or terminate two […]

US firm SoundExchange has published its year-end numbers for 2018, and like other bodies collecting and distributing royalties for musicians and rightsholders, it enjoyed a record year. “We distributed more sound recording performance royalties to recording artists and rights owners than in any other year of our 15-year existence – a record $953m,” announced SoundExchange […]

British collecting-society PPL has reported some figures for 2018: its international collections, for public and TV/radio performances (plus private copying) of its members’ tracks. The organisation collected £70.9m ($93.3m) in 2018, up 43% year-on-year, and a new record for PPL, which now has 92 international collection agreements in place. Those include deals signed in 2018 […]