How One Infant’s Obsession Led His Parents to a Booming Business

Lisa and Eric Greenwald created a totally new kind of jewelry for the mouths of babes.

Every Superhero Has Something to Teach Entrepreneurs About Business

Comic books often teach children serious lessons about the adult world.

Major Labels Ratchet Up Anti-YouTube Rhetoric As The Begin Difficult Renegotiations

The RIAA and the labels it represents have been ratcheting up their anti-YouTube rhetoric, calling out the popular service for paying “meager” royalties. Never mind that these same labels where the ones who agreed to these terms a few years ago. But now, they seem intent on righting their own wrong.

All three major labels are in serious negotiations with YouTube demanding higher payments for the use of music. Universal Music Group’s t deal with the Google owned video and music service has reportedly already run out, and deals with Warner and Sony are set to expire within months.

As music consumption rapidly shifts from purchase to streaming, at stake is how much artists and labels are paid for millions of music streams on YouTube daily. Online music consumption doubled in 2015, but ad-supported streaming like YouTube and Spotify’s free tier drove just 5.5% of music industry revenue. “We make peanuts from the ads,” an unamed music executive told Matthew Garrahan of the Financial Times, in a well documented piece on the negotiations.

“The consumption of music is skyrocketing, but revenues for creators have not kept pace,” according to a recent RIAA report. “In 2015, fans listened to hundreds of billions of audio and video music streams through on-demand ad-supported digital services like YouTube, but revenues from such services have been meager — far less than other kinds of music services.”

Weekly Register: Chris Stapleton Jumps To No. 2 On Overall Albums Chart

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Merle Haggard Laid to Rest at Music-Filled Funeral

Family, friends, bandmates and peers attended Merle Haggard’s private funeral on Saturday, April 9th, with many paying tribute to the late legend through song.

Held at Haggard’s own ranch in Shasta County, California, the outdoor funeral was pre-planned by the country star himself, who had requested that Marty Stuart serve as…

James Brown: Finding New Meaning in Mr. Dynamite

Early in Kill ‘Em and Leave, James McBride writes that “the  James Brown story is not about James Brown. It’s about who’s getting paid, whose interest is involved, who can squeeze the estate and black history for more … It’s reflective of the sad state of the American popular emporium these…

All of YouTube’s Major Label Deals Are Now Expiring…

Will the industry fix its ‘YouTube Problem’ in 2016?

YouTube’s contracts with major labels Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group are all about to expire, or already expired, according to reports and sources this morning. In a report late last night, the Financial Times noted that YouTube is girding for a ‘showdown’ as each of these labels are preparing to radically shift the terms of their low-paying deals.

The deals are ending ‘within months,’ which active negotiations over how to change future compensation. “Over the coming months, Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music are each due to negotiate new licensing deals with the Google-owned video platform,” the Times notes. “None of the three music companies has commented in public, but each appears keen to ‘reset’ its relationship with a service that has, to date, paid them relatively little for their content.”

Separately, Music Business Worldwide has reported that YouTube’s contract with Universal Music Group has already ended, with tense discussions happening on a floating deal.

“[YouTube] are 40% of consumption of music and 4% of the revenue.”

Negotiations could be tricky: on one hand, YouTube is pilloried for generating insultingly-low royalties for labels and artists, but the service also accounts for roughly 40 percent of music consumption. That’s according to Apple Music executive Jimmy Iovine, who spilled the statistic alongside another bomb: “Here’s a little statistic,” Iovine told attendees at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit in San Francisco last year. “[YouTube] are 40% of consumption of music and 4% of the revenue.”

“That’s a problem!… They know that doesn’t work. But do they care? I have no idea.”

YouTube has piggishly argued that ad-supported is working, and monetizing users that will never pay for music. But that rhetoric is being challenged by Apple Music, whose paid-only service now counts an estimated 15 million subscribers. Tie in Spotify (30 million) and Tidal (3 million), and streaming services are now reaching a critical mass of premium users.

All of which gives the majors a lot more leverage against YouTube.

The post All of YouTube’s Major Label Deals Are Now Expiring… appeared first on Digital Music News.

America’s Psychedelic Majority: How LSD Changed Culture Forever

Jesse Jarnow’s fascinating new book, Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, explores what he calls “a vast and learned psychonautical diaspora” – the social and physical world shaped by drugs like LSD, DMT, peyote, MDMA and mushrooms. At the center of the story is the freewheeling economy that grew up around the…

Potential Solution To Piracy Struck Down

The Federal Circuit is holding firm on its decision that the International Trade Commission should not be given authority over digital goods, a decision which has sparked some significant controversy.

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Guest post from David Lowery of The Trichordist

You can’t make this up. Law 360 is reporting that the International Trade Commission (ITC) has been denied authority over digital goods.

The Federal Circuit said Thursday that it wouldn’t reconsider its decision that the International Trade Commission lacks the authority to block the import of digital files, drawing a lengthy dissent from one of its judges.

Keep in mind, the same people now opposed to the ITC having this authority are the same who argued in favor of the the ITC doing so as an alternative to SOPA called the Open Act.

Below is an except from an excellent post on this issue By Devlin Hartline & Matthew Barblanat CPIP.

When advocating for the OPEN Act as a good alternative to SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act, the bill’s sponsors touted the ITC as being a great venue for tackling the problems of foreign rogue sites. Among the claimed virtues were its vast experience, transparency, due process protection, consistency, and independence:

For well over 80 years, the independent International Trade Commission (ITC) has been the venue by which U.S. rightsholders have obtained relief from unfair imports, such as those that violate intellectual property rights. Under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 – which governs how the ITC investigates rightsholders’ request for relief – the agency already employs a transparent process that gives parties to the investigation, and third party interests, a chance to be heard. The ITC’s process and work is highly regarded as independent and free from political influence and the department already has a well recognized expertise in intellectual property and trade law that could be expanded to the import of digital goods.

The Commission already employs important safeguards to ensure that rightsholders do not abuse their right to request a Commission investigation and the Commission may self-initiate investigations. Keeping them in charge of determining whether unfair imports – like those that violate intellectual property rights – [sic] would ensure consistent enforcement of Intellectual Property rights and trade law.

Some of the groups now arguing that the ITC shouldn’t have jurisdiction over digital goods openly supported the OPEN Act. Back in late 2011, the EFF stated that it was “glad to learn that a bipartisan group of congressional representatives has come together to formulate a real alternative, called the OPEN Act.” The EFF liked the bill because the “ITC’s process . . . is transparent, quick, and effective” and “both parties would have the opportunity to participate and the record would be public.” It emphasized how the “process would include many important due process protections, such as effective notice to the site of the complaint and ensuing investigation.”

Google likewise thought that giving the ITC jurisdiction over digital goods was a great idea. In a letter posted to its blog in early 2012, Google claimed that “there are better ways to address piracy than to ask U.S. companies to censor the Internet,” and it explicitly stated that it “supports alternative approaches like the OPEN Act.” Google also signed onto a letter promoting the virtues of the ITC: “This approach targets foreign rogue sites without inflicting collateral damage on legitimate, law-abiding U.S. Internet companies by bringing well-established International trade remedies to bear on this problem.”