The Fern Talks – Page 17954

Would You Pay $50 To Stream a Newly Released Movie at Home?

Would You Pay 50$ To Stream A Newly Released Movie At Home?

Typically, when a new movie is released people flock to the cinema. But what if you didn’t have to join the herd?

What if you could watch your favorite new movie from the comfort of your own home?

Screening Room is a brand-new, Hollywood-focused streaming service that allows you to remain potato-like. The service, created by Sean Parker and Prem Akkaraju, completely eradicates the time-lag between a movie hitting the cinema screens and reaching your personal TV screen. Parker was an original co-founder of Napster, and a top executive at Spotify (and, Facebook, among others).

Screening Room wants to fill a major gap created by Netflix and services like it. Netflix features serious time delays for freshly-released films, and the reason is that the price-points that Netflix charge are simply too low to license frontline releases immediately from major Hollywood studios. It’s a gripe that most subscribers have learned to tolerate, but that doesn’t mean they won’t pay more for more premium content.

Parker and Akkaraju feel they have a fairly straightforward solution to this issue: charge more… a lot more. Users of Screening Room will be required to pay an upfront cost of $150 for a set-top-box, and a further $50 per movie chosen. This will allow the user to watch a movie on the very day it is released, with a 48-hour window of rental enjoyment.

Screening Room brings a series of potential benefits to its users. Firstly, if people have good technology at home (and a large TV screen), this eliminates the need to physically go to the cinema. That includes the expense of traveling to the movies, the over-priced cost of theater popcorn, and about 1,000 other things we all hate. But those benefits only really stand if the service is used in a multi-person household, like a family home for example, or even for those that have high disposable incomes.

Perhaps it all boils down to personal economics. The Hollywood Reporter has looked at the average price of a movie ticket in the US, and found year-over-year increases. In fact, ticket prices are at all time high, currently surpassing $8. So, for a group of friends that regularly go to the cinema, Screening Room could be an valuable option. For a price-conscious, single viewer, the expense of streaming the movie would be far greater than the expense of actually going to the theater.

Screening Room is essentially a luxury offering, but the difficulty that the service may struggle with is getting people to part with the initial $200 before they can watch their first movie. On top of all this, Screening Room’s founders face the unenviable hurdle of clearing the rights for the big, Hollywood-backed blockbusters that high-end users will demand.

(Image licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution-Share Alike, 3.0 Unported)

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Why Spotify’s Royalty War Is a Giant Industry Distraction

Is Spotify really the biggest problem the music industry has right now?

Spotify is constantly berated for paying meager royalties, or, not paying them at all. Over the past few months, Spotify has been embroiled in a massive battle over unpaid mechanical royalties, with a $200 million class action sparking a major war between songwriters, publishers, and streaming services.

But that war may be distracting the industry from a far bigger problem: billions of hours of unlicensed, user-generated content that remains largely unrecognized and unpaid.

It’s not that Spotify shouldn’t pay the royalties it owes under the law. It’s just that Spotify’s war obscures the large percentage of music that remains totally unlicensed, particularly UGC, or user-generated content. Indeed, two of the most important music platforms today — SoundCloud and YouTube — are overflowing with remixed, or ‘derivative,’ content, with only a tiny portion of it actually licensed properly.

Spotify, meanwhile, is one of the highest-paying streaming music platforms, though it’s catalog can’t ingest remixed or UGC content at all because of licensing restrictions. This is a serious problem for Spotify executives and investors, especially with competitors like SoundCloud trumping Spotify’s user totals and eclipsing their catalog selection. Spotify simply can’t compete when it comes to UGC.

That is hardly an understatement: the most important song format is now shifting away from the original, studio-created version to the remixed, mashed-up, altered, or otherwise derivative version. That’s a major shift in the way we interact with music, and it’s a shift that’s already happened. In fact, YouTube recently noted that ‘mix music’ was its most searched-for category, across all video categories.

Meanwhile, YouTube commands as much as 52% of marketshare of all music streams, according to research estimates shared with DMN. That dominance is largely predicated on the availability of nearly every song recorded, with SoundCloud enjoying nearly every remix created (at least those that aren’t getting torn down).

And here’s the problem with all of this: the highest-paying streaming platforms have the highest percentage of licensed, legitimate content, but the lowest total catalogs overall. That means that the war over content licensing is happening

(a) on the platforms that pay the most (relative to other streaming services); and

(b) on the platforms that have the greatest amount of legitimately licensed content.

“The dam has burst…”

Beyond the YouTube and SoundCloud whales, a number of similarly-oriented sites are ushering the real music revolution, one predicated on total fan participation, not to mention endless re-interpretations of original, first-run songs. Indeed, platforms like MixCloud and Beatport have enjoyed meteoric rises (and huge valuations) based on UGC and remixed content, and that doesn’t even include a ballooning surge in podcasting. “The dam has burst,” producer Mark Ronson relayed during his heavily watched TED talk. “We live in the post-sampling era, we take things we love and build on them.”

That surge is creating billions of hours in totally unlicensed hours of music, with overlapping rights completely unaccounted for and unpaid. This has been acknowledged by massive rights owners like Warner Music Group, who according to sources, are committing nearly 35 staffers to handle YouTube accounts alone, including ContentID disputes and complaints.

Sony Music Entertainment, which remains a holdout on SoundCloud licensing, is managing a similar quandary.

All of that raises the scary reality that the existing licensing infrastructure is totally inadequate and unprepared to handle this massive cultural shift. Indeed, the ‘system’ can barely handle existing licenses around original content, which is now coming to the fore with the Spotify imbroglio.

One company attempting to solve this mess is Dubset Media Holdings, a derivatives rights licensing specialist. Just this morning, Dubset Media kicked off a major relationship with Apple Music, a huge start to addressing this issue. According to the deal terms, Apple will begin to ingest cleared, remixed content, with every sample track and artist capturing their sliver of the royalty pie.

Dubset Media, a DMN partner, envisions a better-licensed marketplace, and has constructed a rights exchange called MixBank that will power the Apple deal. MixBank includes a registry for content owners, as well as a realtime scanning and clearance component, to enable quick licensing of remixed works.

The MixBank platform could eventually involve the participation of virtually all rights owners, including individual artists and songwriters, whose works can eventually be recognized and remunerated by platforms like SoundCloud. “This is a very important day for the music industry,” Dubset Media CEO Stephen White told Digital Music News, speaking on the Apple deal. “Until now the major music services could not offer DJ mixes and unofficial remix content in their services.”

Tiesto, one of the largest DJs on the planet, also chimed in. “Delivering remix content to Apple Music through Dubset Media is an amazing development,” Tiesto relayed. “Dance music fans are the biggest winners here because they will now have access to great remixes on the same platform that they listen to our original tracks.”

A similar deal could dramatically change Spotify as well. But mega-players like YouTube and SoundCloud could also actually pay for the remixed content they offer, while pulling down content that simply isn’t authorized. In essence, a digital marketplace that can easily license everything — original or derivative — could potentially rain billions in additional annual revenues, while further marginalizing the revenue drain from piracy.

It could also have serious implications for YouTube, whose ContentID is largely predicated on original works, but has difficulty picking apart the oftentimes multi-layered mixes of different tracks. And this is where none of this makes sense: somehow, YouTube gets away with lackadaisical licensing or straight-up infringement that amounts to billions in unlicensed content, while Spotify gets excoriated for unpaid licenses that amounts to damages in the millions. Perhaps the Apple Music deal is one small step towards leveling that imbalance.

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Sony Buys Michael Jackson’s $750M Stake In Sony/ATV Publishing

Sony Music is now planning to purchase the Michael Jackson Estate’s share of its joint music publishing venture, Sony/ATV. The 50% stake will be purchased for a massive $750 million, according to official statements, with a clear-cut agreement expected by the end of the month.

Sony Music predicts that the deal will be closed by late 2016/early 2017.

For Sony, the agreement will inevitably augment its position in the music publishing market as it gives them entire control of the publishing company. The deal will also give Sony further access to over three million copyrights of iconic artists, including The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Queen, Calvin Harris, Taylor Swift amongst several others. “This acquisition will enable Sony to more quickly adapt to changes in the music publishing business, while at the same time continuing to be an unparalleled leader in the industry and a treasured home for artists and writers,” said Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Entertainment in a statement.

Kazuo Hirai, President and CEO of Sony Corporation, adds, “This agreement further demonstrates Sony’s commitment to the entertainment businesses and our firm belief that these businesses will continue to contribute to our success for years to come.”

For the Michael Jackson estate, the deal will alleviate a massive debt burden which is reported to be hovering around $250 million. Jackson’s children will undoubtedly gain greater financial flexibility with the move, as well. “This transaction further allows us to continue our efforts of maximizing the value of Michael’s Estate for the benefit of his children,” John Branca and John McClain, co-executors of the Estate, said.

“This further validates Michael’s foresight and genius in investing in music publishing.”

The joint agreement between Michael Jackson and Sony/ATV outlined a stipulation that allowed one partner to purchase the other partner’s interest. Although Sony/ATV exercised this right, the deal will exclude Michael Jackson’s master recordings and his 10% stake in EMI Music Publishing.

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‘Sync’ Revenues Quietly Earning Millions for Indie Artists…

Great news for indie artists: Tunecore has revealed a 47% increase in publishing revenue last year, fueled by a handsome 57% jump in sync revenues.

Conventional methods for earning revenue from music dried up ages ago, and the industry’s magic time machine is showing little promise of revitalizing CDs and iTunes downloads. That means trusty mechanical publishing licensing is also down the toilet, despite the ongoing legal wars involving Spotify and other streaming services.

But other publishing licenses are showing modest growth. That includes video-related publishing earnings, with the licensing fees from TV, commercials and movies one small growth story.

Sync Licensing

Synchronization, or ‘sync’ licensing, has been a niche-but-growing revenue stream for independent artists for years, and lucky bands can earn handsome payouts on the right deal. It’s ‘all or none’ in many situations, unless it’s stock audio or background music. But thankfully, top-level cash is increasing in this sector: according to Tunecore, one of the largest digital distribution services for indie artists, sync revenue improved a sizable 57% in 2015, thanks to increased inclusion of lesser-known works in a number of video categories.

This has been going on for some time, with up-and-coming artists appearing in iPod ads and Super Bowl commercials since the early 2000s. Indeed, it’s not just the mainstream artists that can gain healthy payouts from sync deals, though there’s certainly cash for established acts as well.

Outside of Hollywood films, commercials, and TV shows, there are plenty of other avenues to explore for indie, established, and legacy artists alike. iGaming is another industry where musicians can and are earning royalties, with plenty of different players licensing music or generating original scores. Net Entertainment is one active player in this space, with the company just announcing the release of its mobile-based Jimi Hendrix Slot, just one of a growing selection of legacy artists that also includes Motörhead.

And if you’re connecting strongly with a coveted demo like 18-24 males? Watch out: brands and advertising agencies will be very receptive to your pitches, or even contact you themselves. Just remember to read the fine print.

Top image by Jonathan Kos-Read, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 (CC by 2.0). Middle image supplied by Tunecore.

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Instagram Users Are Twice as Likely to Pay For Music Streaming, Study Finds

Instagram has seen significant growth since its launch in 2010, and now boasts more than 400 million active users. The app is one of the most engaging out of the bunch, with users spending a large amount of time scrolling and uploading images and short videos amongst friends . With such market power, brands, marketing companies, and artists alike have taken to the app to connect with their audiences.

Music accounts dominate the top 10 Instagram accounts, with six out of the 10 coming from music artists. The platform didn’t take too long to acknowledge this and decided to create a dedicated account (@music) for exploring music.

With the topic of ‘music’ bubbling on the app, the company decided to partner with Nielson Music to greater understand the behavior of its music listeners, and the results were gripping. The study was based on a pool of more than 3,000 Instagram users.

The data compared the typical annual music expenditure for the U.S. general population and that of an Instagram music fan. Additionally, the study compared the average listening hours for the U.S. general population to the listening hours of both Instagram and social media fans.

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The research found that Instagram music fans spent approximately 7 hours on average more listening to music than the general U.S. population, and 3.3 hours more than music fans on other social platforms. The data also exposed that Instagram music fans spent on average $117 more annually than the general U.S. population.

Music genres were also analyzed, and the study found that Instagram music fans favored listening to Pop, Rap, Hip Hop and R&B over Rock, Country and EDM.

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Music streaming was also a big focus of the data analysis. The research found that not only are Instagram fans more likely to stream music online, but they are twice as likely to pay for it, which really shows the impact Instagram has on music discovery.

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The study also highlighted that a massive 90% of Instagram users stream music on some sort of music streaming platform. Of the 90% that did stream music, they looked into which platforms were used, and found that the most popular service was YouTube, followed by Pandora and Spotify.

Screen Shot 2016-03-14 at 14.22.40

Other useful information that the research found was the fact that Instagram music fans are more likely to attend live music events. And when social media is used at live music events, 83% of people are using Instagram, which is more than any other platform used.

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The platform is already a working tool in the music industry, especially in terms of marketing. But it will be interesting to see what will be implemented as a result of this newfound information.

(Images from Nielsen’s report, first blogged by Instagram).

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Flipagram CEO Admits to Massive Copyright Infringement

Flipagram has been around since late 2013, and a big deal for years. Basically, it’s an easy-to-use photo app that allows users to create fun slideshows, usually accompanied by popular, top-charting music. It’s a lot of fun to use, and makes infinite sense given the extreme amount of photos people take every day — often in social situations.

Flipagram is now incredibly massive. The app is currently used by millions across iOS and Android, and a top-ranked free app in over 85 countries, according to the company. Even as early as 2014, it was ranked as the top free app on both the iTunes App Store and Google Play, with millions of Flipagrams created every single day.

“We did it kind of like entrepreneurs do sometimes, we kind of just did it and [figured] we’d ask for permission after.”

The only problem is that those millions of Flipagrams were largely using content without permission, with massive copyright infringement committed. And this is not a secret: even Flipagram CEO Farhad Mohit is saying it out loud with little concern. “We did it kind of like entrepreneurs do sometimes, we kind of just did it and [figured] we’d ask for permission after,” Mohit recently told Re/Code. “It took a good year and a quarter or so from the first outreach and the first set of deals coming in. It’s a very complicated rights environment that’s been created in music copyright. Suffice to say I had a pretty good education in music rights management by the end of it.”

Additionally, Mohit flatly admitted how critical music is to his core model. It’s not just an add-on, it’s a core ingredient that is absolutely necessary for Flipagram to succeed work. “At its core, a Flipagram is a video story,” Mohit waxed. “Think of it as a mini movie. Imagine a horror movie without a horror soundtrack.

“The music plays such an important role in the tonality and emotional leverage of that movie.”

These days, Flipagram enjoys licenses with major labels Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group, not to mention indie rights through the Orchard and Merlin. But what about the year-plus period before that? The unabashed admission by Mohit raises serious questions about an industry that destroys a teenaged developer with a half-backed ‘Popcorn Time’ idea, but doesn’t even touch a Sequoia-backed company with $70 million in financing.

It also underscores an industry that lacks any decipherable roadmap for how to properly license, while forgiving massive infringers who carry enough cash. Indeed, many music industry executives and rights owners were wondering for years how Flipagram had secured the necessary rights to such a massive quantity of songs, and what their secret handshake was. In fact, at least one Flipagram competitor contacted Digital Music News and set up a meeting with us about two years ago, wondering why they were waiting for years to get licenses from the label while Flipagram somehow obtained the necessary licenses.

They wanted to know what they were missing. The answer, of course, is that Flipagram never initially secured proper licenses at all. They simply raised tons of cash, and subsequently used that cash to secure licenses down the road, without suffering any penalties or lawsuits. And, unlike Spotify, they never got dragged into court, never got vilified by the artist community, and never got broiled by high-profile media publications.

The question is whether that coveted ‘seek permission later’ mantra of Silicon Valley will ultimately haunt Flipagram. Enter activist (and litigious) actors like David Lowery and Yesh Music, who are not only changing awareness around unpaid royalties, but dragging unwitting tech giants into court. And, playing vigilante for an industry that refuses to play bad cop.

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Saturday Night Live Pokes Fun at Tidal’s Parade of Errors

Jay Z’s Tidal streaming service has been at the brunt of some negative headlines recently. There’s been the alleged lawsuits for copyright infringement and unpaid royalties, the leaking of Rihanna’s ANTI album, and Kanye’s latest album, ‘The Life of Pablo,’ not even charting because of a refusal to send vital streaming information to Neilson Music.

On top of this, there’s been the constant change of executives and the talk around Jay Z calling it quits and selling Tidal to Samsung. At the very least, it’s safe to say that Tidal has experienced some challenges and has struggled to maintain stability in the streaming music market as of yet. In a more blunt assessment, this is one hell of a s–t show.

All of that has created widespread skepticism, and many deem the streaming service a failure, with predictions of lasting more than two years considered generous. Add in a handful of technical glitches and errors, and Tidal is starting to look like s*&t show.

All of that invited a satirical skit by Saturday Night Live, who couldn’t help but poke fun at the technical difficulties. In the SNL skit, Chloe – the intern played by Ariana Grande — saves the day by singing the songs that are somehow deleted and missing from the Tidal database.

The video has now gone viral on social media, and has racked up over 3 million views on YouTube within 24 hours. Of course, there’s usually a dark edge to most comedy, and in this case, it’s a streaming service struggling to piece together the deceptively complicated ‘basics’ of streaming music.

The full skit…

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Crunch Digital Launches Direct Licensing Service as an Alternative to Compulsory Licensing and NOIs (Sponsored Announcement)

The following is a sponsored announcement from DMN partner, Crunch Digital, a next-generation technology company that offers innovative music licensing and reporting solutions that connect music apps, multi-channel networks, and digital services with music copyright owners, creating more revenue opportunities for everyone involved. Learn more.

100% Royalty Earnings Pass Through To Music Publishers.

Crunch Digital has announced the launch of a next-generation licensing and reporting solution that helps to eliminate the reliance on NOIs and build a healthy streaming economy. This streamlined direct license solution is an alternative to Section 115 compulsory licensing and addresses the mess and the issues that you’ve been reading about in the lawsuits filed against streaming services who have relied on sending NOIs to cover their licensing needs.

The new service will fall under the name “Crunch Digital Agency” and will compliment Crunch’s song data management and reporting service for music apps.

Direct licenses issued by Crunch Digital will have the same royalty rates as Section 115 for the same service types. So, the royalty expense for a digital service is going to be the same.

Not only will digital streaming services benefit from this service, but music publishers and songwriters will be glad to hear that no commission is taken out of their royalty earnings on direct licenses that are issued by Crunch’s Agency. It’s a 100% royalty earnings pass through to music publishers under a non- exclusive relationship between music publishers and Crunch Digital Agency.

When music publishers sign up with Crunch Digital Agency as their non-exclusive licensing agent, they will also be notified of opt-in licensing opportunities that Crunch administers on behalf of a digital service, music app, or other potential licensees.

“Digital services can benefit from direct licenses which mitigate risk that comes from relying on sending out NOIs in the hope of insuring against copyright infringement claims. Music publishers who work with us can keep all of the royalties that are paid under a direct license we issue without commissions being taken,” said Keith Bernstein, Founder of Crunch Digital.

While it’s great to hear the news about settlement talks between streaming music services and music publishers for unpaid royalties, including future public facing websites for publishers to make claims, those amounts should not be sitting as unpaid in the first place.

As an independent company that is not tied to a trade organization or a PRO, Crunch is in a position to provide a direct licensing solution for streaming services that will work for all parties involved. Learn more.

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SXSW Co-founder Dies Right Before Obama’s Keynote

When it comes to horrible timing, this one takes the cake. It has now been confirmed that the co-founder of SXSW, Louis Jay Meyers, has died aged 60 just as the festival was kicking off its 30th edition.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, Meyers was admitted to St. David’s South Austin Medical Centre on March 10th, and died as a result of a heart attack on March 11th. Meyers reportedly had plans to attend the Obama keynote, which is the first time in the festival’s history that a US president has been a featured speaker at SXSW

Unfortunately, Meyers couldn’t attend as a result of the hospital admission the day before.

Meyers founded SXSW in 1987 alongside Nick Barbaro, Roland Swenson, and Louis Black. Seven years after launch, Meyers took a step back and sold his stake in the festival as he felt ”burned out”. However, according to reports, he made the effort to attend the festivals each year despite no longer being directly involved with the event.

Since the news broke, Meyers’ Facebook page has been flooded with messages of condolences. A memorial event is happening on Monday (March 14th) at the Strange Brew Lounge Side to celebrate his life, which will be followed by a tribute showcase at Threadgills on March 16th.

(Image by Fredrik Welander, Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0))

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SXSW ‘Insists’ That a Muslim Attendee Remove Her Hijab

Update: (March 14. at 12:54). A SXSW representative asked that we change the title of this piece from ‘demanded’ to ‘asked’. In response, we offered to change the title to ‘insisted’ to match Muhammad’s characterization.

At the SXSW Festival in Austin, TX on Saturday (March, 12th), Ibtihaj Muhammad — an American Muslim Olympic fencer — was casually proceeding through registration when she was abruptly stopped by an SXSW volunteer who demanded that she remove her hijab for the purpose of ID.

Muhammad explained to the volunteer that the hijab was for religious purposes, but the volunteer insisted that she remove it to receive the ID badge. Despite this prolonged battle, Muhammad managed to receive an ID badge for the festival. But what came next added fuel to the fire — the name on the badge was completely incorrect.

With outrage, the Olympian publicly announced the incident on Twitter.

It isn’t uncommon for these situations to occur in sports. Religious sport participants have been battling for religious wear for some time, in fact FIFA only officially authorized religious headwear in 2014 after a two-year battle.

The sports industry has come a long way with the acceptance of religious wear, but there will always be conflicting views regarding what is acceptable to wear on the sports ground and what isn’t. Likewise, there is always going to be an issue with what is regarded as acceptable to wear for ID.

Though, in this instance, it wasn’t in SXSW’s policy to restrict the wearing of hijabs, so the volunteer wasn’t following a conference rule. It’s not as though Muhammad was wearing a Burkha, religious wear widely worn in Islam that completely hides all facial features. The hijab simply covered Muhammad’s hair, making her easily identifiable.

The festival organizers did however remove the volunteer and publicly apologize. In a statement furnished to the Chicago Tribune SXSW organizers say, “It is not our policy that a hijab or any religious head covering be removed in order to pick up a SXSW badge.”

“This was one volunteer who made an insensitive request and that person has been removed for the duration of the event. We are embarrassed by this and have apologized to Ibtihaj in person, and sincerely regret this incident.”

(Image by, Marie-Lan Nguyen, Creative Commons, Attribution 3.0 Unported)

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