If you don't know about the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit, you need to check it out and make plans to attend this October. Speakers include:
Below is a brief list of some of the companies that can help bands and musicians place their music in film, television, commercials, games, etc. What companies did I miss?
Rumblefish (licensing for television, film, advertisements, websites, videos, games, podcasts, and sonic branding - e.g. your music inside your local Gap)
Gamecues (licensing for the gaming industry)
YouLicense (music licensing marketplace - essentially, their system enables artists and those seeking music to conduct business directly with each other)
Pump Audio (artists can license their music in television and advertising without giving up any
ownership
BeatPick (music licensing provider)
Ricall (music licensing marketplace, connecting users wanting to license music directly with the relevant copyright owners)
SoundReef (private beta service exchanging music for promotion in television, film, advertising, etc.)
The difference between today's presentation and the one he gave at Midem is an additional 160 slides for a total of 440! Hopefully, the folks at LMDS will post the video soon.
European-based BeatPick has re-launched as an easy-to-use, one-stop online music licensing service for both commercial use (e.g. TV, film, advertising, etc.), and non-commercial use that includes free music downloads. Presently, they have over 200 artists from over 40 countries with about 5,000 songs in their catalog from just about every genre. Additionally, their artist agreement is non-exclusive, can be terminated at anytime, and artists are paid 50 percent of the earnings.
In its fifth consecutive year, the 2009 Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville has an impressive agenda this year. If you attended Midem last week, this should be a nice follow-up conference, as there seems to be a focus this year on the value of understanding the actions and behaviors of an artist's fans. What's nice about this summit is that it's an intimate gathering (about 1,000 attendees), providing more opportunity for conversations with other music industry professionals. Not to mention, the most expensive ticket is only $179, and it's in the Music City!
According to their email, the attendance breakdown is as follows:
Band Metrics will be presenting as well, so please say hello, or email me so we can find some time to chat. I will be arriving on Sunday, March 22 and will depart in the evening on Wednesday, March 25.
This afternoon I reflected a little bit on the last 12 months of news from the music tech industry, and I would submit that the Rumblefish Agreement with YouTube is the most significant music tech deal of 2008. A bold claim? Maybe, but hundreds of millions of people are watching billions of videos each month when you consider the entire global Internet population. That's a ton of potential revenue for artists and labels working with Rumblefish, and the deal will surely bring thousands of new artists to Rumblefish.
Another way to look at this deal is to conduct a simple search for videos on YouTube. It seems there are are currently about 360 million videos on YouTube. Even if you cut that number in half to account for duplicates, vlogs, channels, removed videos, erroneous search results etc., you're still talking about 120 million plus videos, and growing every minute, a trajectory that seems to be in line with Kansas State University's YouTube statistics from January through March of 2008.
It's easy to see that these numbers represent substantial revenue opportunities for the music industry, and I'm excited for artists, as this agreement will become an easy way for individuals to incorporate legal music into their videos.
So hats off to Rumblefish!
We recorded our latest episode of the ArtistDish last week, and it may just be our best show yet with a ton of great discussion surrounding Pandora and Muxtape. You can listen to it here. During the show, several questions were raised either directly or indirectly like:
As you can see, the topic covered in this podcast is complicated, but we believe it's solvable and we hope it facilitates discussion, as it's going to take a multifaceted solution. To voice your sentiments about streaming radio and digital music licensing, take these polls here.
This past Wednesday, we had a great discussion on the ArtistDish about the recent news regarding Pandora and Muxtape (you'll be able to hear the entire podcast in a few days). It's definitely a complicated situation that's going to require time to sort out, coupled with creative solutions and compromises from both sides to solve, as similar situations are on the horizon, and no one has a monopoly on the solution.
So, I wanted to poll my readers to see what you all think about the issues and how to solve them. As a former musician that tried to make a living in a band, I'm definitely pro-artist, and an advocate for musicians and bands trying to earn money from their digital music, so I applaud Pandora for paying royalties to date. Not to mention, I'm a huge fan of Pandora, and I use their service everyday. I also really enjoyed using Muxtape.
But, I'm also a technologist developing a music tech company that I hope will be cash flow positive by the end of 2009. With that said, it seems like a potential conflict of interest could arise if music tech companies try to determine what royalties should be for artists (e.g. COGS as it relates to the cost of song plays relative to earnings from advertising). However, royalty decisions should also not be left for the RIAA, Congress and/or major labels/artists to determine on their own either. Rather, I submit that the long tail of the music industry (i.e. independent musicians and bands) needs to come together and join the conversation as well - you can begin now:
ArtistDish released podcast #2 this morning. It's a discussion about Terry McBride's recent comments suggesting a 25 cent price point for digital downloads, and the current state of audio quality available online. You can listen to the entire podcast here, or subscribe and add the ArtistDish to your iTunes account. The discussion topics in this podcast were suggested by Greg Piper, Adam Wexler and Kate Lawson. Special thanks to Amy Devon of Burning Couch for providing their song "Pulse" in both the intro and outro of podcast #2.
If you would like to suggest a topic for discussion, and/or have your music featured on the ArtistDish, just drop us an email for consideration.
Over the weekend, I re-explored archive.org and their Live Music Archive for the first time in over a year. I was impressed with some of the changes they've incorporated through their integration with etree.org (a lossless live show repository I've been using since 2000). For example, you can now stream most live concerts that have been uploaded, or even embed them on your site. That's a great free widget for bands trying to build a following, as you can introduce potential new fans to your live music directly on your blog with ease. Here's an example of a show from Gomez:
Your fans can also sign-up to receive RSS alerts for newly added recordings of your live shows by other fans. Here's an example for Ween (located under their photo). It's also a great way to see what your fans think about your live shows, like Jack Johnson's recent performance at Bonnaroo (scroll down to the bottom of the page).
There has certainly been a great deal of discussion about free music and the potential benefits it has on generating new listeners and larger audience attendance. For some bands, it does seem to have a positive impact, for others, little to none. So my only suggestion to Archive is that they allow an option for bands to sell their downloads if they like. But until that happens, Maybe the Live Music Archive is where you allow your fans to freely exchange your live shows, but not your studio work or commercial recordings - there are scores of bands on Archive doing just that. Not to mention, most recordings are in high-quality lossless formats like SHN or FLAC, even 24-bit FLAC, and most bands have MP3 files as well, so this should suit everyone from the general music enthusiast to the audiophile. However, with any music repository, there are some potential licensing issues to consider, so you may want to seek guidance from an attorney first.
To get started allowing your fans to record and upload your live shows, just send archive.org an email. To learn how to upload music, go here, or if you have additional questions check out their FAQ.
Separately, from a consumer's perspective, there are literally thousands of live shows from hundreds of bands you can download. Chances are, one of your favorite artists has a show there for you to download.
Last.fm announced earlier today that it will finally start paying royalties to independent bands though its new Artist Royalty Program. While we applaud this move, as artists will now be paid when their music is played on-demand, or via streaming radio on Last.fm, their royalty percentages seem to favor Last.fm a bit too much:
You will accrue an amount each time one of your tracks is streamed on the Last.fm service. The amount will vary depending upon which Last.fm service your track is played. A brief rundown of the various royalty levels can be found below:
- If your track is played on our free radio service you will accrue a 10% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue (see the definition of “Share” and “Net Revenue” in the terms and conditions) from the free radio service.
- If your track is played on our personalised premium radio service, you will accrue the greater of either 10% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the personalised radio service, or US $0.0005 for each complete transmission on the personalised radio service.
- If your track is played on our free on-demand service, you will accrue 30% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the on-demand radio service
- If your track is played on our premium on-demand service, you will accrue the greater of either 30% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the premium on-demand service, or US $0.005 for each complete transmission on the prepaid or subscription on-demand service.
Not surprisingly, a typical independent artist isn't going to earn much revenue from these percentages, but it seems that Last.fm stands to make quite a bit from advertising and subscription revenue on the aggregate of all indie music played. I'm all for Last.fm earning revenue that allows them to become successful, but it seems these percentages need some adjusting. After all, the artists are the ones creating the content. If not, it begs the question, will digital distribution providers attempt to become the next generation of "record labels"... Merlin may be helping to prevent just that, and has also raised some questions today about Last.fm's new Artist Royalty Program.
The Harry Fox Agency just made managing mechanical licenses for cover songs that much easier with their announcement this week allowing artists to mange and re-order their existing mechanical licenses in just a few steps. This is a significant improvement, as before you essentially had to start from scratch each time you wanted to modify your license. For example, let's say you have a mechanical license for "I've Got A Feeling" by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, but it was only for digital distribution (Digital Phonerecord Delivery), and now you would like to have it on a compilation CD you're giving away for free at your shows as a way to promote your band. Previously, you would've had to login to your Songifle account and go through all the steps of creating a new license. Now, you just hit "reorder" and select the delivery medium, and a couple of other variables and you're ready to check-out, as the artist information, your account data, etc. is auto-populated. Wow, much faster HFA! Many thanks!
Now that HFA has some automation built-in, it will be interesting to see how fast artists renew their annual DPDs, as it was a chafe before. If you have any questions about their new service enhancements, you can reach them via 212-834-0100, or publisherservices@harryfox.com. Interesting side note, HFA's Songfile division also announced this week that they've now issued over 500,000 licenses since its inception in 1999. Since Songfile is primarily for indie artists, it shows the power the independent segment is having on the music industry.
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