Last Week's Top Links

Several popular items I posted last week on Linkedin and Twitter shared a theme named Irving Azoff:

• "If you're looking for money, you're better off selling one of your planes." - Irving Azoff to Jimmy Buffett when Buffett asked Spotify for a "raise"
• Azoff's New Global Music Rights Venture Seeks Higher Royalties for Songwriters, New York Times article by Ben Sisario
• Hollywood Reporter Exclusive by Eriq Gardner: Irving Azoff Says That YouTube Lacks Licensing Rights to 20,000 Songs 

The big news in the music business last week was YouTube's announced launch of its Music Key service. In addition to the above-linked Hollywood Reporter/Irving Azoff piece, most of the inquiries spurred by my "What is Content ID?" blog post last week were regarding YouTube Music Key subscriber revenue.

However, another popular YouTube tidbit that I shared with my LinkedIn connections had to do with good ol' advertising revenue: Per Jason Calacanis, "YOUTUBE has grabbed about 10% of television revenue"

More music items that engaged my connections on LinkedIn include:

• "Performers & master rights owners..make about 14 times..[that of] songwriters & publishers..for..digital platforms" 
• Auditrix: Highlights from The California Copyright Conference's October 2014 Music Royalties Dinner
• "Spotify’s ties to peer-to-peer—a huge catalog, an on-demand interface, and a free, ad-supported version—means it threatens profits more than any other platform."
• “For a big hit today, there are about 700,000 #royalty #streams, just for one song,” Los Angeles Times quotes Willard Ahdritz

My Twitter followers @Auditrix were most engaged in the following items:

• Due to "court rulings, the royalty rate Pandora pays Sony/ATV reverted to the 1.85%...from the 5%" it negotiated.
• "There are no mutual funds for music royalties yet."
• EU Court rules content embedding is not copyright infringement | Music Week
• Will Half of Terrestrial Radio Stations Disappear? | Mark Ramsey Media LLC
• Spotify's Twitter campaign got hijacked by people demanding fair pay | Death and Taxes

On the copyright front, there was movement last week in one of the most interesting cases that I am following, between Smokey Robinson and his ex-wife, Claudette. Everyone I know who knows them both think it is too bad that they are litigating, so even though the issue of whether state community property laws or Federal copyright laws apply to royalties for terminated copyright grants is very interesting, I was nevertheless happy to read that the parties dropped their suit (see http://t.co/8pt5xyFxnQ) ...but, upon sharing this news in my @Auditrix Twitter feed, the reporter who has had the best coverage of this case - Eriq Gardner at the Hollywood Reporter - suggested that we have not seen the end of this dispute (see the link Mr. Gardner shared here and follow him on Twitter here).  In any event, if you are an attorney or business manager, keep an eye on this case - the outcome could impact your clients!

Tencent was another company in the news last week due to its partnership with Warner Music Group in China (see this, this, this and this), but the most popular bit that I shared about Tencent last week was via my @RoyaltyExpert Twitter feed, which focuses more on games than music: Tencent said that titles on its games portal QQ are better at making money than games on WeChat

Other top games items I shared last week:

• Game industry growing four times faster than US economy - ESA
• "Zynga may have stopped the bleeding for now: daily active user loss slows"
• Video Game Audits: What You Need to Know International Game Developers' Association's Business and Legal Webinar

# # #

For more music news, follow me @Auditrix.  For interactive games and other IP royalty, business and litigation news, you should follow me @RoyaltyExpert.

What is Content ID?

Content ID is a YouTube-owned tool that IDs copyrights embedded in content.

Copyright owners (i.e., record companies, publishers and, I assume, film and TV rightsholders) use Content ID to identify, tag, control and monetize content on YouTube.

The Content ID identification process starts when content owners provide Google with metadata and copies of their works. Content ID then uses digital fingerprinting technology to match these works to uses in certain categories of content on YouTube (e.g., matches to user generated videos, but not multichannel networks, which assume responsibility to pay rightsholders).

Not only can the © owner control (with other owners, if applicable) whether to leave the use up or take it down, but also it can choose to monetize (via advertising and/or subscriber revenue).  Some record companies get 35% and music publishers get 15% of ad revenue for user generated content.  (Big © owners can negotiate directly with YouTube, so those minimums and splits are confidential, but the some rates for indies are public, though they do not include the advances or minimums that major rights holders negotiate.)

Since > 1 billion users are on YouTube every day, it can generate thousands and even millions in earnings for well-managed content.  

Top Items Shared - Past Two Weeks

Here are the most popular news items in the world of music and interactive royalties that I shared publicly over the past couple of weeks:

• "Video Game Audits: What You Need to Know"@IGDA #WednesdayWebinar with "The Game Attorney" Tom Buscaglia
• EU Court rules content embedding is not copyright infringement | Music Week 

• Tricks to negotiating #screenplay prices: Q&A With Dinah Perez, Esq.

• "Sixty-one percent of people who buy CDs are 36 and older, according to MusicWatch's estimate."

• "More than 70% of the music consumed in the first six months of the year in the US was either downloaded or streamed"
• "The history of the Laugh Track" by Stephen Herrera

• Disney Wants to Build a New "Authentic" Search Engine... - Digital Music NewsDigital Music News

• Female PC gamers outnumber males - PC Gamer

• @bwerde The latter.  I think as video ad budgets rise, more artists will start to appreciate how much money can be made via YouTube though.

Recap of Last Week

Top items shared last week on LinkedIn and Twitter by Cedar Boschan:

L-R: Cedar Boschan, Austin Lucas & Kyla Akasha at The Observatory in Santa Ana

• Great post on music publishing valuation by Derek C. Crownover @dickinsonwright via @nekstbiz

• Association For Electronic Music highlights £100 million missing performance royalties | Complete Music Update

Auditrix:

Best of Last Week

• The California Copyright Conference's #Streaming for Dollars Panel @cacopyright #irespectmusic

• I just published "You Need a Better YouTube Strategy"

• @musicbizcast: Ep. #7: Chris Opperman's journey from the basement of UMPG to Record Label Ownership @chris_opperman

• Spotify curation startup gets bought by WMG  via @guardian

• Ford Seeks To Dodge Class Action Over Music Royalties - Law360

• The music industry: "What used to be a question of persuasion has become a problem of prediction."

• Americans are mad for music festivals, Eventbrite's study finds - NY Daily News

• The New Yorker: "Crooner in Rights Spat"

# # #

All the Ways One Can "Buy a Record"

My favorite octogenarian attorney recently asked me:

"Please give me a list of all the ways someone can buy a record."

I came up with the following and included uses that may not strictly constitute sales or phonorecords under the U.S. Copyright Act:

1 – Consumers can purchase permanent copies of recordings in various configurations, such as:

a.      From retailers (online like Amazon.com or brick and mortar like Target and Walmart) or directly from an artists’ website or at a concert (e.g., together with merchandise):

i.      Vinyl Record

ii.     Compact Disc

iii.    DVD

iv.    Embodied on video games

b.     Permanent downloads from music services (e.g., from iTunes and Amazon.com) and video game console manufacturers (e.g., Sony’s PlayStation network and Microsoft’s Xbox store)

2 – Also, consumers pay for access to listen to recordings by subscribing to a music service such as the following:

a.   Interactive services like Spotify and Beats (where users can stream on demand)

b.  So-called "non-interactive" services like Pandora and Sirius XM (which offer users less control over programming)

3 – Alternately, companies pay to advertise to listeners or viewers of free programming on services like YouTube, Vevo, MTV and the services mentioned in #2 above.  In this case, access to the recording is “free” to the consumer because the advertiser subsidizes the cost, but the consumer must watch or listen to ads in exchange for such free access.

4 – Finally, consumers who purchase electronics devices such as a Samsung phone or iPhone may find that music has been bundled with the device by the hardware seller, which pays the music rights holders for the right to do this (and thusly must build in the music cost in the device's price).

What ways to buy a record did I forget?

Please tell me what I failed to mention below!

Best of Last Week from The Auditrix

• 7 qualities of addictive games
• California Copyright Conference's "Are You Getting Paid? Best Practices for Unmatched Royalties" panel discussion, which I recapped here.

#IRespectMusic at the California Copyright Conference

• Why most people aren’t downloading apps anymore - Quartz

• UMG earns a "‘listener hour guarantee,’ which they know is going to up their compensation by about 40% — since it’s per listener hour, not per track, the artist gets screwed because it’s not attributable to a track, so the artist doesn't get a royalty." - Per Rich Bengloff of A2IM
• 30 years of the #music #industry in 30 seconds | Geek-Cetera
• Per @schuylermmoore 506 offerings are outside of #state #laws
  #crowdfunding @BHBA_EntLaw 

• Your Music #crowdfunding article by omarshamout (featuring quotes from me) - @LABJcommunity

• Six Strikes plan to eliminate piracy finally operating at ‘full capacity’
• What I spoke about last week to #business #managers: