Spotify Bleeding From Licensing Costs
Photo courtesy of madstreetz
Spotify has just published its financial results for 2009, and the European streaming music service is bleeding fast. Spotify may have users “by the balls” (in the words of original Napster founder and Spotify investor Sean Parker), but content owners have Spotify in an even tighter grip. According to the financial statements for U.K.parent organization Spotify Limited, published on Music Ally this morning, the company booked 11.32 million pounds in revenue during the year. About 60% of that money comes from its 250,000 paying subscribers. The rest comes from advertisements that Spotify shows to the vast majority of its 7 million users who use the free Web-only version of the service.
Let’s Talk About Girl Talk
Listening to Girl Talk often feels like the musical equivalent of whiplash to us: the songs snap back and forth between samples at a dizzying speed.
Brooklyn-based filmmaker JP Coakley released his documentary on Girl Talk to YouTube not too long ago, and the artist is back this month with a release so hot and so illegal (at least, from a copyright infringement perspective) that he yanked it from his site within a day of posting. No matter though — you can most certainly nab the tracks from any file sharing service.
And keeping the album up and easily accessible probably isn’t the main goal anyway. After all, tickets were just announced last week for the Girl Talk show in March 2011, and the tickets will almost certainly sell out if they haven’t sold out already.
What do you guys think of Girl Talk — love or hate?
Girl Talk Releases Documentary, Plays a Few Shows :: Music :: News :: Paste.
Take Two: Veteran Acts Like Suzanne Vega, Carly Simon and Squeeze Are Rerecording Their Biggest Hits
“Next week, singer Suzanne Vega releases a collection of some of her most familiar songs, including “Tom’s Diner” and “Luka.” But don’t call it a greatest-hits album. These spare, acoustic recordings are new—and so is Ms. Vega’s business strategy for them. The alternate versions are helping her seize some control of songs she doesn’t actually own, at least in their original form.”
- Why Veteran Acts Like Suzanne Vega, Carly Simon and Squeeze Are Rerecording Their Biggest Hits
Re-records have always been a common fixture in the world of music supervision. Sometimes you really need to license “Cherry Pie” by Warrant, and your project simply doesn’t afford you the budget to license the original version from the label. If you can find another good recording of the song — in the case of Warrant, the band itself rerecorded their popular hit for this savvy reason — then you license the and go with the recoding you can most reasonably afford.
But sometimes you can’t find a decent re-record from the original band, so you end up with a decent version recorded by another band or music library. You can legitimately license and use this alternate recordings, in the process sidestepping the labels and the artist entirely.
Thus, as noted in this recent WSJ article, major recording artists such as Squeeze, Carole King, John Prine and The Pointer Sisters have made the decision to issue re-records, both for licensing purposes and to claim a greater share of album sales revenue. But as the article points out, some labels discourage rerecording with contract clauses that prohibit their artists from doing rerecords, usually for five years after the contract expires. Hence, it’s not as easy to find original re-records from recent artists and it’s more likely to see re-recorded albums released from artists of the greatest-hits genre, rather than from Arcade Fire or Lady Gaga.
Nigerian Copyright Society Starts Collecting
“Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON), the nation’s sole government approved collective management organization for musical works and sound recordings, has begun negotiations for music copyright licences with all commercial users of music across the nation. This follows the expiration of the grace period announced by COSON for all commercial users of music in Nigeria to regularize their copyright licences. COSON has in the last 12 weeks carried out massive public education on the issue including the release of public notices. Category of music users affected include broadcast media organizations, hotels, restaurants, event venues, advertising companies, banks, telecoms establishments, airlines, road transporters, oil companies and such other enterprises in Nigeria which use music in any way to aid their operations.”
- Days of Free Music Over As COSON Begins Nationwide Music Licensing
German Rights Society GEMA Squeezes YouTube
The fight between YouTube and the German collection society GEMA is heading into the next round. GEMA announced today (Sept. 30) that they will file a case for principal proceedings in the next few weeks against YouTube. GEMA’s legal challenge aims to prevent YouTube from making 75 compositions available online. The video site’s license with GEMA expired March 2009. Negotiations for a new agreement have stalled.
- GEMA and YouTube to return to court
It’s interesting to note that YouTube was able, on the other hand, to reach a deal with French collection society SACEM. That deal applies retroactively to all works since YouTube’s launch in France in 2007.