EMI has just licensed their electronica catalogue to Beatport. It seems like EMI are now going to license their catalogue to pretty much anyone at any price.
EMI says it’s giving Beatport a license to sell its tracks in North America, Europe and Australasia, including those from The Chemical Brothers, Kraftwerk and LCD Soundsystem.
Beatport has been going since 2004 and, as Moby wrote: “The average cost for a track on Beatport is twice or three times the cost of a track on iTunes (which makes sense, as the tracks are a lot longer).”
The Future of Music Coalition (FMC) has put together a great list of 32 ways musicians can make money.
A. If you are a composer or songwriter, here are possible revenue streams from your musical compositions..
1. Retail sales: Mechanical royalties from physical sales of recordings of your songs at stores, concerts or via mail order.
2. Digital sales: Mechanical royalties from digital sales via online services (CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, Rhapsody, MySpace Music)
3. Sheet music sales.
4. PRO Royalties: Royalties for the public performance of your work (airplay on radio, TV, movies, jukeboxes, live performance and foreign royalties, and home recording and foreign levy payments) as distributed to you by ASCAP/BMI/SESAC.
5. Advances from publishing companies during a publishing deal.
6. Payments from publishers for litigation settlements.
7. Commissions for works.
B. If you are a performer (think Patsy Cline), possible revenue from sound recordings…
8. Digital performance royalties: Royalties for the digital performance of your recordings — airplay on satellite radio, webcast stations, cable TV stations — distributed to you by SoundExchange.
9. Advances from record labels that are not just reimbursement of recording or touring expenses.
10. Label payments for tour support or recording expenses.
11. Payments from labels for litigation settlements.
12. AARC royalties: collected for digital recording of your songs, foreign private copying levies, and foreign record rental royalties, distributed to US artists by AARC.
13. AFM Payments (TV, Film): Payments from the Film Musicians Secondary Markets Fund to performers on recordings used in TV and other secondary uses.
14. AFM Payments (Recordings): Sound Recording Special Payments Fund to performers for the sales of recorded music
15. AFM/AFTRA Payments: Payments from the AFM/AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund (distributes recording and performance royalties to the non-featured artists)
C. Possible revenue from licensing your musical composition or your sound recording…
16. Ringtone Sales: Mechanical revenue from ringtone sales
17. Synch Licenses: Synchronization royalties based on master rights licensing your song to TV/movies/video games/commercials
18. Sampling Licenses: Licensing fees from other musicians sampling your songs.
D. If you’re a performer, possible revenue from live performances…
19. Touring and shows: compensation for playing live shows or performances, including busking.
E. Revenue from a performer’s brand…
20. Merchandise sales: t-shirts, posters, etc.
21. Sponsorship: of tour or of a band/artist.
22. Direct financial support from fans/patrons.
23. Ad revenue or other miscellaneous income from your website properties (click-throughs, commissions on Amazon sales, etc.)
24. Acting in television, movies, commercials.
25. Product endorsements.
26. Other licensing of your persona (to video games, comic books, etc.)
F. Revenue from an artist’s knowledge of the craft…
27. Work for hire/hired as a studio or live musician or composer
28. Work as a music teacher.
29. AFM/AFTRA session payments: Session payments for recording sessions, TV appearances, and performances flowing from synch licenses
30. Producer: income from producing or music direction
G. Other ways a musicians’ work can be funded:
31. Government grants.
32. Nonprofit/foundation grants.
Yesterday Digital Music News published an article about the state of Spotify royalty payments.
‘Viva Spotify’ isn’t quite the phrase being bandied about at Midem, and executives from both sides of the Atlantic are continuing to disparage. But this is a nuanced picture. Most European executives we’ve talked to recognized that Spotify has achieved ubiquity in many countries, and considerable progress on the premium front. And, this is an addictive product that’s playing by the rules.
But the money situation is problematic, and that has prompted a few independents to jump ship. But also on the major label side, the royalties are a royal problem. In fact, one major label executive close to the numbers pointed to a bizarre problem: there aren’t enough zeros in the royalty program to calculate the fractions being paid by Spotify.
So, think .00000000000005 euros and you get the idea. ”It’s laughable, if it wasn’t so sad really,” the executive told Digital Music News after a few beers.
It seems as though executives and even Digital Music News don’t understand why Spotify is a great service for artists. Having your music on a specific service isn’t always about the revenue generated by that single activity. Spotify allows artists to showcase their music with the aim of growing their fan base even further. I would much rather have 1 million listeners on Spotify and get some of them to see us in concert, instead of just selling a few downloads on another store.
Spotify also aims to provide a service that will attract users away from bittorrent and other p2p services. More music is being consumed that ever before and from a larger diversity of artists. However, legal music only makes up a less than 7% of the entire online music market. Executives should be focused on helping to grow these new services that will attract users from illegal alternatives, instead of trying to pick holes in the legal service of Spotify!
Psonar has just launched their new pay-per-play streaming music service. The new service will charge users 1p (or 1 cent / Eurocent in the US and Europe) per play of tracks that they don’t own, streamed to their PC or mobile device. To pay, users will have a choice of charging the costs to their mobile bill using Bango billing, or using a credit card or PayPal.
The Pay Per Play elements will launch across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland and Scandinavia during the second quarter of this year, although no rollout in the UK and US has yet been confirmed.
Initially it will be available on PC and HTML5-capable mobile devices, with native iPhone and BlackBerry apps to be launched soon.
OpenLBL is a music community that allows everyone to talk about the latest happening in the world of music. OpenLBL will be offering free music to the world on a daily basis. Artists and readers have the ability to submit article to the site. Anyone can create a group on a specific topic (eg. House), then discuss their latest favourite house tracks, new house music, happenings in the industry. Additionally, you can comment on the latest news, create discussion with other members, friend and email other members, or even just post links and create wiki pages about your favourite tunes.
OpenLBL combines groups, forums and wiki’s, which will allow users to discuss anything music.
Check it all out at OpenLBL and let us know what you think.
We will be updating the service as it grows.
The NPD has just released new data about the digital download market. According to the report, Apple has continued to pull away from Amazon and Walmart and now controls 66% of the market.
Apple’s share of the digital-download market from 63.2 percent to 66.2 percent. Amazon’s share climbed from 11 percent to 13.3 percent.
Record label distribution executives say the situation could be even worse for Amazon than reported. According to them, Amazon maintains just 6 to 10 percent of the market in any given week, while Apple hovers at closer to 90 percent.
NPD’s report affirms Apple as the continued leader in music sales. In 2008, Apple surpassed Walmart to take the No. 1 spot among U.S. music retailers. Last year, iTunes represented more than a quarter of all U.S. music sales.
Billboard has announced their new Social 50 chart. Serving as a complement to Billboard’s existing weekly rankings, the Social 50 chart will tally artists’ popularity using a formula blending weekly additions of friends/fans/followers along with weekly artist page views and weekly song plays on MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and iLike. Data from these sites is gathered and provided to Billboard by social music tracking service Next Big Sound.
“We continue to adapt the way we chart the changing landscape of music,” says Billboard editorial director, Bill Werde. “The Social 50 is yet another step in the evolution of Billboard and an important response to our changing times.”
Bill, you should have launch the Social 50 chart at least 2 years ago. Billboard is behind the times and simply too scared to adapt and seems like the old method of charting music is becoming pointless and outdated.
BMG has agreed to acquire Chrysalis for £107.4 million ($168.6 million). Chrysalis has over 100,000 tracks in their publishing division, which includes tracks by David Bowie and Michael Jackson along with artists Cee Lo Green, Sheryl Crow and Blondie.
eMusic has just launched their new websites and it comes with a few upgrades. Not only has eMusic added 250,000 tracks from Universal, but they have changed their pricing structure.
The new service, which previously charged for plans beginning at $11.99 for 24 tracks per month, will now simply charge users money for each track. Track prices will range from $.49 to $.89 each, depending on the newness and popularity of the songs.
For users who aren’t buying the newest music, the price will stay the same. About 80 percent of the 10 million tracks available on eMusic will be 49 cents each—the same price point as before. And whatever price point users are buying at, eMusic CEO Adam Klein emphasized he will still beat the prices of what he called the “a la carte” music stores by 25 to 50 percent.
eMusic is getting ready to add 250,000 songs from Universal Music Group’s catalogue, however they are losing out on the independents. eMusic are about to launch a major overhaul to its subscription pricing scheme and this hasn’t made a lot of leading independent record labels happy.
eMusic subscribers were notified by e-mail Tuesday that they have two days remaining to purchase music from several independent record labels that are about to stop doing business with eMusic. Those labels include Domino, Merge, and the Beggars Group of labels, which includes 4AD and Matador Records.
Losing those labels means that there will be no Arcade Fire, Spoon, Belle & Sebastian, Cat Power, and Yo La Tengo.
“This is as heartbreaking to us as it is to you,” the company’s email stated. “Please know we have done everything we could to keep them from leaving.” The email includes a large button encouraging recipients to “Add Your Voice” by signing a sort of online petition advising the labels that their music is wanted back on the service.
eMusic thought they needed to change their strategy, as they haven’t grown their 400,000 user base since 2007.
Do you think this was the right move for eMusic?
Disclosure: eMusic is a partner of RouteNote.
