Grooveshark Has Lots of Listeners and Lawsuits
Grooveshark, an on-demand streaming service with a large global audience, is being sued by the four big record labels. They’re the talk of the town when it’s time to discuss services that make it harder for others that follow all the rules to keep listeners happy. Grooveshark takes a bold approach to music licensing, allowing listeners [...]
SoundExchange Collections Up 40% Last Year, Mostly Increased Payments From Pandora
The following is a guest post by Angus MacDonald, General Counsel, Live365: A few days ago, SoundExchange publicly released its Annual Report (Draft) for 2011. According to the report, SoundExchange’s 2011 collections from ALL statutory services amounted to $371.9 million. See SX’s Annual Report, p.7 (“In 2011, SoundExchange collected statutory royalties from all statutory classes [...]
Digital Song Sales and Streaming Performances Were Up in 2011
For the first time, digital music sales are larger than physical sales; accounting for 50.3% of all music purchases in 2011. Digital track sales set a new record with 1.27 billion sales in 2011; an increase of 100 million sales (8.4%) over 2010. Total digital album growth was 20% in 2011 as well, according to Nielsen Soundscan. [...]
Cha-ching! Pandora’s Payments Are 23% of Sound Exchange’s Total Revenues
Roughly 23% of Sound Exchange’s total revenues in 2010 came from Pandora, based on publicly reported info and some quick math by Live365 Attorney Angus MacDonald. According to SoundExchange‘s Annual Report for 2010, the collections agency for the RIAA collected statutory royalties from all statutory classes of services in the amount of $263,593,310. That number includes royalties [...]
RIAA Performance Royalties Up 60% in 2010
According to 2010 year end shipment statistics reported by the RIAA, digital formats now comprise 47% of all music shipments in the US. That’s a large share, especially compared to the 9% share digital music held in 2005. Overall, the total digital music market in 2010 was $3.2 billion, a 3% increase over last year. [...]
Clear Channel Hearts Big Machine Records
Clear Channel’s iHeartradio has a new channel dedicated entirely to the music of popular record label Big Machine. Big Machine Radio is a commercial-free, digital station that features exclusive content from Big Machine Label Group’s recording artists, including Taylor Swift, Rascal Flatts, Martina McBride, Jewel and Justin Moore. The dedicated channel will play songs by the label’s [...]
Amazon Launches Music in the Cloud
Amazon has launched a cloud based music service that allows users to store their own music in music lockers and then listen to it on computers and other streaming devices. It’s been rumored that both Google and Apple are readying similar services, so this move by Amazon puts them ahead of the pack. They’re hardly [...]
Robertson’s Daring Service Makes Broadcast Streams Interactive
Michael Robertson is one of the most active entrepreneurs in the digital audio space. He’s started, funded and sold several online companies, including digital music company mp3.com to Vivendi/Universal, and VOIP/telecom Gizmo5 to Google. He’s the founder and CEO of mp3Tunes, a cloud based music storage and streaming service. Now Robertson has launched a new [...]
Digital Radio Fuels Growth
HD Radio units sold, currently at 3 million, will reach 4 million units by the end of this year, according to ABI Research. That number pales in comparison to the 13.5 million DAB radio receivers sold in Great Britain and Europe, but it’s a healthy increase of more than 25% this year. Digital radio technologies, [...]
Ineffective Online Radio
Various news sources are reporting that the radio industry, under pressure to pay performance royalties for over the air song plays, has come up with a proposal to pay – along with a list of demands. It’s a very telling list that exposes the radio broadcasting industry’s desperate desire to turn back the dial and [...]
