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Streaming’s Two-Sided Effect on Downloads

12.28.2016 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

TorrentFreak:

From the beginning, one of the key software engineers at Spotify has been Ludvig Strigeus, the creator of uTorrent, so clearly the company already knew a lot about file-sharers. In the early days the company was fairly open about its aim to provide an alternative to piracy, but perhaps one of the earliest indications of growing success came when early invites were shared among users of private torrent sites.



“People that are pirating music and not paying for it, they are the ones we want on our platform. It’s important for us to be reaching these individuals that have never paid for music before in their life, and get them onto a service that’s legal and gives money back to the rights holders,” {Spotify Australia managing director Kate} Vale said.



Of course, hardcore pirates aren’t always easily encouraged to part with their cash, so Spotify needed an equivalent to the no-cost approach of many torrent sites. That is still being achieved today via its ad-supported entry level, {General Counsel of Spotify Horacio} Gutierrez says. “I think one just has to look at data to recognize that the freemium model for online music consumption works.”



Spotify’s general counsel {also} says that the company is enjoying success, not only by bringing pirates onboard, but also by converting them to premium customers via a formula that benefits everyone in the industry.



The Guardian:

The digital download, ushered in to the mass market more than a decade ago by Apple’s iTunes music store, is in rapid decline as people shift to streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music.



So how much longer do downloads have? A few years and they’re dead, says Mark Mulligan, music analyst at Midia Consulting: “It’s going to die before the CD. The CD has a fairly universal player, where there’s always at least one in a house. And the people who grew up buying CDs are the older music consumers – the CD will literally die out only when they do.”



“There’s no end date … our music iTunes business is doing very well,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice-president of internet software and services, told Billboard magazine in June. “Downloads weren’t growing, and certainly are not going to grow again, but it’s not declining anywhere near as fast as any of them [in record labels] predicted. There are a lot of people who download music and are happy with it and they’re not moving towards subscriptions.”



But in the long run, streaming is the only game in town – along, perhaps, with the CD and vinyl. The download once looked like the future; now, the question is how much more of a future it has.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Apple Music, Piracy, Spotify, Streaming

Apple Music and Dubset: Good News For SoundCloud?

03.17.2016 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

Billboard:

Apple has announced an agreement with Dubset Media Holdings that will allow Apple Music to stream remixes and DJ mixes that had previously been absent from licensed services due to copyright issues.

Dubset is a digital distributor that delivers content to digital music services. But unlike other digital distributors, Dubset will use a proprietary technology called MixBank to analyze a remix or long-form DJ mix file, identify recordings inside the file, and properly pay both record labels and music publishers.

Licensing remixes and DJ mixes, both based on original recordings, is incredibly complex. A single mix could have upward of 600 different rights holders. According to {Dubset} CEO Stephen White, a typical mix has 25 to 30 songs that require payments to 25 to 30 record labels and anywhere from two to ten publishers for each track. The licensing has been done in-house at Dubset. Thus far the company has agreements with over 14,000 labels and publishers.

*In many ways, Dubset is like any other distributor. The {streaming} service pays Dubset for the content. Dubset then figures out which label and publishers to pay. It retains a percentage of revenue for the service and pays the creator (the remixer or DJ) a share of revenue. *

Apple is just the start, says White. “The goal is to bring this to all 400 distributors worldwide. When you think about unlocking these millions of hours of content being created, it’s significant monetization for the industry.”

Much of the coverage I’ve seen, such as this article in FACT, assumes that Apple Music will use this alliance to go after SoundCloud. I have my doubts. For one thing, user-generated content isn’t really Apple’s bag (and adding this to the already muddled Apple Music interface would just create more headaches for casual users). My guess is that Dubset’s involvement is related to Beats One (and the inevitable Beats Two, Beats Three, etc) and making the station(s)’s sets ‘on demand’. Presently any radio sets that are on demand will have to consist of 100% pre-cleared music. I bet Apple would love to create more on demand content from the Beats station(s) without restricting their celebrity guest DJs. They would also be able to integrate featured guest DJ sets in Apple Music’s curated ‘For You’ section. Based on the timing of this announcement, I’m wondering if we might hear more at Apple’s event next week … there are rumors of a much-anticipated Apple Music overhaul.

As for SoundCloud, this news bodes well rather than being “ominous”. Apple doesn’t have an exclusive deal with Dubset, as the company openly aims to bring this technology to “all 400 distributors worldwide.” Having a huge corporation like Apple be one of the initial adopters will do a lot to convince others to come on board. What the technology accomplishes, once accepted throughout the industry, should do much to push ‘remix culture’ forward as it goes legit. And SoundCloud, who already dominate the niche of user-generated mixes and content, could end up coming out on top. Dubset’s tech, after all, seems to solve most of the problems that rightsholders have with SoundCloud’s service.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Apple Music, DJs, Royalties, SoundCloud

Remastered, You Say?

01.01.2016 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

If labels are seriously seeking to make streaming a more organic, listener-friendly experience then an easy first step would be to eliminate this practice:

(click image to expand)

All that is accomplished by appending technical ‘remaster’ information to the song title is it makes things more clinical and distracting. Not only does this show up in the album list but also on the single song title as it plays. I can assure you that no one cares about this information … I’m a big fan of both Talk Talk and Wire and I just want to hear the songs, no matter the version. I may seem nit-picky here, but this is the kind of stuff that subtly clouds the whole. Having technical notes added to the title of a favorite song reminds us that we’re participating in a digital process when we just want to get lost in the music.

If the services (and labels) really want this information out there then they could add it to the liner notes on the album’s page in the streaming app. Oh, what’s that? Liner notes aren’t available on album pages? There’s a good second step.

Note: The screenshots are from Apple Music as that’s what I use, but it is the same on Spotify (I checked) and, I assume, all the other services (I didn’t check). Thus this technical data added to song titles comes from the labels submitting album metadata across the board. It would still be nice for the streaming gods to demand this ‘remaster’ stuff be filtered out or provide the liner note option.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Apple Music, Streaming

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8sided.blog is an online admiration of modernist sound and niche culture. We believe in the inherent optimism of creating art as a form of resistance and aim to broadcast those who experiment not just in name but also through action.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a curious fellow trying his best within the limits of his time. He once competed under the name Q-Burns Abstract Message and was the widely disputed king of sandcastles until his voluntary exile from the music industry.

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