8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

Foretelling a Future of Artist Autonomy

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In a guest column for Billboard, VC friend and SXSW 2019 roomie Brian Penick has some illuminating thoughts about the future of music tech. He’s bullish on the growth of the music industry and points out several ‘key indicators’ that have him excited.

His first indicator is how artificial intelligence will redefine how we approach the creative process:

Imagine, without any prior training, creating a song via AI software with a single click. Now imagine leveraging that song to create a worldwide audience or, even better, a YouTube star pushing that song out to their already-established following.

I’ve spoken to Brian about this, and I believe we agree that, rather than threatening musicians’ livelihoods, AI music — as described in the above quote — creates promotion paths for a personality-driven celebrity outside of the traditional music economy. Your feelings on this probably are in line with your general outlook on celebrity culture, but the activity is nothing new. ‘Stars’ and brands (California Raisins, anyone?) have been promoting themselves with manufactured music projects for ages. And yet culturally meaningful bands and musicians continue to make an impact.

What’s even more impressive is AI as a tool for emerging musicians to exploit. Consider the technology’s application as a fan-interactive tool (different versions for different sets of fans), a creative assistant pushing the artist out of her comfort zone, or a tool that is itself manipulated and pushed to its limits. The ‘recording studio as instrument’ innovation revealed new subsets and styles of genre. In the hands of skilled producers and artists, AI will do the same. Musicians — or those purporting to be — who use AI merely as a crutch will be identified and called out, much like DJs who use ghostwriting teams today.

Crystal Ball Into The Future by Garidy Sanders on Unsplash

Brian’s next indicator is blockchain as a tool to tighten and standardize metadata, and delves into how this affects the tricky calculation of venue royalty:

A 2016 study conducted by my former music recognition company, Soundstr, surveyed almost 3,000 songs in 12 businesses over 2 weeks and found that more than 80% of the music played in public establishments such as bars, night clubs and coffee shops was not properly accounted for. On a national scale, this leaves hundreds of millions of dollars or more on the table for songwriters and publishers, all because of a lack of metadata and tracking methods.

The tracking methods are more important here as metadata can sit within an audio recognition platform like Soundstr or Shazam. PRS and GEMA are currently experimenting with song tracking in venues (something I’ll write more about in the next couple of days). But PRS and GEMA are the only interested parties in their respective territories, those being the United Kingdom and Germany. In the US we’ve got ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GMR — four performance collection societies that don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye.

Proper venue tracking requires the installation of a passive microphone to do audio recognition. Will US venues have four separate receivers installed, one for each PRO? Will the four agree on one company to handle this and trust that the company won’t reveal tracking info to competitors? Will blockchain somehow make that last question moot?

As I wrote about previously, accurate tracking of song performance in public establishments is new and essential. This type of monitoring hasn’t been a possibility until recent technological developments. I agree it’s a significant growth area in music publishing. But the fractured nature of the US PRO system will require a complementary solution based on appliance and accord, not technology.

The last three indicators that Brian lists go hand-in-hand: innovations in direct-to-consumer delivery, artist brand empowerment, and on-brand investment as part of artist identity. These factors create a more independent artist as income reliance shifts away from third-party platforms. There’s also an increased measure of control. The artist develops and strengthens a brand identity that encourages fans to interact and support via the artist’s hub of engagement. This shift diminishes the necessity of social media platforms for fan outreach.

Utilizing a coherent brand to inspire investment opportunities is also a novel idea:

The real opportunity comes when celebrities realize that, while single or minimal recurring payouts from sponsorships, endorsements or licensing deals are good in some scenarios, the bigger returns come from investing. What better to invest in than products and services you associate and market with your brand?

Our age is entrepreneurial. Artists not only participate and (hopefully) make wise decisions with their earnings but these investments potentially tighten relationships with fans. Brian’s example of Beyoncé’s investment in the vegan lifestyle is an instructive illustration.

That reminds me of this brilliant New Yorker profile of Iggy Pop. Pop is undeniably an artist who does what he wants, an epitome of ‘independent.’1In attitude, vision, and identity, if not label affiliation. I wondered how he maintained his autonomy, and then I read this part of the article:

“The phone rings; I get offered work. And, you know, there’s always my Apple stock,” [Iggy Pop] said, and laughed. “I have taken pains to diversify outside of the music industry.”

This example has a different angle than Brian’s observation. But Pop would not have mentioned Apple if it didn’t fit his identity. More importantly, it reveals a savvy road to independence. And that’s ultimately what these five key indicators foretell — a future of autonomy for the artists who want it.

🔗→ Five Music Tech Investment Areas You Need to Know
🔗→ The Survival of Iggy Pop

Music Recognition and the Future of Venue Royalty

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DataArt’s Sergey Bludov, writing for the Medium publication Hackernoon, has posted an interesting rundown of Music Tech Trends to Bolster The Music Industry in 2019. He writes that 2018 may have been one of the more pivotal years for technology in music, both in innovation and adoption, which sets things up nicely for 2019. The article explores the potential of sexier tech-topics like artificial intelligence, VR/AR, and wearables, but the area I’m most excited about might seem mundane in comparison. Sergey places it at the top of his list, so I think he shares my enthusiasm. We’re talking about using music recognition technology as a tool to calculate accurate performance royalty payments from song play in venues. I swear — this is super-exciting:

The music industry faces a massive challenge when it comes to monitoring and tracking where and how often a song is being played. Without effective Music Recognition Technology (MRT) artists, publishers, and other rights owners lose their royalties each time music is played in a club, bar or any other venue. And, of course, this is a very serious problem, with some estimating that 25–35% of mechanical licenses in the U.S. are unrecognized on streaming platforms alone. Fortunately, a range of experts around the world are working diligently to solve this major issue through MRT innovations and implementation.

Automatic music recognition isn’t new. In fact, Broadcast Data Systems (BDS) was widely-deployed by the early 1990s for recognizing songs played on U.S. radio stations. However, even though the core algorithm for recognizing music has existed for decades, a large percentage of venues are still not adequately equipped with MRT. The good news is that many companies such as DJ Monitor heading up the technology side. And of course, once the music is effectively recognized, the data is sent to the performance rights organizations (PRO) that handle payment distribution. Paris-based Yacast is another tech company working in this space, as well as SoundHound Inc.’s Houndify, Google’s Sound Search, and others.

I’ve written about this before. Music played in venues (restaurants, nightclubs, hair salons, etc.) cannot be accurately tracked unless someone’s taking notes and submitting tracklists to the PROs. So, historically, the payments venues make to the PROs (mainly BMI and ASCAP here in the states) go into a pool. The top artists of that quarter — who the PROs assume are getting the most venue-play — receive payments from this pool. Of course, this is ludicrous — though there hasn’t been any other realistic solution — and causes frustration for the gothic club or the hipster coffeehouse that’s never playing ‘top artists.’

Shazam-like technology is a hope to solve the problem. With a device installed in venues, the music coming from the speakers can be monitored 24/7 with the info sent to the PROs. Theoretically (and realistically) that info is used to pay out accurate venue royalty to the artists receiving play.

A few countries and PROs in Europe are already testing this — PRS in the UK and GEMA in Germany are working to implement this technology — and it can’t come soon enough for the US and the rest of the world. However, most countries only have one performance rights organization, which makes it easy to select and install the device and have it report back to the appropriate party. The US is an outlier (go figure) in that there are technically four competing PROs. It may be a battle to get these companies to agree on a single device that will report data to each. I’m sure each fork of that data will need to be a private and trusted stream so, for example, BMI can’t see how ASCAP is faring. If they can’t agree then the untenable status quo may hold or — even sillier — venues may be asked to install a separate listening device for each PRO.

The impact of virtual reality and A.I. on music over the next few years will be fascinating to watch. But, to be honest, I am a lot more curious to see how this song-tracking technology develops.

Songwriters Getting Paid as the Robots Listen

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There are a few options for businesses to legally play music on premises, whether that business is, say, a nightclub, restaurant, or hair salon. An in-store music service like Mood Media (formerly Muzak) can supply channels of pre-cleared tunes for a subscription fee. These services are like radio in most cases, as the business won’t be able to choose any particular song that’s played. The business could also just play music by friends and enter into a direct licensing agreement with each songwriter. That would be a huge hassle and dramatically limit the available catalog.

The most popular option is to pay for the compulsory licenses offered by the performance rights organizations – PROs like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. These licenses allow the business to play songs represented by each PRO. A few factors determine the fee, such as venue capacity, and the business usually obtains a license from all the PROs. For one thing, it’s a lot of work to determine which PRO represents a song the venue wants to play, and the music customers would like to hear are distributed amongst all the rights organizations. Paying fees to all creates full coverage and the freedom to play whatever you’d like.

A venue’s requirement to get a compulsory license is one of the most misunderstood aspects of music publishing. The venues themselves especially misunderstand this requirement. I’ve spoken to many business owners who don’t understand why they have to pay for such a license. The phrase “it’s nothing but a shakedown” is used on more than one occasion. But the simple fact is this: if your business is profiting off of someone else’s music – and playing music to enhance your business qualifies – then the songwriters should get a cut of some sort.

There is another argument made by business owners that I find harder to dispute. Nightclub owners often argue that the fees they pay to the PROs aren’t going to the songwriters whose songs they are playing. This statement is often true. Presently, the PROs have no way to track the songs played in their licensed venues. The businesses could submit a list of all the songs played in a day, but no one is going to do that. Instead, the PROs pool the collected fees and distribute the royalty to songwriters they assume are the ones getting played the most. In other words, popular songwriters, for the most popular songs.

I can empathize, as I DJ’ed hundreds of times exclusively at underground clubs and very few of the songwriters I played (if any) ever saw a penny. I’ve heard tales of clubs in some territories tackling the problem by having the DJs write down all the songs from their sets. I guess it’s the thought that counts, but this is obviously an unreliable and haphazard solution.

There’s a change coming, though. Advances in audio recognition are making song tracking in venues possible. Using technology popularized by the likes of Shazam, songs get identified and, in turn, the appropriate songwriters paid. From a story in Complete Music Update:

Collecting societies PPL and PRS For Music have confirmed that they are expanding a pilot project to test the use of music recognition technology in clubs, pubs, bars and hotels to monitor what music is being played in those spaces.

Peter Marks {CEO of UK clubbing chain The Deltic Group} has welcomed the pilot, saying: “Music is the very heartbeat of our business and it’s in our interest to see that talented artists are rewarded for their creations. With online streaming and other digital technology, it’s increasingly difficult for songwriters and musicians to make a living from their creations, so anything we can do to help and attract and support the latest local talent has to be a good thing”.

I believe GEMA in Germany has also been testing this out.

The ramifications are enormous and welcome; accurate tracking in venues (and eventually across other outlets such as radio and sporting events) will create a great benefit for non-mainstream songwriters.

It remains to be seen if US PROs might look to adopt this technology. The fact that there are multiple PROs in this country may prove to be a stumbling block. A device that listens, identifies songs, and sends data to the PROs would have to be installed in every participating venue. It would be a hassle if each PRO had its own device for every business to install. Could they agree on one shared device? Part of me thinks it unlikely as the US PROs are fiercely competitive. That said, the recent news of ASCAP and BMI collaborating on a musical works database gives us a glimmer of hope.

The US is often the country left behind when it comes to advances in rights management. Let’s hope our industry is proactive in embracing this technology solution to a longstanding problem.

That Music Rights Shell Game

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Routenote:

With the release of iOS 10, song lyrics are now displayed within Apple Music. Apple have received incredibly positive feedback from members, who can now follow along during playback of their favourite songs. To ensure songwriters are paid Apple is obtaining the licenses required to display lyrics in Apple Music. Apple rely on accurate songwriter and composer data to efficiently obtain these licenses.



O RLY?

Music•Technology•Policy:

Apple says to “make sure the ownership of your song is registered with a publisher, and that they have registered ownership with relevant publishing agencies such as ASCAP, BMI, PRS, Harry Fox and Music Reports.” That obviously is misleading.



First of all, we can’t be that surprised that Apple has this impression because as we all know, it is frequently lost on HFA and MRI that neither of them is in fact the government. However, given that Amazon, Google, Pandora and others are sending millions upon millions of NOIs to the Copyright Office claiming to have no idea who owns songs by very well known artists, it should make it obvious that the one place you need to “register” your song copyright ownership is with the U.S. Copyright Office.



It’s also misleading to state that you have to have “the ownership of your songs…register[ed] with a publisher” which may happen frequently, but is not required to enjoy ownership rights.



That unified music metadata database (Blockchain, etc) that keeps getting bandied about can’t come soon enough.

Royalty, Royalty Everywhere

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Ari’s Take:

Before the digital age, royalties were difficult to track, but there were fewer platforms to consume music, so there were far fewer royalty streams to worry about.



With physical sales plummeting, and people shifting from downloading to streaming (like Spotify and Apple Music) and the rise of digital radio (like Pandora and Sirius/XM), there are many more royalties out there, but they can be tracked much easier through sonic recognition and content ID software.



We’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting closer every day.



For indie artists without a label or a publisher, you have to know what these royalties are and know where and how to get them.



Ari Herstand has done a noble service with this informative list of revenue streams for the new-to-it-all artist and songwriter (and it’s a good refresher to those who have been around the block, too). I love pieces like this as they are useful to bookmark and pass on when I encounter an friend or client who wants to learn more about how the sausage is made.

If you’d like to continue your studies, here’s an article titled Now You Know Everything About Music Publishing, as well as a second, completely different article also titled Now You Know Everything About Music Publishing, both hosted by Digital Music News. Now that’s unnecessarily confusing, but appropriately a metaphor for music rights management itself.

Future Of Music Coalition On Political Campaigns and Music Licensing

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Here’s some more on this subject, as it seems to be quite the hot topic in my social media circles. The Future Of Music Coalition has released a factsheet on music licensing and political campaigns that explains a songwriter’s rights much clearer than I was able to in my previous post. One thing I was unsure about was whether a politician’s campaign could have a compulsory license that travels with them … the factsheet clarifies:

Anytime a campaign plays a song at a rally, they must ensure that they have a public performance license covering the composition’s use. Most major public venues such as convention centers and arenas typically purchase blanket licenses from performance rights organizations or PROS (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) allowing campaigns to “publicly perform” any song in their repertoire, which includes the vast majority of compositions. However, these licenses may not cover all uses, so most national campaigns also purchase their own blanket licenses covering all campaign events; an additional benefit is that if they have a whistlestop event on the campaign trail at a factory or in a park and they throw a playlist on the P.A., they’d still be covered.


An ASCAP document specifically concerning music use in political events is linked, which is quite useful. That document also details other avenues that a songwriter could pursue to seek retribution, including a claim of ‘false endorsement.’ I’d like to know if that has been successfully used in a lawsuit against a political campaign under circumstances similar to the recent R.E.M. and Survivor cases. I bet it hasn’t. A judge would have a certain regard for the intelligence of the public … it would be seen as pretty obvious, from a legal standpoint, that playing an R.E.M. song as walk-on music doesn’t equate endorsement of a candidate.

When A Song Is Used Without Permission At A Public Event

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The political season is revving up, so once again there’s a lot of talk about a song used without an artist’s permission at a political event. A lot of my friends have asked if a songwriter has any chance of retribution when this happens. With regards to a recent public rally, the talk being thrown around is that Survivor or their label should sue the organizers, or has sued (as many fake clickbait news stories are purporting). How can their song be used against their will at a large event in a public setting? And, it’s not like it was in a nightclub or coffeehouse that has an ASCAP / BMI / SESAC compulsory license, right?

Sorry to disappoint, but it is possible the use of the music was on the up-and-up. First of all, one can purchase a temporary compulsory license for music played at an outdoor event. It’s not difficult to do … I believe it can even be done through the PRO’s website. In Survivor’s case, this would be ASCAP, and the band would have allowed this by registering their music with the company. Anyway, this is basically a temporary version of the type of license that, say, a nightclub would purchase where the songs played in the establishment wouldn’t have to be ‘cleared’ in advance.

Furthermore, a songwriter cannot bar his or her music from being played at a public event, even if the writer feels the political message being presented is abhorrent. That’s the ‘compulsory’ part of the license. It would be the same if Survivor hated this one coffeehouse that had an ASCAP license and didn’t want their music played there … there’s nothing they can do as a member of the PRO. The exception is a synchronization license – that is, if the music is synced with video (a live TV broadcast of the public event doesn’t count). John McCain got into hot water for using a Foo Fighters song at an event in 2008, but this was due to the fact that he showed a video that had the music as its soundtrack. That’s a totally different type of license than the compulsory one that an organizer obtains for music just coming out of speakers, and the songwriters and publishers have a lot more control when the song is embedded with video.

I don’t know if the parties in question obtained the necessary license to play the music at the recent event, but I’m feeling they might have. It’s not exactly the ‘first rodeo’ for the politician who was involved. In that case, Survivor can only really do what they’ve been doing … publicly speaking out against the use of their song and the politics it has been unfortunately attached with.



Update: R.E.M. just got trolled, too.

Update 2: Here’s an article from The Atlantic on this mess … it’s got the outstanding title of Sigh Of The Tiger.

Update 3: Whoa. I guess Huckabee didn’t have his compulsory license in order after all.

YouTube As Well As SoundCloud Should Worry About PRS Lawsuit

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Music Ally:

We reported yesterday on PRS for Music’s decision to sue SoundCloud for copyright infringement. Over the course of the day, the key contradiction between the two parties’ statements became clear: it’s about whether SoundCloud is willing to strike a licensing deal, and specifically whether that deal would apply to both its existing free service and its upcoming subscription tier.



Meanwhile, it also became clear that this lawsuit may have strong implications for YouTube, not just SoundCloud.



In recent months, when rightsholders have complained about what they see as misuse of safe-harbour protection, they have often grouped SoundCloud and YouTube together as examples. YouTube, of course, has a licensing deal with PRS for Music last renewed in 2013.



If PRS for Music takes SoundCloud to court and wins, delivering a blow to that mooted safe-harbour defence, think how much stronger its hand will be when the time comes (as it soon will) to renegotiate its YouTube deal. Multiple sources have suggested to Music Ally that this is the real significance of the SoundCloud lawsuit. “The stakes are super high,” as one of them put it. Indeed.


2016 may turn out to be ‘The Year Of The Shake-Up’.

(previously)

Personalized Spaces, DJ Curators, And The Speedy Evolution Of General Licensing

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This article on SoulCycle’s DJ-fueled fitness phenomenon explains how the growth in performance royalty may not just be attributed to ‘new media’, but also to general licensing in physical spaces (clubs, restaurants, fitness clubs, etc) thanks to increased personalization and the mainstream integration of DJs as curators. Thus the Performing Rights Organizations (PROs) need to update how they calculate distribution of these royalties as it’s based on an outdated system of presumption.

With respect to distribution, the procedures used by the PROs today are perhaps as inadequate as the licensing fees themselves. While technology makes it possible to track every song actually performed in any given (fitness club) spin class, general licensing revenues are not distributed with this data. Rather, the money received is put into a larger pool, and mostly distributed using a number of inaccurate proxies such as a sample of television and radio performances that overwhelmingly favors “Top 40” hits.



The genesis of this allocation makes sense if you consider that, at the time this licensing category was originally created, there was no cheap, reliable method to track general licensing. Today, several companies, such as the tech start-up Music Play Analytics, are producing inexpensive, unobtrusive and simple song identification technology on a B2B basis. Requiring chain-wide music usage reports, in an easily digestible format, is hardly a burden to either party.



Apart from fitness clubs, many retailers, restaurants, hotels and other general licensees are increasingly personalizing their music offerings. This results in more songs from niche genres getting more exposure than ever before. And nowhere is this truer than at SoulCycle where they have whole classes devoted to a specific artist, DJ or theme (like 90s hip-hop or 70’s funk). Continuing to distribute these license fees by following a homogenized pop radio chart defies logic and underserves the vast majority of PRO affiliate songwriters and publishers.


This has been a problem since the rise of non-top 40 DJ music over four decades ago. That underground nightclub that only books the most cutting edge DJs, and dutifully pays their required ASCAP and BMI fees? Chances are those fees have been going to mainstream songwriters, not the ones actually being played in the club. The time for incorporating song identification technology is now … device installation should come with a venue’s PRO membership.

As an aside, some other countries with stricter performance royalty laws have attempted to solve the problem in unwieldy ways that make one understand why our current system was adopted. I know many clubs in Italy and Mexico will make a DJ write down information for every song played in a set – or, alternately, any song that could potentially be played, if the DJ doesn’t plan sets – so these details can be reported to that country’s PRO. Not only is this a big headache for the DJ, but there’s no guarantee for accuracy; one DJ friend told me that he once listed a large number of my songs (even though he didn’t actually play them) to give me a ‘boost.’ I didn’t end up seeing an influx of royalty from Mexico because of that, but it’s the thought that counts.

The Dept. of Justice Said to Be Considering a Baffling New Rule Change for Song Licensing

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Billboard Biz:

According to numerous sources, the DoJ has sent a letter to the two performance rights societies governed by the consent decree, telling them that on “split works” songs — songs written by multiple writers — any writer or rights holder can issue a license for 100 percent of the song. In other words, the long-established industry practice of each rights owner greenlighting their particular portion of a song in order to establish a license — also known as fractional licensing — may no longer be allowed.



The DoJ has, somehow, become convinced that it is common practice in the music industry for any rights holder to license an entire song, not just the share they own.



I can’t see this going through as it only takes some simple explaining to realize the tumult it would create, but its consideration illustrates the growing political influence of tech — the Pandoras, etc — versus that of the PROs in our present climate.