Glad to meet you back here! I hope the week went well, while still taking all precautions to stay safe. For this edition of our Weekly Roundup, we’ll talk about music industry news, main actors and platforms. Following the news that caught our eye, we will especially talk about how the models are being redefined, as it was bound to happen. During the pandemic new usages emerged and it is now time to build frames for music rights around these. So let’s talk rights and music business!
#1. Twitch is now talking music rights
The sudden extreme rise of livestream drew attention to different existing platforms, including (of course) Twitch. The gaming platform was already well established in this industry, but with the number of users multiplying, the music industry started to take a closer look at music rights. Indeed, the major issue is the fact that a lot of videos contain unlicensed music.
Problem: Twitch never filled the requirements to be allowed to use that kind of content. Following problem: the handling of the situation. Twitch directly asked the users to go through all their videos and delete the content including unlicensed tracks. This would sometimes imply thousands of hours to rewatch (and not always reachable through the platform). Creators now have to follow updated rules on how to use music rights to avoid having their accounts banned. You can find out the whole story on this article, and we should keep an eye on how things will go!
#2. ANote, the future royalty investment platform
The European platform ANote will launch next month their new platform: a marketplace for royalty investment after having raised 500 000€. The goal is to make the investments in music rights easier, through a blockchain secured platform, for artists, labels, publishers, producers. As a first start, the Italian label Irma Records, has put their catalogs on the platform.
#3. The National Music Publishers Association went virtual this year
National Music Publishers Association held their annual meeting virtually this year, and gave their insights on high-stakes legal cases for another year of increased revenues. Aside from the big cases waiting to be ruled, the Association’s survey on the year 2019 revealed that the members’ publishing revenues grew 11,55%, from $3,33 billion to 3,72 billion; synch and mechanical are growing again (after a stagnation period). Let’s wait and see to get the impact of this year on the next numbers.
#4. We were at Midem Digital Edition!
Last week was the first Midem Digital Edition, the biggest meetup of the music industry happened online, right here. Since we couldn’t meet in Cannes this year, Midem managed to set up a free platform (that will be available until the end of August), to get inspired with keynotes and to meet with music professionals from around the world. The keynotes will be available on their Youtube channel after that. We followed the event, get an idea of what we thought and take a look at our software!
Another exciting news about Midem, Reprtoir was sponsoring the main Artist & Label Services, including Fred Davis (The Raine Group), Justin Kalifowitz (Downtown Music) & Kerry Trainor (SoundCloud), moderated by Juliana Koranteng (music business journalist). This session was especially important to us: a lot is going to happen in our sector of activity, including a major growth. I can only urge you to go take a look!
#5. A week after Warner Music Group’s IPO
To finish this week’s Weekly Roundup, let’s catch up on Warner Music Group’s IPO. Short version: it went well. Since the first market cap value at $12,75 billion, it raised up to $16,32 billion in one week. All in all, we should keep an eye on how this trend will go, but it does look good now!
