Toto Is The Latest To Sue Its Record Label Another day, another label lawsuit. Toto this week filed suit in the U.S. District Court for Southern New York alleging that Sony Music failed to account for, and pay, 50% of net receipts from licensing the band's music to third parties (i.e., iTunes and Amazon). Toto's attorneys are basing their argument on a precedent set by an Eminem royalty dispute last year, establishing that digital sales represent a license and that artists are entitled to 50% of receipts, as opposed to a royalty rate in the range of 12% to 20% of the wholesale price of physical product, including CDs. The lawsuit also includes several other avenues of dispute with Sony, including a variety of claimed faulty accounting practices by the label, such as incorrectly calculating foreign royalties and improperly deducting expenses from payments to the band. Richard Busch, a partner at Nashville law firm King & Ballow, filed the suit, and told The Tennessean, "If I were a record label I would be very concerned. When you consider the legal fees that are involved and the liability, it is potentially in the hundreds of millions of dollars." (Full story: Rolling Stone) |
"Leaked Document" Details Monetary Damages In Eminem Suit In a detailed article reporting the "forensics" of the Eminem Digital Royalties Lawsuit, the Hollywood Reporter's Eriq Gardner outlines how record labels that have been targeted in similar suits are getting just a bit nervous - and what kind of money is at stake. Citing "leaked" documents from the Eminem case, Gardner points out how the plaintiffs (F.B.T. Productions) believe that the difference in treating digital music as a "sale" instead of a "license" during this time period is worth $3,810,256. But this potentially understates the damages, he says, because the figure represents only one slice of business. Also at stake are traditional "hold-backs" on vinyl sales, accounting errors, incorrect royalty calculations, improper deductions, and even $2 million withheld by the defendant, (Aftermath Records), to cover legal costs should any of this ever go to trial - which it is expected to do on April 4. Over the last few months, such artists as Kenny Rogers, Sister Sledge, Rob Zombie, and now Toto (see story, above) have sued their record labels, claiming they were cheated out of substantial money from the improper calculation of revenues from digital music. [Full story: Billboard.biz] |
After Just 3 Months, Google Music Falls Short Of Expectations When Google Music launched a little more than three months ago it was supposed to have an inside track marketing music to millions of Android users, but CNET's Greg Sandoval reports that performance is not living up to expectations. Some Google managers have expressed concerns in corporate communications that customer adoption and revenue generation are below what they expected, Sandoval says, although Google admittedly has yet to "throw the full force of its marketing muscle behind the service, and managers have told the record companies that they are trying to correct certain issues." Google Music theoretically was to serve as a companion service to Android-powered mobile devices which, with over 200 million sold, constitutes a massive potential consumer base. If Google managed to convert just 10% of those device owners, it would mean 20 million customers for its paid downloads and music streaming service. One issue: Google has yet to license tracks from Warner Music Group, meaning that a large chunk of music found on iTunes and Amazon is not available through Google. (Full story: CNET) |
MOG CEO Says Company Is Neither Struggling Nor For Sale Responding to reports that digital music start-up MOG is struggling and quietly trying to find a buyer, CEO David Hyman said that, as a venture-backed company, the service has had conversations with potential buyers but he declined to clarify if those conversations had taken place recently. "We're not actively trying to sell this business," he commented. "The Facebook integration has been fantastic for us but as we're not yet profitable we're always engaged in conversations with our shareholders about all possible options." Hyman founded MOG in 2005 and has raised $33 million from its two principal backers, Menlo Ventures and Balderton Capital. The music service now has more than 500,000 active users, but it is not clear how many of those are fully paid subscribers. Since integrating the music service into Facebook last fall, nearly 5,000 new users a day have tried out the site. According to comScore data, the MOG network receives more than 60 million unique visitors a month. (Full story: CNBC) |
Apple Unveils Full-Resolution, Uncompressed Music For iTunes While digital music forever has changed the way people listen to a song, it's no secret that the sound quality of an MP3 is far inferior not only to previous analog recordings (with all their pops and squeaks), but also to full-resolution digital audio tracks. In fact, many sound engineers, producers, and artists - including Neil Young, Dr. Dre, and Jimmy Iovine - have expressed their dismay with the overall poor quality of today's MP3s. One major problem is that virtually every digital file is compressed through a format called Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) in order to reduce the overall size of the file, which allows more songs to be stored on a single device. The result is that the typical MP3 only retains 3% to 5% of the data from the original recording, and even compact discs only contain 15% of the data that artists intend to be heard. To counter this problem, Apple has unveiled its "Mastered for iTunes" store "shelf," featuring full albums and individual tracks that have been encoded using a full high-resolution file for improved fidelity. One catch: Only audiophiles with higher-quality audio equipment will likely hear any difference in the new recordings. (Full story: Tech Spot) |
Lyrics Displays Yield More Publishing Revenue Than Streams Here's an odd statistic from the world of music streaming: The display of a song's lyrics produces more publishing revenue than the actual stream of the song on a service like Spotify. That's the word from Lyricfind CEO Darryl Ballantyne, who says that part of the reason stems from the fact that lyrics are a relatively new, freshly-negotiated revenue stream online, while with interactive audio streams, publishers receive pre-established performance and mechanical royalties. "For a long, long time, [lyrics] were unlicensed," Ballantine explained. "Nobody was paying the songwriters, nobody was paying the music publishers for those rights. And as a lot of people know, 'lyrics' is actually the most popular search term on Google and most other search engines, so there's a huge demand for the content. We've gone and licensed the content from the music publishers...and sub-licensed it out to people. Now, we're paying out millions of dollars to publishers and songwriters for the use of their lyrics, and five years ago, there were zero dollars going to people for that." (Full story: Digital Music News) |
Poll, While Unscientific, Predicts Sharp Decline In MP3 Player Sales A user survey released by "gadget news aggregator" Drippler.com forecasts a dramatic decline in demand for MP3 players as a digital music listening device. The unscientific poll indicates that just 7.2% of users say they own a standalone MP3 player, and only 2.4% say they want such a unit, implying that MP3 player ownership is about to drop significantly. "Even among the holdouts that are still using standalone MP3 players, we expect a dramatic drop-off when their current MP3 players wear out," observed Drippler CEO Matan Talmi. "We are seeing a similar shift away from standalone MP3 players that led to the eventual demise of the Walkman and Discman lifecycles. With the majority of our users downloading and listening to music on their smartphones they simply don't see a need for an additional MP3 player." The Drippler survey parallels actual MP3 player sales figures, as purchases of these devices have declined every year since 2008, while smartphones sales have more than tripled during that period. (Full story: San Francisco Chronicle) |
Al Bell Presents American Soul Music ... And American Soul TV If you're into classic and contemporary Soul, R&B, Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Hip-Hop Soul, Rap Soul, and Neo-Soul, we invite you to listen to Al Bell Presents American Soul Music. Former Stax Records owner and Motown Records Group President Al Bell personally has programmed this awesome radio station online, presenting your favorites from the 1960s and '70s [and some '80s], a lot of the best new music that's being released today, and some real gems you haven't heard in a long, long time. Come to www.AlBellPresents.Com and hear it for yourself! |
| | |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment