Tencent Group Buys 10% of Universal Music for $3.4 Billion

Written by Thomas Pfeiffer — A consortium led by China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. agreed to buy 10% of Universal Music Group from French media company Vivendi SA after months of talks.

The deal values the world’s biggest music company at 30 billion euros ($33.6 billion). Tencent and its partners can increase their stake to as much as 20% at the same valuation until Jan. 15, 2021, the companies said in statements on Tuesday.

With the Chinese social media and gaming giant now officially on board, other potential investors may look at Universal Music. That would energize a sale process that seemed to be dragging along since Vivendi first announced plans to sell as much as half the business in July 2018.

Negotiations will now begin over the potential sale of a further minority stake at a price “which would at least be identical” to the deal with Tencent, Vivendi said. Shares of the company rose 0.4% as of 12:08 p.m. in Paris.

Vivendi is cashing in on a boom in subscription music streaming that’s inflated the value of its back catalog and a roster of stars including Taylor Swift, U2, Drake and Post Malone. Record company sales have jumped by an average 7% annually since 2014 and streaming has become the industry’s biggest source of revenue.

Asia Challenges

However, there are signs that streaming growth is beginning to slow in Europe and North America, while in Asia, music labels face continued piracy and regional rivals especially attuned to local tastes. Tencent could help Universal Music get closer to Asian audiences.

The companies didn’t name the other Tencent consortium members. Hillhouse Capital and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte. were among potential investors that the Chinese tech giant approached, people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg News in November. Vivendi first disclosed the talks with Tencent in August.

The deal brings some good news for Vivendi at the end of a frustrating year for its largest shareholder, billionaire Vincent Bollore. Other Vivendi businesses such as advertising and pay-television are contending with competitive threats from digital rivals and the group’s investments in Italy have been bogged down in boardroom battles and legal fights.

Some analysts had criticized the slow pace of the Universal Music sale process and questioned the price demanded by Vivendi. The idea of a partial disposal of the business or an initial public offering has been mooted since 2017.

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A Look At What Might Happen When The Coronavirus Lockdown Ends

Written by Bobby Owsinski - It's downright scary when you look at the list of tours and festivals that have been canceled or postponed because of the spread of the coronavirus and COVID-19. Asia alone reportedly has had more than 20,000 cancellations since January, amounting to an estimated $286 million loss of revenue. Giant festivals like SXSW, Ultra and Coachella—with more joining every day—have taken big hits because of the outbreak. While this is bad news up and down the music business food chain in the short term, there may be long-term benefits if we can all hold on until we get through this.

If we look into the crystal ball, here are some ways the music business might be affected and how it could change because of what we’re now experiencing.

Festivals, Tours And Venues Get Lean And Mean

If you think that the concert business was business-like before, you ain’t seen nothing yet. In order to make up for lost profits, tours will cut overhead to the bone. Productions will get smaller and less elaborate and will be able to get away with it with few repercussions since an audience starved for live entertainment because of virus containment will be less demanding. Ticketing moves into the future as service charges are decreased, paperless tickets increase, and on a concert level, concession prices are brought in line with competing entertainment choices in order to get more meat in the seats. The name of the game is survival first, and that may mean lower prices all around in order to attract a cash-strapped audience.

The Streaming Herd Is Thinned, But User Numbers Grow

A drop in the economy will see many users cutting unneeded subscriptions, which will hurt the Tidals and Deezers of the world first. Streaming is cheap entertainment, but only the strongest (Apple, Google, Amazon) will thrive while scooping up or casting aside the weaker music-only services that depend on advertising and subscriptions to survive (yes, Spotify, too). The Big 3 have the resources to withstand a downturned economy while the smaller music delivery services do not.

Work From Home Brings Economic And Social Change

With so many new home workers, employers see that they can cut overhead by keeping employees at home after the crises abates. That means fewer people commuting, eating out for lunch, and having that morning Starbucks. It also means that music listening habits and consumption changes, in some cases for the better, along with a general change in what now constitutes a workplace. That could actually help live music venues, as fewer people commuting keeps them fresher at the end of the day and more willing to step out in the evening to check out the scene once health concerns and finances stabilize.

Radio Innovates, Or Else

This one’s a long shot because radio is so resistant to change, but now it really has a chance to innovate. With more people working from home, radio will now either step up or die as the cocoon of the car is no longer needed for many former commuters. Listener numbers drop fast, and station groups begin to shed underperforming stations, mostly on a local level. Now instead of being just one giant homogenous broadcast product, radio now has a chance to become truly local again and serve the communities the stations where exist. Maybe new technology comes to the rescue providing listeners with a different experience from before, which makes them a viable alternative to streaming. More than likely though, many of the stations fall by the wayside and disappear completely. Where’s college radio when you really need it?

A New Look At Supply Chains

This is probably going to be the case in all industries as well, but you can be sure that audio and musical instrument companies will give Just-In-Time manufacturing and inventory a new look. Given that so much product is now manufactured outside the U.S., it might not be a bad idea to have at least some stock on hand in the future. While many MI companies were already moving their manufacturing out of China to Viet Nam, Indonesia and Malaysia because of the Chinese tariffs, that doesn’t matter much in the face of a widespread supply chain stoppage.

Some Companies Won't Make It

Many highly leveraged companies won’t make it through this crisis intact or at all. You'll begin to see sell-offs for many music business conglomerates for pennies on the dollar and it could come as soon as 30 days from now. Record labels and publishers should be okay as their income streams might even increase, but they’ll be the exception in the music business. Any company that has used financial engineering to go public or cook the books will be in danger, and that might not be a bad thing (obviously not good for their employees). The music industry in general could ultimately be healthier with more competition when we come out the other side of our current plight.


In every crisis there’s an opportunity and a silver lining. If we just look at coronavirus in fear and live in its shadow, it will overwhelm us. If we look at how we can better ourselves and our industry as a result of our ordeal, we will be stronger in the end. And the music will still carry on.

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Music Industry’s Biggest Lawsuits Have Been Put on Hold Due to Coronavirus

Written by Dave Brooks - Even for someone like former KAABOO owner Bryan Gordon, who’s no stranger to a courtroom, 2020 was going to be rough. In February, the 58-year-old Wall Street executive-turned-festival promoter was found to have breached a deal with a former business partner and was ordered to pay a $7 million judgement. Less than a month later, Gordon was scheduled to start a nine-day trial in a lawsuit filed by billionaire Ronald Dickerman over the $10 million wind-down of a joint venture the men launched in 1997.

But now, Gordon’s legal battles have been delayed indefinitely, as court systems around the United States struggle to come to grips with the deadly coronavirus pandemic that has cities across the country sheltering in place. From California’s capital, Sacramento, to the U.S. Supreme Court, America’s sprawling federal, state and local judicial network is being forced to shut its doors to the public over fears the contagious virus could easily spread in a courtroom.

Like many other industries, the judges, lawyers and clerks that handle the bulk of the courts’ business are working remotely and doing their best to keep things moving. But the inability to hold public hearings or jury trials is changing how lawyers adjudicate their cases, explains San Francisco attorney Michael Seville with the firm Seville Briggs.

“I’ve seen the impact in some of my cases already — opposing attorneys who are changing their strategy knowing the court system has been impacted by this pandemic,” Seville says. “The threat of trial is part of a plaintiff attorney’s leverage and if jury trials are delayed for six months, that knocks everything back. It takes longer to go into discovery and dilutes the leverage attorneys have as they build toward a settlement.”

That will mean delays for high-profile cases in the music business, like Dr. Luke’s $50 million defamation lawsuit against Kesha and Cox Communications’ appeal of a $1 billion judgement in its lawsuit against Sony. Such a postponement could affect a defendant’s ability to pay a judgment or delay requests for injunctive relief, like in Sonos’ patent lawsuit against Google.

For the first time since the Spanish Flu pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court has canceled oral arguments for the next two weeks. In New York, where the coronavirus has hit hardest, the state’s unified court system has postponed all non-essential court functions and new trials, and the appellate courts are temporarily barring oral arguments. Arraignments hearings for new arrests are happening via video, while felony cases where the defendant is not in custody are being postponed.

California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye has issued a similar order, giving local judicial officials more flexibility to extend arraignment deadlines and allowing some proceedings to move forward.

Besides ongoing lawsuits, the standstill comes at a time of major economic uncertainty, which typically is followed by a spike in personal injury claims and workers’ comp filings, explains Tim Epstein, an attorney for independent promoters and festivals like Riot Fest in Chicago.

“I tell venues to keep their insurance policies up-to-date because economic downturns usually bring about an increase in slip-and-fall claims and workplace injuries,” says Epstein. “There’s just more activity and that’s going to be a challenge for an impacted court system.”

That doesn’t mean the courts aren’t working and new suits can’t be filed, Seville explains. While the partial shutdown will delay most cases, lawyers are still filing legal motions and in the absence of public hearings, judges are issuing rulings based on the pleadings. Some requests for emergency injunctive relief or temporary restraining orders can still be adjudicated in a timely manner, but most cases will face a long delay as a result of the backlog.

“There’s not really any reason to wait to file a lawsuit,” said Seville. “Just expect your case to take a while as it winds its way through the system.”

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CARES Act: Where music industry workers can find federal aid amid coronavirus

Written by Matthew Leimkuehler - A $2.2 trillion stimulus package offers multiple financial lifeboats to music industry and entertainment professionals drowning in the impact of COVID-19. 

Live music, film and theater industries — respectively fueled by gig workers and freelancers — were among the first impacted by coronavirus shutdowns in March. 

Self-employed music industry professionals — sound engineers, touring crew members, songwriters, working musicians and more — qualify for aid under the unprecedented federal assistance, per the Nashville Songwriters Association International, a leading not-for-profit trade organization. 

The package offers an estimated $349 billion in grant and loan programs for three categories of qualifying professionals who earn less than $100,000 annually: sole proprietors, independent contractors and the self-employed. In the package, these individuals can seek federal aid via a paycheck protection program and emergency economic injury disaster loan, among other options. 

Leading industry organizations, including Nashville-based NSAI, Country Music Association, Americana Music Association and Gospel Music Association, launched earlier this week a website to help industry workers navigate aid options.

Paycheck Protection Program

Starting last Friday, sole proprietors and small-business owners can apply for paycheck protection through a program overseen by the Small Business Administration. Businesses with 500 employees or fewer can apply. 

Banks administering the loans include Bank of America, First Horizon, Pinnacle Bank, Regions Bank and SunTrust Bank, per NSAI.   

For small businesses, “it is anticipated that not more than 25% of the forgiven amount may be for non-payroll costs,” a federal tip sheet said. Loans can cover up to two months’ average monthly payroll, plus an additional 25% of that total, for a maximum $10 million. 

How much can be forgiven? That depends.

“You will owe money when your loan is due if you use the loan amount for anything other than payroll costs, mortgage interest, rent and utilities payments over the 8 weeks after getting the loan,” per federal guidelines. 

Individuals and businesses can request loan forgiveness with each provider. Loans include a 10-year term capped at 4% interest and payments will be deferred at least six months.

Independent contractors and self-employed workers who make less than $100,000 annually can begin applying Friday. 

Businesses and workers can apply only once and are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. The application window closes June 30.  

Economic Injury Disaster Loan

Independent contractors, sole proprietors and small businesses — those with 500 employees or fewer — can apply for the federally administered Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program.

Qualified applicants receive a forgivable $10,000 within three days of approval. A maximum $2 million can be borrowed; the loan offers a 3.75% interest rate for small businesses and 2.75% for nonprofit organizations. 

The loan offers a maximum 30-year repayment period. 

Potential borrows can apply for EIDL now. 

Stimulus check

Most Americans, self-employed or otherwise, qualify for a stimulus check. Those making under $75,000 or less annually qualify for $1,200, with workers making $75,000 to $99,000 receiving a lesser amount. Couples earning a household annual income of less than $198,000 qualify for stimulus funds. 

Unemployment

The CARES Act opens unemployment benefits for those who don’t typically qualify, including self-employed and independent contractors per NSAI. 

Under the stimulus package, gig workers and the self-employed can receive half the average unemployment benefit, which varies by state, plus an extra $600 weekly.   

The maximum unemployment benefit in Tennessee is $275 weekly before taxes. 

Those eligible could qualify for up to 10 months’ benefits, plus an additional 13 weeks, but the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce has yet to launch an online portal for qualifying self-employed workers.

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The Hard Drive With 68 Billion Melodies

Written by Alexis C. Madrigal — In an era when millions of songwriters upload music to the internet—and just about any song can be plucked from obscurity by TikTok teens—it seems inevitable that the same melodies end up in different songs. There have been a number of high-profile music copyright-infringement cases, including a multimillion-dollar decision against Katy Perry for her song “Dark Horse.” A jury found that she’d infringed upon the copyright of Flame, a Christian rapper who’d posted a song with the same melody to YouTube, even though Perry insisted that she’d never heard of the song or the rapper. For some musicians, musicologists, and lawyers, the verdict felt scary; after all, large numbers of songs now live on SoundCloud and YouTube. It became thinkable to ask: Could the world run out of original melodies?

Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin were two of those worried musicians. Riehl is a lawyer who has worked on copyright. Rubin is a coder. They were hanging out after a long day at work when a “a lark, a thought experiment” occurred to Riehl: Maybe they could exhaust all possible melodies—and in so doing, protect musicians from being sued for copying songs they don’t remember hearing.

On the one hand, they can’t really create them all. A melody, simply put, is a sequence of notes. If you’re talking about all the notes and all the traditions of music around the world, the combinatorics yields functionally infinite possibilities for the melodies that result. Take just the 88 notes on a piano and, for instance, 12-note sequences. You get 216 sextillion melodies. And of course, that’s only within the Western tradition, in which these particular frequency ranges are considered notes.

On the other hand, if we’re talking practically about Western popular music in the range in which hit songs are made, that is already a radically restricted domain. And within it, the number of melodies is in a more comprehensible part of finitude. Popular music tends to use a more limited range of notes than an entire piano. And Riehl and Rubin figured that most pop melodies run fewer than 12 notes. If you generated every possible melody with just the eight notes of the C scale, that’d be 8^12 melodies, which is 68,719,476,736. That’s a big but thinkable number, considering that SoundCloud receives tens of millions of uploads a year.

Riehl and Rubin hatched a plot to create software that would write every melody, at least within this popular range. It wouldn’t be unlike dialing every possible telephone number: 111-111-1111, 111-111-1112, 111-111-1113, and so on: do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-re.

As it turns out, there were considerable complications to even writing 68 billion melodies within the team’s existing hardware, which amounted to Rubin’s computer. “It is true that the set of all melodies is finite. But finite is still large,” Rubin told me. “It’s quite large, with the current computing technology that we had access to. We’re not Amazon.”

The duo built a simple system working with MIDI, the computer music framework, and started outputting melodies. They’d wanted to generate all possible melodies on the piano, but after some prototyping, settled for 12-note melodies in a popular range that Riehl had seen implicated in copyright litigation: the octave ascending from middle C. Even to complete this set, Rubin had to switch programming languages (from Python to Rust), he said, “and that gave us the speed increase we needed.” Soon, they had a hard drive filled with almost 69 billion melodies. In a conversation with Adam Neely, a YouTuber who helped spread the word about the project, Riehl alluded to previous copyright thought experiments. “This has been a concept that has been discussed,” he said. “But no one has ever brute-forced [it] in this way.”

Now Riehl and Rubin want to release the fruits of that brute-forcing into the public domain. They figure that in a future suit where a musician is hit with copyright infringement, she could point back to the melody on that hard drive as her uncopyrighted inspiration. Their point, ultimately, is that melodies could be seen as math, which is to say facts, and facts cannot be copyrighted. This is not to say that songs cannot be copyrighted, but that each possible series of notes is not a creation so much as a selection from a fairly limited set. (Information theorists might add that selection from a set of possibilities is the very nature of all information—but that’s beyond the theoretical scope of the melody project.)

Riehl and Rubin’s work is provocative on several levels. One, it raises some of the same issues about originality that haunt many discussions of creativity. A recent 99 Percent Invisible podcast episode about the song “Who Let the Dogs Out” provided an especially evocative example of the possibility of unintentional duplication. Ben Sisto, an artist who spent a decade tracing the origins of the woof-woof-woof hook, found variation after variation of that horrible song throughout musical history, some seemingly connected by a chain of transmission, others not at all. “One of the big myths we tell ourselves about art is that it is made by individuals, and that myth is what the art market is propped up on,” Sisto told the show’s hosts. He’s come to believe instead that it is impossible to reliably distinguish what people invent from what they borrow. “I think that all these ideas apply to every piece of creative work ever made,” Sisto concluded in the episode. “It’s just about the very nature of art and life.”

On another level, the melody project asks some interesting questions about machine creation. Is writing some software to output MIDI melodies to a hard drive the same as if you’d created the song, played it on your xylophone, and uploaded it to SoundCloud? Did Riehl and Rubin free music from restriction, or did they infringe on millions of copyrights?

At the very least, the work highlights the long-standing flaws of the current music-copyright system. But legal experts were decidedly less enthusiastic about whether it would actually help musicians in a live-fire copyright case.

“I just don’t get it,” Lawrence Lessig, an eminent copyright scholar at Harvard Law School, told me in an email. “Whether or not melodies can be represented in math, they are not just math. So that seems like a dead end.”

Lessig did agree that it’s unfair that anyone can be dinged for “copying” work even if they could not be shown to have consciously done so. “The whole doctrine of subconscious copying is absurd. So I get the motivation,” he said.

Kristelia García, a law professor at the University of Colorado, saw things in mostly the same way. “It’s an interesting thought experiment,” she told me in an email. “And I think it does a good job of exposing the absurd point we’ve reached in music copyright infringement.” But she didn’t think the project could prevent copyright-infringement suits over melodies. “I am not at all convinced it does what they hope it will do (i.e., give artists a free pass out of infringement suits) since so many of their melodies are almost certainly already ‘owned’ by someone else,” she said.

Undaunted by the somewhat chilly responses from copyright lawyers, Riehl and Rubin are expanding their range of notes and starting to account for rhythm. Ultimately, Riehl hopes that legislation, not coding projects, can reform how copyright works in the United States. He would not want to see their melody project adjudicated in court. “A better place to do it is in Congress, to modify the copyright law in a way that makes sense,” he said.

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Songwriters and artists call on US court to uphold Copyright Royalty Board’s streaming rate increase

Written by Chris Cooke — Organisations representing songwriters and artists in the US have submitted an amicus brief to the DC Circuit Court Of Appeals urging them to uphold the most recent Copyright Royalty Board ruling on the compulsory licence covering mechanical rights Stateside. The rate increase for songwriters in that ruling, the organisations say, is not only “deserved” but also “critical” for many songwriters struggling to stay afloat in the streaming age.

The compulsory licence means that a company exploiting the mechanical rights in any one song does not need specific permission from any songwriter or publisher that has a stake in that song. They just have to pay the rights owners royalties at a rate set by the CRB.

Earlier this year, after a long review, the CRB confirmed it was increasing the rate to be paid by streaming services, so that – ultimately – those services would have to allocate 15.1% instead of 10.5% of their revenues to the song rights.

This would bring the rate due under the US compulsory licence more or less in line with the rate music publishers have negotiated on the open market in countries where there is no compulsory licence to interfere in the deal making process.

It’s also a total rate. A stream exploits both the performing and mechanical rights in a song, which are often licensed separately. Although the compulsory licence only covers mechanical rights, any monies paid for performing rights – usually via collecting societies like BMI and ASCAP – are basically deducted from the 15.1% figure.

The increase was, unsurprisingly, welcomed by songwriters and publishers. But then most of the streaming firms, with the notable exception of Apple, announced that they were appealing the CRB ruling. Spotify has subsequently insisted that it doesn’t oppose the rate increase in principle, but has issues with some other technicalities in the revised compulsory licence. Songwriters and publishers, in the main, have not been impressed by such claims.

Those unimpressed include the Songwriters Of North America organisation and the recently formed Music Artists Coalition. Arguing that songwriters are already unusually disadvantaged by the mere existence of the compulsory licence, they say that the rate rise on digital income is desperately needed by the songwriting community. And especially those songwriters who are not also artists, who cannot rely on other revenues like touring and merch.

“For over a century, songwriters have been subject to a compulsory license, now embodied in section 115 of the Copyright Act, that determines the price to be paid for reproduction and distribution of the musical works they create”, the two groups say in their court submission. “There is no comparable example of a profession where the government sets the price for one’s labours”.

It goes on: “After carefully weighing all of the evidence, the [judges that form the Copyright Royalty Board] determined that songwriters should be paid more, and increased the rate for interactive streaming under section 115. Songwriters deserved that raise. Indeed, for some, the added income will be a critical factor in their ability to continue in their careers as professional songwriters”.

In an accompanying press statement SONA and MAC members expanded on why they felt the CRB rate rise was “critical” for allowing many songwriters to stay in business.

Among them SONA board member Shelly Peiken, who said: “If I were trying to make it as a songwriter today dependent on digital royalties, I wouldn’t be able to sustain a livelihood the way I once did from the income of physical sales. Without sharing in master royalties, merchandising or touring revenue, most songwriters now have to consider holding down a second job. I sincerely hope the DC Circuit Court Of Appeals reaffirms the CRJs’ decision and takes the industry in the direction it desperately needs to go. Songwriters are counting on it”.

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How Music Copyright Lawsuits Are Scaring Away New Hits

Written by Amy X. Wang — Most of the world knows Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and T.I.’s “Blurred Lines” as a half-forgotten hit song from 2013. The music industry remembers it as its worst nightmare.

In the five years since a court ruled that “Blurred Lines” infringed on Marvin Gaye’s 1977 “Got to Give It Up,” demanding that Thicke and Williams fork over $5 million to the Gaye estate for straying too close to the older song’s “vibe,” the once-sleepy realm of music copyright law has turned into a minefield. Chart-topping musicians have been slapped with infringement lawsuits like never before, and stars like Ed Sheeran and Katy Perry are being asked to pay millions in cases that have many experts scratching their heads. Across genres, artists are putting out new music with the same question in the backs of their minds: Will this song get me sued?

“There is a lot of confusion about what’s permissible and what’s not,” says Sandy Wilbur, a forensic musicologist who served as an expert witness for the defense in the “Blurred Lines” case. Because cases are decided by “the average listener, who is not an educated musicologist or musician,” she notes, “labels are very afraid.” Since that game-changing ruling in 2015, Wilbur says, she’s received triple the number of requests from music companies to double-check new songs before they are even considered for release.

How did this culture of fear drift into the recording studio? The answer is twofold. While copyright laws used to protect only lyrics and melodies (a prime example is the Chiffons’ successful suit against George Harrison in 1976 for the strong compositional similarities between his “My Sweet Lord” and their “He’s So Fine”), the “Blurred Lines” case raised the stakes by suggesting that the far more abstract qualities of rhythm, tempo, and even the general feel of a song are also eligible for protection — and thus that a song can be sued for feeling like an earlier one. Sure enough, a jury in 2019 ruled that Katy Perry owed millions for ostensibly copying the beat of her hit “Dark Horse” from a little-known song by Christian rapper Flame, stunning both the music business and the legal community. “They’re trying to own basic building blocks of music, the alphabet of music that should be available to everyone,” Perry’s lawyer Christine Lepera warned in the case’s closing arguments.

That case, which Perry’s team is currently in the process of appealing, suggests a second point: Plaintiffs in copycat cases are largely targeting megahit songs because they’ve seen where the money is, and the increasing frequency of those court battles in headlines is causing an avalanche effect of further infringement lawsuits.

All of this is striking fear into professional musicians’ hearts. A few months ago, Emily Warren, a songwriter who’s worked with the likes of Shawn Mendes and Dua Lipa, released a song with a country artist that had a similar chorus to a pop song released at the exact same time — a total coincidence, she says. “Even though I’d never heard [the other song], it still felt like a tricky thing,” Warren says. Neither of the two artists took any action against each other, but the situation opened Warren’s eyes to how easily sticky situations can arise by accident. “The more cases are publicized, the more fearful people are,” she says.

While some record labels may have the budget to hire on-call musicologists who vet new releases for potential copyright claims, smaller players who can’t afford that luxury are turning toward a tried-and-true form of protection: insurance. Lucas Keller — the founder of music management company Milk and Honey, which represents writers and producers who’ve worked with everyone from Alessia Cara and Carrie Underwood to 5 Seconds of Summer and Muse — recently began encouraging all his songwriter clients to purchase errors-and-omissions insurance, which protects creative professionals from legal challenges to their intellectual property. “We all feel like the system has failed us,” Keller says. “There are a lot of aggressive lawyers filing lawsuits and going ham on people.” (He’s particularly critical of publishers whose rosters are heavier on older catalogs than new acts: “Heritage publishers who aren’t making a lot of money are coming out of the woodwork and saying, ‘We’re going to take a piece of your contemporary hit.’ ”)

Under E&O policies, insurance companies can cover several million dollars of an artist’s costs if they lose a copyright lawsuit. Joe Charles, senior vice president at insurance provider Alliant Insurance Services, says that as many as half of his personal A-list music clients — a roster of stars who already pay for tour insurance and other standard entertainment-industry policies — have recently shown interest in E&O coverage. “When a major claim is all over the press, we’ll get 10 to 20 calls from musicians asking how they can protect themselves and what it will cost,” Charles says. The number who’ve actually purchased the insurance is smaller due to the high costs, which can run from $20,000 to $250,000 a year, depending on the artist’s prior legal run-ins, their audience size, and how much they want to insure.

Artists are understandably reluctant to publicly disclose that they have copyright insurance, which could open them up to an increase in lawsuits. But music attorney Bob Celestin, who’s helped represent acts like Pusha T and Missy Elliott, says it is safe to assume that the majority of artists who show up in Top 10 chart positions are covered in this way. Big labels, too, usually have comprehensive insurance policies that protect them against copyright issues. Yet these policies have gaps. “An artist could find themselves uninsurable if they’ve had numerous claims and the insurance companies have already paid out millions in costs and settlements,” Charles says. “Or they might find a carrier willing to write it, but the rates are going to be astronomical.”

Songwriters, who may not have the financial wherewithal of celebrity artists but are equally liable for copyright claims, are often the most vulnerable. “We’re all nervous and afraid to fall into a battle over something as minor as a few notes or words,” says Ross Golan, a producer and songwriter who has released songs with stars like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber. Warren says she’s even heard of some megawatt artists keeping musicologists on personal retainer to help them avoid lawsuits.

“There’s more conversation on the front-end as songs are being created,” says Joel Timen, vice president of A&R and publishing at Curb Word Entertainment. “A lot of my songwriters have been asking more questions: ‘Does this melody or pre-chorus section remind you of anything? Should we be careful?’”

The popularity of cheap music-production software, which offers the same features to every user, has added another layer of risk. “Music is now more similar than it is different, for the first time,” Golan says. “People are using the same sample packs, the same plug-ins, because it’s efficient.” Then there’s the issue of the finite number of notes, chord progressions, and melodies available. Or, as Wilbur puts it, “There are no virgin births in music. Music comes out of other music.”

The copyright lawsuit boom, and its unintended side effects, may be just getting started. In 2014, rock band Spirit accused Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of lifting the opening guitar riff of “Stairway to Heaven” from a 1968 instrumental called “Taurus”; a jury threw out the case in 2016, determining that Plant and Page didn’t plagiarize the musical motif — only to see the case turned around two years later on appeal, when a three-judge panel ruled that the original trial involved errors in jury proceedings. (“The jury is a whole other conversation,” says Keller, the music manager. “In British court, they’d just ask a musicologist to decide. In American court, we bring in 10 random people.”) In 2019, the court of appeals decided to reconsider the original panel’s ruling; it will likely issue a decision in the spring of 2020.

Artists, songwriters, producers, and labels are now awaiting the next Zeppelin verdict, with many hoping that a judgment in Page and Plant’s favor could unwind some of the headache-inducing ambiguity introduced by the “Blurred Lines” ruling. Others see the case, which has a chance of going all the way up to the Supreme Court, as a reopening of Pandora’s box. Will the latest ruling clarify the scope of music copyright — or muddy it even further? “At what point is an element of creative expression protectable?” says media intellectual-property attorney Wesley Lewis. “Litigators are all hoping for more clarity.”

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Spotify Target Artists, Labels For Ad Revenue - Leaving Smaller Creators Behind

Written by Andrea Zarczynski — Despite recording artists’ complaints of meager royalty payments, Spotify is approaching them and record labels for a new source of ad revenue. In order to support profitability, the streaming company has pinpointed music artists and labels to foot the bill in exchange for advertising their songs on the Spotify app. As deals are made with large players in the industry, the discovery of smaller labels and artists will suffer greatly, according to Daryl Friedman, chief industry, government and member relations officer at The Recording Academy.

“It’s a bad idea for artists, for fans – and in the long run – for Spotify,” says Friedman.

The new effort requires artists to pay Spotify additional dollars for exposure, which effectively reduces their royalties even further, Friedman explains. While major labels may choose to engage in the deal, indie labels and artists may not be able to afford it, thereby driving down the overall amount of music played on Spotify. In the long term, fans will suffer as Spotify playlists are reduced, he says.

In 2018 Spotify announced that it would not allow payola to dictate the formation of its playlists, a tactic that radio stations were known for entertaining in the past. Making its playlist curation process more transparent meant that while the platform allows artists and labels to submit songs for inclusion in a playlist, no payment will be accepted to ensure that the song is added.

As Spotify continues to lag behind its competitors in ad revenue, the company is exploring whether podcasts and its new paid promotions will become lucrative ways to strengthen artist-fan connections. Last year Spotify explored a new form of fan engagement with the beta launch of Marquee, a marketing tool offering artist teams the opportunity to engage with fans using full-screen “marquee” album recommendations on Spotify. The tool introduced a broader reach than previous recommendations that were determined by the platform.

Past Spotify services, including one that allowed artists to upload songs directly to the platform, were not well received by leading labels Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music and Warner Music. The new paid promotions may appeal to some big names but will do little to improve the overall music industry, Friedman says. He suggests a stronger approach to diversifying revenue streams and increasing profitability – identifying ways to lure users from freemium ad-supported access to paid subscriptions.

“Every day I hear artists tell me that they’re getting millions of streams yet low royalties around $100. It’s really (Spotify’s) obligation to pay the artist,” says Friedman, who adds that, in contrast, radio stations pay no royalties to creators or record companies. “Spotify is better than zero, and radio is zero.”

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Here's why this rural town desperately wants better internet

Written by Staff, Fairfield Citizen — About an hour east of Nashville, the scenic little town of Granville would love to become widely known as the “Mayberry” of Tennessee — a tourist destination for anyone seeking a quaint throwback to simpler times.

But the problem is the internet, and just how slowly it churns — if at all — for visitors, businesses and residents alike.

Like many rural areas of Tennessee, high-speed service hasn’t fully arrived in Granville or surrounding Jackson County. It’s the kind of situation that led a WPLN listener to bluntly ask:

“What about the tens of thousands of Tennesseans in rural areas who don’t have broadband internet service?”

A U.S. News report ranks Tennessee 42nd in the nation for broadband. Despite state and federal grants, the ranking hasn’t improved much. But Gov. Bill Lee has declared rural investment a priority. And a place like Granville — which relies heavily on tourism tax dollars — has a lot at stake.

So what does it take to close the gap on internet access? Granville provides one answer.

In August, officials announced a grant to help bring broadband to 447 houses and nine businesses.

STEPPING BACK IN TIME

There’s no mistaking Granville’s appeal. The community enjoys and celebrates its step-back-in-time vibe.

Perhaps best known as the birthplace of Al Gore Sr., the town’s current notoriety centers on the T.B. Sutton General Store.

Reopening in the heart of town in 2001 after major renovations, the general store hosts dinners and the live Sutton Ole Time Music Hour every weekend when musicians fill the space with the twang of fiddles, banjos and mandolins. The store has been listed as one of the 12 must-visit general stores in the South by Taste of the South magazine.

Thousands of visitors descend on the town each year. But many have been put off by the lack of access to the outside world, says civic leader Randall Clemons.

“It’s been a real challenge for us. Having 35,000-plus visitors a year and them basically arriving here and not having cell coverage and not having Wi-Fi,” he said.

Born and raised in Granville, Clemons left for about 30 years, eventually becoming CEO of Wilson County Bank and Trust. Since returning in 1995, he has served as one of the driving forces behind the town’s resurgence. He’s also the president of Granville Museum Inc., which helps undertake the seven major festivals that attract tourists.

Whether it’s the Cornbread and Moonshine Festival, the Granville Quilt Festival or Heritage Day, Granville offers a country aesthetic.

And all of this fits under the town’s branded identity as Tennessee’s Mayberry — styled after the quaint fictional town popularized on Andy Griffith’s 1960s TV show. Granville’s effort now includes the ongoing construction of a museum dedicated to Mayberry and to “I Love Lucy.”

The branding seeks to draw tourists to the sleepy town, which is nearly surrounded by the Cordell Hull Lake. (The lake itself draws a number of visitors every year as the marina continues its own resurgence.)

New lodging choices have been built, with tour buses beginning to shuttle visitors around to various sites.

“Jackson County is a depressed county and our tourism dollars have greatly helped that, and we think it’s going to continue to help as we take Granville to another level,” Clemons said. “Most people today don’t want to go anywhere that they don’t have cell coverage or broadband coverage.”

SLOW GOING FOR HIGHSPEED SERVICE

Granville has an average download speed that is 33.8% slower than the Tennessee average and 41.7% slower than the national average, according to a report from Broadband Now.

The proposed improvement comes from Twin Lakes, a telephone cooperative that services a number of communities throughout the Upper Cumberland. The company received an Appalachian Regional Commission Grant to cover $500,000 of the cost of expanding broadband.

Officials plan on bringing internet speeds of up to one gig to Granville. The project also includes Wi-Fi and better cell phone service for the area, with Twin Lakes supplying multiple cell boosters.

Yet even with the funding boost, Twin Lakes has found parts of the project difficult.

“We’re working incredibly hard on this but it’s incredibly expensive due to the topography,” said Lea Ann Gore, marketing and sales manager with Twin Lakes. “Fiber is expensive and we try to bury most of it, as it’s more reliable. But sometimes we can’t due to topography.”

Burying the cable allows for higher performance, Gore said, and also avoids things that could affect service, such as wildlife chewing on the cable.

Gov. Bill Lee has said he believes private companies could lessen the need for high-speed internet in Tennessee and increase economic impact.

“We have to make life in rural Tennessee sustainable for small businesses and people to live there,” Gov. Lee said during a September appearance in Cookeville. “We have to invest in rural way of life which includes healthcare (and) education. And one of the ways we most profoundly do that is through technology.”

Appropriations for the Broadband Accessibility Grant Program have doubled since 2018, rising to $20 million in the current fiscal year.

“If we have broadband in rural communities so we can utilize telemedicine in powerful ways, there are so many opportunities for us to provide access to quality healthcare to rural communities. But if you don’t have the technology there you can’t do it,” Lee said.

Gore, with Twin Lakes, reiterates Lee’s sentiment.

“Going forward, teleworking for rural working is going to be huge. We want Jackson County to be able to recruit businesses,” she said.

The project requires 51 miles of fiber to be installed to serve Granville, ultimately costing roughly $1.6 million. Gore said the work on the project should begin by the middle of this year and wrap before 2021.

PROGRESS IN GRANVILLE

For years, the volunteers who run the Sutton General Store told patrons about the best place to catch cellphone service: on the bridge that crosses over Cordell Hull Lake.

These days, they don’t have to send tourists on such a hunt.

That’s thanks to a few initial connection improvements. Twin Lakes put up towers on some of Granville buildings and cellphone signal boosters.

“We now have Wi-Fi all over the area where a visitor would be and all over the area of where our festivals are,” Clemons said.

So will visitors begin streaming content while they wait for the start of the famed Music Hour at the general store?

Clemons doesn’t think it will be that drastic.

“You can’t fight social media, and we’re big into social media as we find it’s a great way to promote ourselves. Anywhere you go today, somebody has their phone in their hand,” Clemons said. “But we don’t want to lose our identity. We want Granville to be a step back in time and be a small town that has preserved its story that people want to come to.”

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AT&T fined $60 million for throttling ‘unlimited’ data plans

Written by Makena Kelly — On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission announced that AT&T will pay $60 million to settle a case with the agency. It alleges that the company lied to customers about its “unlimited” data plans because it throttled their data if they ever went over a certain threshold.

The settlement requires AT&T to deposit that $60 million into a fund that will be used to provide “partial refunds” to customers who signed up for unlimited data plans before the year 2011 (when the company’s throttling policy first went into effect). The company is also barred from marketing plans off of their suggested speed or amount of data without disclosing any restrictions those plans may have.

“For example,” the FTC writes, “if an AT&T website advertises a data plan as unlimited, but AT&T may slow speeds after consumers reach a certain data cap, AT&T must prominently and clearly disclose those restrictions.”

Tuesday’s settlement resolves a 2014 lawsuit from the FTC. At the time, the agency filed a complaint alleging that AT&T misled consumers over its data plans and how much data they would be allotted each month before having their access slowed down. “AT&T promised its customers ‘unlimited’ data, and in many instances, it has failed to deliver on that promise,” said former FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez back in 2014. “The issue here is simple: ‘unlimited’ means unlimited.”

“Even though it has been years since we applied this network management tool in the way described by the FTC, we believe this is in the best interests of consumers,” an AT&T spokesperson told The Verge.

In the summer of 2015, the Federal Communications Commission fined AT&T $100 million for similar deceptive marketing practices involving its data plans. According to the FCC, the agency received thousands of consumer complaints that led them to investigate the throttling allegations.

“AT&T promised unlimited data—without qualification—and failed to deliver on that promise,” Andrew Smith, the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection director said in a statement. “While it seems obvious, it bears repeating that Internet providers must tell people about any restrictions on the speed or amount of data promised.”

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