Pandora|Policy

Publication

Mechanical Licensing Collective’s $424.4 Million Unmatched Royalty Collection Highlights Music Modernization Act’s Limited Liability Compromise

IP Watchdog
Steve Brachmann

On February 16, the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) – a nonprofit organization designated by the U.S. Copyright Office to administer blanket mechanical licenses to eligible streaming and download services in the United States –announced that it had received a total of $424.4 million in unmatched royalties accrued by 20 digital service providers (DSPs), including Spotify and Apple Music, during a three-year transition period under the terms of the Music Modernization Act (MMA). The transfer of unmatched royalties enables these DSPs to qualify for limited liability provisions under the MMA. At the same time, usage data submitted by DSPs associated with the accrued unmatched royalties is expected to help the MLC identify copyright owners for distributing royalty payments, the first of which are expected to be distributed this April…

The greatest amounts of unmatched royalties transferred to the MLC came from Apple Music ($163.3 million) and Spotify ($152.2 million), both well ahead of Amazon Music ($42.7 million) and Google Play Music/Youtube ($32.9 million). The unmatched royalties transferred to the MLC largely tracks monthly U.S. user base statistics for streaming music providers, as Apple Music and Spotify top the monthly user base rankings as well. However, it does suggest that companies like Pandora, which ranks third in user base but only had $12.4 million in unmatched royalties, do a better job of locating copyright owners for distributing royalties than companies like Amazon, which ranked fifth in September 2019, with 16.5 million monthly users, but transferred nearly three times the amount of unmatched royalties to the MLC as Pandora.

Read the full article on IP Watchdog

Publication

Fans’ Embrace of Streaming Sustained Music During a Tumultuous Year. Why, and What Does it Mean for 2021

"The full-fledged consumer embrace of streaming helped avert a total collapse of the music business," writes DiMA President & CEO Garrett Levine in Music Business Worldwide

The music business in 2020 experienced an unprecedented cacophony of events. Live music businesses tragically shuttered. A virtual performance market emerging. Yet despite it all, music lived on through streaming as it continued to be embraced by nearly every American with an Internet connection, even in the face of a global health crisis and massive economic disruption.

This is not the only 2020 storyline in music, but it is certainly one of the more hopeful: the full-fledged consumer embrace of streaming helped avert a total collapse of the music business. As one analyst put it: “streaming remains resilient,” with “music industry revenues [holding up] relatively well compared to other industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. The growth of digital streaming has allowed consumers to access and enjoy music regardless of social distancing restrictions.” …

The 2020 music streaming service is your record store, jukebox, speaker, FM radio station, mp3 collection, MTV, set of liner notes and smart music friend all wrapped together in one captivating experience. And critically, streaming services allow you to access all of that without leaving your home—a vitally important characteristic over the past year…

More than ever, I have grown to appreciate just how connected successes and failures are. Music’s resilience is impressive but not infallible.

We should be wary of rhetoric that essentially suggests burning the village in order to save it, or of proposals that ignore how the fundamental complexity of the business — including the balance of payouts to different rightsholders — contributes to the current economics for creators. Any honest reckoning of our business must examine what happens to the 69 cents of every dollar that digital music services pay to record companies, music publishers, and PROs.

For all of us who are part of the community supporting this artform that helped sustain us through this challenging year, our posture should be one of finding solutions and forging partnerships. That is ultimately the approach that resuscitated the music business from a decade-long decline, produced the durable foundation that helped sustain our community through this tumultuous time, and is one reason for continued optimism in the new year.

Read the full Music Business Worldwide op-ed from DiMA President & CEO Garrett Levine here

Publication

Love Your Spotify, Apple Music Recommendations? Thank a Pandora Music Analyst

Spotify gets kudos for its AI-enhanced music-discovery features, but Pandora music analysts past and present say their two decades of work on the Music Genome Project paved the way for today's music recommendations.

PC Magazine
Tyler Hayes

Before Pandora’s personalized internet radio service launched in 2005, there was Savage Beast Technologies. From 2000 to 2004, the company focused on building out its music-recommendation technology, the Music Genome Project. Pioneered by founder Tim Westergren, the Music Genome Project had humans, in the form of skilled musicians, listening to songs to uncover and annotate their musical attributes.

Remarkably, music analysts are still listening to songs today. Many aspects of how streaming music platforms provide song recommendations has shifted to computers and machine learning, but not all. There are still analysts doing the same work they have for the last 20 years. We talked to several analysts, past and present, to get a sense of how they work today, 20 years after the Music Genome Project’s inception.

Human or Machine Recommendations?

“I think we fit in the way we always have, which is as a total anomaly,” says Pandora Music Analyst Scott Rosenberg. “As far as I know, we’re still the only service where the human component is still so central. At least at the scale we’re working at.

“Whenever we hear from people in the Music Science department—the folks working on machine learning—they are all so flipped out that they have this vast, multi-million song repository of human-generated analysis to draw on. There is no other set of musical analysis data that even remotely approaches what we’ve created.”

Read the full PC Magazine article here.

Publication

DiMA President & CEO: Critics of ASCAP and BMI Consent Decrees Are Missing the Point

"The decrees are not broken," writes Garrett Levin, president and CEO of digital services trade group DiMA.

Billboard
Garrett Levin

The U.S. Department of Justice recently convened a series of workshops to review “competition in licensing in public performance rights.” For a government agency considering seismic changes to music licensing laws, it was well-intentioned and an appropriate exercise. Regrettably, however, the conversation lacked the critical perspective of numerous voices, including the music streaming services and consumer advocates.

The discussion throughout the workshop, much like the larger ongoing conversation around music publishing reforms, repeatedly returned to calls for “modernizing” the Justice Department’s consent decrees that protect licensees and consumers from the anti-competitive effects of the two largest performing rights organizations (PROs) — ASCAP and BMI. The requests for “modernization” were virtually all premised on the need to address the innovations in music distribution made possible by digital music companies. Modernization is an important goal when outdated systems truly no longer work; as an industry we recognized that was the case in mechanical licensing and came together to pass the Music Modernization Act.

But let’s be very clear that the PRO consent decrees are not hindering the music industry or in need of modernization because they happen to have originated in the 1940s. The decrees aren’t unnecessary and outdated because they have been in place for decades. They have existed for decades precisely because of their ongoing value in ensuring fair and competitive access to music works. And they aren’t obsolete because of innovations in music distribution — improvements made possible because the consent decrees recognize that differences in distribution tech don’t equate to differences in licensing needs.

Read the full letter in Billboard here

 

Publication

SiriusXM radio calls audibles for sports shows in pandemic

Associated Press
Joe Reedy

When you oversee 19 sports stations, radio programming is a daily challenge. During a pandemic, it can become like throwing a no-hitter, scoring a hat trick and winning a NASCAR race all in one.

Just ask Steve Cohen, SiriusXM’s senior vice president for sports, whose company broadcasts everything from baseball to hockey to soccer to football to golf to, well, you get the idea.

Publication

How SiriusXM’s the Highway, airing ‘Stagecouch’ this weekend, became a not-so-secret weapon for new country singers

The Washington Post
Emily Yahr

For the millions of people who subscribe to satellite radio, it’s a reliable source of time travel: big band sounds from the 1940s, alternative grunge, classic R&B, early millennium pop smashes, the Beatles, hours of Howard Stern interviews. The possibility to get lost in the past is endless.

But at the other end of the spectrum, some channels are focused on current pop, rock and hip-hop. Then there’s the Highway, the modern country music channel — which, even in an era of endless listening options, still frequently serves as the genre’s crystal ball for future country stars and their hits. In a format where radio is king and often heavily regimented on commercial stations where labels push specific singles for airplay, Highway programmers indulge in the freedom to play whatever they want.

Publication

Doctor Radio & NYU Langone Health launch 24/7 coronavirus-focused channel & hotline

SiriusXM channel 121 becomes “Coronavirus: What You Need To Know,” and will be available on both active and inactive SiriusXM radios, and on SiriusXM streaming platforms

Sirius XM
Sirius XM

SiriusXM, in conjunction with NYU Langone Health, launched a special 24/7 channel dedicated to providing the public with the latest information on the coronavirus outbreak. The channel launched on Friday, March 6 at 6pm ET and features programming from SiriusXM’s Doctor Radio (Ch. 110). It is available on both active and inactive SiriusXM radios on Channel 121 and will also be available on the SiriusXM app and via SiriusXM.com.

Click this link to hear an exclusive, free livestream of the channel.

SiriusXM and NYU Langone Health have teamed up to make coronavirus information available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike and this special “free to air” public service channel will feature nonstop information and health tips related to coronavirus.

 

 

Publication

Get around-the-clock updates & expert advice about the coronavirus on SXM’s Doctor Radio

SiriusXM Blog
SiriusXM Blog

SiriusXM today announced that Doctor Radio (Ch. 110) and NYU Langone Health’s medical experts will launch 24/7 programming, live and on demand, dedicated to the latest news and updates surrounding the coronavirus. All programming will be presented by NYU Langone’s team of world-class infectious disease and medical authorities and curated by SiriusXM’s Doctor Radio channel programmers.

Publication

SoundCloud Secures $75M Investment from Pandora Owner SiriusXM

Music Business Worldwide
Tim Ingham

SoundCloud has just announced that it has secured $75 million investment from SiriusXM – which, remember, acquired another leading music streaming platform, Pandora, last year in a $3.5bn all-stock transaction.

Publication

How SiriusXM Is Beating the Subscriber Paradox & Scoring a Better Return Than Streaming Services

Billboard
Glenn Peoples

Whether music or podcasts, on-demand listening is the greatest change to recorded music in the last decade. Yet satellite radio — launched before iTunes revolutionized how music is purchased — continues to thrive as streaming services flourish. SiriusXM’s 2019 earnings report, which dropped Tuesday, shows that the satellite radio service added 1 million subscribers and grossed $7.8 billion of revenue over the year.