music streaming
Chronicling how music streaming services work, and reactions to them
Tony Lashley and
music streaming
Just a moment...
crsreports.congress.gov“Because over-the-air transmission by broadcast radio stations falls outside the definition of ‘digital audio transmission,’ radio stations do not need to pay royalties to the performers, record labels, or other owners of the sound-recording copyright to publicly perform a sound recording.”
In cases where the MLC is not able to match musical works to copyright owners, the MLC is authorized to distribute the unclaimed royalties to copyright owners identified in the MLC records, based on the relative market shares of such copyright owners as reflected in reports of usage provided by digital music providers for the periods in question.
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Music Licensing Modernization | U.S. Copyright Office
"The Future of Rock and Roll: 97WOXY and the Fight for True Independence," Robin James, and "Chokepoint Capitalism," Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow.
“We have to overcome some legal hurdles, but we could unionize musicians tomorrow,” DeFrancesco said. “SAG is like an alternate history for musicians. We’ve done all this before and won, just not within recent memory.”
Some musicians are in fact unionized. The American Federation of Musicians, with 80,000 members in the U.S. and Canada, collectively... See more
Some musicians are in fact unionized. The American Federation of Musicians, with 80,000 members in the U.S. and Canada, collectively... See more
August Brown • Musicians deal with stingy streamers and AI threats, too. So why aren't they on strike?
The most frequent complaint I hear about streaming services is that they don’t pay artists fairly. Michael Pelczynski, the former Vice President of Strategy at SoundCloud, took that complaint personally. Over his five years with the streaming service, he helped conceive and implement a novel payment scheme that received much praise.
In an hour-long... See more
In an hour-long... See more
Chris Dalla Riva • Music's Past & Future: Talking with Michael Pelczynski
With Audible Magic's fingerprinting technology, streaming services and distributors can now easily identify tracks that were made using Udio.
Kristin Robinson • Udio Partners With Audible Magic to Fingerprint AI-Generated Tracks and to Check for Infringements
The major labels are finally facing a crucial reality: Independent music's market share keeps climbing, and controlling the infrastructure behind it is becoming as vital as owning rights.
Universal Music Group's Virgin Music Group led this charge in 2024 — snapping up Downtown Music Holdings in a $775M power move (pending regulatory approval), as... See more
Universal Music Group's Virgin Music Group led this charge in 2024 — snapping up Downtown Music Holdings in a $775M power move (pending regulatory approval), as... See more
Music tech ownership ouroboros, 2025 edition
What Does Music Mean to Spotify? An Essay on Musical Significance in the Era of Digital Curation
Asher T Chodosacademia.edu
Abstract: The growing field of “critical algorithm studies” often addresses the cultural consequences of machine learning, but it has ignored music. Te result is that we inhabit a musical culture intimately bound up with various forms of algorithmic mediation, personalization, and “surveillance capitalism” that has largely escaped critical attention. But the issue of algorithmic mediation in music should matter to us, if music matters to us at all. This article lays the groundwork for such critical attention by looking at one major musical application of machine learning: Spotify’s automated music recommendation system. In particular, it takes for granted that any musical recommendation – whether made by a person or an algorithm – must necessarily imply a tacit theory of musical meaning. In the case of Spotify, we can make certain claims about that theory, but there are also limits to what we can know about it. Both things – the deductions and the limitations – prove valuable for a critique of automated music curation in general."
Daniel Ek, the CEO, is selling $100 million in Spotify stock. This couldn’t happen at a worse time.