Exploration Weekly - AKM Joins ICE Core / Deezer Leads European Lyric Translation Project / Taylor Swift “Shake It Off” Copyright Lawsuit Dismissed

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All creators deserve credit and recognition for the art they create. Sadly, however, creators and their work are often taken advantage of. The exclusive right in the U.S. copyright law are basic rights given to all creators to help protect their art and themselves from copyright infringement and improper exploitation of their work. Exclusive Rights allow creators to gain control over their art and provide creators with opportunities to exploit their art for profit.

In this newsletter:

• Austrian Collecting Society AKM Joins ICE Core for Online Licensing
• Deezer Leads Project to Provide Access to Multilingual Translations of Lyrics in Europe
• Taylor Swift “Shake It Off” Copyright Lawsuit Dropped
• TikTok is Now Testing a Full-Screen Horizontal Mode
• Inside Latin Music’s Billion-Dollar Year in the U.S. - And How It Boomed Across the World
• SoundCloud’s Revenues Grew 19% YoY to $273M in 2021. Now It’s Predicting that “Fandom Will be the Next Big Format for the Music Business”.
• The Amount of Classical Music in YouTube Videos is Up 90% YoY

This week, AKM joined ICE Core for online licensing. ICE will now represent and collect on behalf of the Austrian collecting society for compositions within online services in much of the world, excluding the U.S. and some Asian markets.

Deezer has joined with companies including Zebralution and LyricFind to create BELEM, an EU-funded project that aims to promote the benefits of localized, human-translated lyrics in a variety of European languages to rights holders.

Both parties - Taylor Swift and songwriters Nathan Butler and Sean Hall - have reached an agreement to end the copyright lawsuit over the hit “Shake It Off”, which has gone on for five years. The trial was expected to begin next month.

Now, the details...

Exploration Weekly - December 16, 2022
Compiled by Heidi Seo

Austrian Collecting Society AKM Joins ICE Core for Online Licensing

Austrian collecting society AKM, which manages and licenses rights for songwriters and publishers, has joined ICE Core for online licensing. That means ICE, the online licensing hub created by collecting societies in Germany (GEMA), the U.K. (PRS for Music) and Sweden (STIM), will now represent and collect for AKM compositions for online services in much of the world, excluding the U.S. and some Asian markets. The deal includes AKM mechanical rights subsidiary, Austro Mechana. ICE provides several services, including licensing and online processing, and it operates a copyright database.

Deezer Leads Project to Provide Access to Multilingual Translations of Lyrics in Europe

Deezer has formed a new consortium with companies including Zebralution and LyricFind. Called BELEM, the EU-funded project aims to make properly translated lyrics in a variety of European languages more readily available online. This, it says, will not only “break down cultural barriers”, but also help rights owners to better monetize those lyrics. The four year project has been granted €2 million from the EU’s Creative Europe program and will promote the benefits of localized, human-translated lyrics to rights holders, with a particular focus on demonstrating the commercial value of providing access to properly translated (rather than machine approximated) lyrics. Prior to launching BELEM, Deezer and LyricFind already worked together to create French, German, Spanish and Portuguese translations of lyrics for 10,000 songs.

Taylor Swift “Shake It Off” Copyright Lawsuit Dropped

Taylor Swift and two songwriters who claim she lifted the lyrics to her hit “Shake It Off” have reached an agreement to end the copyright lawsuit, which has gone on for five years. Both parties — Swift and songwriters Nathan Butler and Sean Hall — have asked a judge to “[dimiss] this action in its entirety.” The trial had been scheduled to begin next month. The terms of the settlement were unclear from the filings, although the song’s writing credits were unchanged at the time of this article’s publication: Swift and original cowriters Max Martin and Shellback.

TikTok is Now Testing a Full-Screen Horizontal Mode

TikTok is testing a horizontal full-screen mode with select users worldwide, the company confirmed Tuesday to TechCrunch. Users with access to the feature will see a “full screen” button on square or rectangle videos in their feed. Tapping the button shifts the video into a horizontal full-screen mode that better utilizes your screen’s real estate. Earlier this year, TikTok added the ability for users to upload videos up to 10 minutes in length, a move to attract the longer-form content creators who post primarily on YouTube. Currently, users with access to the horizontal full-screen feature must tap a button to switch to the viewing mode. By the time the feature releases to a broader audience, TikTok may add the ability for videos to automatically switch to horizontal viewing when the phone is turned sideways, the way YouTube and other platforms do.

Inside Latin Music’s Billion-Dollar Year in the U.S. - And How It Boomed Across the World

Latin music is expected to reach the billion-dollar mark in revenues by year-end in the United States for the first time, according to the RIAA. Spanish-language music has been having a moment in the U.S. ever since Daddy Yankee released his breakthrough single “Gasolina” in 2004. Then, there was Luis Fonsi‘s “Despacito,” the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping song that changed Latin music forever, spearheading a global Latin movement made possible by streaming. This year, Spanish-language music in the U.S. and other non-Latin markets has reached new heights across multiple metrics, including on the charts, in market share growth and in global reach. In the U.S. alone, market share for the Latin genre was 6.6% of the total market in the first half of the year, up from 5.9% last year, according to the RIAA’s mid-year report in October.

SoundCloud’s Revenues Grew 19% YoY to $273M in 2021. Now It’s Predicting that “Fandom Will be the Next Big Format for the Music Business”.

2022 has been a metamorphic year for SoundCloud. In January, the company launched its ‘Roster’ business, which for the first time has seen it investing significant sums in selected talent, while ‘signing’ said talent’s recorded music for a licensed term. In addition, SoundCloud revamped its ‘Repost’ distribution and services operation for indie artists into the new ‘SoundCloud for Artists’ platform. But perhaps the biggest announcement from SoundCloud this year was its deal with Warner Music Group to pay the major’s artists via ‘Fan Powered Royalties’ (also known as ‘User Centric Royalties’). Over 100,000 indie artists have been paid via ‘Fan-Powered Royalties’ (FPR) since last year, with a Midia Research report published in the summer suggesting that 56% of these acts are now being paid more via FPR on SoundCloud rather than they were via the ‘pro-rata’ model. According to its financial report, SoundCloud also saw its global revenues grow 19.2% YoY to USD $273m in 2021, as the firm’s gross profit grew by 33.7% to $97m.

The Amount of Classical Music in YouTube Videos is Up 90% YoY

Epidemic Sound’s end-of-year data reveals that its classical music library has now been streamed more than 200 million times, and those pieces appeared in 90% more YouTube videos than in the previous year. Though electronica, pop, hip hop, and alternative are still the most-common genres chosen by Epidemic Sound users, classical music downloads rose 64% year-over-year on the Epidemic Sound platform. And those tracks appeared in videos around the world. In 13 of the 15 content categories tracked by Epidemic Sound, classical was the fastest-growing soundtrack choice of 2022.

Random Ramblings

• Why were there so many samples on the charts this year?
• Live music logs record-setting 2022 as Bad Bunny and Elton John lead with booming stadium tours.
• 14 music diversity, equity and inclusion must-reads from 2022.
• Mariah Carey leads a Christmas trifecta on the midweek U.K. chart.
• 7 reasons why AI music was fascinating AND controversial in 2022.