Exploration Weekly - Spotify Greenroom Launches / CRB Sets Webcasters Royalty Rate / Average Services Per User Falls For The First Time

“Failure is a friend if we can see past the face of the foe that we project on it.”

Craig D. Lounsbrough

Please join us in an upcoming online seminar hosted by The Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL), featuring our very own Exploration Co-Founder and COO, Rene Merideth! The event will be held on Thursday June 24 at 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET. Learn more here about navigating the maze of royalty income for independent music artists and composers looking to maximize their earning potential in today's music business.

We also would like to mention weekly Clubhouse sessions that are happening every Wednesday at 10:30 AM PT with our very own Rene Merideth in conjunction with the WeAreSONA group. Please search for the "Royalty Super Sleuths—How to Maximize Songwriter Money" session on Clubhouse to join!

Spotify launched Greenroom on Wednesday, a live audio app and Clubhouse competitor, in addition to announcing new plans to launch a Spotify Creator Fund to pay live audio creators for their work. The new app is available on iOS and Android in more than 135 markets globally.

Last week, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) granted sound recording licensees a royalty rate increase for 2021-2025 for programmed song plays - a rate of $0.0026 per performance for commercial webcasters’ programmed streams and $0.0021 per stream for ad-supported non-subscription services. These new rates apply to companies like Pandora and iHeartRadio, but does not impact interactive on-demand services like Spotify.

According to an announcement made on Tuesday by technology research firm Omdia, the average number of video streaming services utilized per U.S. user has fallen for the first time, from 7.23 in November to 7.06 in April. However, outside of the US, Omdia’s survey found that the number of online services per home is continuing to rise, with the U.K. reaching 5.78 services per user.

In this newsletter:

Spotify Launches Greenroom, Its Live-Audio App To Take On Clubhouse, With Plans To Pay Creators
CRB Sets Royalty Rate For Pandora, iHeartRadio And Other Webcasters
Streaming Fatigue? Average Number Of Services Per User Falls For First Time: Study
Kevin Brennan MP Proposes “A New Right To Fair Remuneration” From Streaming For Musicians In Private Members Bill
British Music Exports Grew By 6% In 2020 To £519.7m
Apple Launches Podcast Subscriptions, Offering Ad-Free Listening, Extra Content For Thousands Of Shows

Now, the details...
Compiled by Heidi Seo

Exploration Weekly - June 18, 2021

Spotify Launches Greenroom, Its Live-Audio App To Take On Clubhouse, With Plans To Pay Creators

Spotify is giving creators a new way to connect with their audience using live audio — borrowing a page from popular audio-chat app Clubhouse. On Wednesday, Spotify announced the launch of “Spotify Greenroom,” the new name for Locker Room, the app developed by startup Betty Labs (which Spotify acquired in March). In addition, Spotify announced plans to launch a Spotify Creator Fund to pay live audio creators for their work. The audio-streaming giant said it will open the Creator Fund later this summer for applications. Spotify Greenroom is available on iOS and Android in more than 135 markets around the world. Users can download Greenroom for free and log in using their Spotify log-in info. The Greenroom app lets any user host or participate in live rooms, as well as record live conversations.

CRB Sets Royalty Rate For Pandora, iHeartRadio And Other Webcasters

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) on Friday (June 11) granted sound recording licensees a royalty rate increase for 2021-2025 for programmed song plays. While slightly less than what SoundExchange and others had wanted, the Web V ruling ignored digital broadcasters’ petition for big rate decreases. As it is, the CRB set a rate of $0.0026 per performance for commercial webcasters' programmed streams and $0.0021 per stream for ad-supported non-subscription services. The rates apply to programmed music webcasters like Pandora and iHeartRadio, and web simulcasts of terrestrial radio programmed music, but does not impact interactive on-demand services like Spotify. The CRB also set a cost-of-living increase formula pegged to the consumer price index. Finally, it set a fee of $1,000 per year for non-commercial for each channel or station, and $0.0021 for all song transmissions in excess of 159,140 ATH (aggregate tuning hours) per month.

Streaming Fatigue? Average Number Of Services Per User Falls For First Time: Study

According to a presentation at the Connected TV Summit 2021 in London on Tuesday by technology research firm Omdia, the average number of video streaming services utilized per U.S. user has fallen for the first time. The figure declined from 7.23 in November to 7.06 in April. While pay TV is “largely stable and SVOD continues to grow,” Omdia found that “a significant number of users are eschewing AVOD and instead increasingly consuming content via paid alternatives.” One reason is that entertainment giants’ AVOD services “draw viewers away” from TV networks’ VOD offerings, “reducing the overall number of services that a consumer must manage, while maintaining access to the same volume of content,” the firm argued. Outside of the U.S., Omdia’s survey found that the number of online services per home is continuing to rise, with the U.K. reaching 5.78 services per user.

Kevin Brennan MP Proposes “A New Right To Fair Remuneration” From Streaming For Musicians In Private Members Bill

Labour MP Kevin Brennan presented a Copyright (Rights And Remuneration Of Musicians etc) Bill to Parliament which seeks to amend UK copyright law so to “create a new right to fair remuneration for musicians when their work is played on streaming platforms”. The proposed legislation is a direct response to the #fixstreaming and #brokenrecord campaigns, which have called for musicians to have a statutory right to equitable remuneration when their music is streamed. The inquiry dealt with many of the complexities regarding the ways in which streaming services are licensed by the music industry and how streaming royalties are calculated and paid each month. However, by far the most time was spent on the digital pie debate - how streaming income is shared out between artists, songwriters, record labels, music publishers and the streaming services themselves. One proposal to try to get artists a bigger cut of the streaming money is to apply so-called performer equitable remuneration to streams.

British Music Exports Grew By 6% In 2020 To £519.7m

British industry body the BPI is stepping up its lobbying efforts for more support from the British government. According to them, British music generated £517.9m in export earnings in 2020, up 6% year-on-year. However, the BPI wants the government to “seize the moment” to boost that even further this year and beyond. How? By doubling the existing ‘Music Export Growth Scheme’ funding to support more artists; pull its finger out on the post-Brexit chaos for tours in Europe; introduce a music production tax credit in the UK; and to reject any “watering down of UK copyright” in trade deals – for example with the US.

Apple Launches Podcast Subscriptions, Offering Ad-Free Listening, Extra Content For Thousands Of Shows

Apple is officially in the podcast subscription game. Weeks after major competitor Spotify launched a podcast subscription service (which will give creators 100% of revenue from subscription fees through 2023), Apple has dropped its own version. Through Apple’s service, people can pay to subscribe to individual shows and/or to “channels,” which are themed collections of content that “span many genres and formats, including news, comedy, sports, and true crime,” Apple says. Subscriptions (which appear to vary in price from show to show and channel to channel) can give payees access to a range of perks such as ad-free listening and exclusive or behind-the-scenes content. Users pay for subscriptions directly in the Apple Podcasts app, and unlocked content is stored within the app. The company says its library currently offers thousands of subscribable shows and channels, with more launching each week.

Random Ramblings

How YouTube serves 2 billion monthly music users without human-curated playlists.
Eight new records that reimagine what a guitar can do.
Michael Jackson scores his first video in YouTube's Billion Views Club.
Bad Bunny breaks the record for most top 10s on the Hot Latin Songs chart with "Yonaguni".
The Killers and Bruce Springsteen forge a remake of "A Dustland Fairytale".

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Hope you have a great weekend!