ASCAP Daily Brief

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

We are pleased to offer you the ASCAP Daily Brief powered by The Dean's List This daily email, compiled by ASCAP Board member, music publisher and songwriter Dean Kay, cuts through the media clutter to bring you links to the most relevant news and commentary on the rapidly evolving music industry and how it affects your future livelihood. Now the ASCAP Daily Brief can be accessed on the Headlines page of ASCAP.com and in the ASCAP RSS Feed. Tech companies and criminals have made billions supporting the illegal exploitation of our cultural past while ruthlessly pursuing the dismantling of incentives creators need to fashion our cultural future The Death of the Long Tail By Mark Mulligan -- The concept of the long tail seemed like a useful way of understanding how consumers interact with content in digital contexts, and for a while looked like the road map for an exciting era of digital content. Intuitively the democratization of access to music – both on the supply and demand sides – coupled with vastness of digital music catalogs should have translated into a dilution of the Superstar economy effect. Instead the marketplace has shown us that humans are just as much wandering sheep in need of herding online as they are offline. How Digital Music Services May Be Fueling a 'Superstar Artist Economy' By Stuart Dredge -- ...the top 1% of musical works are now accounting for 77% of all those artist revenues thanks in part to a "tyranny of choice" on digital services...The report takes pains to point out that "superstar" artists aren't necessarily just those signed to major labels, noting that a number of independent artists have broken into the 1% tier. One Market is Responsible for Half of Global Digital Music Sales: the United States, at $2.9 Billion By Nicholas Jackson Trends: Plenty of Digital Debates By Chris Cooke - It feels like there weren't any major developments in digital music in 2013, with most column inches dedicated to the ongoing debate over the royalties paid by the streaming music platforms (focused on Pandora in America and Spotify in Europe). Though a more interesting discussion was also being had away from the spotlight about what kinds of digital services can and will succeed. 50 Cent The Latest To Exploit The Music Industry's Newest Business Model By Bobby Owsinski -- The artist and his G-Unit imprint joins a number other artists like Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Korn, Peter Gabriel and Prince who chose to leave the comfort of a traditional major label record deal behind in favor of going independent, but with a new twist. Warner Music Begins Auctioning Off Assets to Indies Following Parlophone Acquisition By Ed Christman -- The massive list of assets which indie labels can bid on is thousands of pages long, though WMG will likely not part with any of its crown jewels — i.e. those artists critically acclaimed and/or financially rewarding. US Government Supporting TV Broadcasters in Aereo Fight at Supreme Court By Eriq Gardner ABC, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc.  Brief for ASCAP, BMI, NMPA, RIAA, SESAC, The Recording Academy, SGA, CMPA, NSAI and Soundexchange, Inc. in Support of Petitioners How to Make Your Posts Stand Out on the Web: the Complete Guide to Social Media Formatting By Courtney Seiter -- In this post, we'll go over some simple tricks and best practices of social media formatting to help you create unique, stand-out posts on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest, along with some tools to help you create memorable blog tidbits worth sharing. gTar Licensing Deals Make 2 Million Song Tutorials Available By Eliot Van Buskirk -- Incident Tech, maker of the advanced, iPhone-powered gTar, says it has signed landmark deals with major music publishers Sony/ATV Music Publishing and EMI Music Publishing after 18 months of negotiations to offer around two million song tutorials within the gTar app, which runs inside a special $400 guitar. a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25154-dream-job-digital-instrument-creator.html#.UxX4ac6cf9U">Dream Job: Digital Instrument Creator By Jessica Hamzelou -- Sometimes playing a guitar with a plectrum isn't enough. Jimi Hendrix used his teeth. Creative musicians are always seeking ways to make novel sounds with existing instruments, as are digital instrument creators like Andrew McPherson, of the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London. 4 Amazing Mobile Apps for Musicians and Composers By Mackenzie Carlin Time Zones and Business Hours Around the Globe By XKCD Philippe Jaroussky And The Impossibly High Male Voice By NPR Staff Justin Bieber and the Beatles: They both liked to rhyme the same words By Ben Blatt -- What is the most common rhyme in the history of pop music? DEAN KAY Dean Kay has been at the helm of some of the most highly respected and forward thinking music publishing companies in the world, first as COO of the Welk Music Group, then as President/CEO of the US division of the PolyGram International Publishing Group, and now as President/CEO of his own precedent setting venture, Lichelle Music Company. Prior to his involvement in publishing, he was a successful songwriter, having had hundreds of his compositions recorded - including "That's Life" by Frank Sinatra. Mr. Kay has been a member of the Board of Directors of ASCAP since 1989 and is Chairman of its New Technologies Committee. He is also on the Board of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA). The ASCAP Daily Brief-Powered by The Dean's List is intended as a guide to direct music professionals to key articles about issues facing the entertainment industry. Recipients are encouraged to read further about the issues by accessing the complete article through the links provided. Author attribution is provided with each article, and none of the links allow readers to by-pass subscription archive gateways. Please note that all editorial comments are indicated in brackets. Questions? Comments? Please Contact Us

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