Business News Week In Five

The music business week in five – 25 May 2012

By | Published on Friday 25 May 2012

Chris Cooke

So, I am off to Poland tonight to speak at the New Directions event as part of Warsaw Music Week, which is all rather exciting – do say hello if you’re also there. Then next week, back in London, it’ll be the latest edition of our Music Rights training course. Find out what exactly copyright is, how it works, and how it makes money. There are still a few places left, so get booking! Meanwhile, your week in five…

01: GEMA and YouTube both appealed GEMA v YouTube. The German collecting society has been in dispute with the Google-owned video service for a long time. GEMA reckons YouTube should do more to ensure that songs represented by the society are not uploaded to the video site, even though the Google service goes some way beyond the obligations set out in American copyright law in terms of removing unlicensed content. When the squabble reached a German court earlier this year, the judge hearing the case sided, in the main, with GEMA. So no surprise that YouTube has appealed the ruling. Though GEMA too wants a second hearing, saying there is still the need for more legal clarity about its members’ rights in the digital domain. CMU report | PC World report

02: Vince Power admitted that festival ticket sales were slow this year. With his current festivals company now publicly listed, the original Mean Fiddler founder has to keep investors up to date on how his music events are going, and in an investor briefing this week he admitted that ticket sales were slower than normal this year, a fact that might require some cost cutting at Music Festivals plc. Meanwhile, two more smaller festivals were cancelled this week, Cloud 9 and Golden Down. They join a growing list of cancelled events this year, including, of course, the arguably more significant cancellation of bigger fests like The Big Chill and Sonisphere. Power comments report | Cancelled festivals report

03: It looked increasingly likely that AEG will get a slice of HMV Live, as the live music conglom was reported to have been given preferred bidder status by the retail group, which announced its intent to sell its live music division, aka the MAMA Group, late last year. It’s thought AEG is definitely only interested in some of MAMA’s venues, and that the rest of the company will either be sold to another party, or (some reports suggested this week) remain part of HMV, or, as has long been expected and seems ever more likely, be subject to a management buy out. We expect proper word on all this pretty soon. CMU report | City AM report

04: Bono didn’t make $1.5 billion from Facebook, despite that being widely reported after the social network floated on Nasdaq last week. True, the U2 frontman’s investment company Elevation had a stake in the social network, but it only sold about a tenth of its Facebook shares last Friday, and the money generated will be shared around a number of investors and partners. Billboard reckons Bono could personally pocket anywhere between $4 million and $10 million. Which is a lot of money, but nowhere near $1.5 billion. CMU report | Billboard report

05: There was lots of streaming service news. Spotify went live in both Australia and New Zealand, leading to the MD of its Aussie branch having to face some tough questioning on Australian radio station Triple J about how much artists earn from the music service. Meanwhile rumour had it Spotify competitor Rdio was planning on ensuring artists get some cash from the boom in streaming by giving them a commission for every fan they persuade to sign up to the service. Elsewhere, music video platform VEVO was reportedly seeking more investment to enable growth, telling possible investors an IPO could happen at some point down the line. And US-based Pandora, now a publicly listed company, revealed losses were up, but still pleased investment types with better than expected ad revenues. Spotify report | Rdio report | VEVO report

And that’s your lot people – though do look out for the podcast with more retrospective chatter going live over the weekend – www.completemusicupdate.com/podcast

Chris Cooke
Handlowy Redaktor, CMU



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