Archive
@musictechpolicy Podcast: Eight Mile Style Sues Spotify Under Music Modernization Act
Chris Castle discussion of Eight Mile Style lawsuit against Spotify under Music Modernization Act (driving with dogs series)
The MTP Podcast: Revenue? What Revenue? Don’t be fooled on royalty audits vs. financial audits
BLANCHE
Whoever you are…I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
From A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams
From Highlights of Managing Change under the Music Modernization Act’s Mechanical Licensing Collective (footnotes omitted. A version of this article appears as How Will the Music Modernization Act’s Mechanical Licensing Collective Work? in 34 Entertainment Law & Finance 1 (No. 9, Dec. 2018.)
Audits: Only the MLC may audit the blanket licensees. Only copyright owners may audit the MLC. However, audits must be conducted by certified public accountants and those auditors are obligated to look for overpayments—which probably violates a CPA’s duty of loyalty. As Warner Music Group’s Ron Wilcox testified to the CRJs, “Because royalty audits require exten- sive technical and industry-specific expertise, in WMG’s experience a CPA certification is not generally a requirement for con- ducting such audits. To my knowledge, some of the most experienced and knowledgeable royalty auditors in the music industry are not CPAs.”
It is also important to note that the collective may only audit once a year for the prior three years. Given that there will be bil- lions of transactions subject to audit (and eventually trillions in a three year period), it is unlikely that CPAs will be conducting census level audits. Projections and lump sum payments are likely, and lump sum payments tend to be distributed in the old- school method of market share distributions.
Is Self Auditing Hazardous to Your Health? musictechpolicy.com/2014/06/01/is-s…to-your-health/
Songwriter Liberty and Audit Rights Under Section 115: Music Licensing Study Filing musictechpolicy.com/2014/06/10/song…g-study-filing/
Attestation Agreements AICPA
Generally Accepted Auditing Standards AICPA
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles
How to Fix The Music Modernization Act’s Flawed “Audit” Clause musictech.solutions/2018/03/12/how-…d-audit-clause/
Five Things Congress Could Do for Music Creators That Wouldn’t Cost the Taxpayer a Dime Part 3: Create an Audit Right for Songwriters artistrightswatch.com/2018/12/29/pos…r-songwriters/
Guest Post by Keith Bernstein: Holy GAAP! Publishers Not Getting the Upside musictechpolicy.com/2016/02/22/gues…ing-the-upside/
The MTP Podcast: The Truth About Streaming Royalties
Chris Castle on how the streaming royalty allocation guarantees a declining royalty for artists
SHOW NOTES
The Trichordist Streaming Price Bible for 2018
Arithmetic on the Internet: The Ethical Pool Solution to Streaming Royalty Allocation
@BBCtrending: The mystery tracks being ‘forced’ on Spotify users–another explanation
Laura Kobylecky, Making Fake Art: “1984”, The New Rembrandt, and The “Fake Artist”
The MTP Podcast: When is a Pledge Not a Pledge? The PledgeMusic crisis
Chris Castle discusses the current crisis with PledgeMusic payments.
SHOW NOTES
PledgeMusic: Once a Crowdfunding Haven For Artists, Now Owes them Thousands of Dollars–Billboard www.billboard.com/articles/busines…ds-late-payments
Digital Aggregator Deals: Is the New Boss Worse Then the Old Boss?
musictechpolicy.com/2012/02/01/read…n-the-old-boss/
What is the Difference Between Dischargeable and Nondischargeable Debts in Bankruptcy?
www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia…ts-bankruptcy.html
Which Debts are Discharged in Chapter 7 Bankruptcy?
www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia…-7-bankruptcy.html
Chapter 11 Bankruptcy for Small Business
www.thebankruptcysite.org/resources/ba…sinesses.htm
Secured vs. Unsecured Debt in Chapter 7 Bankruptcy
www.thebankruptcysite.org/resources/ba…7-bankruptcy
Bankruptcy in the UK
Civil Investigative Demands
MTP Podcast: Why Artists Should Care About Data Center Lobbying
Show Notes
Today’s podcast is about the impact on climate of the massive data centers operated in states outside of California and New York by Google, Facebook, Amazon and others. I focus on Oregon and Nebraska, but there are many other locations. These massive building projects enable Google to exercise its lobbying muscle in states you wouldn’t expect and on the federal senators and representatives of those states on issues familiar with our old adversary: Artist rights, profit from human trafficking, drugs and brand sponsored piracy.
Are Data Centers The New Cornhusker Kickback and the Facebook Fakeout?
What’s Up With @SenSasse’s Vicious Little Amendment on pre-72?
Here Comes the Shiv: Sen. Sasse to Move to Strike the CLASSICS Act and Screw Pre-72 Artists
Carbon Clouds: Should Artists Ask Why Aren’t Google, Amazon and Facebook in the Green New Deal?
Greenpeace “Dirty Data” research. www.greenpeace.org/archive-interna…-greenpeace.pdf
Nature magazine sums it up (www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y):
“Upload your latest holiday photos to Facebook, and there’s a chance they’ll end up stored in Prineville, Oregon, a small town where the firm has built three giant data centres and is planning two more. [Hello, Senator Wyden.] Inside these vast factories, bigger than aircraft carriers, tens of thousands of circuit boards are racked row upon row, stretching down windowless halls so long that staff ride through the corridors on scooters.
These huge buildings are the treasuries of the new industrial kings: the information traders. The five biggest global companies by market capitalization this year are currently Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook, replacing titans such as Shell and ExxonMobil. Although information factories might not spew out black smoke or grind greasy cogs, they are not bereft of environmental impact. As demand for Internet and mobile-phone traffic skyrockets, the information industry could lead to an explosion in energy use.”
According to the National Resources Defense Council www.nrdc.org/resources/americas…ing-amounts-energy:
“Data centers are the backbone of the modern economy — from the server rooms that power small- to medium-sized organizations to the enterprise data centers that support American corporations and the server farms that run cloud computing services hosted by Amazon, Facebook, Google, and others. However, the explosion of digital content, big data, e-commerce, and Internet traffic is also making data centers one of the fastest-growing consumers of electricity in developed countries, and one of the key drivers in the construction of new power plants.
Google emits less than 8 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per day to serve an active Google user—defined as someone who performs 25 searches and watches 60 minutes of YouTube a day, has a Gmail account, and uses our other key services.”
In Google-speak “less than 8” usually means 7.9999999999. So let’s call it 8. As of 2016 there were 1 billion active gmail users. So rough justice, Google acknowledges that it emits about 8 billion grams of carbon dioxide daily, or 9,000 tons. And based on the characteristically tricky way Google framed the measurement, that doesn’t count the users who don’t have a gmail account, don’t use “our other key services” and may watch more than an hour a day of YouTube.Upload today,
MTP Podcast: Spotify’s Direct Public Offering
Chris Castle explains Spotify’s direct public offering (compared to a traditional IPO) and commentary on how the stock is performing (NOT investment advice).
According to the Spotify Case Study:
As of March 28, 2018, the average first-day return for 2018 IPOs was 13.2%. [4] On April 3, 2018, when Spotify opened for trading on the NYSE, the NYSE’s initial reference price that was published to the market pre-trading was US$132.00 per share the opening price of the shares was US$165.90 per share, or approximately 25.7% higher than the NYSE reference price. Trading in Spotify’s shares closed at a price of US$149.01 per share, which was approximately 10.2% below the opening price and 12.9% above the reference price….Spotify disclosed recent high and low sales prices per share in recent private transactions on the cover page of the preliminary prospectus and the final prospectus [to arrive at the reference price of $132].
Spotify Case Study: Structuring and Executing a Direct Listing
MusicTech Solutions: Why Will Spotify’s Price Tank?
Barrons: Spotify Stock Is Up This Year, but Analysts Say Don’t Get Too Excited
Spotify stock, up almost 6% this year, have dropped about 27% in the last 3 months, more than twice as far as theS&P 500’s decline.
On Monday, Stifel’s John Egbert reiterated a Buy rating on the stock, while lowering his target price to $170 from $210. That’s in part based on his estimate of the fair value of its stake inTencent Music Entertainment (TME). But he also trimmed some margin estimates based on the likely costs of global expansion.
“We remain bullish on Spotify’s subscriber growth prospects and believe the company could deliver upside to our 2019 subscriber addition forecast of 24 million, particularly if newly (and soon-to-be) launched markets become material,” Egbert wrote.
Deutsche Bank ’s Lloyd Walmsley maintained a Hold rating on the shares, cutting his price target to $135 from $152 in a Sunday note. Nomura Instinet’s Mark Kelley, meanwhile, wrote Sunday that Spotify was “among the most oversold stocks in our coverage.”