Tag Archives: Spotify

How Spotify can survive the size of Apple, Amazon, Google & YouTube

December 18, 2018 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

The streaming genie is out of the bottle. There is no going to back to CD sales or downloading as the primary model for music revenue. For industry leader Spotify, whose stock has dropped from a high of $196 in July to $120, more challenges lay ahead. 

Streaming may be acceptable to celebrity artists with CD sales and negotiating leverage, and who play concerts, but not for more mainstream musicians who have difficulty securing a record deal and receive pennies per stream.

With more than 87 million current subscribers and 191 million active users, Spotify appears to be well-positioned for success. Whether or not you believe that Spotify has gone from music industry slayer to savior depends on you ask and when you look.

The service survived the wrath of Taylor Swift and has settled a class action suit brought by musicians, including Cracker frontman David Lowery, publisher of The Trichordist, for $41 million. (More on how Swift is improving fellow artists streaming compensation in a future IP CloseUp.)

But if Spotify is going to bring the music industry forward it will need to show more than the ability to add subscribers. It must be able to work collaboratively with all recording artists, despite the adverse economics of the music business, and to become profitable in the not too distant future. 

Cash Out

Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) went public in March 2018 with a much-publicized offering that did not raise capital, but enabled some insiders, including investors like Sony Music and Warner Music Group, to take cash out and for the market to broadly value its model. The company’s offering price was $132 and had traded as high as $196.28 in July, but Spotify shares are down to about $120 (as of December 17), below its IPO price, an indication that its shares may not have been as accurately priced as initially believed, or that they can expect to struggle in a bear market.

To go public, Spotify executed an unusual move called a direct listing, forgoing investment-banking underwriters and opting not to raise any money for itself at this time. In the process, Spotify showed confidence in its future and saved tens of millions of dollars in fees while still giving its employees and early investors the chance to cash out at least some of their holdings without diluting the share price.

It’s not clear that streaming – and Spotify agreeing to pay higher royalties to some for their content – will save the music industry or earn the company a profit.

The Main Stream

Spotify was the first company to make streaming mainstream, a simple alternative to both the murky Torrent digital music piracy sites and the more expensive downloads model popularized by Apple’s iTunes.

The brainchild of Swedes Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, Spotify launched as a desktop application in October 2008 and quickly gained millions of users across Europe before spreading to the US.

Spotify represents hope for the patent community, where serial infringers use others’ inventions with much the same impunity that streaming services employ content

“A good example of a tech B-lister is Spotify, which appears to be winning its battle with its biggest suppliers but lives in perpetual danger of being steamrolled by a tech giant,” reported The New York Times.

Perhaps the clearest indication of the Spotify’s awkward status came from Randall Stephenson, the chief executive of AT&T. “Mr. Stephenson has been fighting to acquire Time Warner since November 2016 in an attempt to cobble together some combination of content libraries, mobile networks and advertising tech that is big enough to survive a battle with the Googles and Amazons of the world.”

This is a defining moment for Spotify and big tech. If content it to survive meaningfully, IP rights need businesses, executives and shareholders to step up and look beyond quarterly earnings.

When a $200 billion business like AT&T is jockeying for leverage against Netflix, Google, Apple, and others, how is a university start-up, independent inventor or musician going to compete?
Not easily. 

Yet to be Determined

Despite its subscriber base and public offering, Spotify is far from a financial success. Some believe that to do so it must turn against artists and song writers. That will do little more than make its competitors, especially Apple, look good. Microsoft is among the few players who are big and smart enough to acquire the streaming giant at the right price.

Like AT&T, Spotify’s ability to compete depends on how it fares against much larger, more powerful companies, some with only a passing regard for IP rights.

Leading technology businesses set the tone for how licensing is conducted and how creators are treated, and so far – as far as copyrights and patents are concerned – it has not been a very harmonious one.

Image source: spotify.com; statista.com; economist.com

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Royalty rates paid musicians decline for some streaming services

January 29, 2018 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

When it comes to getting paid, the bigger streaming service is not necessarily better for most musicians and song writers.

While the revenue and market share have grown for the leading streaming services, some significantly, the royalties paid to artists have been declining.

According to a recent article in The Trichordist, a publication dedicated to the protection of artists rights in the digital age, streaming royalties paid to artists declined in 2017.

The blog took snapshots from a major indie portfolio for 2017, 2016 and 2013. It found that “when streaming numbers grow, the per stream rate will drop.”

This data set is isolated to the calendar year 2016 and represents a label with an approximately 150 album catalog generating over 115 million streams, a fairly good sample size. All rates are gross before distribution fees.

Spotify was paying .00521 back in 2014, two years later the aggregate net average per play rate dropped to .00437 in 2016, a reduction of 16%, reports the Trichordist. The current effective per stream rate at Spotify has now dropped to 0.00397, a reduction of 9% since last year. This a cumulative reduction of 24% since 2014, which is an average decrease of 8% a year of the per stream rate.

Business Model Questions

“If the music business could set a per stream rate that allowed revenue growth, proportionate to consumption growth that would be a much better model,” said David Lowery, editor of The Trichordist and leader of the band Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven. Lowery teaches in the Music Business Certificate Program at Terry College of Business, University of Georgia.

A notable change from last year is that Pandora replaces YouTube with the greatest value gap of streams at 21.56% volume with only 7.86% of revenue. YouTube drops to 8.38% of volume with only 1.70% of revenue.

Indie Label Sample: 115 Million Streams

Top Players

Apple appears to be the lone streaming service that is growing both in market share and revenue, and is paying relatively high royalties. It accounts for 22.29% of the revenue on 10.48% of the streams, and pays approximately six-times the per-stream royalty rate of Pandora. (Apple’s iTunes is a direct purchase model, while Pandora offers a more radio-like format, which precludes on demand listener selection.)

More than 95% of the streams and 98% of the revenue were concentrated in the top ten companies. The top three, Spotify, Apple iTunes and Pandora, comprise about 80% of the streams for this representative catalogue and 82% of the total streaming revenue.

For The Trichordist‘s 2017 streaming sample, go here; 2016, here; and 2013 here.

Image source: thetrichordist.com

 

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Copyright company filing is a “mini” IPO aimed at monetizing future music royalties

December 5, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

A business designed to acquire and monetize royalty streams “of the world’s biggest artists,” Royalty Flow, went public last week with a “mini” IPO, or registration under Regulation A+ crowdfunding initiative. 

A new type of PIPCO (public IP company), Royalty Flow hopes that under the 2012 JumpStart Our Business Start-up (JOBS) Act, passed by the Obama administration and known as “Regulation A+,” will enable it to raise between $11 million and $50 million. If successful, the capital will allow the company to purchase a portion of the income stream derived from Eminem’s 1999-2013 catalog and pay investors dividends in return.

Depending on how much money is raised, Royalty Flow will buy either 15 percent or 25 percent of an Eminem income stream based on royalties paid to FBT Productions, which often works with the performer.

With the recent upsurge in streaming revenues from services like Pandora, Spotify and Apple Music, some music industry observers believe that royalties generated under copyrights have a bright future. But streaming services have only just begun to pay recording artists and producers, and lucrative licensing deals reminiscent of returns on retail CDs are a long way off for most.  See “Music royalties – a siren song for niche investors seeking higher yield” in the August 23 IP CloseUp.

The Royalty Exchange website cites a Goldman Sachs analyst that paid streaming revenues will grow by 833% by 2030 (see graph above).

Reminiscent of “Bowie” Bonds

The Royalty Flow business model is reminiscent of the “Bowie” Bonds securitization that took place in 1997. In that arrangement Bowie’s company, the copyright holder, did not sell the assets, but a portion of the cash flow they generated over a ten-year term. Bowie did well on the $55 million deal. Investors, depending on when they bought and sold, did not.

“What Bowie sold was the present value of his personal intellectual property (song copyrights) – that is, the future expectation of future royalty income, less a discount,” said an analyst.

Those buying shares in Royalty Flow would have the right to collect dividends based on the performance of the Eminem catalog and any other catalogs acquired over time. The company says it intends to later list directly to the NASDAQ.

“The plan is to give fans and investors a way to share in the income from the royalties through dividends paid by the company,” reports Billboard.

The minimum investment during the IPO is $2,250 for 300 shares (at $7.50 a share). After the equity campaign is over, Royalty Flow “intends to list directly to NASDAQ and give latecomers a chance to invest in Royalty Flow stock through the public exchange.”

Royalty Flow was officially launched on November 27, 2017. The company, a subsidiary of Royalty Exchange, a copyright auction company. For more information about Royalty Flow, go here. 

For the Regulation A+ S.E.C. filing, go here.

Image source: royaltyflow.com

 

 

 

 

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Music royalties – a siren song for niche investors seeking higher yield

August 23, 2017 by Bruce Berman 1 Comment

A small but growing number of investors are buying the rights to musician’s future earnings, hoping to beat the fixed income returns and other markets.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, “Music Royalties Strike a Chord,“ these fixed income investors are lured by future returns of 8%-12% annually, when junk bonds are still hovering around 6%.

Private equity funds have raise or begun to raise $1 billion since 2013 when this sector appeared to be an alternative to low yields on fixed income.

There are a several types of royalties that can be sold, either for a specified period of time or until they expire. (For works created on or after January 1, 1978, it is life plus 70 years or 95 or 120 years, depending on the nature of authorship.)

David Bowie infamously sold his future copyright earnings for $55 million (“Bowie” Bonds), only to have new technology like Napster devalue them. [See, “The Bonds that Fell to Earth,” in the January 15, 2016 IP CloseUp.) The financing did wonders for Bowie balance sheet, although not all investors made out so well.

High Yield

Bowie Bonds paid 7.9% for ten years, at which time, I believe, they reverted back to the mercurial artist. He never lost ownership of all of his songs; he merely licensed the future earnings to some of them for a period of time.

Songs can also earn money when they are performed live, played in a restaurant or film, or streamed through a service like Spotify. They still do not make money from radio airplay (a legacy from old tech, when it was about selling records). Songwriters, music publishers, artists and labels own various rights, including performance rights.

WSJ reports that in the 2Q Denver-based website Royalty Exchange held music rights auctions valued at $2.5M, more than double the total from the 4Q 2016.  Royalty Exchange publishes a guide to music royalties, here.  It is a transaction site, so it is best to speak to a lawyer or experienced IP broker before buying.

Risk to music royalty streams includes timing, trends and technological threats. A song that generates a steady stream of income today is not necessarily going to in five or fifteen years. On the other hand, a small handful could actually generate more revenue than expected. Receivables, or royalty stream financing, takes place in many industries, including energy, real estate and sports.

Streaming Rises

The renewed interest in music royalties may due in part to increased royalty payments by services like Spotify, Pandora and Apple, which, similar to YouTube, have been notoriously reluctant to pay creatives fairly for content. But increases have been negligible for most performers and song writers, and top recording artists with leverage tend to cut their own distribution deals.

With disdain for IP rights on the rise, it is somewhat encouraging that niche investors still believe in the integrity of copyrights and the reliability of their income stream. For them to succeed they will need cooperation from streaming services, as well as songwriters and performers.

Image source: myradio360.com; entertainment.howstuffworks.com 

 

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Apple is seeking to cut license royalties paid to record labels

July 2, 2017 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

While the share of revenue from streaming paid to record labels and recording artists is rising, Apple Inc., among the fairest licensees in on-line music, is now seeking to reduce record labels’ share of revenue from streaming.

Bloomberg reports that the record labels’ deal with Apple were expected to expire at the end of June, though they are likely to be extended if the parties can’t agree on new terms, according to the people who asked not to be identified.

“Part of negotiations is to revise the iPhone maker’s overall relationship with the music industry.”

The negotiations would bring number two Apple closer to the rate industry streaming leader Spotify Ltd. pays labels, and allow both sides to adjust to the new realities of the music industry. Streaming services have been a source of renewed hope following a decade of decline in the digital age.

Patent holders may believe there is an element of deja vu taking place in music content. Once rock solid copyrights are now subject to renegotiation and diminished revenue because of lost leverage due to lower valuations and easier access. A key will be finding what will make copyrights more relevant again, and creating more competition among streaming services for content.

More Optimistic

Record labels are now more optimistic about the future health of their industry, which grew 5.9 percent last year worldwide thanks to paid streaming services Spotify and Apple Music. They recently negotiated a new deal with Spotify further lowering their take from the service, provided Spotify’s growth continues.

“Apple initially overpaid to placate the labels,” says Bloomberg, “who were concerned Apple Music would cripple or cannibalize iTunes, a major source of revenue.”

For the full Bloomberg article, go here.

Sales vs. Streams 

Though online sales of music have plummeted over the past few years, they still account for 24 percent of sales in the U.S., according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Vinyl record sales also are up but they are still limited to a specialty audience, while CD sale are way down.

According to Billboard, streaming led the U.S. music industry to its first back-to-back yearly growth this millennium and in the first half of 2016 was the single ­highest source of revenue in the U.S. recorded-music industry, ­bringing in $1.61 billion. All three major labels — Universal, Sony and Warner — posted streaming-driven double-digit percent boosts in earnings throughout the year.

The Trichordist, a publication devoted to “Artists for an Ethical and Sustainable Internet,” reports that Spotify was paying .00521 back in 2014, two years later the aggregate net average per play has dropped to .00437 a reduction of 16%.

                     Apple Music generates 7% of all streams and 13% of revenue

YouTube now has their licensed, subscription service (formerly YouTube Red) represented in these numbers as opposed to the Artist Channel and Content ID numbers we used last time. Just looking at the new YouTube subscription service numbers isolated here, they generate over 21% of all licensed audio streams, but less than 4% of revenue! By comparison Apple Music generates 7% of all streams and 13% of revenue.

Apple sits in the sweet spot, generating the second largest amount of streaming revenue with a per stream rate .00735, nearly double what Spotify is paying. But, Spotify has a near monopoly on streaming market share dominating 63% of all streams and 69% of all streaming revenue.

The top 10 streamers account for 99% of all streaming revenue.

New Technology, New Values

IP rights holders, including those with patents and trademarks, need to think through where they fit in the current digital scheme of things, and how much should be expected in a world that finds not paying for others’ intellectual property increasingly acceptable.

For patent holders, the streaming/copyright battle could be the proverbial canary in the mine.

Image source: fortune.com

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Musicians want fairer streaming fees; inventors want patent licenses

June 29, 2016 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

In a digital world, fair compensation for creative expression or new ideas, like music and inventions, requires more determination than ever.

Intellectual property piracy has become an insidious problem, affecting a wide range of  individuals and industries, including recording and technology.

The effect of low payment – as opposed to no payment – has been particularly harsh on recording artists. They have had the challenge of policing the frequently unauthorized use of their work, getting their music taken down (and kept down), and being paid fairly by valuable streaming services who claim that they are not profitable.

Spotify, Pandora, YouTube and others have made it difficult for artists to permanently take down songs and videos that they are not being fairly paid for or that should not have been posted in the first place. While fans may enjoy the mostly free access, it has made it extremely difficult for less well-known artists to survive in the industry. For most of the big names, the possible loss in recording revenue can be made up in performances and merchandising.

Musicians: Update the Law

Napster was a turning point.  Shut down by court order in 2001 after just two years of operation, the online service enabled MP3 files to be easily shared. The recording industry and artists had little choice but to respond by surrendering preventing the digital distribution of their work or accepting the poor terms – if they were even offered. Streaming services legitimized file-sharing. It’s been more than a decade since Napster was shut down, and artists and labels are finally fighting back about the meager pay rates for their material. They are demanding, among other things, that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) a 1998 law, be updated.

They want to change the law so that music and video streaming services will be required to remove permanently material that they are not authorized to provide. It will be interesting to see if Congress complies.

YouTube claims that it has paid out over $3b in royalties, although that amount was initially attributed to all of Google, YouTube’s parent company. Bank of America values YouTube at $80b, more than all but 66 of the S&P 500 companies. (An article from Bloomberg News is worth reading, here.)

Don’t get me wrong. YouTube is a convenient, well-organized service that offers consumers an affordable alternative to network and cable TV and iTunes.  It claims to have paid some 15 million content providers. But the-1x-1 question is what amounts and to whom?

Angry Headliners, Too

In an article in the The New York Times, “Music World Bands Together Against YouTube, Seeking Change to Law,” it was reported that while YouTube is a vital platform for promoting song and discovering new talent, “it has never been a substantial source of revenue and is a vexing outlet for leaks and unauthorized materials.”

Now, even highly successful artists like Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry and Billy Joel have signed letters asking for United States copyright laws to be changed.

It is no accident that recording and visual artists face similar obstacles as other IP holders – notably inventors and patent holders. Since passage of the America Invents Act, it has been anything but easy for patent holders to stop the unauthorized use of their invention rights, or to get fairly paid for them.

Consumers are Complicit

“New services and platforms are great for consumers,” says Johathan Taplin, a music and film producer who has worked with Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese, “but our weak laws have allowed them to siphon revenue away for the underlying music, leaving song-writers, performers and the he whole industry choking on their dust.”

Taplin is Director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. See “Do you love music? Silicon Valley doesn’t.”

It Ain’t Over Until It’s Over

In 2015, after years of battling pirates, Prince, an innovator in controlling the distribution of his work, said in an interview that the Internet “was over for anyone who wants to get paid.”

Let’s hope that blatant disregard of the source of creative expression and new ideas will not continue unchallenged. For less well-known musicians and visual artists who depend on revenue from streaming and copyrighted songs as a means of survival the future may be a little less bleak. Young tech companies, inventors and universities, who are finding difficulty securing patent licenses have yet to turn the corner.

 

Image source: nytimes.com; bloomberg.com; BofA/Merrill Lynch Global Research

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Patent Holders can Learn from Angry Musician’s File Sharing Fight

October 16, 2013 by Bruce Berman 1 Comment

A song writer makes a strong case against businesses that profit wildly from his and others innovators’ work.

Heavy metal band Metallica got serious about battling illegal downloading of their work in 2000 when drummer Lars Ulrich filed an unpopular copyright infringement law suit against Napster, naming 300,000 users. Everyone complained, but Napster was eventually shut down.

Recording artists and song writers remain easy prey for those who who make music files available to anyone with Internet access. Audiences including fans, businesses, software developers, and especially content providers, have portrayed victims as greedy and out of touch with the digital world, just as many tech companies depict all patent enforcers as “trolls.”

For better known artists, unpaid air time on sites like Pandora and Spotify serve as free publicity for their live performances and sales of their earlier or “private” work,  but for less wellfreeloading-cover-image21-known musicians who lack the ability to sell-out arenas, the lack of compensation for air play can mean the difference between having a decent year or taking a day job.

Phantom Royalty Stream

David Lowery, the leader of two bands, Van Beethoven and Cracker, has become a celebrity among musicians, reports The New York Times. He has been speaking out about artists shrinking paychecks and the influence of Silicon Valley over copyright, economics and public discourse.

Lowery, a San Antonio native,  is no run of the mill song writer. He is a trained mathematician and has worked as a quant trading derivatives and providing financial analysis, and is a lecturer in the University of Georgia’s music business program.

His blog, The Trichordist, has documented the income statements associated with his and other musicians work. He claims that 1.1 million plays of one of his popular song, “Low,” on Pandora has netted him just $16.89.

Song writers, recording artists, visual artists and inventors are innovators connected in spirit but bound to different innovation rights. As innovators, they share common challenges for acceptance of their ideas and for economic survival among those who have no qualms about not paying them anything if they don’t have to.

Their  problems are fueled by the speed and accessibility of the Internet, which are both a boom to artists and thinkers and a threat. Consumers and businesses crave low-cost products, or better-still free ones. Companies that need to sell new and more appealing products have a ravenous appetite for inventions. Often, they are actually incremental advancements, or “re-invention”, which their internal R&D is only partially able to provide.

Patent holders can learn from musicians’ copyright battles with content providers.  The frequency and scope of invention infringement has grown, and routine abuse of patent holders’ rights, like downloading, has been as widely accepted.

Inventors and their advisers need to educate audiences about how the patent system works and how it must be protected from bad actors. They also need to show the problem has a human face, and that unauthorized patent use affects not just “eccentric” inventors and aggressive businesses, but consumers, jobs, and the ability of the U.S. to compete with other nations. Invention theft affects the quality of innovation itself.

There are those who would prefer to turn the story line into one about patent “trolls,” when it is really about business acting in bad faith to get the best deal on inventions or improvements that are not theirs.

Lowery’s blog is subtitled “Artists for an Ethical and Sustainable Internet.” Patent holders would be wise to consider adopting a similar tag line for the ethics associated with patent filing and patent quality.

At the Roots

Audiences need to know that unauthorized use of inventions and demonizing all patent enforcement leave many talented, necessary individuals and businesses out in the cold. Moreover, it weakens the DNA of innovation, which is not easily repaired.

Illustration credit: Slashgear.com; thetrichordist.com

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The NY Times Says Streaming Sticks it to Musicians

January 29, 2013 by Bruce Berman 0 Comments

Royalties from so-called legitimate Internet streaming sites, including Pandora and Spotify, pay most musicians less than a penny on a dollar of revenue generated.

In a page one article in today’s New York Times, “As Music Streaming Grows, Artists’ Royalties Slow to a Trickle,” the paper illustrates how cellist Zoe Keating received just $1,652.74 from Pandora over six months for her songs with they played more than 1.5 million times. On Spotify, wrote the Times, Keating netted just $547.71 for 131,000 plays or 0.42 per play.

The formula makes the old days of Tin Pan Alley look pretty good for struggling song writers and recording artists.  

zoeA post on Keating’s blog, “Internet Royalty Math Makes My Brain Hurt,” documents a similar experience with Soundexchange. Her post on Tumblr, “More About Data vs. Royalties,” is worth a look from anyone interested in IP rights and business. (In case you had not noticed, inventors don’t fare any better.)  

*     *     *

Fans need to remember that even streaming businesses like Pandora and Spotify, as opposed to Megaupload, which pays no royalties and was shut down by authorities, may be great for their personal library but not so good for musicians trying to make a living — and we’re not talking about the Adele and Rhianna.

Some say music streaming is merely a disruptive technology for delivering content people want in a manner they desire. With sufficient volume, it has been argued, royalty payments for top names will eventually catch up to where they were. Don’t bet on it.

Illustration source: concertlivewire.com; venturebeat.com

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