CMU Digest

CMU Digest 02.07.18: Chart, MMA, Prince, AEG, Beats

By | Published on Monday 2 July 2018

Dua Lipa / Official Charts Company

The key stories from the last week in the music business…

The UK’s Official Charts Company announced that video streams will be included in the country’s main singles chart. That means video streams from the likes of Spotify and Apple too, though it’s the introduction of YouTube data for the first time that is the big development. Any official music videos streamed on the YouTube platform will be included in the data crunched to make the big singles chart each week. [READ MORE]

The judiciary committee of the US Senate approved the Music Modernization Act, meaning the copyright reforming legislation can now go for a full vote. The act, which seeks to address various quirks of American copyright law, was amended a little in the upper house of Congress. In particular there will be increased oversight of the new mechanical rights collecting society the legislation will create. [READ MORE]

Sony Music announced a deal to represent Prince’s sound recordings catalogue. The Prince estate originally chose Universal Music to control the late musician’s recordings, but that deal fell apart because of confusion over what rights Warner Music already had. Warner signed a new deal with Prince a couple of years before his death. Sony says that the new arrangement will give it immediate access to albums released since 1995 and then, from 2021, US distribution rights to Prince’s most famous albums from the 1980s and early 1990s. [READ MORE]

AEG announced that its two London arena venues would partner with its ticketing business AXS on a new face value ticket resale marketplace. The announcement comes as The O2 and Wembley Arena end their partnerships with eBay’s secondary ticketing site StubHub. AXS isn’t the first ticketing firm to offer an approved resale service where tickets can only be sold on at face value (with a nominal admin fee), though the technology behind its new marketplace is arguably more sophisticated than what has gone before. [READ MORE]

Beats was ordered to pay $25.2 million in unpaid royalties to a businessman involved in the launch of the original Dr Dre-endorsed headphones. Beats founders Dre and Jimmy Iovine said that there one-time business partner was only due royalties on the specific headphone product he helped bring to market, but Steven Lamar said he was also due royalties on subsequent evolutions of that product. In a long-running legal battle he had demanded over $100 million in royalties, but a jury decided he was due $25.2 million. [READ MORE]

The big deals from the last seven days in the music business…
• PRS announced a deal with Auddly [INFO]
• Kilimanjaro’s owner sold its stake in Raymond Gubbay Ltd [INFO]
• Marshmello signed a publishing deal with Kobalt [INFO]



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