Business News Education & Events The Great Escape 2018

CMU Insights launches two new research projects at The Great Escape 

By | Published on Monday 21 May 2018

Book stack with headphones

During The Great Escape last week, CMU Insights launched two major new research projects. One putting the spotlight on music education in the UK, and the other setting out to map the digital music supply chain for the first time.

CMU Insights has teamed up with Urban Development and BIMM for the ‘Redefining Music Education’ project. The Education Conference that kicked of the TGE Convention last week was designed to both launch and inform that research.

Ahead of last week’s conference, CMU Insights began mapping music education in its widest sense across England, from what happens in schools, through college and university, and extra-curricular programmes, as well as industry-led initiatives, internships and apprenticeships, and continued professional development. Concurrent to that, CMU Insights has also been busy identifying the plethora of music careers available, and the skills and knowledge required to succeed in those careers.

Last Wednesday’s conference put the spotlight on many of the different segments of music education identified and some of the career routes, speaking to people involved in each of them. Based on those conversations, CMU Insights, Urban Development and BIMM will now investigate more in-depth the link between music education and music careers, with the aim of reporting back at the second edition of the Music Education Conference in a year’s time.

You can download the slides CMU Insights presented at The Education Conference hereand find out more about the ‘Redefining Music Education’ project here.

Meanwhile, CMU Insights has been commissioned by the Association Of Independent Music to map the digital supply chain, and that project was formally launched at AIM House at The Great Escape on Friday afternoon.

This project will put the spotlight on music distribution. We know distributors remain key business partners for most independent record companies. But the role of the distributor has changed a lot over the last fifteen years, and not just because they are now mainly distributing digital content rather than physical product.

The ‘Mapping The Digital Supply Chain’ project is reviewing the music distribution sector with a view to helping labels make more informed decisions when choosing their partners. That review is already underway, and the next phase of the project will involve a survey of the AIM membership about what services they need from their distributors, and how they go about choosing which companies to work with.

You can download the slides CMU Insights presented at AIM House here and find out more about the ‘Mapping The Digital Supply Chain’ project here.

In addition to these two new research projects, CMU Insights is also embarking on phase four of the ‘Dissecting The Digital Dollar’ project with the Music Managers Forum, as revealed in the CMU Great Escape Special magazine distributed at TGE.

Building on three years of activity explaining how the streaming business works, phase four will do two things. First, managers will be encouraged to assess the labels and distributors they work with based on the MMF Transparency Index published last year. And secondly, the spotlight will fall on the song rights sides of streaming.

When it comes to how songwriters are paid when their music is streamed there are added complications caused by compulsory licensing, the split between mechanical and performing rights, the involvement of the collecting societies, and music data issues.

Phase four of ‘Digital Dollar’ will map how the songwriters’ royalties flow, including how money passes between different societies around the world; the territorial nature of music publishing having proven to be a particular challenge in the streaming domain, and another way songs differ from recordings. The aim is to identify all the key issues that occur along the way, including data, deductions and delays.

For more information on the ‘Digital Dollar’ project, or to buy the book that summarises all the work done to date, click here.



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