Takeaway Takeover - July
Synch Suffering, User-Centric Winners & Losers, Why Can't Musicians Strike?
This is your weekly reminder that The Cadence now offers premium content to paid subscribers.
Next week, we’ll be dropping our Atmos Producers Roundtable, featuring three of LA’s best recording professionals — Kevin Moo, Dean Reid and Steve Genewick — discussing what’s next for spatial audio. Here’s a SNEAK PREVIEW.
Right now, we encourage you to watch full-length video interviews with recent guests like Bustle Digital Group president Jason Wagenheim, Vevo founder Rio Caraeff and Beatport CEO Robb McDaniels.
TAKEAWAY TAKEOVER
Salient statements from this week’s music news.
1. What the Hollywood Strikes Mean for the $2B Music Synch Business
Music publishers and the music supervisors they sell to are becoming collateral damage in the WGA x SAG strikes.
Takeaway: For labels and publishers, the key to surviving the Hollywood strikes may be diversification — many are looking to advertisements, reality and unscripted TV shows, documentaries and overseas films to bolster synch revenue.
2. The Downsides of User-Centric Streaming Royalties
A new report suggests that close to a third of artists would “win” under user-centric royalties, while another third would lose.
Takeaway: This is a case of “Be careful what you wish for,” in that sometimes what seems like a perfect option on the surface doesn’t yield the results you’ll think you’ll get.
3. Spotify Price Rise Reaction – and Possible Consequences
Reaction to the long-awaited Spotify price increase has been muted. Should it have happened much sooner?
Takeaway: There’s a surprising amount of socio-economic interests, pressures and perspectives to keep in mind when discussing a relative small hike in individual-platform subscription fees, which – again – is why Spotify held out until it was sure that the price rise would not be considered a consumer problem.
4. Aslice Added Its First Performing Rights Org
The voluntary system for DJs to pay producers whose music they play has launched a pilot program with SOCAN to add PRO payments to the pile.
Takeaway: Connecting to an existing PRO is promising as a two-way street. It could potentially offer more success for both Aslice and more accuracy for the traditional PROs. Frankly, one of the things the PROs are worst at is accurately collecting data from DJs – which is funny because it’s simultaneously the one performance that has a huge digital data trail.
5. Musicians Deal With Stingy Streamers and AI Threats, Too. So Why Aren’t They on Strike?
Decades of hostile laws and internal fracturing have left musicians without a viable union that can legally organize.
Takeaway: A few in-progress bills would open up significant new paths for organizing and create pressure for better pay. A broad-based labor bill like the PRO Act would expand workers’ rights to organize in ways that would help musicians too.
6. What Could Apple’s Vision Pro Mixed-Reality Headset Mean for Music Production?
Spatial monitoring, VR studios and even virtual DJ decks could all become commonplace if Apple’s vision succeeds.
Takeaway: Apple’s clearly not shying away from more hands-on experiences with Logic Pro, either. Last month, it announced Logic Pro for iPad, which is almost a complete port of the desktop DAW to iPadOS. One might wager that, if Vision Pro is a success, the brand will look to ‘spatialise’ its flagship creator apps, Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro.
This is your weekly reminder that The Cadence now offers premium content to paid subscribers.
Next week, we’ll be dropping our Atmos Producers Roundtable, featuring three of LA’s best recording professionals — Kevin Moo, Dean Reid and Steve Genewick — discussing what’s next for spatial audio. Here’s a SNEAK PREVIEW.
Right now, we encourage you to watch full-length video interviews with recent guests like Bustle Digital Group president Jason Wagenheim, Vevo founder Rio Caraeff and Beatport CEO Robb McDaniels.