YouTube yesterday announced deals with music publishers such as BMG Rights Management, Christian Copyright Solutions, ABKCO Music, Inc., Songs Music Publishing, Words & Music, Copyright Administration, Music Services, Reservoir Media Management, and Songs of Virtual. The new deals, along with the licenses from the publishers who opted into last year’s deal with the NMPA and Harry Fox Agency, enables YouTube to monetize nearly all of the user generated videos with music on YouTube. When publishers allow YouTube to run ads alongside user generated videos that incorporate their compositions, then the publishers, the songwriters they represent, and the record labels and artists using their compositions each receive a share of the revenue.
Imagem Music USA has signed a joint venture with the Cutcraft Music Group. Imagem Music is the pop music division of the Imagem Music Group (André de Raaff, co-founder). Home to the Elvis Presley and Sammy Cahn catalogues as well as such talent as Ludacris, Phil Collins, Genesis, Anna Nalick, Steve Robson, Jens Gad, Temper Trap, Hesta Prynn, Bombay Bicycle Club and more, Imagem Music has offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin and the Netherlands, and exclusive agents all over the world. The Cutcraft Music Group is headed by Katrina Sirdofsky who is the founder of Rebel Management and also serves as CEO of Custard Records and president of Coldwater Music Publishing/Sony/ATV.
Twitter recently announced a global partnership with Pepsi focusing on music; giving Twitter’s 140 million active users a unique and real-time way to discover and consume music. The partnership involves offering free music downloads, weekly music updates, and live streaming of concerts via Twitter. By following Pepsi’s Twitter account, Twitter users can now get access to free music downloads from Amazon MP3, and will receive messages about new and notable music using the #LiveforNow hashtag. Pepsi will also post a weekly video summary of music news based on an analysis of trending topics on Twitter. Followers also receive free download codes every week that they can then use towards more music in Amazon’s MP3 store.
Samsung announced the arrival of the much anticipated new Music Hub. The first completely integrated, all-in-one mobile music service. Initially available on the Samsung Galaxy S III and hitting European markets since yesterday, Music Hub (features here) vastly simplifies and enhances the everyday experience of listening to music. The new Music Hub service will be offered for free and also in a Premium version.
Despite ongoing lawsuits with major record labels and music publishers, Grooveshark is looking to diversify its product offering with the launch of a free music information tool called Beluga. Beluga combines Grooveshark’s in-house market research with the streaming service’s own data, providing music insights and allowing anyone to conduct in-depth research about a particular artist and their fans – completely free and with no registration required. Beluga conducts analysis to find correlations between artist affinity and their listener’s demographics, location, and survey responses. Beluga can help find statistically significant correlations between listening habits and brands, providing insight into what is trending in digital music consumption. Moreover, it can help in identifying typical demographic and psychographic characteristics of an artist’s or brand’s target audience.
SoundExchange is expanding its global reach with five new reciprocal agreements with record label collection societies in France, Spain, Sweden, Ireland and Jamaica. SoundExchange has also become the first U.S. performing rights organization (PRO) to drop it’s administrative fees on royalties collected for members from foreign PROs on or after January 1, 2012.
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