SF Music Tech
We can't talk about streaming without discussing the biggest steaming service of all, YouTube
with YouTube you can stream anything whether it has been released or not,
we're going to need to find other ways for revenue to come to artists without requiring paywalls
I think spotify is going to convert the free tier to paid, but how are we going to deal with youtube
there is a lot of argument about the per-play rate, but what matters is the size of the pool of money
it's not just about the per play rate, it's about where else can the revenue come from to the artists
where else can we make money within the streaming ecosystem - tickets, merch other ways
Does anyone use Tidal? Anyone? Bueller?
A lot of VCs are very down on music, but we have invested in a lot of music startups and made money on all of them
I see a lot of seed stage music companies; taking VC money is an evil prospect. We will kill innovative businesses
If you're going to make a 10 million dollar company, don't take VC money, take seed instead.
The arts have always been a place of inspiration, using each others work and building on it
so many artists put off creating the metadata until later. do it early, and establish who wrote it for the split
while they are waiting for the split you are not getting paid. have the discussion about what percentage that you own
if 2 people in this room make 1 song and make 1 recording it's not a problem, but if you have 30 million…
once you start committing data to multiple databases it gets messed up
we spend the rest of our lives trying to make sense of all these poorly integrated databases
every music platform has its own database of content, people are typing stuff in, and computers are matching it
unlike the movie business you have to have a unique name, that isn't true of music
lost fo duplicate names, and then there is the band "the the"
what we want to see is better tagging around remixes and derivative works
a big part of our platform is audio fingerprinting; but differentiating similar pieces of work is still hard
we can distinguish recordings if we here a complete recording, but making it work with remixes and mashups is harder
we take DJ mixes or remixed songs and break them down to 3 second or 6 second blocks and fingerprint those
then we can clear those through the automated licensing, and then unlock monetisation for mixed content
the IFPI says 30 million listen to remixed music a week, primarily through unlicensed sites
i'm an artist, I love soundcloud because I can put stiff up and people like me
only youtube has a contentid that works now, and soundcloud doesn't. it's hard to identify it
we believe strongly that it should be centralised so there is one place for creators to clear sound
if I upload my content to soundcloud, how can I get paid, there is no money going there
instead they put a block system rather than a identification system - you need people can leave the stuff up
100 million views on a videogame montage, boom it's gone the next day
when you uploaded your drum track soundcloud you checked a box where you said you own it
we don't want to create millions of new infringers each year
we want to enable people to set rules on remixes, on sync or in certain territories
I see a lot of my friends remixing their own and others work and having lots of fun
I want 3 options: 1. put my name in the song - which is great if you're skrillex
2. or maybe I'd rather just sell the sample to the remixer
or 2. I can take a percentage of royalties as that might be worth more. can you build it?
we can apply a robust set of rules eg it's on for hollywood records and off for epic records
the music industry has infrastcruture that runs in straight lines, but you can make a new route overnight
I spend years learning to play music, months recording and composing, and then 5 minutes on the ISRC bad data
that inaccurate data lasts forever. we need to remap those bad ISRC's back to better data
the asset won't phone home if it is not identified properly
the other thing that happens is that each service has their own database. if you can match 85% you're a magician
if you go overseas, you get a katakana appendage on your song name and the matches all break
and when that japanese company goes global, the metadata gets scrambled again
the most obvious one is to enter your metadata correctly; what else?
you want to get your audio fingerprint into the Gracenote database with the right information
cover songs is a real interesting area - if they record it with an acoustic guitar on youtube we don't know
rumblefish has a technology called a radkey that shows that tghts have been obtained
I find it very satisfied to create recognition for people's creations
is our goal to get people paid for recorded music through technology, or to unlock other sources of revenue?
we are migrating to a world where we are collecting pennies, and relying on a global scale for volume
is bitcoin a viable solution for sending small amounts?
our system is blockchain based, which makes it transparent and works for small payments
it is odd that songwriters are more regulated than weapons manufacturers in this country
you're living on an island - anyone can bittorrent anything; you need to make it easier to buy than to steal
I find it a bit of a convenient pass to say that stealing is too easy
itunes is a virus on my computer, it takes over the music. I refuse to use it
it's erroneous to say we haven't made legal access to music easier
it is easier to spotify than to torrent; youtube is easier still. A lot of artists give it away free and sell tickets
the Ableton culture today is great you want a million kids making a million mixes and not being knocked down
we need to enable the ableton
we made the mix transparency report today http://www.dubset.com/2015-mix-transparency-report/ that shows the most mixed songs
we found David Guetta in 52% of mixes
we want to make the registry open source and available to the public -now they are all private
we're talking about opening up the walls and creating things that don't exist today
at the moment all these platforms do it themselves behind their own walls. the plays are valuable statistics
some of it is business people worried about competition
transparency often means "i want what you have and I don't want to pay you"
I think blockchain has a big role to play here to drive transparency
why aren't we asking the copyright office to create the central registry?
assume the copyright office was interested in that, it is woefully underfunded
people file papers with the copyright office to stake their claims
this si still paper, it is not digitised and I have to send
its very hard to do this.once I explain ti to people they realise how hard it is and run away
was the Berne convention a mistake? should registration be statutory?
we do register copyrights, but there is so much created nwo we can't keep up
there was an initiative to create the global repertoire database, which collapsed last year. $100M
I'm hearing that artists should do more, but none of my bandmates want to talk about data. How do we do that?
there is an initiative to capture credits from protools and so on directly - look into those and see what is up to it
when you do your credits use actual words 'Producer' - the publishing compny copyright name is hard
I work with a publishing company called p'twgs - that is hard to find
one thing the music industry has been poor at is creating standards - we need to capture it at the point of creation
there is an organisation called ddex to create data exchange standards ddex.net/rin is in protools etc
go and get an ISNI - international standard name identifier
one uplifiting thing each - go
we're at the beginning of the second ecosystem of music - don't give up we want to help artists
I've been in the data business for 18 years and I just figured out what I am doing now
the tools for creation and distribution have been democratised. we have been behind. we are working on it