Tidal — the music streaming service owned by Jack Dorsey’s Block payment processing company — is launching a royalty-tracking toolkit for songwriters. The new feature lets authors organize disparate publisher information in one place. “Songwriters juggle a mix of collection societies, publishing platforms, royalty management services, streaming services, and single-purpose apps to manage their royalties, careers, and catalog,” explains the company, which claims to be the first platform to serve songwriters “throughout the full writing career cycle.” Tidal has partnered with performing rights organization AllTrack to handle the backend. Continue reading Tidal, AllTrack Team to Provide Songwriter Royalty Snapshots

Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record company, has licensed its music catalog to Facebook. The deal, which focuses on the music in user-generated videos, covers songs that will be used in the background on videos and so-called social experiences on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Oculus. For Facebook, the deal is aimed at encouraging users to post more videos, key to the company’s current video-centric strategy. A day before this deal was struck, Universal also reached an agreement with YouTube. Continue reading Facebook, Universal Music Ink Licensing Deal for User Videos

Warner Music Group, which has ownership stakes in streaming services, will now share revenue with artists if and when those services go public or are sold. Following Warner’s lead, Sony Music confirmed it would do the same. Analysts believe the move is an attempt to woo artists who receive miniscule returns from streaming. Two other trends leave musicians out in the cold: royalties are often not pegged to a specific song and record labels have traded more generous royalty rates for part ownership of streaming services. Continue reading Warner, Sony Commit to Divvy Spotify Sales Gains with Artists

Pandora Media has ended its ongoing legal battles with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) over royalty rights, without disclosing the details of their new licensing agreement. Pandora previously licensed both performing-rights group’s catalogs based on rates that had been determined by the U.S. District Court in Manhattan that sets music royalty fees when the parties can’t agree. ASCAP and BMI currently represent a combined collection of 20 million songs. Continue reading Pandora Ends Long Fight with ASCAP, BMI Over Royalty Rates

Apple Music, the highly-anticipated $10 per month streaming music service, is launching this month with a free three-month trial for music fans. Last week, Apple’s Robert Kondrk said that the company was planning to pay 71.5 percent of subscription revenue to all music owners. However, Kondrk also noted that Apple would not be paying owners during the three-month trial period. Following criticism by Taylor Swift and others, Apple changed its plans. Apple’s Eddy Cue quickly explained via Twitter that Apple would make sure that artists are paid. Continue reading Apple Music to Pay Royalties During New Service Trial Period

ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) reported having its best year to date in 2014. The not-for-profit performance-rights organization, which collects royalties on behalf of over 500,000 musical artists and more than 10 million songs, collected a little over $1 billion in revenue for 2014. ASCAP said that it had improved its efforts in identifying songs being played via streaming services and in return created opportunities to pay more artists for their work. Continue reading ASCAP Turns to Streaming Services for Collection of Royalties