Is streaming a winner-take-all market? Bob Lefsetz recently implied that, and guest columnist Mike Spinelli offers strategic thoughts targeted to specialized streaming services. Rather than attract every listener in the world, optimize the service around core specialty audiences. Continue Reading
SoundCloud’s kettle boiled over this summer when major labels (“the majors”) started to enforce their intellectual property rights upsetting the service’s large community of Producers and DJs. After seven years of maintaining the same service, SoundCloud took drastic steps to change its design, and more importantly, its functionality. Many of the functionality changes likely occurred from the growing concern over potentially copyright-infringing works that inhabit the platform. Although SoundCloud has remedied the situation temporarily to satisfy the smaller artists, it could run into further problems down the road. Continue Reading
This guest column was contributed by Mike Spinelli, a third-year law student at Quinnipiac University School of law, where he is studying music transactions and music licensing. He previously worked at SoundExchange. Where does the future lie for music services — human curation of playlists, or data-driven music selection? Continue Reading