BPI boss fires shots at BBC about royalties for future streaming service

Earlier this week, the BBC unveiled its commitment to making its service more Internet-friendly, including plans for a streaming music service. Geoff Taylor, CEO of the BPI, addressed this as-yet non-existent streaming service by demanding that it pay to license the songs whenever it does come to be. “The starting point for some of the BBC’s suggestions around how such a service might work involved launching such a service but paying no money for it – and I just don’t think that’s viable,” Taylor said. Continue Reading

UK’s half-year data shows nearly 80% streaming growth

The British Phonographic Industry released half-year data about music sales in the UK. The report showed that there have been 11.5 billion tracks played in the first six months of 2015, compared with 14.8 billion plays in all of 2014. Dedicated audio streaming services see about 480 million streams a week. Stream Equivalent Album consumption for the first half was 11.49 million, up 79.5% from the year-ago period. Continue Reading

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RIAA and BPI have submitted 200 million URLs for Google takedowns

The RIAA and the BPI have issued their 200 millionth URL takedown request to Google. The RIAA has submitted 19,569 total requests and the BPI has made 295,730. These requests seek to remove pirated content from the web. The two record industry organizations for the U.S. and UK, respectively, have been pushing for the tech company to adopt stricter measures to prevent this type of music piracy. Continue Reading