2

In historic ruling, Copyright Royalty Board dramatically raises royalties for streaming services

Posted on by Anna Washenko

The Copyright Royalty Board has announced the new rates for mechanical royalties to be paid by streaming music services. As announced on Jan. 27, streaming platforms will pay out royalties to songwriters and composers as a share of their revenue. By 2022, the share for mechanical royalties will be 15.1% of the streaming platform’s revenue. Read on for the full rate ruling and reactions from both publishers’ and songwriters’ organizations. Continue Reading →

More records broken by Drake. Is the singles chart broken too?

Posted on by Anna Washenko

Drake has a new single, and after less than a week, it has broken multiple streaming records. His track “God’s Plan” now holds the title for Spotify’s and Apple Music’s one-day streaming records. A single breaking records on that scale would have been a major deal a few years back. Now, it’s more surprising if a new release from Drake doesn’t meet those milestones. That trend indicates that it’s time to change how we’re using chart rankings. Continue Reading →

1

Scripps reshapes for the 21st century: cutbacks coming; radio laid off too

Posted on by Brad Hill

The venerable E.W. Scripps Company, a multimedia national player in newspapers, radio, television, and digital media, has announced a tectonic and identity-changing restructure plan. As with many corporate reinventions, headcount will be reduced over 12-18 months, costs will be lowered, technology will be centralized, resources will be optimized across divisions. And radio will be ditched entirely. Continue Reading →

Podtrac releases December 2017 rankings for publishers and podcasts

Posted on by Anna Washenko

Podtrac has published its podcast ranking charts for December 2017. Measured listening rose 93% year-on-year for the period, although December did see a slight drop of 7% in total global unique streams and downloads from November. Each of the publishers also posted dips in their audiences for December over November, a common trend in end-of-year listening. Continue Reading →