Music Publishing News 12.23.16: Nielsen Buys Gracenote • Facebook vs Publishers • Loudr Pays Out $1M
Nielsen Co. has purchased Tribune Media Co.’s Gracenote video, music, and sports for $560 million (in cash). Metadata giant Gracenote, acquired by Tribune Media in 2014, provides reference information for more than 200 million music tracks.
John Batter, Gracenote’s CEO, said, “Nielsen is a natural home for Gracenote. Both companies have entertainment data at their core and have spent years delivering services to the world’s top media brands. Bringing together our data for driving discovery and tune-in with Nielsen’s deep insights about what people are watching, listening to and buying makes a formidable combination.”
• Unsigned artists are begging Facebook to reach an agreement with music publishers on the use of copyrighted content on the social media platform. In October, covers of popular songs began being pulled down from Facebook following a spate of copyright infringement notifications from music rights-holders, and the takedowns have only gotten more vigorous since then. In the meantime, artists who have had great success posting covers on Facebook–like UK-based, unsigned artist Samantha Harvey, who has 1.97 million “likes” on her official Facebook page–have been encouraging their fans to migrate to YouTube.
• Mechanical licensing and administration service Loudr has distributed over $1 million in royalties to music publishers worldwide over the last few years. Since the sale of their digital distribution business earlier this year, Loudr has focused on solving the problem of how to identify music publishers, songwriters, and other rightsholders and issue royalty payments and statements for the use of their compositions. Loudr CEO Chris Crawford said, “Loudr’s goal is to provide infrastructure to address rights and royalties in the real world. Since we’re well past the brick-and-mortar era of music distribution, it’s important to make sure that the systems for paying creators and rights holders keeps up with the pace of digital music.”
We would be willing to donate $2.00 from the sale of every book that originated from your website and we would also put a link on our website to join blog. We are at http://www.audinova.ca/master_of_reality.html
This is the object of the exercise. We have to start taking action NOW. The window of opportunity is getting smaller every year we let the powers that be, decide the fate of mother earth. Big money does not care because they are drunk with greed and power. The result of their myopia is brutally assaulting our planet without regard to their dangerous behaviors. We need to create an army of intelligent, strong and principled activists, to turn this very serious situation around. Big money is trying to squeeze more trillions out of their industries that are poisoning our planet. They are taking a very dangerous gamble and they are known to be big risk takers, but they do not have the right to gamble with the lives of our families.
Nobody gave them that right. The Earth does not have limitless resources and it can only handle so much stress before she begins to falter and go terminal. We have maybe 15 or 20 years until we hit the wall and the point of no return. We are at a turning point. If we can get enough people to cultivate their power, become extremely successful and flex their muscle to turn this around we may have a chance. You have all the tools to do this and they are all free. That’s right, all your power tools are free. The book is the only cost and it provides the funds to further our cause. Tell as many people as you can about this system of aggregating power, wisdom and influence.