Explicação : Music Publishing E Royalties

Music publishing royalties explained: what is a mechanical royalty?

If you’re a songwriter, there are a number of different kinds of publishing royalties you can earn from the usage of your original music.

One of the big sources of publishing revenue is performance royalties, generated when your music is played on the radio, television, or in a live venue.

An even bigger source of income for songwriters (at least for the music industry at large) is the mechanical royalty, generated by the reproduction of your music in mechanical or virtual form, whenever CDs are manufactured, downloads are purchased, or your songs are streamed on-demand.

Mechanical royalties and independent songwriters

Wikipedia says:

The term “mechanical” and “mechanical license” has its origins in the “piano rolls” on which music was recorded in the early part of the 20th Century. Although its concept is now primarily oriented to royalty income from sale of compact discs (CDs), its scope is wider and covers any copyrighted audio composition that is rendered mechanically; that is, without human performers.

In a nutshell: every time a song you’ve written is manufactured to be sold in a CD, downloaded on a digital music retail site, or streamed through services like Spotify and Apple Music, you are owed a mechanical royalty. Traditionally, mechanical royalties have also been more difficult for independent songwriters to collect on their own, without the help of a publishing adminstrator. That’s where CD Baby Pro comes in (more on that later). 

Now for the longer explanation of mechanical royalties…

As a songwriter/publisher, you are owed a royalty every time your composition is reproduced (on vinyl, tape, CD, MP3, etc). In the United States, this royalty is generally equal to 9.1 cents per reproduced “copy” of that song, depending on the length of the song, regardless of whether those albums or singles are sold.

The mechanical royalty rate for interactive, on-demand streams through services like Spotify and Apple Music is far lower than 9.1¢. But mechanical royalties for global streaming can really add up — especially because they’re generated with every LISTEN, unlike the one-time mechanical royalty generated by a download purchase or CD manufacture.

In many cases, for every $100 your sound recording has generated on Spotify, there could be another $15 owed to you in (uncollected) mechanical royalties.

That’s YOUR money just sitting there, and Performing Rights Organizations such as ASCAP and BMI do NOT collect mechanical royalties, which is one of the big reasons a publishing rights administrator like CD Baby Pro can be so helpful for independent artists.

[Check out “3 ways to earn money from your music on Spotify.”]

But let’s get back to mechanical royalties for CD sales and downloads for a second…

If someone covers one of your songs and they manufacture 1000 CDs — they owe you $91, regardless of whether those CDs ever get purchased by customers. If they sell 100 MP3s of your song, they owe you $9.10.

You are also owed a mechanical royalty for the sales of your music on YOUR OWN albums. But here’s where things get a little virtual; if you’re acting as your own label and putting out music that you’ve written, you’ll effectively be paying that royalty to yourself from album proceeds.

At least that’s how it works in the US, where download retailers like iTunes and Amazon pass on that mechanical royalty to you as part of the net payment for the sale of the MP3. But in many countries outside the US, mechanical royalties are set aside BY the retailer, to be paid to collection societies who then distribute those royalties to publishers and writers. A similar system is set up for the payment of mechanical royalties generated by global streaming.

BUT again, performing rights organizations like ASCAP and BMI do NOT collect mechanical royalties. Their job is to collect performance royalties, NOT mechanicals. So…

How do you collect “foreign mechanicals” generated outside the US?

In order to collect international mechanical royalties (as well as mechanicals for both global and domestic streams) on your own, you’d need to register your music with many royalty collection societies around the world.

As our friend Justin Kalifowitz of SongTrust is fond of saying, you CAN do it yourself if you really want to — but you’ll probably have to stop making music for a while. Affiliating yourself and registering your songs directly with all the international collection societies would not only take hundreds of hours of paperwork and filling out online forms, but you’d need to be proficient in dozens of languages — or hire a translator. And who wants to do that when you’ve got gigs to play?

Adele “Skyfall” O Vocal Isolado - Video

Adele “Skyfall” Isolated Vocal

Adele is a phenomenon unlike any other in music business in at least the last 10 years. With sales of more than 100 million in a time when a million is a big deal, she’s definitely touched a lot of people with her music, and her approach to it. You can attribute at least some of this to the fact that she has some real chops, and this isolated vocal of “Skyfall” perfectly illustrates that. The track uses the “official acapella” from the studio recording, matched to her live performance on the Oscars. Here’s what to listen for.

1. First of all, Adele’s voice is bathed in a dark, slightly delayed reverb. The decay feels longer than it really is because of the amount of verb. Actually, it also has a bit of a midrange honk if you listen on headphones.

2. At the end of the chorus there’s a nice ping pong delay on the last word.

3. There’s actually several lead vocal tracks that overlap. That said, this vocal performance is pretty much perfect, which is somewhat different from other Adele hits that were more “organic” in that a few things were left in that might normally be fixed.

4. The background vocals are spread in slightly left and right to make room for the lead vocal.

5. Compression is used very nicely on the vocal track. You can occasionally hear it on the louder parts, but not so much that you’d ever hear it in the final mix.

Billboard-THR Compra Spin, Vibe e Stereogum Para Se Tornar A Maior Marca De Música Do Mundo

Billboard-THR Acquires Spin, Vibe and Stereogum to Become World's Largest Music Brand

The Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SpinMedia’s storied music assets Spin, Vibe, and Stereogum, establishing the world’s largest music brand by digital traffic, social reach, and audience share.

“In recent years, we set out to own the topic of music online, and the acquisition of these incredible music assets helps us do just that,” said Media Group co-president John Amato. “By making these storied brands part of our family, The Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group will be able to fully capture the value of millennials and music, and continue to strengthen its leadership position in this critical arena.”

“Bringing in these historic brands under Billboard gives us the chance to serve passionate music audiences from rock to urban to pop in one massive portfolio,” said Media Group co-president Janice Min. "The power and scale of these combined, complementary digital assets gives us the ability to deliver even more ways to reach our audience through TV, video, live events, and social and online media."

SpinMedia CEO Stephen Blackwell will be named Chief Strategy Officer of the newly acquired company and will oversee revenue, digital growth, and product, reporting to Amato.

The deal expands The Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group’s online audience to 45 million readers a month, strengthening its reach among social-media savvy millennials who value listening to music digitally and live experiences in equal measure. The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard both launched aggressive moves into video earlier this year, with the brands currently delivering over 100 million video views monthly. The Media Group has also partnered with Facebook to create custom content for the recently launched Facebook Live.

In all, the acquisition will boost the Media Group’s revenues to more than $100 million a year, two-thirds of which will come from digital and video.

SPIN magazine became fully digital in late 2012 after BuzzMedia acquired the 27-year-old publication and rebranded it as SpinMedia. It bought the hip-hop and R&B magazine VIBE and its digital properties the following year, growing its footprint in music and entertainment.

Alicia Keys Sobre Composição: "Ele vem de algo que você não pode conter" - Video

Alicia Keys on songwriting: 'It comes from something you can't contain'

Fifteen Grammys and six studio albums into her career, Alicia Keys still hasn't cracked the formula for a hit song.

"I just don't know how to do that -- I just don't! And I've tried!" the singer said ahead of a performance at New York's Apollo Theater. 

"I've been like, 'Okay, I'm going to take those same chords that I did before, but I am going to play them differently, which is going to make me write something different,' and it just doesn't arrive because you are trying." 

Instead, every new track is a fresh start. Where she typically writes alone at her piano, for her latest album, "Here," Keys decided to collaborate with a team, gathering "a hub of interesting, creative people." 

Read: A night alone in St Paul's Cathedral

"Put all of us in a room together and give us nothing but space, an opportunity, and all of a sudden boom! When you write a great song, you don't know how you got there." 

Finding release 

Alicia Keys performs in Times Square in New York City on October 9, 2016 

Regardless of who else is involved, Keys stresses that genuine feeling is at the core of any good song. Musically, she strives for a striking tension between the bassline, the melody, and the way the song is sung that ends in a feeling of relief. Lyrically, it's about channeling emotions. 

Read: Risqué portraits and Hollywood secrets from photographer Marc Hom

"Songwriting comes from an emotion. It comes from a feeling. It comes from something you can't contain, something that makes you cry, something that makes you laugh, something that you can't describe because it is like a stone in your chest," she says. "It's some kind of emotion, and it provokes you to find the words."

As 3 Previsões Da Indústria Da Música Que Falharam Em 2016

3 Music Industry Predictions That Flopped In 2016

Daniel Ek, CEO of Swedish music streaming service Spotify, gestures as he makes a speech at a press conference in Tokyo on September 29, 2016. Spotify kicked off its services in Japan on September 29.

For such an erratic industry, music loves its predictions. From pondering the Grammys to calling the next big hit or the next technological innovation roadmap, music business executives, artists and commentators are eager to sidestep their own surprises—with mixed success.

Some predictions for the music industry in 2016 stayed strong. Yes, touring is still a cash cow. Yes, curation is ever more important for music discovery, with an estimated 1 in 5 streams occurring on a playlist. Yes, streaming services are aggressively creating original content (and collaborating with labels in the process).

Other issues remain more ambiguous, particularly with regard to emerging technologies. How many people will actually cash into virtual reality music experiences? What impact, if any, will autonomous vehicles, chatbots and alternative advertising have on music companies' bottom lines?

Finally, a handful of industry predictions, many of which revolved around streaming, fell flat this year. Here's where we missed, and why:

1. The industry didn't kill freemium. In May 2015, rumorsbegan to spread that Spotify would limit its free, ad-supported tier to a three-month trial, facing financial pressures from major labels and following in the footsteps of competitors like Apple Music. While the rumor has since been debunked, publications such as Rolling Stone and Hypebot posited that free streaming would take its "last breath" in 2016.

In fact, freemium models not only remain alive and well, but are also arguably benefiting the music industry at large. Warner Music Group recently reported the highest annual revenue figures in eight years, driven by a 23.1% increase in streaming dollars—a significant rise considering that most users on multi-tier services like Spotify, Deezer and Pandora still stream for free.

Perhaps the largest burden lies not on the artists and labels, but rather on the freemium services themselves: to date, no such service has turned a profit.

2. Albums didn't die. Ever since iTunes launched in 2001, music industry professionals and commentators alike have prognosticated the death of the album. Unbundling otherwise premium-priced CDs into individual tracks that could be bought for 99 cents rendered physical album formats essentially irrelevant, undermining one of the industry's key revenue streams at the time.

Streaming was expected to take this effect one step further, eliminating altogether the need for listeners to "shop" for songs to purchase, embracing a buffet-style consumption model instead. Several electronic artists like Flume and The Chainsmokers have taken note, abandoning the traditional album format for a singles- and EP-oriented approach to music releases. More regularity allows not just for more experimentation with individual works, but also for more visibility; as radio personality Nic Harcourt told Billboard, "releasing singles every month or two keeps them constantly engaged with their fans."

Yet, 2016 also gave us some of the longest, boldest albums in recent music history, all of which became successful because of streaming, not despite it. Beyoncé's Lemonade, a Tidal exclusive, featured a whopping 60 writers and 22 producers. Frank Ocean's Blonde, The Weeknd's Starry and Drake's VIEWS clocked in at 60, 69 and 81 minutes respectively, and each nailed multiple songs onto the Billboard Hot 100.

Indeed, in the streaming era, longer albums not only usher in a new "playlist aesthetic" catered to digitally-native listeners, but also make economic sense. More tracks lead to more streams overall, which helps performances on the charts. Some have criticised this strategy for giving mainstream artists an unfair economic advantage, working against the theory that streaming is more beneficial for artists in the long tail.

3. Hi-res audio didn't catch on. The past few years have seen a growth in the number of high-resolution streaming options from the likes of Tidal and Qobuz, offering a lossless listening experience for $19.99 a month as opposed to the standard $9.99. In January 2015, Neil Young famously launched his hi-res Pono Player, which went on the market for $400 apiece. The assumption was that audiophiles—the consumer segment willing to invest hundreds of even thousands of dollars in high-quality headphones and audio systems—were a particularly important type of "superman," and would be willing to jump in masses on the opportunity to experience lossless music online.

As of May 2016, however, Tidal has only around 4.2 million subscribers, dwarfed by Spotify and Apple Music's subscription numbers, and likely a small fraction of these subscribers are paying a premium for hi-fi. French-orientated Qobuz went into receivership in late 2015, and has yet to enter the U.S. market. The Pono Player is still not a household name, and the accompanying PonoMusic online store has been out of commission since July 2016. Singling an even more competitive hi-res streaming market, Young recently revealed in an interview with Rolling Stonethat he was working with a company in Singapore to pivot his company from a hardware player to a streaming service.

Hi-res evangelism has seen a bit more success in the form of artist and B2B services. LANDR—a freemium algorithmic mastering tool that charges anywhere from $0 a month for two lo-fi Mp3s to $25 a month for unlimited WAV files—syncs with SoundCloud, while Aftermaster Audio Labs has a partnership with independent distributor TuneCore starting at $75 per song. The 2017 installment of the Consumer Electronics Show will feature the first-ever Hi-Res Audio Pavilion, featuring product demonstrations sponsored by the Digital Entertainment Group, a trade organization that includes all three major record labels. The biggest challenge for these organizations may be to convince the average music consumer to join their cause.

Os 10 Albums Mais Populares Da Apple Music Em 2016

The 10 most popular albums on Apple Music in 2016

It's been a good year for hip-hop. 

Apple has released its year-end lists for the top music, movies, apps, and more, and hip-hop albums swept several of the top spots. The top 10 albums were ranked based on downloads and streams through Apple Music. 

Several relative unknowns cracked the top 10, including singer/songwriter/rapper Bryson Tiller and breakout duo Twenty One Pilots. A little-known musical known as "Hamilton" also managed to sneak on the list. 

Here is the full list of Apple's top 10 albums of 2016:

10. Panic! At The Disco, "Death Of A Bachelor"

Isaac Brekken/Getty

9. Twenty One Pilots, "Blurryface"

Getty

8. Bryson Tiller, "T R A P S O U L"

Theo Wargo/Getty

7. Original Broadway cast of Hamilton, "Hamilton"

Theo Wargo / Getty

6. Chris Stapleton, "Traveler"

Rick Diamond/Getty

5. Justin Bieber, "Purpose" (Deluxe)

Keork Djansezian/Reuters

4. Frank Ocean, "Blonde"

Jason Merritt/Getty

3. Adele, "25"

Gareth Cattermole/ Getty Images

2. Rihanna, "ANTI" (Deluxe)

Jason Kempin/Getty

1. Drake, "Views"

Jack Plunkett/AP

O Piano Mais Antigo Do mundo Continua Soando Muito Bem! - Video

The World’s Oldest Piano Still Sounds Pretty Good

Many times we take the grand piano for granted, thinking that it’s been around forever in musical history. The fact of the matter is that it’s a somewhat new instrument in the grand scheme of things, being invented in the early 1700s by expert harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori. The harpsichord predated the piano by about 300 years.

That being said, there are 3 pianos still in existence made by Cristofori, and the video below features the oldest one, made in 1720. What’s more, it still sounds better than you’d expect an almost 300 year old instrument to sound.

When I listened to this video I first thought that I was listening to a harpsichord, since it had a lot of those high harmonics associated with the instrument. The piano is a lot different though, and quite an improvement in that the strings are struck, and not plucked like the harpsichord. As a result, the player is able to play with dynamics, while the notes played on the harpsichord are all at the same volume.

Regardless, enjoy listening to this priceless instrument, which is part of the collections at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Go here for more on the differences between a piano and harpsichord.