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Hello all -
Apple is a company that has always struggled with social. Time and again it has attempted to roll out some level of social network function into its ecosystem, and each time it has failed. Today the same fate has befallen its Connect element of Apple Music... but ironically it feels like the long game here is one in which social is perhaps not something the company has much desire for anyway. Look at Tim Cook's remarks regarding Facebook and ad businesses in general and it is clear that Apple have established a new dimension to their brand positioning: privacy. Ergo, on some levels it might stand to reason that the company isn't the place to lead on any matters social.
Elsewhere, Tencent's IPO appears to be off to a solid start, giving some a chance to highlight how Spotify is currently comparing. Right now, the answer is 'not good', but as MBW highlights, the latter's share prices have been very much on a constant up-and-down cycle for some time now. Ergo, Spotify may be down for a while now - and largely due to wider global factors rather than the company's own actions - but I would imagine it will bounce back soon enough.
Finally, one article raise a question that I'd flagged earlier this week with my team: just how GDPR-compliant is Blockchain? No one appears to know for sure, but it is certainly something I'd like to see clarified. The story overlaps nicely with another piece below regarding GDPR and adtech, underlining how the fog may soon be lifting as various court cases conclude and in doing so determine a more solid stance on what companies can and cannot do. No bad thing at all...
Have a great weekend,
D.
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JOB ALERT! Our friends at Big Dipper Management are looking for a new Junior Assistant to join their team. "The job is a catch-all of everything a management company does, which is pretty much everything bar making the music. Duties include (but are not limited to) booking travel/studios, song registration/metadata, organising meetings/itineraries, talking to manufacturers re: records/merch, understanding social media/streaming services, visa applications, expenses and sometimes making the tea. We have a great roster, including Sigur Rós, Jónsi, Alex Somers, JFDR, Sons of Raphael, James Canty, Kjartan Sveinsson, Paul Corley and Sigur Rós label imprint Krunk. Salary to be assessed according to aptitude and experience." Sound like your thing? Contact John Best via john@wearebigdipper.com for more info! As ever, feel free to spread word privately. Thanks!
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MBW further reported on Spotify’s tumbling share price on November 12, and that the firm was worth less than $24bn in terms of market cap value for the first time since its New York Stock Exchange IPO in April. Its market cap has since sunk by another $1bn-plus. From Spotify’s peak in late July to yesterday’s NYSE close, the company’s market cap had fallen by more than $12bn. At the time of writing (9:30am ET, December 14) Spotify opened the day’s trading even lower, at $123.85.M
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-share-price-falls-to-all-time-low-of-125-55-as-market-cap-hits-22-7bn/
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In revamping artist listings on Apple Music, the company is removing Connect posts from artists’ pages – effectively killing off a major part of Apple Music‘s social features. The company introduced Connect with the launch of Apple Music back in 2015, to let artists reach out to fans directly by posting updates to a feed. However, after an initial flurry of activity, posts from artists soon dried up. In 2016, Apple removed the dedicated Connect tab from the app, and moved it to the ‘For You’ section.
https://thenextweb.com/apple/2018/12/14/apple-music-is-dropping-its-connect-social-features/
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So when Spotify finally launches in India, expect a series of global cultural aftershocks. Spotify is unlikely to covert that many premium subscribers – except via telco bundles – but it is likely to build a big free user base. And when that happens expect T-Series to take centre stage with Guru Randhawato be the most streamed artist globally by 2020…?
https://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/2018/12/13/soon-to-be-the-biggest-ever-youtube-channel-t-series-may-also-be-about-to-reshape-global-culture/
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General data protection regulation (GDPR) and blockchain is one of the industry’s most contentious debates at the moment. Some believe that public permissionless blockchains cannot be GDPR compliant, and that private blockchains might be the answer to blockchain’s regulatory woes. Even so, private blockchains bring into question the very meaning of what a blockchain is. There is no simple answer.
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/12/14/blockchains-privacy-by-design-gdpr/
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Reset the “days since the last Facebook privacy scandal” counter, as Facebook has just revealed a Photo API bug gave app developers too much access to the photos of up to 5.6 million users. The bug allowed apps users had approved to pull their timeline photos to also receive their Facebook Stories, Marketplace photos, and most worryingly, photos they’d uploaded to Facebook but never shared. Facebook says the bug ran for 12 days from September 13th to September 25th. Facebook tells TechCrunch it discovered the breach on September 25th, and informed the European Union’s privacy watchdog the Office Of The Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC) on November 22nd. The IDPC has begun a statuatory inquiry into the breach.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/14/facebook-photo-bug/
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Because if your service or app relies on obtaining consent to process EU users’ personal data — as many free at the point-of-use, ad-supported apps do — then the GDPR states consent must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous. That means you can’t bundle multiple uses for personal data under a single opt-in. Nor can you obfuscate consent behind opaque wording that doesn’t actually specify the thing you’re going to do with the data. You also have to offer users the choice not to consent. So you cannot pre-tick all the consent boxes that you really wish your users would freely choose — because you have to actually let them do that. It’s not rocket science but the pushback from certain quarters of the adtech industry has been as awfully predictable as it’s horribly frustrating.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/13/this-early-gdpr-adtech-strike-puts-the-spotlight-on-consent/
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Earlier this year, Apple Music launched some of its top charts as playlist series. Today, YouTube is doing something similar. The company announced it’s making its YouTube Charts available as playlists in YouTube Music to users across the 29 markets where the music service is live. Each market will receive five of these “charts playlists” — three specific to their country, and two global lists, the company says. The Top 100 Songs and the Top 100 Music Videos will be offered both as local and global playlists, while the Top 20 Trending Songs will be offered as a local playlist.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/13/youtube-music-turns-its-top-charts-into-playlists/
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SoundCloud has rolled out its first DJ performance software integration with Serato. The move, announced in a blog post on Wednesday (December 12), follows the announcement in October that the platform had partnered with six DJ software companies, including Native Instruments, Serato, Virtual DJ, DEX3, Mixvibes and Hercules. According to SoundCloud, the launch marks the first time DJs will have ‘immediate access’ to SoundCloud streaming catalog directly through professional DJ software.
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/soundcloud-launches-first-dj-software-integration-with-serato/
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The French media giant is one of a number of European companies and trade groups who have signed an open letter voicing concerns over a possible 'watering down' of the European Commission's controversial Copyright Directive. The widely debated reforms were approved by the European Parliament in November. In the weeks since then, lawmakers have been negotiating with members states to finalize the directive, which Google-owned YouTube claims threatens "the livelihoods of thousands of artists, creators and songwriters."
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8490109/umg-vivendi-european-union-youtube-copyright-directive
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Inspired by the tweet embedded below, I wondered how musicians on Spotify actually feel about the streaming service, which has been sending artists year-end stats, seemingly as if to rub salt in wounds. Most of the musicians who responded to my query grumble about the poor pay rate, although a few—all electronic musicians, for what it's worth—have accrued some decent money in 2018.
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/12/13/37038870/letting-off-stream-how-do-musicians-really-feel-about-spotify
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Overall, Tencent Music reported post-tax profit of $263 million in the first half of 2018, a 341 percent increase year-over-year. In contrast, with the exception of Napster, no Western music streaming service has turned a profit -- and shareholders seem to be responding accordingly. At market close yesterday, Spotify’s stock price was $128.40 per share -- a 5 percent decrease from its opening price of $132.00 in April, and a 35 percent drop from its peak of $196.28 on July 26.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8490089/tencent-music-ipo-analysis-streaming-china-data-trends
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At a Swift concert in California’s Rose Bowl this past May, Swift’s security teams installed a kiosk that displayed highlights of her rehearsals for the show that fans coming to the concert could stop and take a look at. The only thing is, as that fans did this, little did they know they were being watched too. That’s because the kiosk had a camera in it that immediately recorded an image of each person and then sent these images thousands of miles away to Swift’s Nashville, Tennessee “command post,” where facial recognition tech was used to identify if any of the concertgoers were one of the hundreds of Swift’s known stalkers, reports Rolling Stone.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90281014/taylor-swift-has-become-big-brother?partner=feedburner
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n 2012, Germany’s Federal Court Of Justice found in favour of Kraftwerk, in part on the basis that Pelham could have easily recreated the sound he sampled, so clipping the snippet out of ‘Metal On Metal’ was just laziness. Four years later the German Constitutional Court overturned that judgement, reckoning that the lower court hadn’t properly considered Pelham’s “artistic freedom”. The higher court reckoned that the negative impact on Kraftwerk caused by the uncleared sample probably wasn’t sufficient to outweigh the sampler’s artistic rights.
http://www.completemusicupdate.com/article/uncleared-samples-are-copyright-infringement-however-short-reckons-eus-advocate-general/
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After 12 years at the helm, Alison Wenham is stepping down as chief executive of The Worldwide Independent Network (WIN) with immediate effect. “It has been a pleasure and a privilege to devote two decades of my life and career to helping ensure the stability and continued growth of the independent music sector,” said the much-respected British executive in a statement announcing her departure.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8490074/alison-wenham-steps-down-ceo-win
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Shares in Chinese streaming music giant Tencent Music Entertainment rose nearly 8 percent to $14 on Thursday, their first day of trade. The company’s initial public offering of 82 million shares, which was priced at $13 a share, is expected to raise between $1.07 billion and $1.23 billion. The stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the “TME” symbol.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8490025/tencent-music-shares-rise-first-trading-day
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