AUSTIN, Texas–Should music ever be free? That was the inescapable topic of discussion among the hordes of recording-industry middlemen and hangers-on gathered for the music section of the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference last week. It’s a schism that has emerged...
Advertisers love Pandora and Spotify, but the money isn’t trickling down By Michelle Castillo Illustration: Zach Meyer Pharrell’s “Happy” was the song of 2014, topping the charts in the U.S. and two dozen other countries, selling 6.45 million...
Up until a few years ago there weren’t many options for independent songwriters to collect mechanical royalties. Performance royalties were (relatively) easy to get. Simply sign up (and register all your songs) with a PRO like ASCAP, BMI or SOCAN (in Canada). But...
The Turtles in 1970. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Pandora’s effort to move the Flo & Eddie lawsuit, on whether the streaming radio service has to pay master recording performance royalties for pre-1972 material, out of the courtroom of Judge Philip S....
We all know recorded music sales are dying. It’s a Titanic size plank that sales have been marching down for years, but eventually they’ll fall off. But we’re not there yet. Last year, Americans bought 257 million albums – an 11% drop from 2013. That’s still a hefty...
