SoundCloud’s “Fan Powered Royalties”: a halfway house towards the true fans approach
Regular readers of this blog will know that Walled Culture is a fan of the true fans concept – the idea that creators can be supported directly and…
How to redeem big, bad music streaming so that it serves artists, fans – and local communities
Music streaming services are great – for listeners, who gain access to huge quantities of music, even if they don’t end up owning any of it. But it’s…
“Red hot music copyrights market” leaves most creators out in the cold
Last week, Walled Culture wrote about the juicy £230 million pay that the head of Universal Music Group (UMG) took home up last year. That may be exceptional…
Will analogue academic textbooks be the next to move to the Spotify digital licensing model?
Last December, a post noted that Spotify is a rising digital giant, despite its lack of profitability. As well as representing a concentration of power – something seen…
A bit is a bit is a bit: digital platforms begin to merge with digital producers
Last week Walled Culture wrote about Microsoft’s planned purchase of the video gaming company Activision. That’s been followed by some other news stories that may not involve such…
Beyond a game: Microsoft swallows up Activision, a further concentration of power in a few digital giants
This blog has written a couple times about YouTube‘s dominance in the video sector. Spotify may well create a similar leading position for itself in music streaming, while…
A few companies dominate the music market; meet the rising giant that could beat them all: Spotify
Back in September, a blog post noted that Universal Music Group (UMG) regarded streaming as key to its future. Investors agreed, pushing the company’s valuation to 45 billion…
The film industry effectively solved the problem of unauthorised downloads; now it is “unsolving” it…
Copyright companies frequently invoke “piracy” when they demand new legislation or stronger enforcement of existing laws. Usually, they have a free hand to claim what they like about…
YouTube is “neck-and-neck with Netflix”, and bigger than the world’s entire recording industry
Everyone knows that Google (strictly speaking, the parent company, Alphabet) is a digital giant. But recent figures reveal that YouTube alone is also enormous, and in two markets:…
Squaring the music streaming circle: fair remuneration for artists, easy discoverability for users
Streaming dominates the recording music industry today, and everyone assumes that things won’t change for a while. But there are two opposing aspects of the current business models…
Until the recording industry’s monopoly power is broken, musicians may need to go independent
We’ve just written about the terrible deal that most musicians get from the increasingly-popular streaming of their music. A post on Boing Boing explores another aspect of the…
We don’t have walled culture because of piracy, but because of corporate profiteering
Last week, Universal Music Group (UMG) went public on Amsterdam’s Euronext exchange, and ended up with a valuation of 45 billion euros (over $50 billion). An article on…