CMU Digest

CMU Digest 03.06.19: Warner, SGAE, DBR.ee, Iron Maiden, Snapchat

By | Published on Monday 3 June 2019

The key stories from the last week in the music business…

Warner relaunched its Warner Bros label as Warner Records. When Warner Music split off from the Warner film company in 2004 it got a fifteen year licence to continue to using the Warner Bros name and its accompanying WB logo. With those fifteen years up, the major label division needed a rebrand. Warner said the relaunch of its Warner Bros division was perfectly timed as “we all feel the label is at a moment of re-invention”. [READ MORE]

CISAC announced it was expelling Spanish collecting society SGAE from its membership. The Spanish rights organisation has been involved in various controversies over the years, most recently an alleged scam around how TV royalties are distributed and the fact it locked global publishers out of its board meeting when they complained. Global grouping CISAC said it welcomed changes SGAE’s new President was proposing but that it needed to see those reforms approved by the society’s General Assembly and implemented if it was to retain its membership. [READ MORE]

The Recording Industry Association Of America successfully forced offline a file-storage platform used by music pirates. DBR.ee was one of the sites used for the unlicensed distribution of music that appeared in a subpoena recently secured by the RIAA against internet services firm Cloudflare, which sought the contact details of people involved in various piracy operations. DBR.ee was seemingly run out of Canada and its operators agreed to shut the site down, its URL replaced by a joint message from the RIAA, global label group IFPI and Music Canada. [READ MORE]

Iron Maiden sued gaming company 3D Realms over a game it recently launched called ‘Ion Maiden’. The band alleged that the game infringed on their intellectual property in a number of ways beyond the similar name, including having a lead character called Shelly Harrison, which they reckoned was a reference to their founder member Steve Harris. 3D Realms called the band’s claims “frivolous” and said that no trademarks had in fact been infringed. [READ MORE]

It emerged that Snapchat is in talks with the major labels over possible licensing deals. It’s thought that the social network is seeking a licence that would allow it to enable users to officially feature commercially released music in their videos. So licences that would allow it to offer similar music services to those being piloted by Facebook and Instagram, rather than any deals to launch an actual standalone music platform. [READ MORE]

The big deals from the last seven days in the music business…
• Absolute signed a deal with Boomplay [INFO]
• Jack White’s Third Man label allied with The Orchard [INFO]
• Warner Chappell acquired the Gene Autry Music Group [INFO]
• Hipgnosis acquired the songs catalogue of Al Jackson Jr [INFO]
• Hipgnosis also acquired the songs catalogue of Ari Levine [INFO]
• One Media IP acquired a number of songs by Cole Taylor [INFO]
• BMG signed Sugar Ray [INFO]
• WME signed the Beach Boys’ Mike Love [INFO]
• Sony’s Epic signed K-pop group Monsta X [INFO]



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