CMU Digest

CMU Digest 09.02.18: Shazam, Google, Apple Music, Spotify, CISAC

By | Published on Friday 9 February 2018

Shazam

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

The European Commission announced it would investigate Apple’s acquisition of Shazam on competition grounds. Although the deal wasn’t big enough to automatically result in a competition investigation at an EU level, it was sufficient to require such an investigation under Austrian competition law. But regulators in Austria have decided to pass scrutiny of the deal up to the EU level. The EC will now consider whether Apple’s purchase of the audio recognition app could have a negative impact on competition in the European music and digital sectors. [READ MORE]

Google’s new rules for secondary ticketing websites advertising on its search engine came into effect. It means ticket resale sites will need to be clearer that they are not an official seller of any tickets. A spokesperson for Google said: “We felt like we needed to do more to make sure the advertising of secondary ticketing is clear on our platform”. Anti-touting campaign FanFair welcomed the move but said more still needed to be done to flag that secondary sites were for touted tickets. [READ MORE]

It emerged that Apple Music is likely to surpass Spotify in terms of paying subscribers in the US market in the next few months. The Apple streaming service launched in 2015, whereas Spotify went live in America in 2011. However, Spotify’s premium user-base worldwide is still double that of Apple, despite the latter being able to push its service via its devices and the iTunes platform. [READ MORE]

Spotify launched a new feature that will see songwriters getting credited within its desktop app for the first time. It’s a response to criticism in the songwriter community that they don’t get credited on the digital platforms, despite there being a moral right to attribution under copyright law. The issue to date has been how the streaming services access songwriter data. At launch Spotify’s new writer credits set-up is relying on information provided by the labels, which the digital firm admitted probably isn’t complete or 100% accurate. [READ MORE]

Jean-Michel Jarre wrote a letter to all MEPs in Brussels urging them to back safe harbour reform as discussions around the new European Copyright Directive reach their conclusion. Writing in his capacity as President of CISAC, the body that brings together all the songwriter performing right organisations around the world, he said EU law-makers had an “opportunity to shape a fairer digital market for creators in the 21st century” by increasing the liabilities of user-upload platforms like YouTube. [READ MORE]

The big deals from the last seven days in the music business…
• CTS Eventim took a majority stake in Italian promoter D’Alessandro E Galli [INFO]
• Fat Possum Records signed Royal Trux [INFO]
• Peermusic and Big Deal signed Cigarettes After Sex [INFO]
• Kobalt signed Duke Dumont [INFO]



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