Last week the IFPI issued their annual IFPI report giving a comprehensive overview and analysis of global developments in digital music. The Report also contains data on the effectiveness of national strategies in preventing copyright infringement promoted by search engines promoting infringing websites and discusses the effectiveness of ISP cooperation oriented graduated response programs and developing markets like India. As noted previously, A2IM members are participating in the U.S. Copyright Alerts Program, if you currently are not but want to participate please contact Sheryl Cohen at Sheryl@a2im.org We applaud the IFPI for their continued good work.
Copyright Alert Program
You are browsing the archive for Copyright Alert Program.
Independent music labels and their artists continued to move forward in 2012, repeatedly proving the value we bring to the music industry and fans. As we look back, our 2012 State of the A2IM Indie Community highlights many promotional & financial success stories:
- As reported by Billboard, Independent market share of recorded music sales based upon label ownership rose to 32.57%, we thank our good friends at Billboard for their reporting perspective! By our computations we also note that digital album share has risen to over 39% of market, significantly underscoring that our Independent community sells a body of work, not just singles.
- The increased market share is not a surprise as Independents controlled the top slot on the charts for seven consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 with Glassnote’s Mumford & Sons’ ‘Babel,’ Broken Bow’s Jason Aldean’s ‘Night Train,’ and Big Machine’s Taylor Swift’s ‘Red’ [October-November 2012]. During the Fall period diverse acts such as All Time Low- Hopeless, DJ Drama-eOne, Papa Roach- Eleven Seven, Deadmau5- Ultra, Lumineers- Dualtone, Grizzly Bear-Warp, The xx-Beggars/XL, Animal Collective- Domino, Cat Power-Beggars/Matador, Punk Goes Pop-Fearless, The Sword & All That Remains- Razor & Tie and the Nashville Soundtrack-Big Machine all made the Billboard Top 20.
- On the digital performance front, payouts to Independents by our SoundExchange advocates continue to soar! Pandora estimates that Independent music plays represent almost 40% of their steams and Sirius reports Independents are 30-35% of their programming. We thank our friends at Pandora for answering our requests by giving Independent labels an improved portal to submit music and other informational support during the past year, and thank Sirius for providing our diverse programming to their audiences.
- Independents are even seeing improved success at terrestrial radio and we thank Clear Channel for including Independents in their bi-annual programmer label presentations and look forward to increasing the Independent label community’s radio access and share of plays with Clear Channel and other radio groups in 2013.
- A2IM’s export funding initiatives came to fruition this year with the first government funded trade mission to Asia in September, and the MDCP funding grant. We thank the U.S. Department of Commerce ITA, U.S. SBA, NY State, Tennessee and our legislative champions like Congressman Jerry Nadler for making this happen. The Recording Academy support of our export funding initiatives was vital.
- We thank the Recording Academy for their support on many fronts. Critical recognition of Independents included the share of Independent Grammy nominations crossing the 50% level and our community’s 34 wins included major categories like Best New Artist, as well as many best album categories. Our successes were across the board at many award shows; our members even swept all of the awards at the 11th annual Americana Music Awards.
- A2IM held its first Libera Awards, where Independents honored fellow Independents, during Indie Week in NYC last June. The event was a sold-out success and received critical acclaim as A2IM members claimed their Libby’s and we honored Beggars’ Martin Mills with a Lifetime Achievement Award! Libera means freedom in Latin; Independents are free and not confined in the mainstream, not dependent, get it? The A2IM “Libby’s” celebrated that freedom and how our community is not limited by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas and open to new ideas.
- Indie Week 2012 continued to grow, with over 500 executives and staff gathering in NYC to discuss issues and learn from each other. In 2012, the focus was on garnering greater publicity access, optimizing YouTube monetization practices, reflecting on digital case studies, and discussing Pan European licensing, among other topics. The schedule was packed with one-on-one networking meetings, panels and roundtables, which led to the fourth annual Indie Roadmap discussion and white paper. We thank our speakers who included Pandora’s Tim Westergren, Free Ride author Rob Levine and keynoter U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel.
- We geared up for the launch of the non-invasive Copyrights Alerts program, which aims to reduce unlicensed music acquisition and we thank our colleagues at the RIAA for our inclusion.
- A2IM continued to stay in touch with Washington D.C. to advocate our positions and file on issues ranging from International trade to Copyright regulations. Many of the filings were made at the request of U.S. Government Agencies who approached us for the Independent views. We also practiced advocacy on legislation like IRFA, which we oppose, and as a member of the World Independent Network (WIN) issued the Indie Manifesto.
- We continued to educate our members so they can make informed choices based on understanding all sides of an issue via the weekly Round-up newsletter, committees like DMET and the Licensing & Publishing white papers and meet-ups. This included a joint event with our AIMP brothers and sisters and networking events around the country at local chapters and during conferences such as SXSW, CMJ, NARM, and Midem (2012 had our largest-ever presence at MIDEM ever (more than 300 members from 135 companies)
As your extra employee, with pride, your A2IM staff takes dozens of calls from its members every week and in this time of need and continued financial challenges it is the pleasure, no honor, of the A2IM staff to support and represent you all, the greatest privilege of our careers. Your A2IM elected board does the same, meeting monthly, annually setting our priorities on your behalf, always all hands on deck.
Independent music labels are diverse in label sizes with hands-on management, allowing for entrepreneurial speed and based upon genre and geographic diversity provide music with cultural diversity. We thank all of our supporters, especially our associate members who understand the Independent vitality, who increased our access for both marketing & promotion and monetization as we move forward! We thank our publicists at Shore Fire for the fabulous press coverage at all mediums that has increased the A2IM press profile to new heights. We thank you all for your continued financial support of A2IM’s mission, we know it is not easy and we appreciate it.
The A2IM Board and Staff
Posted in Advocacy, Events, News by A2IM
Due to Hurricane Sandy the deadline to participate in the Copyright Alert Program has been extended to Monday November 12, 2012.
Overview:
The Copyright Alerts Program is about to roll-out next month and your label is invited to participate at no cost.
This program as announced previously, is a program where a group of Internet Services Providers (“ISP’s”) (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable) are going to work with the music and film industries in an effort aimed at reducing unauthorized, unpaid acquisition of creative content at its source. The ISP’s will contact their customers who’ve been found to be illegally downloading copyrighted works that are in the program. Click HERE for a recent status update about the program. The program does not involve suing customers nor termination of a subscriber’s ISP account.
The process will be simple. Participating label members will
This is members only content.
12
Apr
2012
2012
On April 11, 2012, The Obama Administration released a long awaited, first-of-its kind report estimating the economic impact of IP related industries on the U.S. economy. The study, entitled “Intellectual Property and the U.S. Economy: Industries in Focus,” was prepared by the Economics and Statistics Administration and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Protecting Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) is a priority for A2IM. As A2IM has previously reported, In July, 2011, A2IM joined forces with other music community creator colleagues and announced our participation in the Copyright Alert Program. The Copyright Alert Program unites the music, film and television communities with the Internet Service Providers to fight content theft and to educate consumers about content theft via the ISP services that individual consumers use. Upon announcing A2IM’s support of the program, Rich Bengloff, (A2IM President) noted that the Copyright Alert Program is an “historic agreement that will reduce the financial distress being experienced by our independent music label community so that our members and their artists can continue to create and invest in the music they love and, in doing so, help protect thousands of music artists and their musical compositions, across the United States.”
As A2IM continues to work protecting Intellectual Property Rights, we applaud the Obama Administration for continuing to do so too.
Read the: U.S. Commerce Department Press Release
Read the: Full Report
As we have reported to you in the past A2IM is working with our independent film creator colleagues at the IFTA and the MPAA and RIAA on a program called Copyright Alerts where the major ISP’s will be helping the creator community in reducing unauthorized unpaid acquisition of content on a fair basis for both creators and consumers. The program is slated to start this year at mid-year. One of the programs major considerations was the formation of a Center for Copyright Information (“CCI”) to provide consumer education and administration of the copyright alert process. Details related to the CCI were announced yesterday and A2IM again thanks the participating ISP’s for their support of the creator community.
This week the news broke that the British government had announced plans to overhaul UK copyright law following recommendations contained in the Hargreaves report which had been commissioned by British Prime Minister David Cameron.
The Billboard article HERE provides detail including comments from UK label trade BPI chief-executive Geoff Taylor, “Every day blatantly illegal foreign sites flout our laws, rip off consumers and musicians and wreak huge damage on our creative sector. Government has recognized that blocking such sites could help to reduce levels of infringement, but that there needs to be a more effective framework that enables speedier action than would be possible under the relevant DEA provisions.” Taylor called for his government to “act urgently to put in place effective means to protect consumers, creators and UK jobs from the impact of illegal foreign sites.”
On the face of it, the UK government’s decision is bad news for labels and artists in the UK and, of course, that impacts us here as well. However, a recent U.K. court ruling ordering UK ISP BT to block access to the movie rights infringing website Newzbin2 leads us to infer that current legal interpretations and marketplace solutions to protect creators are already or will soon be in place in Great Britain.
The issues are:
*there’ll be no UK government intervention to block websites trafficking unlicensed creative content (but there is UK gov’t support of ISP’s doing that blocking similar to the recently announced U.S. ISP Copyright Alert Program in which A2IM members’ music will be included),
*Allowing mash-ups without licensing from copyright owners,
*Allowing usage of Orphan Works (A2IM’s concerns about how “orphan” is defined is something we’ve messaged consistently).
