We monitored 100 livestreams to identify the music publishers and songwriters behind the tracks. Here’s what we found.
During the Coronavirus Pandemic we have seen huge disruption to the live music industry. LIVE, the umbrella group representing the UK live music industry has estimated that up to 170,000 jobs may be lost in the UK alone and reports a decline of 50% in revenue. The pattern is repeated all over the world.
The challenge is not just forced closures caused by lockdowns, but the fact that social distancing measures mean that some venues, forced to operate on dramatically reduced capacity, are simply no longer viable. Meanwhile, uncertainty over when restrictions might end means that planning for tours and festivals in 2021 is almost impossible.
While the sector continues to argue for increased clarity and financial support, one bright spot has been livestreaming, which involves performers performing for their fans directly over the internet. Although no replacement for the real thing, either in experience or business terms, livestreaming has presented an opportunity for both performers and event organisers to reach an audience and — with varying levels of success — to continue to make an income.
But a murkier piece of the puzzle until now has been how songwriters and publishers get paid from the use of their songs in livestreams. In some cases platforms may already have a licence to use the music, but reporting on what song is played where is patchy at best, and that means that in the end it is a struggle for the songwriter to get paid. Some collection societies even made a pot of money available for livestreams, but it still requires the songwriter or publisher to submit a setlist.
Over the summer, Blokur partnered with the audio recognition company DJ Monitor to identify the use of our client’s songs in livestreams. We ran a pilot looking at 100 top livestreams, ranging from DJ Soda playing in a DIY space station to John Digweed DJ-ing in his basement surrounded by dancing family members and an epic record collection.
Once the tracks in the streams were identified, we used Blokur’s sub-graph matching algorithm to match the recordings to the underlying compositions, and then looked up the compositions in Blokur’s database to find the writers and publishers behind the compositions. The results were pretty interesting.
In the 100 livestreams, we identified a combined more than 500 million views of our clients’ songs, split between around 30 of Blokur’s publisher clients. And depending on the territory and the licensing arrangements, those views are worth tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to some of our clients. That’s money that otherwise would have made its way into the black box.
In 100 top livestreams we identified 500m+ views of our clients’ songs
With livestreaming as a mainstream commercial and marketing channel still in its infancy, it remains to be seen how the model for getting creators paid for the use of their music will evolve. But we’re excited to have begun the valuable work of shining a light on the songwriters and publishers whose music is being used on livestreams and helping them to claim the royalties that they are owed.
Curious about how Blokur can help you to identify where your music is used in livestreams? Send us a note to pj [at] blokur [dot] com.
With thanks to DJ Monitor: https://djmonitor.com/
