✘ Fragmentation and Nostalgia - the power of video
And: AI and robots should sound robotic; JKBX is now Jukebox; LyricFind sues Musixmatch; YouTube is winning emerging markets by being social; Clinically meaningful hearing improvements in trial
Do you remember Fabchannel? It was a very early experiment to bring live video broadcasts of music to the Internet. Straight from the Paradiso in Amsterdam, some really cool acts got some fantastic distribution. I watched it a lot in the early and mid-2000s. In 2009, they stopped - rights are always different as we all know.
Do you remember MTV Unplugged? I’m sure you do, it was a much more mainstream cultural phenomenon compared to Fabchannel. It shows us that TV was the ultimate power when it came to reaching audiences, before this switched to the Internet.
Where Fabchannel started in 2000, that was a year after MTV Unplugged stopped - of course, it continued for another decade with irregular appearances on the channel. Then, in 2009, Fabchannel stopped. In a ‘goodbye letter’ their founder Justin Kniest said this:
“No money means no content. That is the way the labels (major and independent) look at potential partnerships with internet companies. Even when it is obvious a service provides added value in promotion and sales, the mantra stays the same: no money, no content.”
He also talks about the difference in approach between these ‘internet companies’ and TV and radio.
“You see the difference in perception? Internet = source of income, Radio/Television = partner in generating income.”
Now, we’re seeing a very different bifurcation - between video and audio. The latter is accessible via different services who all basically offer the same product and content. The former is fragmented, and this fragmentation offers a very different business model. As Fabchannel and MTV Unplugged both make a comeback, let’s see how this can play out.
Video = fragmentation
The world of video, all of series and films and documentaries, is organized in a vastly different way than music. Rights are bought in advance, production can be very expensive, actors get a flat fee including a buy out that incorporates language like: any known media known now or devised in the future. This film or series will then become part of the IP owned by a company that either distributes it or has its own video platforms or TV channels. Take Disney, with its plethora of TV channels and now Disney+. Want to watch Marvel films, you need that Disney+ account. But you can’t watch Stranger Things, or Lord of the Rings on there, for that you need more subscriptions from different brands.
Disney+ has been dipping its toe in music, now offering some of their ‘From Stage to Screen’ performances at the Hollywood Bowl in LA. This, next to some other concert films and biopics from big-name artists. There’s a lot to explore, but nothing by Fabchannel or MTV Unplugged. The former is on YouTube - useful for sorting through copyright claims with ContentID. The latter is on Paramount+. In all three cases, this particular content won’t move the needle in terms of subscriptions and viewing time. However, it shows the power of having a healthy mix of content on offer on a specific platform. Viewers will sometimes not simply watch the first thing offered to them. And music seems to be another diversifying factor between the major subscription video-on-demand streaming services.
Music drives nostalgia, video enhances it
Those Disney concerts are a way to experience some much-loved films in a different way. They create a sense of nostalgia. In a slightly different way, this is what the re-emergence of Fabchannel and MTV Unplugged also go for. What’s better than seeing the video of the Emiliana Torrini concert from 2005 that I attended? Or seeing that MTV Unplugged by KoЯn that I used to love so much, I had it on a VHS tape.
Music is a strong trigger for nostalgia. Sometimes in odd ways where certain music defined a particular decade - even though the band involved might still be making music now. This is often arbitrary, but that’s how nostalgia works. It’s often connected to these autobiographical moments, just like I described above. Couple the sound with video, and the connected nostalgia comes out even stronger. In essence, this is simply because more of our senses get connected to the feeling of nostalgia. This longing towards this moment, this autobiographical memory.
The opportunity
To echo what DR MYSTERY recently wrote about video, music can evoke emotions that video can express in a different way. These emotions are personal, different from person to person. This is the case with music heard for the first time, but also when it comes to nostalgia. The opportunity, then, lies in bringing the two mediums together. To tap into video means to tap into a different medium and with it a different mode of consumption. On the macro level, the money flows very differently for video than for music. Of course, not every artist can take advantage of this - that’s probably only for the major artists. However, as Fabchannel shows, there’s already a lot of recorded material out there when it comes to video, most of it in shiny HD. And as their CEO already wrote in 2009, this is as much about branding and marketing as it is about potential diversification of revenue models.
So, if you’re a new artist do think about creating video assets that won’t just help you market your music now. Think, as well, about how these videos could later help tap into a sense of nostalgia and bring back memories and sensations. If you’re an artist who has been going at this for a longer time, start digging around to see if there’s videos made of your shows, music videos, interviews, etc. Repurpose it to trigger nostalgia among listeners and viewers alike.
LINKS
⚖️ Why we’ve sued Musixmatch and the private equity owner that runs it (Darryl Ballantyne)
“Last March, Musixmatch signed a deal with Warner-Chappell that gave Musixmatch not only the exclusive rights to sub-license Warner-Chappell lyrics, but also to provide the lyric data itself to third parties. That exclusivity applies even if those third parties have acquired a lyric license directly from Warner-Chappell (including existing direct licenses). This exclusive extends to works that are controlled in whole or in part by Warner Chappell, so publishers who co-control works with Warner-Chappell will be impacted and see an immediate drop in their revenue from LyricFind as that content becomes blocked. As part of the exclusivity, Warner-Chappell informed us that “all DSPs/partners can only source [Warner] lyrics from [Musixmatch] and would need to remove lyric data from other sources.”. This would seem to indicate that DSPs would not even be able to use lyrics provided by co-publishers, artists, or even lyrics they transcribed themselves.”
✘ As consumers we’ve gotten very used to the availability of lyrics. We search for them, we see them on videos, and they’re available on DSPs. It’s long been an area of contestation among a competitive field of companies offering licensed lyrics. LyricFind itself got sued a few years ago by competitor Genius for allegedly sourcing their lyrics to publish in Google search results. This new suit is a little different in that it has a stronger competition element - potentially heading to different kinds of law and legislation. In a competitive market, private equity is known to force exclusive deals - let’s see how this shakes out in the lyric industry.
🥁 Music fintech firm Jkbx rebrands as Jukebox with a new CEO (Stuart Dredge)
“[Mike] Coppola inherits a firm that is offering royalty shares in more than 60,000 songs, which it says represents more than $6bn in music royalties. Jukebox said the new CEO’s focus will be on expanding its market presence; recruiting more staff from the finance and capital markets; forging partnerships with big financial institutions; and further developing its technology.”
✘ Fractionalizing royalties and opening them up as an investment opportunity for bluechip investors. It’s still a good idea to actually grow the overall revenue pie for the music industry. Who exactly stands to benefit, however, is most likely the major rightsholders. Let’s see where this change in leadership takes Jukebox.
🤖 AIs and robots should sound robotic (Barath Ragavan & Bruce Schneier)
“But there is something fundamentally different about talking with a bot as opposed to a person. A person can be a friend. An AI cannot be a friend, despite how people might treat it or react to it. AI is at best a tool, and at worst a means of manipulation. Humans need to know whether we’re talking with a living, breathing person or a robot with an agenda set by the person who controls it. That’s why robots should sound like robots.”
✘ Similar to how electric cars need sounds to help people recognize them as cars, so do AI-driven communication tools need sounds to help us recognize them as non-humans.
🦋 YouTube is winning emerging markets by being social – and format-flexible (Hanna Kahlert)
“The result (and the point): English-driven Western markets behave very differently from other-language emerging ones. Old industry demarcations of social versus video versus music versus games do not exist in the same way, and are not considered relevant by consumers or creators. Instead, mobile-driven consumption blends everything together, layering social, music, video, games, creator content and studio content all together in what legacy companies would consider baffling – if not sacrilegious. Old rights systems and remuneration struggle to keep up, and meanwhile, new creators keep creating, and audiences keep engaging.”
✘ I feel like we know this, or at least we should now this, by now. But this is another great affirmation of the fact that the differences in global markets, audiences, and behaviors, require different tools for engagement and retention.
🦻 Latest DB-OTO results demonstrate clinically meaningful hearing improvements in nearly all children with profound genetic hearing loss in CHORD trial (Regeneron)
“Sound is a significant part of the human experience that connects us to each other and our environment. A year after treatment in one ear with DB-OTO, a child born profoundly deaf was able to enjoy music, engage in imaginative play and participate in bedtime reading when the cochlear implant on their other ear was removed. These seemingly small interactions are life-changing for these children as well as their families and these results continue to underscore the revolutionary promise of DB-OTO as a potential treatment for otoferlin-related hearing loss.”
Jay T. Rubinstein, M.D., Ph.D., Virginia Merrill Bloedel Professor of Otolaryngology and Bioengineering and Director, Bloedel Hearing Research Center, University of Washington School of Medicine
✘ This kind of stuff blows my mind. If we can achieve this, it will change the lives of those impacted in ways previously unimaginable.
MUSIC
The new record by Everything is Recorded, also known as Richard Russell, is a beautiful collection of tracks with some amazing vocalists. The album is perfect for the current sunny early spring days I have here in the Netherlands. Soothing, yet uplifting. The record may be called Temporary, but it feels like a moment in time to be captured.