Tag: Audio Network
Posted inNews

‘Fake’ Spotify artists aren’t a scandal… but they ARE food for thought

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

It turns out that ‘fake artists on Spotify’ is actually fake news.

Or to put it more accurately: those artists are actually real, human songwriters and producers putting music out under pseudonyms, with those tracks then getting picked for prominent spots in some of Spotify’s popular ‘mood’ playlists for sleep, yoga, concentration and so on.

The details are emerging bit-by-bit with every story that’s published, but it’s already clear that Spotify’s denial earlier this week – “We do not and have never created ‘fake’ artists and put them on Spotify playlists” – was true, if carefully specific.

Posted inNews

YouTube and beyond: the new frontiers for production music

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

Production music isn’t an area we’ve written about regularly in the past for Music Ally, since it didn’t have much of a digital focus. That’s changing fast, however.

YouTube in particular, and the need of its burgeoning community of creators for background music that won’t earn them copyright strikes, is opening up new territory that’s already being mined by companies like Epidemic Sound, Audio Network and No Copyright Sound.

A conference panel run by Music Ally at the by:Larm festival in Oslo this morning investigated, with the help of two of those companies.

Epidemic Sound’s head of growth and marketing Edward Høglund and Audio Network’s product and customer experience lead Matthew Hawn were joined by Upright Music’s head of licensing Maria Therese Seefelft Stæhr, with Music Ally MD Steve Mayall moderating.

Posted inAnalysis, News

From YouTube stars to AI: Audio Network on production music’s future

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

For most of its history since being founded in 2001, Audio Network has been a high-quality production-music library for the TV, advertising and film industries.

The UK-headquartered company has built up a catalogue of more than 119k tracks to which it owns 100% of the rights, paying their composers upfront fees plus performance royalties.

With customers including the BBC, MTV, Endemol and NBC, it’s a good business. In its last financial year, which ended on 30 June 2016, Audio Network’s turnover rose 16% to £20.5m, with the company recording a post-tax profit of £5.1m.

Posted inNews

Audio Network exec assesses blockchain music potential

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

There is a lot of excitement around the potential that blockchain technology has for the music industry, but also plenty of scepticism.

Audio Network’s head of product Matthew Hawn walked the line between the two attitudes neatly in an op-ed piece for Digital Music News, in which he outlined a key issue.

“The challenge with using the blockchain for music isn’t a technological one. It’s a set of interlocking business problems that have been around since the beginning of music licensing,” wrote Hawn.