A Little Knowledge... #74

Welcome to A Little Knowledge #74 – our free weekly LinkedIn newsletter.

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?? BULLETIN NEWS: Should skipped songs be valued less on streaming services?

If your track gets skipped a lot on streaming services, it may get moved down or removed from playlists - and the DSPs’ recommendation algorithms don’t tend to look too kindly on this signal either. But should there be a direct financial penalty for being skipped? That’s the suggestion being made by former Spotify chief economist Will Page in his latest report: ‘A Case for Completion’:

• “Put simply, songs that are streamed in their entirety should be better compensated, and songs that are skipped before the end should be valued less,” writes Page in his analysis.
• As he points out, the standard current streaming model sees tracks earning a royalty once they have been played for at least 30 seconds, regardless of whether they are skipped after that point or played to the end.
• Page thinks that factoring ‘completion’ into the calculations could be an alternative to the much-discussed ‘pro rata’ system of calculating streaming payouts.?“It’s easy to legally define, and therefore removes the risk of auditing disputes,” he writes.
• He sets out the strengths and potential weaknesses of a completion model in his study. The former include rewarding “greater appreciation of the songwriter’s work”; rewarding intent (“listeners don’t intervene to complete, but do so to skip”) and would tackle fraud involving “click-farms based on mass-repeats of 31-second plays”.

???Read more in our article?here, which also includes a link to Page's report.

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??MUSIC ALLY ON WHATSAPP

?Our WhatsApp Channel is a simple way to stay on top of music business news: every afternoon (UK time), we post the lead story, and links to the rest of the day’s news. Click here to sign up.

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???Music Ally?Focus?podcast:?Livestreaming in 2024 - what do artists and fans want from it now??

Jakub Krampl, founder and CEO of music livestreaming company On Air, is the guest for our latest?podcast?episode.

• Cast your mind back to 2020, when public spaces were shut down and the world suddenly felt insular and closed. Livestreaming became wildly popular overnight and many apps and platforms sprang up to feed the demand for watching live events from our homes.?
• A mere four years later, and livestreaming has matured, the froth has died down, and quite a few of those startups have shut down. So what is the space like now that it is no longer the buzzword of the moment??
• How healthy is the livestream ecosystem today compared to the frothy ecosystem a few years ago? And how are artists using livestreaming now? And what do audiences and superfans really want from livestreaming now that they can go to gigs again??
• Krampl talks about where livestreaming is in 2024, and what artist teams and audiences really want from livestreams and recordings of their favourite artist.?

????Listen (or get links to listen on your preferred service)?here.

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?? MUSIC ALLY JOBS

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The latest and best jobs for the global music business, trusted by both top music industry companies and experienced professionals on top of their game.

Are you looking for a job? Click here to see the full list of vacancies!

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?? A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA...

?And finally… our daily Bulletin newsletter is loved by subscribers for its instant industry analysis - but secretly, the part they like most is the ‘A Little Something Extra’ section at the bottom of the email. Here's a few of the best recent links:

• The world's largest cashew tree, planted in 1888 by a Brazilian fisherman,?covers an area of 8,400 square metres.
• We have a new favourite?'The Science of Puppies' video?that also includes the phrase "America's inevitable descent into theocratic dictatorship" in its intro.
• Feeling overwhelmed by those?rubbish?primary colours, red and blue? Luxuriate in this?three hour video?of the colour yellow.?

This is only a glimpse into this week's The Knowledge newsletter – subscribe for FREE?and every Friday it’ll arrive in your inbox with:

??? The best new platforms in TOOLS; ?? Highlights from our latest COUNTRY PROFILE REPORTS; ???? Some great and/or strange music in SOMETHING 4 THE WEEKEND; ?? A look back in TIME MACHINE; ?? The Music Ally Focus PODCAST; and ?? more links to our favourite unusual stuff in A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA.