Subject: March Newsletter - Changes Coming To The Music Business Soon
Welcome to my March 2015 Newsletter.

We live in interesting times. The music business is changing all around us, but sometimes it happens at a pace that hard to notice. That said, there are a number of big things that either are happening now, or will happen in the near future that you should know about.

Let's get into it.

Here Come The New Music Streaming Services
If you're not aware, two new streaming music services will be online soon and that could accelerate the changeover to streaming.

1. YouTube Music Key. YouTube knows that more people access their music now via the service than just about any other, and Google (YouTube's owner) wants to capitalize on it by introducing this new service. What's so cool about it?
  • It gets rid of the ads before every video that we so hate.
  • It allows you to just stream the audio, even if you're offline.
  • You get access to the huge 20+ million song and video catalog of the Google Play service
Here's the rub - Where YouTube access is free now, Music Key will be a subscription at $9.95 a month. Will the features be enough to get your to convert from the free service as it is now? We'll soon see as it looks like it will launch in May.

2. Apple's Beats Music relaunch. Apple purchased Beats Music last year for it's management and infrastructure, the results of which we'll see soon. The company will be launching it at a June event, supposedly at $7.99, which trumps all other services by a couple of bucks.

The name Beats Music will go away though, as it will be folded into iTunes.

Outlook - Apple has more than 800 million credit cards on file, so a new service could instantly be a moneymaker, dwarfing Spotify and Pandora. That said, the company has missed before with Ping, and Apple Radio isn't exactly setting the world on fire.

The unknown - Will artist and songwriter royalties be the same as other streaming services or reduced thanks to the $7.99 price. Stay tuned for that one.

3. Hi-res streaming. There are already two services with hi-res CD quality or better streaming with TIDAL and the Elite tier of Deezer. That said, Apple has been collecting hi-res 24 bit files as part of it's Mastered For iTunes program for 3 years now. If its new music service launches as hi-res, the rest of the streaming world will have to follow.
Here Comes Watermarking Again
4. Watermarking might catch on. Back in the days of the DVD-Audio disc, one of the features that was going to be incorporated was its watermarking, an inaudible block of data buried in the program that would prevent copying the audio. Watermarking is back again, but this time as a way to identify the owner of the copyright of the music and where it came from.

Universal Audio already watermarks all of its digital files, as does Universal Mastering in an effort to eliminate a song leaking before its release date. With an individual watermark for each person that has the song, you can tell right away where it came from so you could trace the leak.

The bottom line: Look for watermarking to come on big this year as publishers and record labels find it easy to trace when their songs are used on radio, television and online without their permission. Also, even in production it can be useful, as a musician can trace his or her contribution to a track if their own watermark is used during production.

The majority of the music business is not yet aware of the above issues. Remember you read it here first as a member of my inner circle.
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Have a great March,

Bobby
4109 Burbank Blvd, Burbank, CA 91505, United States
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