Episode #3
The digital age devastated in its gigantic leap from 2020 to 2021, favored by the forced confinement during the pandemic and even the foundations do not stop shaking. Multinationals cannot see through so much fog and their way out is to look for young people to be their lantern on the road.
Conkarah and Shaggy's song “Banana” was heard more on Tik tok used by third parties (children, politicians, tiktokers) in dances or funny videos than on its own distribution channel on music platforms. I call this mist.
Record labels don't know whether to focus more on claiming copyrights, promoting their music or partnering with social media to use their catalog. And they are also not clear on what is the path for new investments and thus restructure their portfolio of artists.
The lantern of multinationals
Alejandro Duque, a Colombian who studied at Berklee College of Music at age 38, becomes the youngest president of a multinational, leaving behind his successor Iñigo Zabala, who directed Warner for 30 years. Alejandro works in the development of new digital media and that is precisely the area of uncertainty because it evolves daily.
Just thinking that 60,000 songs are uploaded a day to Spotify, it is understandable that music companies are concerned about where the river will overflow. Shazam for example, reported a billion searches carried out in May 2021. There is more music than our ears will ever be able to hear and traditional structures are looking for a way to merge with new media so as not to be left out.
The same thing happens in the cinema. Steven Spilberg ended in the impossible to imagine: his company Amblin Partners has just signed an agreement to produce for Netflix, when before he criticized said services for not being properly reproduced in a movie theater and that they would be unsustainable.
On the other hand, not only did the large film producers switch to their own streaming services such as HBO or Disney Plus, now television channels as well. Univision confirmed that in 2022 it will launch its content platform and its novels, original films and programming in general will be broadcast there.
The 2022 narrative: Fair use Fair use Fair Use X1000
Piracy was left behind, artists and record labels untouchable as well. Now the correct distribution of royalties is the new narrative and I explain why:
1. Imagine a youtuber who talks to you about Mexican food and travels all over the country to show you his super interesting video.
2. The youtuber uses 50 seconds of a Justin Bieber song in his video.
3. YouTube monetizes millions of views of the youtuber but does not pay him because he receives a claim from the label that owns the catalog that contains the Justin Bieber song.
4. The youtuber spent dozens of hours, financial investment and community creation to achieve those millions of streams, but the label keeps the monetization.
Solving this problem and having the royalties divided correctly is fair use. As I mentioned at the beginning, there are songs that are heard more by third parties using them in their daily lives or in their tutorial videos, than by the artist himself. Therefore, the label is rethinking the idea of allowing people to use their catalog and freely monetize so that they viralize their artist and not dedicate themselves to taking monetization away from others. Sooner or later, if they don't, content creators will use catalogs from other artists who would allow their use and would run out of bread or a piece.
Universal, Sony Music and Warner have already taken the first step by selling licenses to the main social networks directly so that users can use the music without downloading it, but it is not yet monetizable.
The next step will be to allow everyone to partially monetize their content that uses songs from third-party catalogs.
Fair use.