Here are a few interesting news from last week:
* Royalties Hearing on Capitol Hill
Billboard magazine reports on a recent hearing in front of the US-Congress Subcommittee on Communications and Technology in Washington. Various speakers among others from trade organisations such as RIAA, NAB, NARAS and companies such as Pandora teamed up for a debate covering issues such as royalty payments for “sound performance royalty from terrestrial radio” and the “parity for digital royalty rates”.
* Labour Party Speaker for Culture appears at BPI AGM.
Music industry magazine Record Of The Day reports that Harriet Harman, MP and Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will hold a keynote on the upcoming annual general meeting of BPI on July 3rd.
* An Editorial Assumption: “Facebook Will ‘Disappear’ by 2020…
Industry newsletter Digital News Publisher Paul Resnikoff wrote an editorial, assuming and adding up arguments for the outlook of Facebook. A well written article, coming up with interesting conclusions and considerations
* Madness on top of Buckingham Palace
The Brits celebrated the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee with a tribute concert – or rather an outstanding live music show. Compiled and conducted by Gary Barlow of Take That this event set new standards in terms of live entertainment. Depending on your musical taste, the show included highly entertaining live performances, for instance Madness on Top of Buckingham Palace. For a complete overview please check here.
* Forbes Magazine Considers Live Nation as Loser
The economic glamour magazine Forbes includes Live Nation in an article entitled “Six Loser Stocks You Should Love”. Journalist Marc Gerstein actually opens up his list of loser stocks with Live Nation, questioning the investment quality of the company, the world biggest corporate concert company that continuously delivers “EPS numbers into the red”.
* CTS Eventim and Anschutz Entertainment Group acquire Hammersmith Apollo
German publicly-traded concert and ticketing company CTS Eventim explores new business opportunities. They have partnered with AEG for the acquisition of London’s Hammersmith Apollo. In contrast to Live Nation, CTS Eventim so far had no big piece of the action in running venues and arenas. It seems, the new company strategy of CTS Eventim obviously is designed to expand into this part of the music industry. (via Der Aktionaer)
* DEHOGA criticise GEMA for New Rates
For its new proposed tariff rates for the usage of recorded music in gastronomy and discotheques the German royalty collection society GEMA faces sharp criticism by the DEHOGA, the biggest German trade association for gastronomy and hotels. The rates provide for royalty payments to increase up to 500 percent and more from the beginning of 2013 onwards. DEHOGA argues that the new rates will lead to a massive decline of discotheques. (via Handelsblatt) (German language only)
* Meeting Between GEMA and Pirates
A delegation of the German Pirate Party met high ranked GEMA officials in Berlin. The mini-summit was the kick off meeting for a series of meetings about the copyright policy of the party. The Financial Times Deutschland reports that Bruno Kramm, copyright commissioner of the German Pirates concluded that although “GEMA hasn’t changed at all,” and the two sides didn’t really come to terms, at least the catering was fine. (via FTD) (German language only)