Sofar Buys Seated, Pharell vs. Gaye Verdict, Spotify Being Generous?
What's up, everybody? My name is Sweet Deat, and we're back with another episode. Thanks for stopping by.
Sofar Sounds is in the news this week, if you don't know what Sofar sounds is, it's like couch concert sort of series where they do these secret concerts, you sign up on their mailing list, which is a nice way to get an email, and then they notify you when it's your turn in your area to come and check out a concert in somebody's living room or in a really interesting space.
Usually they pay two, three, four, five, six artists in a night and only invite enough people... That makes it feel nice in the room and it's not overcrowded, then each artist gets to be exposed to a completely brand new group of people, and the people that show up don't know who's playing, so it's kind of like a rule of music, so to speak. I've been to many, Sofar Sounds concerts, and they're really cool, 'cause usually I find out a lot of artists that I didn't know about in my hometown, I've also played so far concerts before and got paid next to nothing, so there's that.
Anyway, the concept is really cool. And this week, they acquired Seated. It is pretty cool 'cause it's a direct to fan type of ticketing platform that a lot of major artists have used to put on private shows in these Covid times that we're in, Sofar can't really get together by packing a bunch of people in a very small space and doing shows, so it makes sense that they would look to acquire something like seated that does online shows already, the acquisition price is still unknown, but I'm very interesting see how they integrate together in the future to hopefully benefit the local artist community that you and I both live in onto the next…
That's right, folks. Gibson and Universal Music are teaming up in China, his agreement for Universal Music comes at a very interesting time, they're the second largest in China, as it stands right now, and they are planning on to release their new IPO at the end of 2024, and this unique branding opportunity gives and plans on putting songwriter clinics on and all sorts of other type of workshops in China in partnership with Universal Music. Additionally, Gibson will be providing Universal Music Group studios in China with tons of equipment and such to sweeten the deal.
Additionally, they plan on working together on social media campaigns to really rev up their artists and their interests, as we know China is a huge market for music and everything in the entire world, so I'm very interested to see how this sort of plays out with two power houses in the music industry, working together in a market like China, good things are probably around the corner from both of them.
Alright, let's keep it moving.
As always, there wouldn't be an episode unless we talk about Spotify, recently, Spotify came out publicly saying that they are willing to pay the New York and San Francisco wages of all of their employees and they can live wherever they want, and by wherever they want, they do mean, 100% of the time. Anywhere they want to go. Now, Spotify has offices in New York, Miami, Detroit, and kinda all over the place recently. It dropped a memorandum simply saying that people could work from anywhere. So all these people that were hired in major market cities that have decided that maybe the more rural life is best for them, they get to keep their salaries in full - way to go Spotify.
So we all may remember that Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke song called Blurred Lines, that was sort of similar to the Marvin Gaye song, Gotta Give it Up. Initially, it was in the favor of Marvin Gaye and they got rights to the song and probably a... Some sort of payout. Additionally, they went back for more money and just recently a federal judge denied that request, apparently Marvin Gaye whole crew was looking for repayment and legal fees and stuff, which I guess reached in the millions of dollars, personal opinion, I don't necessarily think that was copyright infringement here I don't really think that you can take someone to the bank on the idea of just copying the feeling of a song and not the actual notes, the notes are different. I mean, that's just clear as day, go listen to God to give it up and go, listen to Blurred Lines, you can tell that the vibe and the feeling is there, but the notes aren't the same, so Stevie Wonder said that too, so you can argue with him but anyway, this cashgrabbing effort is now over according to a federal judge