🤝 IC Digest: Integrations are a win for indies everywhere
Plus, Rick James' unpaid royalties, industry growth concerns, and more
Hello from the midway point of Q1, which means we’re *does math* 1/8th through the year. Truly insane.
Time might be flying by, but the big IC x SD partnership news from last week is not, featuring in no less than three sections below, including a new Royalties WTF deep dive. Read on for that + our usual array of industry news, events, and company & community updates!
p.s. an *extra* special hello to the many IC catalog admins and payees who signed up to hear from us when creating their accounts, but, as we recently discovered, did not make it over in our move to Substack. We’re so glad you’re here now, but in this house we respect the inbox, so if you’re no longer feeling it the unsubscribe link is here, no lengthy scroll required.
— Hunter, Infinite Catalog co-founder and person who despises junk mail but loves integrations.
Quick hits
💸 Rick James’ Estate Being Sued For Unpaid Royalties
The filed suit states that an “unusual” deal was struck, with Rick receiving 100% of the track’s rights and publishing royalties for the song’s first five years in the market. At the end of the five years, it was agreed upon that the trio of songwriters would be granted royalties.
Your friendly neighborhood royalty experts can confirm: this deal is superfreaky (sorry), though not necessarily shady (and with IC, not actually difficult to execute). You still have to actually pay the people after five years, of course.
📈 Where is the growth going to come from?
The challenges attached to the three solutions above (increasing streaming prices + licensing new services + capturing more market share) perhaps explain why a fourth potential option to boost growth has now come into sharp focus: increasing the share of the pool of revenues that labels and their artists enjoy from streaming.
You can get more water in the bucket by adding more to it (the first three solutions)… or fix the hole at the bottom, aka the income being siphoned out of the pool by 30-second-song scammers, muzak, and streaming services themselves in the form of fake artists, production music factories, and algorithmic meddling. It’s my opinion that if you fix the common perception that “streaming doesn’t pay artists,” more growth will follow.
📝 Independent labels and distributors: take our survey!
The truest measure of the independents’ contribution is on a copyright ownership basis. This is a task MIDiA has conducted for many years now and a crucial input into this is our global independent label and distributor survey. We use this survey to take the pulse of what the independent sector is thinking, what challenges and opportunities it is facing, and as a measure of its commercial performance.
MIDiA’s research and insights are a ray of light in the dark sea of data, and this is one of their most important efforts each year. Please, take their survey!
🎉 ANNOUNCEMENTS
We couldn’t be more excited about this, but for those of you who don’t use Secretly Distribution, take heart — as with our Bandcamp integration before it, we see this as the first of many partnerships/integrations to come.
🧰 PRODUCT
Last but not least, here’s a deeper look at the new SD integration, along with some additional updates to existing ways of getting SD data into IC.
📆 UPCOMING INDUSTRY EVENTS
+ check out the newly public 🎟 Events Directory for more conferences, festivals, record fairs, webinars, etc!
Feb 16th ‣ AIM Academy presents: How to Get Started in Sync
Feb 21st ‣ AIM Sync (Online)
Feb 21st - 23rd ‣ Pollstar Live (Los Angeles, CA, US)
Feb 21st - Mar 9th ‣ Water & Music Academy 003: A Global Approach to Music Rights (Online)
Feb 23rd - 25th ‣ Durango Songwriters Expo (Durango, CO, US)
Feb 24th - 26th ‣ Measure of Music (Online)*
Mar 4th ‣ Near Mint Record Fair (London, UK) 🆓
*we’ll be there!
🙌 WHAT YOU'RE UP TO
ICYMI, the latest IC Community Update features new Father/Daughter signing Pickle Darling, fresh music from Ultra Q, Screaming Females' annual Garden Party Festival, an award nomination for GRADUATION*, plus upcoming shows, tours & more!
Elene: Yves Tumor - God Is A Circle
Ari: Sonny Sharrock & Nicky Skopelitis - Uncle Herbie’s Dance
Hunter: King Krule - Man Alive!
Austin: Howie Lee - Birdy Island
Adam: ghost orchard - all in
You can find a Spotify playlist here ft. our favorite tracks!
Till next time, Adam, Hunter & the IC Crew
THANKS FOR READING THE INFINITE CATALOG NEWSLETTER
Infinite Catalog is a royalty accounting software + service company that makes tracking and sharing profits easier and more transparent for catalogs and creators alike.
Record labels, publishers, managers, and creator businesses of all shapes and sizes use IC to simplify royalties so that can everyone can know what they’re earning, spend more time growing their catalogs, and get more creators paid more money, more often.