Contents contributed and discussions participated by wstrahan
Streaming revenues turn the tide against digital pirates - FT.com - 0 views
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Spotify, the subscription streaming service, has more than 6m subscribers. In video, Netflix, boosted by original productions such as House of Cards , has more than 36m subscribers. Amazon, Google and now Apple, with iTunes Radio, are bringing streaming to a much wider audience
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This is – at last – translating into meaningful income. The Recording Industry Association of America calculates that revenues from services including Spotify, Pandora and YouTube went from 3 per cent of industry revenues in 2007 to 15 per cent, or more than $1bn, in 2012.
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Apple’s strategy has pleased some music companies because its streaming service also encourages downloads. But many content owners still believe that streaming cannibalises download and DVD revenues
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Piracy Collapses As Legal Alternatives Do Their Job | TorrentFreak - 0 views
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“When you have a good legitimate offer, the people will use it,” says Olav Torvund, former law professor at the University of Oslo. “There is no excuse for illegal copying, but when you get an offer that does not cost too much and is easy to use, it is less interesting to download illegally.”
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Of those questioned for the survey, 47% (representing around 1.7 million people) said they use a streaming music service such as Spotify. Even more impressively, just over half (corresponding to 920,000 people and 25% of Norwegian Internet users) said that they pay for the premium option.
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While TV show piracy has reduced by half in four years, it actually peaked at the start of 2011 with 200 million shows copied without permission. However, since then with the introduction of legal alternatives, unauthorized copying is down more than 72%.
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"Spotify Was Designed from the Ground Up to Combat Piracy" | TorrentFreak - 0 views
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“Spotify was designed from the ground up to combat piracy,” the company confirms. “Founded in Sweden, the home of The Pirate Bay, we believed that if we could build a service which was better
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than piracy, then we could convince people to stop illegal file-sharing, and start
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consuming music legally again.”
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Pink Floyd: Pandora's Internet radio royalty ripoff - 0 views
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The latest example is how Pandora is pushing for a special law in Congress to slash musicians' royalties – and the tactics they are using to trick artists into supporting this unfair cut in pay.
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We hope that many online and mobile music services can give fans and artists the music they want, when they want it, at price points that work. But those same services should fairly pay the artists and creators who make the music at the core of their businesses.
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Nearly 90% of the artists who get a check for digital play receive less than $5,000 a year. They cannot afford the 85% pay cut Pandora asked Congress to impose on the music community.
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An economic analysis of online streaming music services - 0 views
Literature Resource Center - Document - 0 views
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Morgan's an independent musician and his song "Better Angels" was among a number of his songs that got some 28,000 plays on Pandora.
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The song earned $1.62 in royalties over a 90-day period on Pandora, which is a very typical rate.
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Pandora, which is the number one Internet radio service, saw over $125 million in revenue last quarter, 55 percent more than the year before. But the company still isn't profitable in part because it pays over 60 percent of its revenues to acquire music.
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Literature Resource Center - Document - 0 views
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Sam Rosenthal, who's the founder of a label called Project Records
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iTunes and the other music players have had in the past; buying to own
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Spotify really is changing here is we're talking about access to music.
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Spotify, YouTube, Streaming Services Are Killing Digital Downloads | TIME.com - 0 views
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Now, with a deluge of music streaming services letting fans listen to songs for free, the digital download may be going the way of the CD and the cassette tape before it.
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U.S. digital track sales decreased for the first time ever in 2013, dropping from 1.34 billion to 1.26 billion, according to Nielsen SoundScan. CD sales also continued their ongoing decline, dropping 14 percent to 165 million. Digital album sales were stable, staying at 118 million sold last year. Meanwhile the number of songs streamed through services like Spotify, YouTube and Rhapsody increased 32 percent to 118.1 billion.
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Spotify just arrived on U.S. shores in the summer of 2011, but it has become a lightning rod for controversy thanks to a chorus of artists who decry that paying musicians a fraction of a cent per listen is unfair.
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Study Finds That Streaming And Spyware Are Killing Music Piracy - 0 views
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That report shows that the number of music files being illegally downloaded was 26% less in 2012 than in 2011. What’s more, 40% of the people surveyed in the study who said that they’d illegally downloaded in 2011 did not do so in 2012.
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So what’s responsible for this massive reduction in piracy? According to the survey, it’s not stepped-up enforcement – it’s the availability of free music via streaming services like Spotify. Nearly half of the people who had stopped or sharply reduced their music downloading cited those services as the reason for stopping.
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What’s interesting to me is that streaming isn’t just killing downloads. 44% of the survey respondents indicated that they’d also stopped ripping CDs from friends and family.
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Music as a Service as an Alternative to Music Piracy? - Springer - 0 views
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Music pirates show a clearly positive approach to MaaS. The mean of attitude was 3.95 on a five-point scale.
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While most pirates would use the free version (mean = 3.57), few would pay for MaaS (mean = 1.65).
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Alternative
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Greece is standing up to EU neocolonialism | Costas Douzinas and Petros Papaconstantino... - 0 views
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The bailout of Greece is not a gift or grant but a loan bearing high interest.
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According to IMF estimates, Greece will pay €131bn in refinancing and interest payments between 2009 and 2014, far more than the initial bailout loan of €110bn.
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The European governments now propose to offer a second loan, if Greece accepts an even more odious set of measures and sells off the family silver.
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China and Nigeria: Neo-Colonialism, South-South Solidarity, or Both? | Daniel Wagner - 0 views
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Bilateral relations between China and Nigeria will likely take one of two paths in the long term: either China will remain the overwhelmingly dominant actor or Nigeria will become a regional superpower, evening out the playing field. If China remains the stronger player it will shape Nigeria in its own interests (commonly referred to as "Chinese Imperialism").
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During the first eleven years of its independence, Nigeria and China had no diplomatic relations. The Nigerian government's view of China grew especially sour after Mao officially supported the secessionist state in Biafra by supplying the Biafran administration with weapons.
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During the period of General Abacha's military rule (1993-1998), Beijing's no-strings-attached development projects were increasingly well received. Nigeria's leaders grew resentful of Western conditions for aid and investment, and many Nigerians began to question what a generation of economic dependence on the West achieved for Nigeria.
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Africa and China: More than minerals | The Economist - 0 views
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An estimated 1m are now resident in Africa, up from a few thousand a decade ago, and more keep arriving.
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Between the Sahara and the Kalahari deserts lie many of the raw materials desired by its industries. China recently overtook America as the world’s largest net importer of oil.
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Almost 80% of Chinese imports from Africa are mineral products.
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In Africa, Li Keqiang Refutes Charge of Chinese 'Neo-Colonialism' | The Diplomat - 0 views
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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang finished his four country tour of Africa, making stops in Ethiopia (including the African Union headquarters), Nigeria, Angola, and Kenya. China’s activities in Africa are increasingly gaining media attention around the world, particularly as speculation heats up about a competition for the continent between China and the U.S. (or even China and Japan).
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Li promised to devote “more than half of its foreign aid to Africa,” with no conditions attached to the funding. Li pledged China’s friendship to Africa, and reiterated Chinese support for Africa playing a larger role in world politics as it continues to develop. Li also stressed that China “will never attach political conditions to its assistance to Africa and will never use its aid programs to interfere in the internal affairs of African countries,” a tacit criticism of Western countries who often refuse to provide funding to countries seen as human rights violators.
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Li Keqiang also acknowledged in a speech that China-Africa relations have encountered some “growing pains,” a nod to tensions in some African countries over issues such as illegal Chinese mining operations and resentment against local Chinese traders. But Xinhua was quick to emphasize that these “growing pains” are “problems that inevitably occur during the development of relations” — meaning no one (especially not China) is to blame.
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Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah - 0 views
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Non-alignment, as practised by Ghana and many other countries, is based on co-operation with all States whether they be capitalist, socialist or have a mixed economy. Such a policy, therefore, involves foreign investment from capitalist countries, but it must be invested in accordance with a national plan drawn up by the government of the non-aligned State with its own interests in mind.
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