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Building Robust Valuations of Music Assets In A Digital World

By Chris Gilbey

Historically, music publishing catalogues are valued at a multiple of the NPS (Net Publisher Share) with the multiple increasing or decreasing according to the perception of the future earnings potential. The NPS is the gross margin the publisher keeps after the songwriter has been paid and is made up of a basket of Performing Rights [...]

Canada Upsets the American Music Industry for the second time in 110 Years

By Tom Koltai

(Our previous article was the first upset.)   This time, Canadians have made the top ten list of countries that are “out to get” the content industries.   They share this dubious honour with the following countries. Priority Watch List (Links retrieve country specific pdf reports.)         Argentina         Canada         Chile         Costa Rica [...]

Copyright, Trademark or Legalised Piracy?

By Tom Koltai

In 1994, I wanted to place an entry in the Phone Book to give me an advantage over my “soon to be competition”.   I tried to register “Internet Australia Pty. Ltd.”  as a company name. Quite rightly, ASIC refused my attempt at registering a “generic” name.   I succeeded in my efforts by registering [...]

Is Time Warner a Content Company a Service Provider or Just a Stock Promoter?

By Tom Koltai

While other media companies look at merging their broadcast and catalogue divisions with online broadband delivery companies, (Comcast & Universal) Jeff Bewkes the CEO of Time Warner is placing his bets on content distribution agreements.   But just in case that doesn’t work, he’s placing a side bet on owning the distribution methodology, whatever that [...]

Entertainment or Treason? Where do you draw the line.

By Tom Koltai

Prologue: Most of us remember the Blair Witch Project and it’s phenomenal box office success based on a number of web pages suggesting it was a real occurrence.   Mythology – The Aftermath – The Legacy – The Filmmakers   That was an exceptionally clever piece of PR marketing, resulting in one of the highest [...]

The Most Expensive Real Estate in the World – and it’s going to waste.

By Tom Koltai

It looks like online games might be about to change the way media and advertising companies interact with the Internet.   Believe it or not, the most expensive real estate in the world is a little red barn.   Nearly 40,000,000 million Farmville players have purchased one. It uses up exactly 3 squares of virtual [...]

The Tail (Zynga) is Wagging the Dog – Facebook……

By Tom Koltai

I guess the new star of the Internet, Zynga has started looking for M&A’s.   Not that they want to be taken out yet.   Fig 1.    Farmville User Numbers daily growth through August. – Source – Facebook. User numbers were doubling every two weeks – although have slowed recently mainly due to transaction (caps) [...]

“Habeus Corpus” Died This Week. (The Body of Justice)

By Tom Koltai

The latest craze (meme) on Facebook is co-op farming. The backbone mainstay of the communist co-operatives and Israeli Kibutzes, localized farms have proven to be vital when attempting to provide food for a decentralized population (more than 5 miles from the food growing establishment (farm, dairy, piggery, hatchery, etc)       What about Coles, [...]

You Be The Judge – Time Warner – Destroyed or “MADE” by P2P?

By Tom Koltai

We have noticed of Late that the US Judiciary don't seem to have all the facts pertainent to file sharing cases, relative to the issue of damages – or if they do, they are failing in their instructions to the Juries. Whether this is due to poor representation, or lack of adequately informed expert witnesses, [...]

The Internet starts to payoff for big music.

By Tom Koltai

It seems the Big studios have finally recognised the value of YouTube as an identifier of valuable new talent.   After all it isn’t every day that someone can show casting agents and producers a “pre-approved” Showreel. Pre-approved? Well, viewed, by millions; thereby suggesting “Star Quality in relation to the actors, performers and possibly “No.1 [...]