Warner Music Group Collaboration with Shazam Creates Hybrid Record Label

By Zach Rickers

In February of 2014, Warner Music Group and Shazam announced that they would enter into a “strategic collaboration” in which Warner would have access to Shazam’s user data and Shazam would have access to exclusive Warner content.¹  Currently, when a user hears a song that they like, whether it is at a restaurant or on the radio, they can open up the Shazam application on their smartphone and hold the phones microphone to the speaker which will then analyze and identify the song title and artist that the user is listening to.²  Once a song is identified, the app logs data such as the time of day the song was “tagged”, the song being identified, and even where the song was tagged (if the user has location services enabled).³  This is the sort of data that Warner plans to use not only for A&R, but also for marketing and promotion purposes.

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PRINCE’s NEW DEAL WITH WARNER BROTHERS RECORDS IS A PART OF THE RIPPLE EFFECT OF THE ISSUE OF COPYRIGHT TERMINATIONS UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAW.

The music business headlines are touting the story that Prince has returned to Warner Brothers Records after 18 years with a deal that will see him regain ownership of his back catalog of recordings. This deal marks a new era as the ability to terminate master recording copyright after 35 years was granted in the Copyright Revision Act of 1976 and became effective in 1978, the year that Prince’s debut album came out. 

Just as the record business has been staggering back to its feet after the digital assault started by Napster over a decade ago, another hard blow to the record industry business model is starting to have ripple effects. Recording artists and songwriters from 1978 and after are now entitled to start terminating their contractual transfers and demanding back their copyrights.

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