Zac plays bass on Ooh La La La.
Which show in 1998 sold whistles to fans?
More Than Big-Name Acts, Music Rights Took Center Stage At SXSW
Where’s Garth? Brooks appeared last year at South by Southwest, but in 2018 the focus was elsewhere. (Photo by Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP)
Last week, the music world descended on Austin, Texas, for the annual tech-and-entertainment fortnight known as South By Southwest. But unlike recent years, talk of music rights — not keynotes by A-list acts, like Garth Brooks last year — ended up at the forefront.
The industry has become transfixed by streaming, which has finally turned a corner with the growth of services like Spotify and Apple Music. Whereas the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga headlined prior iterations of SXSW, this year was highlighted by speeches from YouTube’s Lyor Cohen and Apple’s Eddy Cue. And behind the scenes, much of the action revolved around music rights.
“Catalogues are growing [in value], and that is streaming,” says Matt Smith, CEO of Royalty Exchange. “Everybody can see it, there’s a lot of enthusiasm around Spotify’s IPO. There’s a lot of financial coverage, essentially, of the growth in the music business, finally, after this huge bear market. That’s bringing a lot of people in now.”
Smith’s company serves as a marketplace for sound recording and publishing copyrights for music ranging from Sesame Street tunes to Eminem songs (the latter through its subsidiary, Royalty Flow, which is planning an IPO). Royalty Exchange is agnostic to the boom-and-bust cycle, taking a 15% cut of each deal; the company has been a part of more than 230 transactions worth over $14 million in total during the past two years.
The music rights rush has also attracted big institutional players, a trend on display last week. Winton Group, a data-driven investment management firm with some $30 billion in assets under management, unveiled Music Fund — an algorithm-driven outfit set to buy pieces of catalogues — at SXSW. The idea: give up-and-coming musicians a chance to sell slices of their rights in order to stay independent, rather than selling away everything to a major label.
“Any artist that has music that’s generating royalties could come to us and say, ‘I’m interested in selling X percentage of these tracks,’” says Winton data scientist Thomas Jerde. “And our algorithm would say, ‘Here’s the evaluation, and here’s an offer.’ So you can use that capital to do whatever you want. Invest in your career.”
Winton is especially interested in the long tail of music royalties.
“If you’ve had 10 years of constant $1,000-a-year [payouts], it’s plausible to believe that next year is going to be around that same number,” says Music Fund founder Geoff Cross. “Similarly, you expect that when a track is launched, it’s going to be a big spike, and then it’s going to decay.”
The draw for investors and marketplace operators is clear. But does selling off increasingly valuable assets make sense for artists? Depends who you ask. Proponents of outfits like Music Fund and Royalty Exchange cite the freedom to sell small chunks of a catalogue, sometimes for a term of just a few years, as a great way to free up cash to make new music or plan a tour.
Some musicians remain skeptical, including singer-songwriter Taylor Hanson, who along with his brothers Zac and Isaac plays in the band Hanson, one of the bigger names at SXSW this year.
“In 2018, artists are at risk of offering up their core intellectual property to the lowest bidder, streamer or company acquiring those rights,” he says. “History is repeating itself, just like artists of the early record industry in the ’50s who sold their publishing royalties and then watched those residuals earn millions for publishing houses long after the heyday of album sales. I would say to all artists, large or small, learn from the past and maintain the ownership of your creation; it will always be your future.”
As for South By Southwest, the relative lack of stadium-filling acts this year was in many ways refreshing, returning the confab to its roots as a platform for rising artists to get discovered. But even last year, Brooks offered a clue toward the future.
“I think I’m the bridesmaid,” the country superstar told me. “I think everybody wants to know what Amazon is doing.”
Back To The Island 2019 – Pre-Sale starts today!
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MMMBop Hanson Brother Stops by The Alamo
While we all remember “MMMBop,” Hanson remembers the Alamo.
At least the youngest of the three brothers does.
Zac Hanson, now 32, stopped by San Antonio’s most-famous landmark with his family over the weekend.
He captured the moment on with an Instagram selfie of his kids and wife, Kathryn, and the hashtag “#rememberthealamo.”
While they may best be remembered for the 21-year-old song, Zac and his brothers, Isaac and Taylor, are celebrating 25 years of making music together this year. The trio was in Austin for SXSW prior to the Alamo visit.
HNET Newsletter- Mar 19, 2018
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Bring Hanson to Newcastle is gaining momentum
The Herald
If there’s one thing Topics likes to see, it’s Newcastle being promoted as a great place to go.
Lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes’s passion for talking up the city must be rubbing off on us.
Each and every one of us are ambassadors for our city and region, aren’t we? We’re parochial. We love our town.
Which is why we were delighted to see the actions of a group of hardcore, passionate, fervent and (just slightly) obsessive fans of the cult band Hanson.
Now, many of you would only know this band from the 1997 hit, MMMBop.
The Hanson brothers – Isaac, Taylor and Zac – were young, baby-faced whipper-snappers back then, but have since released six albums and built a largely underground but passionate following.
As such, there’s a Facebook group called Bring Hanson to Newcastle. This campaign, which includes a petition, was spearheaded by Emily Fuller, Samantha Nay and Helen Gregory. The girls are doing their bit to promote Newcastle.
You see, lead singer Taylor is known for wearing a black cap with the initials “TUL”, which is the airport code for Tulsa – the band’s hometown.
“We all travelled to Tulsa in May last year, where we talked their ears off about Newcastle,” Helen said.
When the band came to Australia last June, the girls made their own “TUL” black caps and wore them to multiple shows.
They also made black caps with the initials “NTL” – the airport code for Newcastle.
The girls gave NTL hats to the band.
“When we met them at the Sydney show, we said ‘look we’re representing your hometown, feel free to promote ours’,” said Helen, who reports for the Herald when she’s not following Hanson around the world.
“You’re gonna need to know this airport code for when you come to Newcastle – hopefully soon,” the girls told the band.
The girls wondered if they’d ever see the hats again.
After the show, Zac came out of the Enmore Theatre wearing his NTL hat.
“The next day he was photographed by another fan in Sydney wearing the hat. We were pretty chuffed by that,” Helen said.
Then, earlier this week – nine months after the Sydney show – Taylor’s daughter Penny was seen in a photo on Instagram wearing the hat.
Penny Hanson wearing the Newcastle hat.
What does it all mean? Well, we reckon it might just mean that Hanson will be coming to Newcastle on their next Australian tour.
SXSW: Hanson Deliver the Hits, Hint at ‘Next Big Project’
Jiro Schneider
Hanson
Hanson has a storied history with South By Southwest, from busking on the streets of Austin as youths and famously singing a capella at the closing barbeque and softball tournament before signing its major label deal in the mid-90s to headlining a tribute to fellow Oklahoman Leon Russell at last year’s Texas Recording Academy chapter Block Party. The brothers added to that legacy on Thursday afternoon by coming in from Oklahoma especially for a rare, and lightly publicized, trio performance at the John Lennon Come Together For Education day party at the Belmont.
The group turned in a generous and intimate 12-song, 55-minute show that fit the event with plenty of songwriting stories as Hanson worked through acoustic renditions of “Strong Enough To Break,” “Penny & Me,” “Madeline,” “Weird,” “On And On” and “MMMBop” — the platter played to a sea of cell phone cameras — before plugging in for “Thinking ‘Bout You,” “Been There Before,” “Where’s the Love,” This Time Around,” “A Minute Without You” and “Lost Without Each Other.”
“We kinda consider ourselves locals,” Zac Hanson told Billboard afterwards. “Tulsa’s not far away, so to support music in this region makes a lot of sense. It seemed like a cool way to come and be part of the festival without doing the rigamarole, and it really connects to something we see in sort of our immediate future.”
Taylor Hanson — who turned 35 on Wednesday — teased that at the beginning of the show, telling the Fansons in front of him that the group was “quietly plotting the rest of our year.” That will include a tour Hanson plans to announce in April, as well as the group’s “next big project” that the brothers were being circumspect about on Thursday. “It’s very musical,” Taylor said. And though Zac said the group is “in the studio right now recording new music,” Taylor added that “we don’t really think about our music under the terms of, like, records anymore. Some of it’s a product of 2018 and some of it is a product of being a band that tries to think about the bigger picture, the kdea of long-term, of songs living past your lifetime.
“Year 26 for our band this year — we just need to make sure every project we do is exciting and challenging for us, and hopefully it’s a great story.
Hanson’s 2018 may also include more partnerships with the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus and, according to Taylor, “making our project an opportunity to talk about the importance of supporting music in every school and in every community. The whole idea of creativity is so important to American culture, so important to our future.” And, Zac, added, “it’s really about our love of seeing music education grow for kids. We all have kids. We started as kids. One of the first things we did as a band was playing in schools. So if we can help that keep going and grow, we want to.”
Happy Birthday, Taylor Hanson! Celebrate with a look back at Hanson through the years
Tulsa world
More than 25 years after Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson’s first performance at Mayfest, they have seen the world, played “MMMBop” more times than they can fathom, built an enormous and fervent fanbase, and weathered tension between record labels and themselves.
The creativity of the Tulsa-native brothers, so many years after they started their career as pre-teens, shows no signs of slowing.
