Orange County Music & Dance awarded landmark gift to expand its music education offeringsThe City of Irvine and Orange County Music & Dance (OCMD) came to a landmark agreement providing 35 acres of land for the school to develop a new 70,000 square foot campus, allowing OCMD to double its student body.  

The approval came during today’s Irvine City Council meeting. Irvine will provide OCMD with a $1 per year ground lease for its site for 50 years, with optional extensions totaling 75 years. The lease along with $91 million the City has invested in preparing the land and bringing in utilities signifies one of the largest gifts from a municipality in the U.S. 

OCMD offers the highest quality education, training and performance opportunities for K-12 students and veterans, with an endowed scholarship program that ensures that children who want to attend can do so, regardless of their financial circumstances. 

Construction is expected to begin in January 2025 and is slated to be completed by Fall 2026.  

Sharing the full announcement below and I’d be happy to connect you with OCMD’s Executive Chair and CEO Douglas Freeman, who is the founder of National Philanthropy Day, for more information on what this expansion means for students wanting to learn more about music in the region.  

Renderings of the building can be downloaded HERE! 

From KISS’s $300m deal to Warner’s deadline for a bid on Believe… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days…
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An Independent Musician’s POV on the U.S. TikTok ‘Ban’ [Blake Morgan]“The vast majority of music on TikTok generates virtually no revenue for the musicians who made it," writes musician, entrepreneur, and fierce artist advocate Bllake Morngan, and "even more music on the platform is completely unlicensed (stolen), copied (stolen via AI), or pirated (stolen)"......
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Spotify claims rules now in effect will shift $1B to ‘Working Artists’This week, we learned that new Spotify rules are eliminating payments on the tens of millions of tracks that get less than 1,000 plays a year, and a crackdown on so-called "junk tracks" has been in full effect.......
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Lessons from $300M sale of the KISS brand, catalog: ‘This is the future, and the rules are being written now.’Pophouse, the company behind the Abba Voyage hologram live show, has acquired the music catalog, brand name, likeness, and trademarks of the iconic American rock band KISS for a reported $300 million.....
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No royalties and "junk tracks"

Leo Z Picks TELEFUNKEN for Handpan Virtuoso Davide FrielloGifted composer, pianist and producer Leo Z has employed his personal collection of TELEFUNKEN microphones to record Italian handpan virtuoso David Friello. The handpan consists of two metal half-shells welded together, a center tone field surrounded by a circle of at least seven tone fields on the upper side, with an opening in the bottom side.

Listen to a preview of Davide Friello's new album "Amplexus"https://www.davidefriello.com/telefunkenhandpan

Davide Friello, born in Florence, Italy, is an acclaimed handpan artist, known worldwide as a prolific touring and recording musician, composer, and percussionist. Friello has three previous studio albums: "Ritmatika", "Violin & Hang" and "5 Elements." The majority of the handpan selections on "Amplexus" were co-composed by Friello and producer Leo Z.

For the new "Amplexus" album, Leo Z employed two M60 FET pencil mics on the side of the pan, two ELA M 260 tube mics with omni capsules above the pan, and an M82 dynamic mic underneath the pan. "The combination of these Telefunken mics beautifully captures the spacious and ethereal sound of the handpan," says Leo Z, "while retaining the unique percussive qualities of this remarkable instrument."

Handpan is the term for a group of musical instruments that are classified as a subset of the steelpan. Several handpan makers and brands have emerged in recent years, resulting from a growing worldwide interest in the sound that is based on the physical properties of the Trinidadian steelpan, Indian ghatam, Thai gong and Indonesian Gamelan.

"The overhead ELA M 260's bring an airiness and transparency to the way we capture sound," says Leo Z, "especially for this type of impressionistic, acoustic, and intimate type of music." The 260 Stereo Set features two perfectly matched ELA M 260 microphones and a custom dual power supply powering both microphones. In previous recordings, Leo Z has used his 260s on piano, viola, violin, and woodwinds. 

Pictured at the Steinway grand piano at EastWest Studios in Hollywood is Leo Z with his matched pair of TELEFUNKEN ELA M 260 microphones. Photo by David Goggin.

IMPALA sides with UMG in TikTok dispute, calls on Spotify, Apple, Deezer to address ‘negative consequences’ of royalty changesEurope’s trade association for indie labels says there is “an urgent need to secure fair revenues” from services like TikTok
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Christian Luiga, veteran of defense firm Saab, named new CFO of SpotifyLuiga will start his new gig at Spotify in October, the company said in a statement Thursday
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CD Baby operations have been merged with Downtown MusicDowntown Music announced on Thursday that it has completed the merger of CD Baby’s operations into Downtown.....
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Infamous Record Stall Crawl returns for a 7-City Comeback TourMusic lovers, record enthusiasts, and audiophiles are checking their collections and ironing their CBGB t-shirts in anticipation of the upcoming Record Store Crawl tour, making a comeback after a four-year pandemic-induced hiatus.....
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Planning a big D.Y.I. Release? Learn from Kohla’s debut album ‘Romance’Independent neo-soul artist Kohla explains the "highs and lows" of planning a big self-release.....
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Spotify stock up 8% on report of planned price increase in US, UK, AUSpotify reportedly plans to raise the price of its paid subscription service in multiple markets later this month and in the U.S. later in the year. The news caused Spotify stock to close up 8.15% on Wednesday.....
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3 reasons why… Warner Music Group might be tempted to bid $1.8 billion for BelieveWeighing up the positive differences an acquisition of Believe could make to WMG
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The MLC Reaches Milestone of $2B in Total Royalties Distributed; Files Initial Submission for Periodic Review of DesignationThe Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) announced that its total royalties distributed have now exceeded $2 billion. The MLC reached this significant milestone in just over three years since beginning full operations. 

The MLC also announced that it filed its initial submission to the United States Copyright Office in connection with the first periodic review of the designation of The MLC and Digital Licensee Coordinator (DLC) by the Register of Copyrights.

The Music Modernization Act of 2018 requires the Register to review the designations of The MLC and DLC once every five years. The next step in this process will be a public comment period, during which members of the public can submit their input until May 29, 2024.

As part of its initial submission for the periodic review, The MLC has demonstrated its unwavering commitment to its statutory responsibilities:

-The MLC maintains its status as a nonprofit organization, which is funded entirely by DSPs at no cost to songwriters or music publishers. 

-The MLC has received endorsements from owners of musical copyrights representing the overwhelming majority of the market. 

-The MLC has demonstrated that it possesses the administrative and technological capabilities necessary to carry out all of its responsibilities under the MMA, including enabling more than 50 DSPs to secure the compulsory blanket license, establishing a public database of musical works ownership data that now contains data for more than 35 million songs, conducting extensive outreach and educational activities that have enabled The MLC to enroll more than 38,000 members based throughout the United States and around the world, and building a royalty distribution process that has enabled The MLC to complete 36 on-time monthly royalty distributions and achieve total royalties distributed of more than $2 billion.

-In addition, The MLC has matched over 90% of the mechanical royalties it has received to musical works in its public database, and effectively illuminated the “black box” for digital audio mechanicals by giving members the ability to search all of its data for the remaining unmatched royalties and propose matches of those unmatched royalties to the works they have registered using The MLC’s Matching Tool.

Despite its focus on U.S.-based services, The MLC has made it a priority to find and compensate rightsholders for their U.S. mechanicals globally, establishing connections with over 100 collective management organizations in nearly 130 countries.

The public can file comments on The MLC’s and DLC’s submissions by May 29, 2024, and can reply to other initial public comments by June 28, 2024. The MLC and DLC will have the ability to file replies to the comments by July 29, 2024.  For more information about the periodic review process or to learn how to submit comments, please click here.