Hello there! Here is some stuff I do…

I’m heading to Ibiza this week for my first ever visit to the International Music Summit. I’ll be talking all things fan data and will be running IMS delegates through the key recommendations in the MMF’s Fan Data Guide – which you can still download for free here.

Last TGE 2019 photo, promise! It’s me interviewing the marvellous Cassandra Gracey from Sony’s 4th Floor Creative last Friday. Don’t forget, you can download all the slides I presented at The Great Escape this year from this link. (Also, thanks to Tia Johnson for taking all the other CMU+TGE photos I’ve shared, and to Patrick Gunning for this one).

I spent a lot of time on stage at the CMU+TGE conferences last week, but I wasn’t the only person allowed to ask questions, honest! I mean nearly, but not quite. Thanks to my brilliant co-hosts, including Jen Long who led half the discussions at our Music Marketing Conference on the Friday, like this one about all the ‘content’ artist campaigns now need.

This year we got to do the ‘Article Thirteen’ bit at CMU+TGE with an actual ratified ‘Article Thirteen’ on the screen. Progress! Except, of course, it’s now Article Seventeen. And what will it actually look like when implemented at a national level across the EU? That’s what we discussed on stage. You can get my beginner’s guide to safe harbour reform in the Digital Dollar Conference slides here.

After we launched the MMF Song Royalties Guide at TGE last week I asked Nigel Dewar Gibb from Lewis Silkin to provide some practical tips for how songwriters can reduce the negative impact of all those royalty chain complexities, which he is doing here. Then MMF Chair Paul Craig set out the management community’s priorities for ensuring more writers get paid more of their digital dollars. You can download the actual guide here.

In the post-TGE haze, I’m just going back through the photos and remembering all the great conversations that took place on stage during the three CMU+TGE conferences last week. Obviously being able to chat to Chilly Gonzales about his experiences of traditional music education and why he established the Gonzervatory programme was a stand-out moment for me!

And that’s another TGE completed. This year we launched the all-new TGE Elevate professional development programme for early-career delegates thanks to support from Arts Council England and I got to meet all these guys, ie my keynote speaker bookings of the future. Thanks to everyone who took part in and supported Elevate, it was a really great first year. TGE 2020 kicks off in 366 days time!

It’s the final day of The Great Escape Festival and after our three high-speed CMU+TGE conferences on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, some more laid back Elevate Seminars today. Plus we finale, as always, with Heroes & Villains in Conference Room 2 in Jurys Inn Waterfront at 5pm – it’s going to be a good one!

So that’s two CMU+TGE conferences done. Too many highlights to list! But launching our latest Digital Dollar guide and getting to interview my musical hero Chilly Gonzales would definitely be high up on the list if I did. Tomorrow the focus is music marketing and then, on Saturday, we present the all-new Elevate seminars.

So we are presenting three – yes, THREE – full day CMU+TGE conferences as part of The Great Escape this year. The third is on Friday and will put the spotlight on how music marketing continues to evolve thanks to the rise of social and the big shift to streams. I wrote an intro to it all here.

Not only are we presenting a full day conference at The Great Escape this year based on all our Digital Dollar work for the MMF, we are also launching the latest Digital Dollar guide, explaining why many songwriters are missing out on a chunk of their streaming money. It’s all happening on Thursday and I wrote a little intro about the day’s proceedings.

So somehow it’s very nearly time for The Great Escape. Quite how that came round so quickly is anyone’s guess. It all kicks off at 10am on Wednesday with our CMU+TGE Music Education Conference, a full day for music employers, music educators and everyone who cares about the future of the music talent pipeline. Plus musical genius Chilly Gonzales will be providing the all-important artist perspective shortly after 4pm. I wrote an quick intro to it all here.

This week to Cologne to sort out all things music licensing in one hour. Yep, we’re going to fix everything. I can say that because I’m moderating, which means I just have to ask the questions. But I’m pretty confident my panel will have it all sorted by minute 58. If you’re going to Co-Pop – see you there! Info here.

So is music saved yet? It was great to discuss all things article thirteen (aka seventeen) and the wider Copyright Directive yesterday at the Brighton Music Conference with Lucie from the Featured Artists Coalition, John from PRS For Music and James from Reed Smith LLP. Here are my slides explaining the basics.

This is me at Wide Days earlier this month talking about why artists and songwriters sometimes don’t get paid. I’ll be at the Brighton Music Conference later today talking about why artists and songwriters sometimes don’t get paid. One day artists and songwriters will always get paid and I’ll have nothing to talk about! (Photo by Janice Honey)

I spent today with MMF and the Accelerator managers for the second and final Mechanics Of Music Management day. And now to Cornwall for the third and final Music Industry Insights session with Cultivator. End of term all round!

I have spent the afternoon trying to get on top of my Great Escape admin. Have I mentioned that we have three excellent CMU+TGE Conferences happening there this year? Though that said, in my Easter Weekend office it’s somewhat easy to get distracted by the boats that keep going by!

We will launch the next guide in the MMF Digital Dollar series at The Great Escape next month. This one puts the spotlight on song royalties and why songwriters often miss out on their streaming royalties. Next week we are teaming up with The Ivors Academy to give a sneak preview to the songwriting community. Info here.

I’ve spent the last two days at BIMM London hearing from business, event and journalism students about the final year projects they’ve been pursuing. The aim being to pick a winner of the annual BIMM London Entrepreneurial Award. There were some really great business ventures. Meanwhile, one of my fellow judges – Tina Hart – has already penned a LinkedIn post with some great tips based on all our feedback and deliberations. You can read it here.

There is one more TGE+CMU Conference to plug – this one focused on music marketing. First we’ll speed through the entire music marketing toolkit – does press still matter, who is still listening to radio, what about podcasts, what about influencers, are playlists peaking? Then we’ll talk strategy – how do you deal with campaigns getting longer and how can you ensure all the artist’s business partners work as one? Get yourself some info here.

Another Great Escape plug? Yes, that’s right, another Great Escape plug! We are presenting three TGE+CMU conferences this year. On Thursday 9 May we will put the spotlight on the streaming business and how artists and songwriters get paid… occasionally… on a good day… when the stars align. We’ll also discuss how you might make the stars align more often. Intro.

The Great Escape is now somehow just a month away. We are presenting three TGE+CMU conferences this year, the first one on Wednesday 8 May puts the spotlight back on music education. If you’re in music education, or are a music employer, or have a talent development role, or are interested in how the industry can better support the next generation of artists, executives and entrepreneurs, this is for you! I wrote a little intro here.

If you followed me on Twitter back when Last.fm used to tweet out weekly listening stats (and if you have a very good memory) you might appreciate how exciting it is for me to be chatting to Chilly Gonzales about his brilliant Gonzervatory project as part of our music education conference at The Great Escape Festival next month. Latest updates to our programme here.

This week’s Setlist actually has some music in it – complete with a copyright law get-out as to why we’re allowed to do that without any licence. Plus how to invest in a dying medium via a company in bankruptcy and me falling UP some stairs! Tune in.

This time next week I’ll be Edinburgh for the marvellous Wide Days talking about why artists don’t get paid and the future of music publishing. Sam from CMU will be leading sessions on fanbase building and the blockchain. Get some info here.

So yesterday the IFPI confirmed that the global record industry enjoyed a fourth consecutive year of growth in 2018 with revenues up 9.7% to $19.1 billion. Cue lots of positivity and optimism. Hurrah! But for those of us writing about it all, that’s no fun at all is it! Here is me making the best of it.

We are currently running the MMF Mechanics Of Music Management courses as a series of webinars. Tonight, all the key info you need about music copyright in just two hours. That’s right, all of it! Check out the info here.

For anyone who heard my session at Music Norway’s Eksportdagen on Friday – you can download my slides on the MMF Fan Data guide here. Even if you didn’t, you can download the full guide for free from that link too. Get on top of your artist’s data!

Spent the day at this fine establishment in Oslo where I had the chance to talk about the MMF’s Fan Data Guide. Are artists getting access to the fan data they need? And are they legally able to use it? Thanks to Music Norway for the invite!

It’s been a busy week of chatting music revenues, music rights and music management – with entrepreneurial MA students at the National Film & Television School on Tuesday, musicians with Cornwall’s Cultivator initiative yesterday, and managers on MMF’s Accelerator programme today. Tomorrow, to Norway to talk fan data.

So the European Parliament has passed the Copyright Directive. Which, depending on who you believe, will both “save music” and “kill the internet”. Before it dies, why not tune in to the recent edition of Setlist where we explained the whole music industry v YouTube saga? Here it is.

There’s more Spotify v Apple chatter on this week’s Setlist – but we snuck it in between Parliament’s new live music report and the latest BPI stats, so you’ll hardly notice. You can tune in to it all via your podcast application of choice or here online.

Really enjoyed heading up to the rather swish new campus of the University of Northampton yesterday to talk all things music business with The Ultimate Seminar. If you were there, many of the tips I mentioned are included in this article here.

I’m so exited about this new professional development programme we are launching at TGE that my subconscious pasted the headline announcing it into the CMU Daily subject line twice! But it is actually that exciting. Find out more about TGE Elevate here.

In this week’s edition of what is fast becoming the Spotify Dispute Of The Week podcast, we explain what’s actually going on with the big mechanical royalties hoo haa in the US just now. Plus Kanye’s sneaky trick to try and get out of his EMI publishing contract. Tune in here!

So this has all really kicked off this week hasn’t it? Currently thinking about setting up a wrestling ring on Brighton beach during TGE, then we can let Spotify, Apple and all the music publishers fight it out once and for all. Our report on the latest is here. Plus we’ll talk about it on next week’s Setlist.

This weekend I’m heading to Colchester for the second of two CMU:DIY afternoons with the Essex Music Development Agency. We’ll be talking revenues, rights, gigs, social and business partners with lots of local artists. And I’ll be putting diagrams like this one on a big screen! Info here.

So, the war of words is very much underway in the US over Spotify’s decision to appeal the Copyright Royalty Board’s ruling on song royalty rates for streaming services. As with all things to do with digital licensing, it’s complicated. Someone should write a book about all that digital licensing nonsense! Here’s my report on yesterday’s developments. Oh, and here’s that book, in case you’re interested.

Last year, when CMU was 20 years old, we picked out the 20 biggest stories that we had covered over the last two decades. We’ve now made special editions of Setlist in which we discuss fifteen of them. Still to come: DRM, web-blocking, MegaUpload, Live Nation and the big bad Pirate Bay! You can listen to all the special editions so far here.

On the latest Setlist special edition we talk about why CMU covers artist news as well as music business news, despite being a music business news service. It’s only partly because artist stories are often funnier. Because sometimes they really aren’t! Tune in here.

Thanks to the Confetti Institute Of Creative Technologies in Nottingham for inviting me to speak at their marvellous Industry Week earlier today – talking through all the key music revenue streams and the business partners that artists work with along the way. Basically this lecture here: cmudiy.com/makingmoney

I’m still really interested in the ever growing ‘influencer business’. Sufficiently so that I have almost – albeit reluctantly – agreed to start referring to it as the ‘influencer business’. I am mentioning it now because the next MME 4.5 event on Tuesday is on all the latest trends in influencer businesses and influencer marketing. If like me, you only tune in on this stuff occasionally, it will be a great way to get fully up to speed on all the latest developments.

Always keen to sample the local cuisine, I’m in the Dubai (Airport) branch of Giraffe. My brain can’t quite decide which timezone it’s currently in so I am having pancakes. That seems about right. Tanzania was magnificent, but next stop London.

Last week I was in Northern Ireland for Output Belfast and chatted to Peter Cinnamond about why artists and songwriters sometimes don’t get paid when their music is streamed, performed or played. You can hear the speedy interview at 13.40 here.

Another good day talking copyright, licensing and streaming at the Dar Es Salaam HQ of the British Council. This was the view from my hotel at dawn this morning, with the Indian Ocean off there in the distance. I think that might be the Omani Embassy down in front, though I am basing this on the fact I can see their wifi network on my iPhone.

Greetings from Dar Es Salaam. It was great to meet so many artists, songwriters, producers and entrepreneurs at today’s first session on the global music rights business. I’m now back in editorial mode and focused on the big stories of the day. Having read the Tanzanian Copyright Act for this trip, guess I’ll need to give the Indian Copyright Act a read ahead of writing the top story for tomorrow’s CMU Daily! So, more copyright reporting and teaching tomorrow…

So this week’s destination for some full on copyright chatter is perhaps the most exiting yet. Looking forward to meeting the Tanzanian music community and discussing music rights globally and locally.

If you heard me chatter at today’s Industry Take Over All-Dayer from Urban Development – here are some downloads…

My Meet The Music Industry slides
My A:E Guide slides
MMF Deals Guide I mentioned to someone!

Tomorrow is Urban Development’s Industry Take Over All Dayer at Kings Place. See you there!‬

Back to Northern Ireland for the brilliant Output Belfast – this year I am talking ticket touting, music mapping and what stops artists and songwriters from getting paid.

This Saturday is the Industry Take Over All-Dayer from Urban Development in London. I’ll be doing two sessions in amongst a packed programme of talks, panels, sessions, discussions, one-on-one advice surgeries and more. If you know anyone getting started in music, do let them know – info at industrytakeover.co.uk.

I am in Truro! Yes, Truro! Somehow I got to the Caucasus before I got to Cornwall. But I’m here now. Looking forward to the first of our events with Cultivator and Cornwall Music Network tomorrow putting the spotlight on music revenue streams and all things gigging.

With May kind of getting too close for comfort, we better announce some more details about this year’s CMU+TGE conference at The Great Escape. And hey, look, we just did that. We have 40 great speakers on board already to talk all things music education, digital dollars and music marketing. More info here.

Last week Spotify bought some podcast companies. So we made a podcast about Spotify and are podcasting it via Spotify! Actually, we’d already made it. It’s another of our CMU 20th anniversary editions of Setlist. Tune in.

For a very long document looking to reform lots of tedious technicalities around EU copyright law, the writing of the European Copyright Directive has created plenty of drama. For fans of ‘Copyright Directive: The Music Industry v YouTube’ here comes the sequel… ‘Copyright Directive: The Music Industry v The Music Industry’. Read more.

An on-the-ground update for Setlist listeners: the old Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street is now a Primark. Repeat: a Primark.

Brain about to switch off for the night then two very interesting new lawsuits pop in my inbox. Time to brush up on the good old termination right in US copyright law and all those attempts to employ a sneaky ‘work for hire’ get out. More in tomorrow’s CMU Daily.

‘Chris Cooke’s Copyright Tour Of The Caucasus’ may be over (and I never did get the t-shirt printed) but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped banging on about music rights. Thanks as always to Lewis Silkin for being magnificent hosts of our CMU Insights masterclasses and seminars. We had one of each today: some digital dollars and some copyright basics.

What I learned today: not only does Armenia have its own alphabet, it also has its own form of musical notation. I’m told it allows for a more precise representation of sound. So, look at me, doubly ignorant, can’t read the words or the music! Fortunately copyright protects both in the usual way and that’s what I’m here to talk about. The seminar is tomorrow.

Today I moved from Tbilisi in Georgia to Yerevan in Armenia. It was a super early flight so only managed to take a few rather-blurry middle-of-the-night snaps of Tbilisi on the drive to the airport. Basically, lots of brightly lit magnificent buildings up high on either side of the valley! Lots of CMU and TGE catch up work to be done today, but tomorrow I plan to explore Yerevan a little. Then on Saturday, the finale music copyright seminar of the trip. This one with a panel too!

Chris Cooke’s Copyright Tour Of The Caucasus (yeah, I’m still it calling that) was in the magnificent city of Tbilisi today. And if you don’t believe me, 1TV popped in with a camera to prove it. I leave the Georgian capital tomorrow morning at 3.30am, but have made mental note to return, there seems to be so much more to explore here. I do, however, now know quite a bit about the local music industry, which was my remit this time.

It’s the customary CMU copyright slides – but in Azerbaijani! Thanks to the British Council team in Baku for making me feel so welcome. Great to talk to the local music community here. Now to the airport as Chris Cooke’s Copyright Tour Of The Caucasus (TM) continues. I’m still the only person calling it that, but may as yet print up a t-shirt.

I have arrived in Azerbaijan at the start of what I’m calling Chris Cooke’s Copyright Tour Of The Caucasus! Excited to be teaming up with British Council’s Selector Pro to present music copyright seminars in Baku, Tbilisi and Yerevan. Kicks off tomorrow, with sessions on Wednesday and Friday too.

I promised a link to the latest MMF Digital Dollar guide, all about fan data. Here is a little background to it all and the all-important download link. All the Digital Dollar reports and guides rely on managers, lawyers and other experts sharing their knowledge with me – but this one in particular. It’s basically the combined insights of Tom at ie:music, Lisa at Red Light, Jessie at Wicksteed Works and Peter at Russells. I did the editing and Fiona at MMF made the magnificent diagrams. Thank you one and all!

So that’s another MMF Digital Dollar guide published, this one on all things fan data. Thanks to everyone who came to the launch tonight. I’ll share links to where you can all download a copy tomorrow.

Thanks to the team at shesaid.so UK for inviting me to talk music industry trends this evening – it was great to meet everyone and pose tricky questions like these four about the streaming business. For everyone who came along, we’ll send out the link for the slides tomorrow!

Back into chatty mode this week presenting things to people at BASCA, CISAC and RSL, talking music industry trends for the she.grows programme, then on Thursday a brand new Digital Dollar guide will be unleashed. And then on Saturday, to Belfast for the very latest Artist:Entrepreneur Day with the FAC, featuring all these guys below. Info on all that at here.

This week’s Setlist includes a discussion about the ins and outs of the R Kelly boycott. And then, for some light relief, Rihanna suing her dad. You can tune in at setlistpodcast.com.

Really excited (in fact possibly even “THRILLED”) to be able to support the excellent she.grows mentoring programme by presenting our Key Music Business Trends session at this event next week. Can’t wait! You can find out more about what that session involves here if you are interested.

Quick trip down to sunny Brighton earlier today to check out the new spaces we are using for the TGE Conference this year. It’s going to be brilliant. More info on the CMU+TGE programme coming soon, but here’s the heads up on the key themes we’ll be exploring this time: cmuinsights.com/greatescape2019

Look, more talking about copyright, hurrah! The first round of CMU Insights seminars for 2019 are our Making Money From Music Copyright sessions. If you know anyone who wants to know more about how music copyright works, it would be great if you could let them know. Info here.

Sometimes I talk about things other than copyright you know! Today was my first session with the latest set of trainees on the brilliant Taylor Bennett Foundation programme. So that’s me talking public relations, corporate communications and stakeholders. And that kind of thing requires a whole different set of diagrams!

The first edition of Setlist for 2019 is another of our specials celebrating 20 years of CMU – this one telling the story of YouTube and the music industry’s love hate love hate love hate relationship with it.

Tune in if you feel like it here.

Artist:Entrepreneur Day is the artist-to-artist educational programme we help run for the Featured Artists Coalition. Three artist entrepreneurs talk us through their artist businesses. I chip in with some A:E Guides. Our next edition is in Belfast on 26 Jan with Help Musicians NI. Do let any early-career artists and future industry talent in that part of the world know. Info here.

So this is me moderating one of our CMU:DIY sessions at Wide Days in Edinburgh last year. Wide Days, by the way, have just announced details about their bigger and better 2019 programme. Which will include some more CMU:DIY sessions too. Hurrah! We reported on that announcement here.

The first CMU Insights training session of 2019 will be our ‘Digital Dollar’ masterclass at Lewis Silkin HQ on Monday 4 Feb. It’s basically me summarising the big long ‘Digital Dollar’ book in 3.5 hours. Though you should all buy the book too, obviously! Here is some info.