The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) delivered its Web IV ruling on statutory SoundExchange licensing rates for webcasters for 2016-20, raising Pandora’s total music royalty costs by a forecast 12% in 2016

Had the CRB sided with SoundExchange, rates for Pandora’s non-subscription tier would have shot up 79%, leaving the company floundering in a sea of red ink

Nevertheless, these increased licensing costs for Pandora over 2016-20 will postpone the moment when the company attains net profitability

At launch, Google’s new subscription service YouTube Red competes most directly with premium music streaming services, also offering ad-free videos

YouTube’s augmented revenue model re-boots incentives for native talent to produce content for the platform, and will also widen its appeal for established content producers

Although consumers are likely to find paid subscription for ad-free videos a weak proposition, Red holds much potential for YouTube as it competes for attention across device ecosystems, and presents little risk to its existing advertising model

Germany remains the second largest market in Europe for the exploitation of composition rights by their authors, with €382 million paid out to them in 2014, up 8% on 2013 (63% share of distributions on average). The German Government intends to secure an even “better balance for authors” in their contracts with music publishers, by allowing the composer to “re-tender” their contracts after five years to secure a better deal

GEMA, the collecting society, has a strong position in Germany and is poised to lead the development of the digital single market for online music services. Together with PRS for Music (UK) and STIM (Sweden), GEMA has formed a joint venture (JV) to offer multi-territory licensing and copyright administration services to services, music publishers and other CMOs, cleared by the EU Commission

Music publisher revenues from domestic collections could rise from €225 million to €247 million from 2014 to 2017, due to a moderate rise in broadcast revenues on the back of the economic recovery, a boost to public performance revenues from a higher live music tariff and flat royalties from recorded music expenditure, as the decline of physical mechanicals is offset by the rise of online royalties

The UK is the top music publishing market in Europe, at £428 million in 2014, despite being second to France and Germany for collections, because mechanical royalties for the reproduction rights (CDs, vinyl, digital) flow only to music publishers, while performance royalties are shared with writers

Thanks to the recovery of the UK economy that started in 2013, royalties from performance on radio, TV and in public have risen more strongly in recent years than in the difficult period of the recession 2008-10, providing a more promising context for sustained growth of the performance component of music publisher revenues

For online royalties, which accounted for 12% of music publisher revenues in 2014, the withdrawal by major music publishers of their rights to Anglo-American repertoire has shifted licensing to SOLAR, a joint venture of PRS for Music, STIM, and GEMA, also offering an aggregated repertoire and copyright administration services. This makes PRS for Music a leader in the development of multi-territory licensing of digital music services

BT will soon for the first time charge the majority of viewers for their own channels with the launch of the BT Sport Pack. The Pack includes BT Sport Europe, exclusive home to UEFA’s European football tournaments from this August, the rights to which BT are paying £299 million a year.

Viewing figures for the big European tournaments are not as high as one might expect given their prominence. Consumer demand for the new channel will also be highly dependent on the success of British teams, notably lacking in recent seasons.

We therefore do not expect a dramatic impact on BT Sport (or BT broadband) subscribers, and the widening losses will put pressure on BT’s margin squeeze test regulation, although they are easily absorbable at BT Group level.

Apple has confirmed the launch of Apple Music, its streaming music service, available on iOS devices by the end of June, and later on Android. Priced at the same level as Spotify’s premium tier and lacking a free ad-supported offer, much hinges on the appeal of its curation tools.

Other key announcements included a news app, the roll-out of Apple Pay to the UK, improvements to maps, and new operating systems for Mac, iPhone/iPad and Watch.

The main theme was one of increasing intelligence in services, with Music and News both being curated and the software getting better at understanding and predicting user needs. This is a necessary step to prepare for the next wave of consumer technology: wearables and connected devices.

France’s Orange Sport closed last month after France Télécom declined to bid for a renewal of its four-year licence to broadcast Ligue 1 football. The future of its sister film channel, Orange Cinéma Séries, remains unclear.

The strategic aim for Orange Sport was confused from the start – standalone profit centre or loss leader, fully fledged alternative to Canal+ or add-on to it.

Orange’s premium TV project was a failure: we estimate its cumulative losses at €1.2 billion, while Orange’s broadband market share and retail price premium shrank during the four years of its operation. But it did arguably strengthen Orange’s hand in carriage negotiations with Canal+.

In this report we show our analysis of trends in UK broadband and telephony to March 2012, based on the published results of the major service providers.

Highlights for the March quarter include broadband subscriptions exceeding 21 million, a sudden uptick in broadband market net additions and local loop unbundling accounting for a record 40% of broadband subscriptions. The proportion of unbundled lines that are fully unbundled exceeded two thirds for the first time.

This quarter we also include a look at pricing, including prices for high speed broadband that show how BT Retail is using high speed broadband to reduce the price advantage of its competitors.

Vodafone’s proposed acquisition of Cable & Wireless Worldwide is far from a done deal and is unlikely to be completed until September

The cost synergies are real but likely slim, with the main rationale being to cost effectively expand Vodafone’s fixed enterprise business in the UK, and to gain the expertise to do this elsewhere

The impact of an acquisition, while gradual, would reverberate for years to come. Wireline wholesalers, then corporate service retailers would be affected, notably BT. Later, the impact could spread to the small business segment. The prospect of Vodafone’s re-entry into the UK residential wireline market would remain distant but more likely

In this presentation we show our analysis of trends in UK broadband and telephony to December 2011, based on the published results of the major service providers.

Highlights for the December quarter include a return to the lower rate of broadband market growth seen prior to mid-2010, accelerating growth in the number of subscribers to high speed broadband and the continuing increase in market share of BT Retail and BSkyB at the expense of virtually all other players

This quarter’s edition includes a look at Openreach’s wholesale FTTP On Demand, planned for launch in 2013.

Following announcements by Virgin Media to double the speeds used by most cable customers, and by BSkyB to launch high speed broadband offer in April based on Openreach’s wholesale VDSL product, by 2016 we now expect about half of UK residential broadband subscribers to be on high speed broadband, i.e. xDSL or GPON at 30 Mbit/s plus, and DOCSIS at 20 Mbit/s plus