Sports & Entertainment Beat

Spotify has launched a new commission-free service that permits music artists to make their merchandise and live concert tickets available to fans through the Spotify platform.  Through Spotify’s partnership with direct-to-consumer marketing platform, Topspin Media, artists will now be able to link from their Spotify artist page to a webstore, enabling them to provide fans direct access to CDs, vinyl records, t-shirts, posters, stickers, writstbands, and other merchandise through Spotify.  Participating artists will manage “preview” merchandise images, item titles, and descriptions that will be linked to the applicable webstore.  Spotify will moderate submissions to ensure the authenticity of offered merchandise.  It is anticipated that the merchandise offerings will appear on an artist’s page 24 to 48 hours after submission by the artist.  Currently, the service limits artists to offering a maximum of three merchandise items at a time.

California recently adopted a new law that affects almost all website operators and online service providers. The update to the California Online Privacy Protection Act (“CalOPPA”) became effective January 1, 2014, and applies to any person or company that operates a commercial website or online service (California’s position is that “online service” includes mobile apps) and collects personal information about California residents, whether such information is actively provided by the visitor or user or automatically collected by the site or service.