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1 | Article Title | Author | Publication | Date | Country | Artist | Service | Data | Comments/Key points | URL | Artists Interviewed or Quoted | Data points/Statements from artist perspective: | Industry Personnel Interviewed/Quoted (Relevance): | Relevant Data points/Statements from Industry perspective: | Quotes from unnamed sources: | ||||||||||||
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3 | ‘Bigger than MTV’: how video games are helping the music industry thrive | Mat Ombler | The Guardian | 2018 | US | Steve Aoki, Yuzo Koshiro, Motohiro Kawashima, Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke, Kode9, Dizzee Rascal, Thundercat, Jay-Z, Eminem, Kanye West, Trent Reznor, Paul McCartney, Amon Tobin, Hans Zimmer, Health, Neil Davidge, Skrillex, Solar Fields | Spotify, Apple Music | - The success of a booming video game industry, expected to generate $137.9bn in revenue this year, is music to the ears for bands, musicians, record labels and composers - Acrobatic remote-control-car football game Rocket League, meanwhile, surpassed 40 million players at the start of this year and regularly adds new music to its tracklist, letting players click through to listen on Spotify outside the game. | - Since the 90s, when licensed music became prevalent in games, series such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Grand Theft Auto and Wipeout have become just as well-known for their soundtracks as they are for their gameplay. For millions of people, video games have been a way to discover new favourite bands or dive into other musical genres. And because people discover this music while playing a game they love, they develop a strong emotional attachment to it. - Video games are now an essential part of marketing plans for musicians and managers. The Fifa soundtracks, for instance, are viewed as one of the foremost annual showcases for international artists today. - The heyday of music games like Guitar Hero has passed, but now games integrate with services like Spotify. Beat Fever is a mobile game helping to generate better engagement between players and musicians: players tap along to their favourite music and are then invited to stream the tracks in full on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. - “If you want a really, really interesting, jet-propelled career as a composer you probably wouldn’t go into film anymore; you would go into video games,” says Charles Hazlewood, an international conductor and advocate for the wider appreciation of orchestral music. - The vinyl resurgence is also helping to create new opportunities for both video game composers and record labels. Data Discs is a record label solely dedicated to releasing video game music. Working alongside partners such as Sega, Capcom and Konami, they’ve remastered a variety of game soundtracks from their studio in London, including Streets of Rage, Shinobi, and Metal Slug. Their founder, Jamie Crook, tells me this is another way for composers to be paid for their work. | https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/aug/22/video-games-music-industry | Charles Hazlewood - an international conductor and advocate for the wider appreciation of orchestral music //// Just Blaze - has produced some of the biggest rap albums in the world, with credits including Jay-Z, Eminem and Kanye West, but has also composed music for video games like NBA Street 2, Def Jam and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles | Charles Hazelwood: “If you want a really, really interesting, jet-propelled career as a composer you probably wouldn’t go into film anymore; you would go into video games" //// Just Blaze: “When somebody has influenced you to the point where they are a part of your being, of your essence, how do you put that into words? If I met Yuzo, or any of those dudes, I wouldn’t say anything. I’d just give them a hug – and be like yo, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you.” | Steve Schnur - worldwide executive and president of music at game publisher EA //// Nick Dwyer - host of Red Bull’s Diggin’ in the Carts series, a video and radio show exploring the history of video game music. //// Jamie Crook - Founder of Data Discs record label | Steve Schnur - “We often begin working on a soundtrack almost a year in advance, trying to identify new music we believe will define the sound of the coming season...We knew that video games could become what MTV and commercial radio had once been in the 80s and 90s. Any given song in Fifa 19 – whether it’s a new track by an established act or the debut of an unknown artist – will be heard around the world nearly 1bn times. Clearly, no medium in the history of recorded music can deliver such massive and instantaneous global exposure.” //// Nick Dwyer (on Streets of Rage video game live performances by Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima) - “It was unreal. It was incredible to see a room full of adults going so, so crazy to music that had only previously existed within a video game. It was one of the greatest thrills of my life" //// Jamie Crook - “There has been a shift where composers of indie games are retaining the rights to their music much more often, which is obviously a positive thing,” he says. “Publishers seeing that music isn’t a disposable commodity associated with the game in the background, but a valuable asset in its own right – that is satisfying.” | |||||||||||||
4 | @CES 2011: MOG & RDIO Music Streaming Services Move Beyond The Computer | Anthony Bruno | Billboard | 2011 | US | Mog, Rdio | - Streaming music services MOG and Rdio used the massive media platform that is this year's International Consumer Electronic Show (CES) to unveil their plans to extend their services off the computer and mobile phone and into new devices showcased at the event. MOG led the way, unveiling a deal to put MOG on new Verizon mobile phones just a day after announcing plans to extend the MOG music streaming service to automobiles through a deal with Visteon. The MOG service will be preloaded into select "4G" mobile smartphones later this year as Verizon adds them to its new high-speed broadband network. For $10 a month, billed directly through user's Verizon account, MOG subscribers will be able to download individual songs, albums and playlists and play them on the phone... Meanwhile Rdio joined forces with the Sonos wireless multi-room streaming system to give users direct access to the Internet-based service. It includes streaming all songs available in the Rdio catalog, as well as play lists, Rdio's collaborative play lists, and Rdio's personalized radio stream. The integration is scheduled to begin later in the first quarter. And just last night MTV revealed its plans to add the MTV Music Meter to select Samsung HDTVs and other Internet-connected products through the Samsung Apps store. This kind of service-device integration is critical to these streaming music service, who--for all the attention they receive in the tech and music press--remain relative unknowns among the general public, especially when compared to such consumer electronic devices as mobile phones. These applications are, however, somewhat reliant on their hardware partners to promote their services to consumers and educate them on their benefits. | https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/1179782/ces-2011-mog-rdio-music-streaming-services-move-beyond-the-computer | None | None | |||||||||||||||||
5 | 3 Lessons for Entrepreneurs From Spotify, Which Won Over Taylor Swift and Just Made its Billion-Dollar IPO | Hayden Field | Entrepreneur | 2018 | US | Taylor Swift | Spotify, Napster, Apple Music, Pandora | - As the bell rang Tuesday morning at the New York Stock Exchange, music streaming giant Spotify went public in a historic move for the music industry. Company shares opened at $165.90, the cost of about 13 physical CDs, or close to 130 songs on iTunes. The opening price pegged Spotify’s market value Tuesday morning at close to $30 billion. - When CEO Daniel Ek launched Spotify in 2008, his business plan shook up the industry. Music streaming revenue in the U.S. has multiplied more than elevenfold since 2010 -- growing from around $500 million to, in 2017, roughly $5.7 billion -- and experts say there’s likely no going back. Ek’s business plan hasn’t changed much since its original incarnation -- the idea that consumers either listen to ads or pay a regular fee for access to essentially all music. The company’s $1 billion “IPO” isn’t traditional, either. - About 30 million outstanding shares of Spotify’s 178 million total were traded on Tuesday, and the price dropped just around 10 percent. By the end of day, the company’s market value was close to $27 billion, and as of Wednesday, Ek’s shares (about 9 percent of the company) were worth $2.3 billion. - The company’s five reasons for going with a direct listing align largely with its core values. For example, instead of preferred access to bankers, a direct listing grants equal and simultaneous access to the public. It also doesn’t hurt that this plan should save Spotify roughly $35 million in fees - Almost 377 billion songs were streamed in 2017, up more than 50 percent from the previous year, according to a report by BuzzAngle Music. | - Spotify’s “IPO” is actually called a “direct listing.” Instead of a traditional IPO, which involves more middlemen in the form of investment banks and institutional investors, Spotify is choosing to allow existing shareholders to sell their shares to potential buyers immediately. Spotify’s direct listing also allows shareholders to sidestep the traditional 180-day lockup period and see an immediate return. - Most industries are much smaller than you’d think, so treating everyone -- even your opponents -- with respect is a good rule to live by, especially since you might end up working together one day. If you’re butting heads with another key industry figure, keep in mind that the best way to sow goodwill is asking for their expertise. | https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/311511 | None | Matthew Kennedy - IPO market strategist at Renaissance Capital. | On Spotify: Most companies raise capital and use IPO proceeds to fuel growth, but “Spotify doesn’t need that -- it has plenty of cash on its balance sheets" | ||||||||||||||
6 | 37 Awesome Streaming Music Sites You Should Check Out | Thomas Frank | College Info Geek | 2012 | US | Spotify, Pandora, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Rdio, MOG,GrooveShark, Slacker, YouTube Disco, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, NoiseTrade, Google Music, Amazon Cloud Player, Orb Caster, Sony Music Unlimited, TubeRadio, deskamp, Just Hear It, ShoutCast Radio Directory, Live 365, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, jango, Songza, RadioTuna, Aupeo, Radio Reddit, 8tracks, FratMusic, Jelli, Mixtaping.fm, Sworly, SoundSleeping, Twusic, Musicovery, Stereomood, Mugasha, Turntable.fm, We Are Hunted, City Sounds, Locusic, Thesixtyone, earbits, Hypemachine, Shuffler.fm, Musopen, This is My Jam, 22tracks, Pump You Up, PureVolume, IndieShuffle, Pitchfork | Spotify: -Free: Desktop app w/ ads, unlimited streaming (U.S. only), mobile radio - $4.99/month: No ads on desktop version - $9.99/month: Full mobile app access, offline mode for playlists, high-quality streaming/// Pandora: Pricing: - Free: Web and mobile apps w/ ads - $3.99/month or $36/year: No ads, higher quality streaming, Mac/PC apps, custom skins/// last.fm : - Free: Most website features, scrobbling, mobile apps, radio w/ ads - $3/month: No ads on site or in radio, radio access on mobile and hardware apps ///Rhapsody - $10/month /// Rdio : -you can stream a limited amount of music for free each month, with the option to go unlimited for $5/month and get the mobile app for $10/month. /// MOG: - limited streaming for free, a $5/month unlimited streaming/no ads plan and a $10/month mobile streaming plan /// Grooveshark: Grooveshark lets you use most of its functions for free, including unlimited streaming /// Slacker: The service features skip limits and audio ads like Pandora; however, upgrading to Slacker’s $4/month Radio Plus option makes these annoyances disappear./// Google Music Beta: - Google Music lets you sync up to 20,000 songs to the cloud and access them from any computer or HTML 5-enabled mobile browser. | - Spotify: - its slick desktop and mobile apps along with its tight integration with Facebook have given it a great start right out of the gate. With no web interface, I can’t really recommend Spotify as the best streaming choice if you tend to use a lot of public computers...- Spotify’s free account limit how much music you can stream... /// Pandora: One of the first streaming music options to emerge on the net, Pandora remains incredibly popular despite its very limited streaming options and restrictive nature. Pandora’s only function is creating radio stations with song picks generated from the artists or songs you tell it you like. Admittedly, its recommendation engine – backed by the Music Genome Project – is a very good one. However, without a paid account, you’ll be interrupted every so often with audio ads. Also, you’re limited on how many song skips you get per hour, which means you need to be content with whatever comes up to be satisfied using Pandora./// - Last.fm: a way to research artists, get recommendations, and scrobble [music]... it also offers a solid internet radio experience as well. The site’s radio option lets you generate Pandora-like radio stations based on a particular artist or genre. You can also combine up to three artists or genre tags to pinpoint your taste more exactly. /// Rhapsody: One of the only options here with absolutely no free option, Rhapsody still stands as a popular streaming music site due to its massive library. However, the site’s audio quality tops out at 128kbps, making it a poor choice if you’re rocking any kind of quality headphones./// Rdio: Rdio is very similar to Spotify... On the negative side, Rdio’s library isn’t quite as big as Spotify’s. However, ... Rdio does have a web interface, so you can stream from any computer you please (it’s also got desktop apps). Secondly, it’s mobile app is far superior to Spotify’s. /// MOG: the best feature about MOG is the sound quality of its music selection; MOG’s entire music selection streams at 320kbps – a rate that will likely satisfy all but the most hardcore audiophiles.... While Rdio beats out MOG when it comes to social integration, MOG has a bigger catalog (over 13 million songs vs. Rdio’s 8-9 million). Spotify beats it with a catalog of around 15 million (though not all are yet available stateside) – however, it seems only about a third of those are available at high quality bitrates. This makes MOG the clear choice if you’re a person who cares about sound quality./// Grooveshark: featuring a library so large it can only be bested by the sites that utilize YouTube. Unlike many sites, Grooveshark lets you use most of its functions for free, including unlimited streaming. The site also has folders, a radio option with many pre-set stations (you can also generate a radio station from a song), a playlist-making feature, and robust social integration. However, the most prominent feature of Grooveshark is the ability to upload your own music to the site. /// Slacker: Often thought of as the most direct competitor to Pandora... it will create radio stations based on your favorite artists or songs, Slacker also lets you simply pick a genre and start playing... Upgrading further to the Premium Radio plan unlocks Slacker’s most differentiating feature; once you’ve got this paid account, you’ll be able to stream songs on-demand like you would with Grooveshark or Spotify. /// Youtube disco: This little-known YouTube feature lets you type in an artist (or basically any term you want), and it then creates a playlist for you based on that term. Inputting a single artist will give you a playlist featuring just that artist, while entering a genre ... will give you a wider selection of songs. /// SoundCloud: a platform where literally anyone can upload music – in fact, it’s almost like the YouTube for music and sounds. However, everything you’ll find here is made by the uploader, so you’re not going to find hardly anything you’d recognize on the radio. It’s all independent stuff – sometimes popular artists will upload a track from an upcoming album here, but most often you’ll find stuff from people you’ve never heard off /// Bandcamp: More of a platform for artists to advertise and sell their music, Bandcamp is nonetheless a great streaming music option – particularly if you’re into indie music. /// Google Music Beta: What nice about Google Music is that it gives you the option to have your music constantly synced via a program that checks your computer for new music./// Amazon Cloud Player: allows you to upload 5GB of your own music (more if you pay) for personal streaming ... Besides letting you upload the music you already have, Amazon Cloud Player automatically adds a copy of any song you purchase on Amazon.com for instant streaming. | https://collegeinfogeek.com/37-awesome-streaming-music-sites-you-should-check-out/ | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
7 | 4 HUGE Trends in the Music Industry for 2018/2019 | Alex Moskov | Medium | 2016 | US | Bassnectar, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Tupac Shakur | - We grew up paying $12 for a CD of 12 songs and now we can pay $10 a month for an all-you-can eat music plan - We have the tech giants battling it out for a position in the $25.3 billion dollar music industry, with hundreds of startups seeking a niche to solve the underlying problems - The U.S. live music industry is expected to grow to 11.06 billion by 2019, up from 9.06 in 2014. Music streaming, as of 2015, is at about 3.66B | Artists are fixing their gaze on touring and alternative ways to make money other than streaming - A new music format that would be a bigger shift as .MP3 and BlueRay (cryptocurrency) - Music is going to play a huge role in the Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality industry (holograms and virtual reality experiences) - The movement from record labels to more independent formats is going to continue. | https://medium.com/@AlexMoskov/4-huge-trends-in-the-music-industry-for-2016-2017-63b6924f4c2e | Jerry “Wonda” Duplessis (15x Grammy nominee and 3x Grammy winning producer) | On an artist building their own brand: “build yourself, get hot on the Internet, and go on tour. If you see any record labels offering to sign you, run in the other direction.” | None | |||||||||||||||
8 | A decade of iTunes singles killed the music industry | Adrian Covert | CNN Business | 2013 | US | iTunes, Rhapsody | - Since the introduction the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, music sales have plummeted in the United States -- from $11.8 billion in 2003 to $7.1 billion last year [2012]/// - When music sales reached their peak in 2000, Americans bought 943 million CD albums, and digital sales were [negligible]... By 2007, however, those inexpensive digital singles overtook CDs -- by a wide margin -- generating 819 million sales to just 500 million for the CD... Last year, there were 1.4 billion digital singles sold, dwarfing CD sales by a factor of 7. More than three-quarters of all music-related transactions were digital singles last year,/// According to NPD estimates, iTunes is currently responsible for 63% of all digital music sales. | - during that same time [2003-2013], people have been buying more music than ever. How is that possible? It's because the iTunes Music Store popularized the cheap digital single/// By the time the iTunes Music Store arrived, the iPod was well on its way to becoming a run away success, which meant that Apple already had an installed base of customers using iTunes. Competitors, such as Rhapsody, were mostly concerned with streaming music. Most crucially, their files weren't designed for use on the iPod, let alone most other MP3 players.Without the iPod, iTunes and its music store were seemingly innocuous./// Whether or not Apple can maintain its relevance in digital music could very well depend on its ability to transition to the streaming subscription model | https://money.cnn.com/2013/04/25/technology/itunes-music-decline/index.html | None | Russ Crupnick, NPD analyst | Crupnick believes musicians will have to increasingly rely on touring, merchandise sales and endorsement deals to make up for lost album sales.... The subscription streaming services of Spotify and other music apps could help bolster the business, Crupnick says, but the thought of those bringing the industry back to its former peak seems lofty | |||||||||||||||
9 | A deeper dive into how artists are getting discovered on Pandora | Julien Benatar | Next Big Sound | 2018 | Paty Cantu | Pandora | - the example of Paty Cantú. She recently saw a significant spike of streams and unique listeners on Pandora, more than doubling her audience compared to the previous 28 days [ Unique listeners = 91,995 srom September 22 - October 19, up 120.6 % from the month before] [streams= 153,162 from September 22-October 19, up 67.5% from the previous month] // Streams by Source for Paty Cantu: Paty Cantu Radio=17%=24.6K streams; Other Pandora Stations=67%=98K Streams; Interactive plays= 16%=23.8K streams | - Pandora is a service widely recognized for its ability to promote the discovery of new artists. Combining the power of Pandora’s Genome with the genre expertise of our curation team, artists are constantly being recommended to audiences most likely to engage with their music... The new Pandora Playlists & Discovery section on Next Big Sound Artist Profiles displays the top radio stations, playlists and on-demand sources where artists are getting discovered on Pandora.// An artist’s streams on Pandora can be attributed to a variety of different sources, all of which can be categorized into the following distinct buckets: Streams an artist is getting for their music on their own artist station Streams an artist is getting for their music on other stations (i.e. other artist stations or genre stations) Streams an artist is getting from on-demand sources (i.e. on-demand album plays, track plays, playlists)// Paty Cantu.. has been getting a significant amount of spins from Maluma radio in the past 28 days, a station created by 3.9 million Pandora users, where she received 18,500 spins. She has also seen plays coming from two genre stations: Pop Latino and Las Diosas Del Pop Latino, in addition to Pandora’s Pop Latino de Hoy playlist | https://blog.nextbigsound.com/artist-discovery-pandora-98d60a605f5b | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
10 | A Leaker Reportedly Made $60,000 This Year Uploading Unreleased Rap Songs To Streaming Services | Chris Mench | Genius | 2019 | US | Kanye West, Playboi Carti, Young Nudy, Lil Uzi Vert | Apple Music, Spotify, DistroKid, TuneCore | - Unauthorized uploads of leaked songs continue to perplex the music industry. Whether it’s a fake Kanye West song on Apple Music or a leaked Playboi Carti and Young Nudy song reaching No. 1 on Spotify’s Viral 50 chart, it doesn’t take much for someone to upload a track they don’t own to commercial streaming services. It seems they’re also cashing out on their misdeeds. | https://genius.com/a/a-leaker-reportedly-made-60-000-this-year-uploading-unreleased-rap-songs-to-streaming-services | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
11 | A Music Industry Peace Treaty Passes Unanimously Through Congress | Andrew Flanagan | NPR | 2018 | US | Paul McCartney, Sia | Spotify, Pandora | - The introduction of the Music Modernization Act, this past December, actually accelerated the filing of a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Spotify over this problem, since that would cease to be an option after the first of this year, once the bill becomes law. | - On Tuesday evening, the Music Modernization Act (renamed the Orrin G. Hatch Music Modernization Act at the 23rd hour — in honor of the retiring Utah politician who also happens himself to own a platinum record), was passed unanimously in the Senate, as it was earlier this year by the House. In an age where political and artistic consensus is increasingly found only in cultural warrens populated by the like-minded, the bipartisan support of the bill is perhaps a small beacon of unity. (But still.) - For years, these largely at-odds entities have sparred over the tortuous system currently in place for the licensing of music, both songwriters' compositions— which are legally distinct from recordings and governed by rules established prior to World War I — as well as the money paid to songwriters for those licenses. - The compromise at the heart of the bill (which will now return to the House for approval of Senate amendments before making its way to the White House) is to provide a legal shield for companies like Spotify from these lawsuits and the large settlements that have accompanied them. - Other than the Mechanical Licensing Collective, the new bill addresses some other longstanding points of contention. The somewhat shadowy Copyright Royalty Board — a panel of three judges responsible for setting some royalty rates, mostly related to radio-like services such as Pandora, where listeners can't pick from any song they'd like to hear — is now allowed to consider a song's value on the open market, what's called a "willing buyer, willing seller" provision, which should eventually mean more money for songwriters. - If the amended version of the bill passes the House, it will then go to the desk of President Donald Trump to be signed into law. Assuming there aren't any complications in that process, everyone involved, who spent all those years across the table from each other hammering out this significant compromise, can return to war. Just with new weapons. | https://www.npr.org/2018/09/19/649611777/a-music-industry-peace-treaty-passes-unanimously-through-congress | None | Lamar Alexander - Tennessee Senator | On the Music Modernization Act and its passing in the Senate: "It is the most important piece of legislation in a generation to help make sure songwriters in our country are paid and are paid a fair market value for their work...It was a very complicated exercise," Sen. Alexander explained on the Senate floor, "and it was in doubt until about an hour-and-a-half ago in terms of whether we would be able to do this tonight." | ||||||||||||||
12 | A New Spotify Initiative Makes the Big Record Labels Nervous | Ben Sisario | New York Times | 2018 | US | Kanye, Adele, Beyoncé, Drake, Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift | Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon | - Although the deals are modest — with advance payments of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to several people involved — the big record companies see the Spotify initiative as a potential threat - Spotify typically pays a record label around 52 percent of the revenue generated by each stream, or play, of a given song. The label, in turn, pays the artist a royalty of anywhere from 15 percent to, in some cases, 50 percent of its cut - With its 83 million subscribers — and nearly 100 million more who listen free — the service can offer significant exposure to artists without asking them to give up something that traditional record companies demand as part of any deal: ownership of their recordings. | Over the last year, Spotify has quietly struck direct licensing deals with a small number of independent artists. The deals give those artists a way onto the streaming platform and a closer relationship to the company — an advantage when pitching music for its influential playlists — while bypassing the major labels altogether - Spotify has paid advances to management firms and other companies that represent artists who are not signed to a record label. For now, that means up-and-coming acts and older artists who have gained control over their vintage hits - Spotify is offering artists two advantages: a bigger financial cut and ownership of their recordings. The deals, furthermore, are not exclusive, leaving the artists free to license their songs to other streaming companies, like Apple Music and Amazon | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/business/media/spotify-music-industry-record-labels.html | None | Daniel Ek - Spotify CEO //// Amy Yong - Macquarie media analyst //// Bill Werde - director of Syracuse University’s Bandier Program on the music industry and a former editor of Billboard magazine //// J. Erving - an artist manager who has worked with Troy Carter, Spotify’s departing head of creative services //// Zack Gershen - executive at Mtheory, a company that consults with artist managers | Daniel Ek: On Licensing: “Licensing content does not make us a label, nor do we have any interest in becoming a label...We don’t own any rights to any music, and we’re not acting like a record label.”//// Amy Yong: On Spotify's decision to forge relationships with artists: “They are treading carefully...They do not want the Big Three to shut then out from their library of content for the sake of signing deals with up-and-coming artists at a higher margin. That’s not an economic trade-off that you want to do.” //// Bill Werde: On conglomerates favoring Spotify's relationships with commercial products: “It’s almost a warning shot by the labels to remind Spotify that, as these stories play out, it’s not just Spotify that controls the narrative //// J. Erving: Spotify had paid a modest advance that helped J. Erving establish his company - Human Re Sources. Spotify has not given favorable rates to artists affiliated with Human Re Sources, and it has not guaranteed them placement on its playlists. But the company’s artists have had success penetrating Spotify’s most influential playlists, like New Music Fridays and Rap Caviar. //// Zack Gershen: On Spotify's entry into the talent marketplace: “From our perspective, options are good...Options create competition. They create innovation. They help everybody discover what the future of this business is.” | ||||||||||||||
13 | A problem of popularity: How Canada's northern musicians are hurt by lack of access | Jackson Weaver | CBC News | 2019 | Canada | The Jerry Cans, Tanya Tagaq, Elisapie Isaac, Riit, Aasiva, Josh Q | Spotify | - According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, streaming now constitutes nearly half of all revenue in the global recorded-music market. | - Northern Canadian musicians are ballooning in popularity, thanks in large part to streaming, which has given these artists the ability to reach audiences as never before. But it's also forcing them to rely more heavily on live shows and touring to generate an income. In the past, they would have benefited from album sales./// Though some critics argue there still aren't enough Indigenous musicians on services like Spotify, the music industry's switch to a streaming model has undeniably had a profound effect.// unlike when artists could rely on album sales for revenue, they must now rely on streaming, which earns them much less, forcing them to focus on alternative sources of income. This can put a disproportionate strain on northern acts.// The inaccessibility of some northern communities can push the price of goods above five times the national average, because flights from Nunavut and Canada's other territories are uniquely expensive. Couple that with the already high expense of music production, and you start to understand why artists from the North are at a significant disadvantage.// There is help available. All Canadian musicians can apply for provincial and federal funding, such as from Canada Council for the Arts, as well as compete for grants from the Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings (FACTOR), a private-public arts funding agency. Musicians from remote communities are eligible to apply for additional funds, up to $1,000 per band member, depending on which province or territory the musician is from. In 2017-18, for example, The Jerry Cans received nearly $70,000 from the government of Nunavut, which also sponsors Nunavut Music Week. | https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/touring-northern-musicians-1.5173983 | Andrew Morrison, Of the Jerry Cans, an Iqaluit based band which performs largely in the Inuktitut language// Nancy Mike, accordionist and throat singer with The Jerry Cans | - "Touring is super-challenging," Morrison said... "Even for this show, we're paying for it," he said, since they've already used up all the grant money they're eligible for and have received.// Artists from Canada's remote communities face a particularly difficult, expensive and emotionally draining reality of struggling to simply get to the same venues that musicians from the South can easily access, said Morrison and Jerry Cans bandmate Nancy Mike. Morrison says it cost more than $10,000 to get his band to Ottawa for a single tour. 'We've struggled a lot to get out of Nunavut sometimes to play music.' "[Flying] from Iqaluit to Ottawa is, like, $2,200 return for one person," said Mike. And because they took every opportunity to play as many dates as possible while touring in the south, "we'd be exhausted by the end of it," she said. .. In the past 10 years, northern and Indigenous music has been winning over bigger and bigger audiences, and some artists have leveraged that into international recognition, said Morrison and Mike. /// "Iqaluit has always had lots of talented people; it's just now, and in more recent times, it's been building outside of Iqaluit, outside the territory and even outside Canada," said Morrison. "People are finally sort of paying attention to what I think are already amazing things that have been happening there for many, many years." Mike, the sole Inuk member of The Jerry Cans, believes the fascination is largely fuelled by an interest in Indigenous artists. "Indigenous people now are proud to present what their talents are to the world, and feeling a little bit more comfortable" doing so, she said. | Liam Killeen, artist manager at Coalition Music, also teaches a talent management course at Ryerson university in Toronto | - "Music has never been so global as it is right now," said Liam Killeen... In this environment, Killeen said, artists from Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and Yukon can just as easily be discovered as those who are closer to musical hotspots and urban centres.// "If we look at touring [for a young artist from the North] — which is so, so vital nowadays … to building a real fan base — the biggest issue you're going to find is logistics," Killeen said // To travel to Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver or Toronto, artists will already have spent several thousand dollars before they've even touched down, Killeen said. "It's a little bit daunting to see how in the red you are before you've played your first show." .. It's true that musicians from all over Canada string together shows for months-long tours, but it doesn't compare, Killeen said. For instance, southern Ontario bands are "spoiled" because they can play "50 shows between Windsor and Montreal" while spending most of their time at home, "not in a hotel, not taking those expenses," he said. | |||||||||||||
14 | A stream come true: Drake is 2018’s most streamed artist | CBC Kids News | CBC | 2018 | CAN | Post Malone, XXXTentacion, J Balvin, Ed Sheeran, Juice WRLD, Ariana Grande, Cardi B, Kacey Musgraves | Spotify, Apple Music | - Although Apple Music doesn’t release its statistics, Spotify revealed that Toronto-born Drake racked up 8.2 billion streams on its platform this year. - Post Malone, XXXTentacion, J Balvin and Ed Sheeran also made Spotify’s top streamers list. | https://www.cbc.ca/kidsnews/post/a-stream-come-true-drake-is-2018s-most-streamed-artist | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
15 | Adele Is Said to Reject Streaming for '25' | Ben Sisario | The New York Times | 2015 | US | Adele, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, N'Sync | Spotify, Apple Music, Rhapsody | - According to Billboard magazine, music executives expect the album to sell about 2.5 million copies in its first week in the United States... The last album to have sales at that level in its first week was ’N Sync’s “No Strings Attached,” which moved just over 2.4 million copies in early 2000, at the peak of the CD era./// Spotify now has 75 million listeners, 20 million of whom pay for subscriptions. Apple, which introduced its streaming service, Apple Music, in June, said last month that it had 6.5 million paying subscribers, and 7.5 million more who were using it as part of a three-month trial period./// Despite its availability on Spotify and elsewhere, the song [ 'Hello' ] sold a record 1.1 million downloads in the United States in its first week. The video for the song has also been viewed more than 400 million times. | - With less than 24 hours before the release of the album on Friday, the major digital music services were informed that “25” would not be available for streaming, according to three people with direct knowledge of the plans. A spokesman for Adele declined to comment. Streaming has taken hold as the fastest-growing part of the music business and the format that record executives and technology mavens alike point to as the future of listening. But it remains controversial among many artists over royalty payments and issues of control.Most artists have no choice but to opt for streaming and accede to the terms set by the services. But Adele, along with Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, are viewed as among the very few superstar acts with enough leverage to set the terms for how they want their music to be consumed. Adele is said to have been personally involved with the decision, which mirrors one made a year ago by Ms. Swift when she withdrew her music from Spotify, complaining that the service was devaluing her music by letting its users listen to it free. Ms. Swift later made a deal to add her newest album, “1989,” to Apple Music. Beyoncé withheld her last album, “Beyoncé,” from streaming for nearly a year after releasing it in late 2013./// Record labels have sometimes withheld albums from streaming outlets to increase CD and download sales. Adele was one of a number of major acts to do that in 2011, when she released her last record, “21.” That album was kept from Spotify for more than a year and went on to sell more than 30 million copies around the world./// Adele’s decision was most likely long in the making, however. At an Internet conference in Dublin a year ago, Adele’s longtime manager, Jonathan Dickins, echoed a sentiment common among record executives and artist representatives that their biggest objection to streaming is the wide availability of music on free, advertising-supported models like Spotify and YouTube./// Yet “25” is being withheld not only from outlets like Spotify — which has both paid and free versions, supported by ads — but also those like Apple Music and Rhapsody that do not use the so-called freemium model. The freemium approach, championed by Spotify, lets users listen free as long as they like in the hope that they will buy subscriptions to eliminate ads and gain other perks.For now, “Hello,” the first single from “25,” remains widely available on streaming services, and its release last month seemed to show no negative impact from streaming. | https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/business/media/adele-music-album-25.html | None | Mark Mulligan, digital media analyst with MiDiA Research | - “This is a minor issue for Adele, but a major issue for the streaming services,” said Mark Mulligan...“For two years running they’ve not had the biggest album of the year.” | - In a statement, Spotify tried to lure Adele back, noting the size of its audience. “We love and respect Adele, as do her 24 million fans on Spotify,” the company said. “We hope that she will give those fans the opportunity to enjoy ‘25’ on Spotify alongside ‘19’ and ‘21’ very soon.” | |||||||||||||
16 | Adele Talks Decision To Reject Streaming Her New Album | Time Staff | Time | 2015 | US | Adele, Taylor Swift | Spotify, Apple Music | - When Adele released 25 on Nov. 18, her new album shattered sales records, earning the biggest first-week sales on record by selling 3.38 million copies in the United States. | - One place you couldn’t find Adele’s album? On streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.// Adele’s decision follows Taylor Swift’s move in 2014 to remove her own music from Spotify | https://time.com/4155586/adele-time-cover-story-interview-streaming/ | Adele, musician | - “I believe music should be an event,” [Adele] said in one of a series of recent interviews with TIME, speaking for the first time about the decision. “For me, all albums that come out, I’m excited about leading up to release day. I don’t use streaming. I buy my music. I download it, and I buy a physical [copy] just to make up for the fact that someone else somewhere isn’t. It’s a bit disposable, streaming.” “I know that streaming music is the future, but it’s not the only way to consume music,” she said. “I can’t pledge allegiance to something that I don’t know how I feel about yet.” While Adele said that she was under pressure on both sides—to stream or not to stream—ultimately, the choice came down to her. “I’m proud of my decision,” she said. “I would have been proud even if the album flopped. I would have been proud because I stuck to my guns, and I think it’s really important as an artist that you do that.”/// “It was amazing,” she says of Swift’s stand. “I love her—how powerful she is. We’ll get lumped together now because of it, but I think we would both feel the ability to say yes or no to things even if we weren’t successful.” | None | ||||||||||||||
17 | After Six Months, Streaming Label Humble Angel Records Reflects on What Has -- And Hasn't -- Worked | Cherie Hu | Billboard | 2018 | US | DJ Cassidy | Spotify | - So far, Humble Angel has released 26 songs and generated over 9 million total streams across all platforms. The biggest success in the roster to date has been Malia Civetz's single "Little Victories," which was released in April 2018 and has achieved over 3 million combined streams to date. | - Thursday (July 26) marks the six-month anniversary of Humble Angel Records, the streaming-first indie label founded by Warner Music's former vp of global playlists strategy, Kieron Donoghue. While six months sounds like a short time span, that's given more than enough wiggle room for Donoghue and his artists to experiment with different marketing and promotional strategies across the streaming landscape -- and to learn from their mistakes. - The label still embraces an open submission policy, enabling anyone to send music via a simple Google form -- but the acceptance rate from that form is only around 1 percent. "Although I make sure to listen to every song submitted through the form, most music is coming to me via my network, trusted contacts and referrals from happy artists," Donoghue tells Billboard. - I’m starting to get more inquiries from artists who were previously signed to major labels, but are now actively looking for deals that offer both friendlier royalty splits and deeper streaming expertise. Case in point is DJ Cassidy, who had previously released music through all three major labels and had a top-10 hit in the U.K. in 2014 with "Calling All Hearts." Cassidy reached out to me because he wanted to discuss a fresh approach to releasing music in the streaming age and liked the fact that our label specializes in that area and moves more quickly. We’re releasing our first single together next Friday (Aug. 3), titled "Blame It on the Freak" This is an interesting shift away from the conventional thinking that you have to have a major-label deal in order to facilitate your success -- this simply isn’t the case anymore. | https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8467181/humble-angel-records-streaming-label-six-months-evaluation | None | Kieron Donoghue - founder of Humble Angel Records, the streaming-first indie label founded by Warner Music's former vp of global playlists strategy, | On promotion: I've moved to more of an artist-development model, as I feel that both Humble Angel and our artists can have longer-term success if we sign artist deals for, say, three to five songs, or even for entire albums. That gives us time to develop the artist further and put stronger PR and marketing plans in place. I now look for artists who have two or more songs ready to go, so we can build a longer-term strategy over the space of a few releases. On artist signings: I’m starting to get more inquiries from artists who were previously signed to major labels, but are now actively looking for deals that offer both friendlier royalty splits and deeper streaming expertise. Case in point is DJ Cassidy, who had previously released music through all three major labels and had a top-10 hit in the U.K. in 2014 with "Calling All Hearts." Cassidy reached out to me because he wanted to discuss a fresh approach to releasing music in the streaming age and liked the fact that our label specializes in that area and moves more quickly. We’re releasing our first single together next Friday (Aug. 3), titled "Blame It on the Freak" This is an interesting shift away from the conventional thinking that you have to have a major-label deal in order to facilitate your success -- this simply isn’t the case anymore. | ||||||||||||||
18 | Aggressive Content Bundling Might Be Spotify's Only Chance of Competing With Apple, Amazon | Cherie Hu | Billboard | 2018 | US | Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon | - According to Apple’s Q2 2018 earnings report, services accounted for a record $9.2 billion of Apple's quarterly revenue, up more than 30 percent year-over-year. But as for music, there's still a long way to go on a global scale. - "There are easily 2 billion people in the world who can afford to pay for some level of music, yet Spotify and Apple Music combined have only around 100 million subs globally," Apple's company's senior vp, internet software and services Eddy Cue said at South by Southwest in March. "There’s a huge gap there and we both have to grow by a significant amount in order to get to the numbers that we should be at.” - A recent memo from RBC Capital Markets analyst Amit Daryanani claims that original TV content alone could more than double Apple Music’s global subscriber base to over 100 million by 2021. - In fact, even without an explicit bundle, Apple Music is already well on its way to taking Spotify’s spot as the top streaming service in the U.S. Internal major-label forecasts project Apple Music’s U.S. subscriber base to reach 27 million by the end of 2017, ahead of a projected 24 million paid subscribers for Spotify, as first reported by the Financial Times. - How can Spotify compete? The streaming service recently extended a bundle offering with Hulu’s Limited Commercials plan to all of its Premium subscribers for $13 a month, after eight months of running an even more discounted bundle for college students at just $5 a month. Sources tell Billboard the two companies should get closer together if they want to stand a chance against big-tech rivals in an increasingly cutthroat streaming landscape. - In May 2018, TechCrunch reported Spotify was surveying users about a hypothetical three-part bundle with Hulu and Scribd, which would encompass music (Spotify Premium for Family), video (Hulu’s Limited Commercials) and audiobooks (one free book credit from Scribd) for a total of $17.98 a month. - Spotify is aggressively exploring and testing content and data bundles with normal Premium accounts as well. In Jun. 2018, Android Police reported Spotify was surveying users about a potential mobile unlimited data-only bundle (i.e. no calls or texts) with Spotify Premium for $30 a month -- perhaps a nod at the increasingly significant role of telco partnerships in the platforms' global user-acquisition strategy. - Earlier in March 2017, Spotify mistakenly offered some users the opportunity to upgrade to a hi-fi tier for an extra $5 to $10 a month -- which would have also included a free vinyl record every month and discounts on other limited-edition vinyl, à la VNYL and Vinyl Me, Please. In fact, Spotify already partners with Vinyl Me, Please to sell vinyl editions of Spotify Singles on the latter’s website. - The one place where Spotify might have a leg up: advertising. Amazon is clearly the global winner when it comes to retail at large, but neither Amazon nor Apple offers an ad-supported version of their music services beyond a free trial. This gives Spotify slightly more wiggle room to court advertisers with granular listening data, as well as with upcoming self-serve tools such as Ad Studio. | - The music and media industries went abuzz when Spotify announced last month Dawn Ostroff, former president of entertainment at Condé Nast Entertainment, would be joining the streaming service as its new chief content officer. - But competitors like Apple and Amazon -- booming from profitable non-media products and services that fill increasingly deep wallets for music and other content -- have already gained significant ground against Spotify in the music streaming wars. The secret word, which Spotify itself has yet to master: bundles. - Spotify’s video history in particular has been fraught at best. Sources tell Billboard the company made several handshake acquisition deals for scripted TV shows over the last year -- including a music-related series involving Moby and Rashida Jones -- but those deals ultimately fell through. Several years ago, even before Hulu or YouTube launched their own online TV services, Spotify reportedly tried to assemble a proprietary TV bundle for a live video service in Europe, but abandoned the launch after failing to settle on the right price for the offering. | https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8464867/spotify-content-bundling-competing-apple-amazon-music | None | Eddy Cue - Apple's company's senior vp, internet software and services //// Danielle Lee - Spotify’s vp/global head of partner solutions | Eddy Cue - On music streaming numbers: "There are easily 2 billion people in the world who can afford to pay for some level of music, yet Spotify and Apple Music combined have only around 100 million subs globall...There’s a huge gap there and we both have to grow by a significant amount in order to get to the numbers that we should be at.” //// Danielle Lee - On music data: “Music data, I think, is really unique,” Danielle Lee, Spotify’s vp/global head of partner solutions, said at Cannes Lions in June. “We really believe that we can extract unique insights based on how you stream. You can understand habits. You can understand moods, mindsets, tastes. And you can start to predict behavior.” | |||||||||||||||
19 | Alan Cross: Why are people still bothering to steal music? | Alan Cross | Global News | 2018 | Canada | Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube | - Music sales dropped from a peak of nearly US$22 billion in 2000 to less than half that 10 years later largely due to piracy./// A new survey on how people around the planet consume music says that 38 per cent of online music fans still insist on engaging in some sort of music piracy. The study, commissioned by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), looked at the habits of people aged 18-64 in 18 countries (Canada, the U.S., the UK, and France among them)... Stream-ripping is the biggest source (favoured by 32 per cent of those who steal) of illegal music...Another 23 per cent use cyberlockers (clandestine storage sites of illegally-obtained music that often require users to be carefully vetted and introduced) or whatever peer-to-peer software is still available. Search engines like Google can also turn up files for the taking, the preferred method of 17 per cent of thieves./// The IFPI estimates that the industry loses out on US$2.65 billion each year by the misuse of streaming sites./// According to the IFPI study, only 17 per cent of global businesses have acquired the proper PRO licence while 83 per cent use a streaming service. | - Streaming was supposed to stop all that [music piracy]. By making virtually every song ever recorded available online for a low monthly fee (or, in the case of Spotify’s freemium tier, nothing at all), the thinking was piracy could be eliminated. Today, the streaming services give users access to a library of 45 million songs and counting./// Stream-ripping is the biggest source (favoured by 32 per cent of those who steal) of illegal music. This is the process of finding songs you want (YouTube is the biggest source) and then using software to capture the audio as an MP3. You then have the music file and can do what you wish with it. The industry is trying to crack down on purveyors of this software — a big site, Youtube-mp3, was shut down in 2016 — but there are still plenty of them out there. FLVTO.biz is one of them and it just fired a big lawsuit at the Recording Industry Association of America over its right to exist./// [reasons for continued music piracy]: The free tier with its ads and hobbled features aren’t good enough for some people. They want to listen offline, which you cannot do without a monthly subscription. They want physical possession of music files so they can do what they please. They don’t want to pay for data to their phone. Some of the people in this survey were in places like Brazil where many don’t have access to credit cards, which makes it impossible to sign up to a premium streaming service. (China and India were also surveyed but those stats were not included in the final global numbers. If they had been, the piracy rate would likely have been much worse.)/// If you run a business — a restaurant, store, office, hair salon, whatever — and you play music throughout your establishment, you’re supposed to pay a public performance fee to the local performing rights organization or PRO. This is standard copyright law in countries around the world. The thinking is that if you play music as part of the way you conduct business, then the people who own that music should be compensated. In Canada, an entity called SOCAN collects this money and distributes it to its member artists and composers. The cost of a public performance licence depends on things like square footage and the number of speakers being used. For a typical small business, it’s peanuts.Some businesses are getting around paying for a licence by firing up Spotify or Apple Music. The copyright laws governing streaming services are different from those regulating public performance | https://globalnews.ca/news/4565155/stealing-music/ | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
20 | Amazon Is Ready to Take on Apple and Spotify in Streaming Music | Lucas Shaw | Bloomberg | 2018 | US | Ariana Grande, Kendrick Lamar, Queen, Best Coast, August Green, Robert Glasper | Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Google | - But the Seattle-based company says tens of millions of people use its two music services. Amazon Music comes included in a membership to Amazon Prime and offers a library of 2 million songs with limited new releases. Amazon Music Unlimited has tens of millions of songs and charges a monthly fee. - Spotify has persuaded more than 80 million people to pay for its service, boosting its value to about $35 billion. Apple, once dominant with iTunes, has established itself as No. 2. - Yet Amazon says it will stand apart because its service is tailored for people listening on a speaker rather than on earbuds. Users can just ask Alexa to add a song to a playlist or request a song they haven’t heard for a while. Major record labels are letting Amazon offer a lower-priced, speaker-only version of the service at $3.99 a month. Competitors are $9.99. | - Music has ascended the priority list at Amazon.com Inc. because of the popularity of the company’s Echo speakers and the virtual assistant Alexa. Music is one of the most common requests of Alexa, and listening hours have doubled over the past year, the company said. - The music service has helped Amazon differentiate Echo and Alexa from the competition, Steve Boom, the head of Amazon Music, said in an interview. Selling smart speakers is the latest battleground between technology giants Apple Inc., Amazon and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, all of which operate music services. - In many industries, the mere threat of Amazon sends stock prices tumbling. The company is the second-most-valuable in the world, behind Apple. It’s also a major supplier of cloud services, and a growing threat in everything from groceries to movies to health care. - The growth of those paid services has boosted music industry sales for three years, providing a big dividend to the recording industry. Labels are now looking to Amazon, as well as YouTube and Pandora Media Inc., to counter Apple and Spotify. If new players can sign enough customers, the two leaders will lose leverage in rights negotiations. | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-17/amazon-is-ready-to-take-on-apple-and-spotify-in-streaming-music | None | Steve Boom - vice president of Amazon Music | |||||||||||||||
21 | Amazon is taking a more simplistic approach to music streaming | Micah Singleton | The Verge | 2017 | Katy Perry, Garth Brooks | Amazon Music Unlimited, Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora Premium, Tidal | - And even if you aren’t subscribed to Music Unlimited, you can sign up for the $4-a-month Echo-only tier simply with your voice. Boom sees both of those moves as long-term game-changers for the company. - According to The Information, Amazon expects to sell as many as 10 million Echos in 2017, and projections from the investment firm Mizuho have Amazon moving over 40 million Echos in 2020 alone, creating an enormous market of potential users. - Some in the music industry, like Sonos co-founder and former CEO John MacFarlane, expect that by 2021, 1 billion people will be paying for streaming music worldwide. - In the latest report from the IFPI, there were an estimated 112 million people using paid streaming accounts at the end of 2016, and the paid streaming market grew 60 percent year over year. With that growth rate and the diversity in the market already, there are a number of players that could each be pushing 100 million paying users by the time the 1 billion figure is reached, pushing the music industry to new heights. - Amazon is gearing up for an international expansion of its music service. But don’t expect a rapid expansion like Amazon did with Prime Video, which went live in more than 200 countries at the end of last year — Amazon Music Unlimited will likely take a more traditional approach to its expansion, adding additional countries over time. | - Six months ago, Amazon launched Music Unlimited, its on-demand music service, designed to compete against the likes of Spotify and Apple Music. Six months later the company hasn’t shared any subscriber numbers, but it is very bullish about its prospects, encouraged by the success of its Echo smart speakers, which are deeply integrated with its music offerings and in millions of homes across the country. “I see us as one of the top global streaming services,” Steve Boom, the vice president of Amazon Music said about the service’s future in an interview at the company’s office in San Francisco. “I expect us to grow faster than everybody else.” - While the incumbent streaming services have captured early adopters with powerful discovery algorithms, personally curated playlists, and big-name exclusives, the latest wave of streaming services like Amazon Music Unlimited and Pandora Premium are using simplicity to target music fans who may not have gotten on board with streaming yet. For Pandora Premium, that means creating the most intuitive streaming app to date; for Amazon Music Unlimited, that means tackling what many in the music industry see as the next major space for streaming to take off — the home. | https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/25/15420402/amazon-music-unlimited-echo-streaming-pandora | None | Steve Boom - vice president of Amazon Music | On company growth: “I see us as one of the top global streaming services. I expect us to grow faster than everybody else.” On Amazon's streaming options: “Making it simple, whether it’s from the subscription process... or ways that you can ask for music and get to music quickly, it’s game-changing. It’s opened up premium streaming to new categories of customers that aren’t ready to deal with some of the complexities of downloading apps or using their web browsers. [Streaming is] becoming a mainstream activity, but I don’t know if paying for it is quite mainstream yet. There’s a whole class of customers that really aren't paying for it. I really believe that premium music streaming will touch a lot more people than [digital] music purchasing ever did. Yes, a lot of people might have bought one or two tracks, and I’m kind of excluding those, but if you think about people who really bought music, I think you’ll have way more people paying for a premium subscription because just the value is there.” On exclusive content: “The industry has really moved away from exclusives and is moving toward this concept of premium windows — we’re very strongly in favor of that. We’ve been in favor of that for a long time. Different services may have different types of content alongside the studio release that may be exclusive to them. There were a couple ‘making of’ Katy Perry’s newest video for ‘Chained to The Rhythm’ and we have those exclusively on Amazon, and that was great. But again, it wasn’t the actual studio release, it was the content around it, and I think you’ll see more and more of that kind of stuff.” On users: “We listen to what our customers want, and if what they want is a weekly playlist of some sort, then that’s something that we’ll offer." | |||||||||||||||
22 | Amazon Music adds gapless playback and loudness normalization to its Android app | Manuel Vonau | Android Police | 2019 | US | Pink Floyd | Spotify, YouTube Music, Google Play Music, Amazon Music | - Even though we mostly write about Spotify, YouTube Music, and Google Play Music around here, we mustn't forget that Amazon Music also exists. The retail giant sets itself apart from the pack by including a limited selection of content for Prime subscribers, all while also offering a fully-fledged streaming service of its own with 50 million tunes called Music Unlimited. After rumors of a Tidal-like high-fidelity Amazon service, the company sure seems to set certain wheels into motion to allow for better audio enjoyment. In the meantime, an update to the Amazon Music Android app adds loudness normalization and gapless playback. | https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/08/30/amazon-music-gapless-playback-loudness-normalization/ | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
23 | Amazon Music Is Growing Three Times as Fast as Spotify | Amy X. Wang | Rolling Stone | 2019 | US | Taylor Swift, SZA and Dua Lipa | Spotify, Amazon Music Unlimited | - the Financial Times is reporting that the number of people subscribing to Amazon Music Unlimited — which complements Amazon’s more limited Prime Music offering — has grown 70 percent in the last year. While Spotify dominates the market in pure subscriber count, its rate of growth in subscriptions lags behind at just 25 percent.// According to Midia, only five percent of Spotify’s customers are 55 or older, compared to 14 percent of Amazon Music customers. // The cost of a subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited also falls from the normal $10 a month to $8 a month for Prime members and just $4 a month for people who only listen via Echo devices, making it easily the most convenient and affordable option. (Amazon Prime boasts over 100 million customers in the U.S. alone.) | - When Amazon rolled out a standalone music-streaming service in 2016, the music business largely dismissed it as yet another Spotify clone, entering far too late in the game. But the e-commerce company’s efforts in music are quietly shaping up to be major drivers in the industry.// The reason for Amazon Music’s furious growth? It doesn’t go after the obvious demographic of young music fans, many of whom are already loyal to their Spotify and Apple Music logins. Instead, it’s been targeting older consumers, especially those who fall in the space between the record-store generation and the streaming youngsters. // Amazon understands the value in catering to the middle-of-the-road consumers — the ones who stream music only casually, the people who care foremost about being able to use their smart speakers as radios — and has positioned its two music-streaming services as utilities rather than innovations. | https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/amazon-music-growing-spotify-858309/ | None | Mark Mulligan, Midia Research music analyst | - Mulligan noted to the [Financial Times] that Amazon Music is the “dark horse” of streaming services and that “people don’t pay as much attention to it [as to Apple and Spotify], but it’s been hugely effective.” | - Amazon executives have admitted outright that Amazon Music, both in its Prime and Unlimited versions, is simply a “mainstream music-streaming service for the mainstream music fan.” | |||||||||||||
24 | Amazon Music Jumps Into the Hi-Res Audio Game | Amy X. Wang | Rolling Stone | 2019 | US | Taylor Swift, Neil Young | Amazon Music HD, Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal, Qobuz, Sony Music, Rhapsody | - The new service, available immediately in the U.S., UK, Germany, and Japan, is priced at $12.99 a month for Amazon Prime members and $14.99 a month for non-Prime members; current Amazon Music subscribers can upgrade to the HD tier for an extra $5 a month. Amazon is offering a 90-day free trial for the new service, which will deliver 50 million songs at 16-bit/44.1kHz (CD quality) and several million other songs at the higher-quality depth of 24 bits and sample rate of up to 192kHz (which Amazon refers to as “Ultra HD”). /// - The company’s non-HD music subscription tiers currently include Amazon Music, which comes with Prime membership at no additional cost, and Amazon Music Unlimited, which offers an expanded catalog for $7.99 a month or $9.99 a month, depending on Prime membership. | - Tech giant Amazon announced on Tuesday that it is launching Amazon Music HD, a new tier of its existing music-streaming service that delivers lossless audio streaming — at both higher quality and a higher cost. The new service, available immediately in the U.S., UK, Germany, and Japan/// - The tech company was rumored to have been gearing up a hi-res music-streaming service earlier this year, shortly after it announced a free streaming service tied to its Echo devices. Tuesday’s announcement solidifies Amazon’s position as an unusually diverse player in the music industry, as it now caters to multiple levels of streaming users, in addition to boasting a seemingly endless catalog of physical music products and launching exclusive, somewhat surrealist marketing deals with artists like Taylor Swift. | https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/amazon-music-hi-res-audio-885366/ | Neil Young | - [Young through Amazon's press release announcing Music HD]: “Earth will be changed forever when Amazon introduces high quality streaming to the masses. This will be the biggest thing to happen in music since the introduction of digital audio 40 years ago.” | - Steve Boom, vice president of Amazon Music/// Brian Ringer, Rhapsody’s Asia Pacific general manager and one of the leaders behind Mora Qualitas | -Boom... tells Rolling Stone that the company “wants this to to be mass-market” and expects a substantial portion of the current Amazon Music user base to migrate to the HD tier, though he declined to share specific target numbers. When the company surveyed customers about what they wanted the most out of the music-streaming experience, he says, three common responses emerged: a large catalog size, ease of use, and high-quality music. “What we found is that people really do care about this,” Boom says... music fans have a generally fractured understanding of the terms “high resolution,” “high quality,” “high fidelity,” and the no-less-murky abbreviation “hi-fi” — and though all of these are the same thing, some listeners think the terms are referencing different levels of quality — which is why Amazon decided to go with simply “HD” for its new tier’s branding, Boom says./// Ringer told Rolling Stone last year that the U.S. and European music markets are finally “starting to follow” on the existing hi-res enthusiasm in countries like Japan as they become exposed to cheaper and more sophisticated technology. “Audiophiles love vinyl because of its enhanced listening experience, and high-res audio can capture that enhanced experience and not have it squished down into a digital CD,” Ringer said. “People listen to a couple of songs with a nice pair of headphones and go, ‘Oh, I get it.’” | |||||||||||||
25 | Amazon Prepares to Launch Cheaper Music Streaming Service | Laura Sydell | NPR All Things Considered | 2016 | US | Amazon Music, Spotify | - Amazon is taking a deep dive into the highly competitive music streaming world. It's introductory price of $3.99 a month undercuts every other streaming service, and it does some heavy lifting with artificial intelligence... The artificial intelligence is integrated into the Amazon Echo, and it's impressive. To those more intimate with it, it's also known as Alexa. It's a standalone device with a speaker and what many experts say is some of the best voice recognition software on the market. /// Then there's the price. It's not quite as good as it looks. You already have to have an Echo to get the 3.99 a month, and it only works on the Echo. If you want it to work everywhere else, it costs 7.99 a month. | https://www.npr.org/2016/10/12/497715207/amazon-prepares-to-launch-cheaper-music-streaming-service | None | Steve Boom, Works for Amazon/// James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research | - Steve Boom says the company has been collecting data from millions of Alexa users about how they talk to it about music, and they've been programming Alexa to respond. STEVE BOOM: To learn characteristics of different songs in the catalog so that when people ask for things the way they want to ask for them, that we can respond to that./// Responding in a way that caters more to the way humans actually speak is a great way to open people up to the vastly expanding universe of artificial intelligence, says James McQuivey... JAMES MCQUIVEY: And I think that Amazon is signaling that it believes it can have conversations like this with users about many, many more things in the future... McQuivey says Amazon can afford to do such low pricing because it's not just a music service, and other big companies might follow. MCQUIVEY: Because it is such a valuable creator of frequent customer interactions. And Amazon knows this. Apple knows this, and Google also knows it. | ||||||||||||||||
26 | Amazon's Music Unlimited streaming service offers surprisingly great value for Prime members — here's what it's like to use | Remi Rosmarin | Business Insider | 2019 | US | Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Prime Music | - If you have an Amazon Prime membership, you already have access to Prime Music. This is Amazon's basic, free (for Prime members) streaming option that offers up some 2 million songs. That may sound like a lot, but you can get millions of more songs if you pay for Amazon's Music Unlimited service. Unlimited comes with 50 million songs, and Prime members can get it for $7.99 a month, while non-members will pay $9.99 a month to use it. - There is no free Music Unlimited option, though you can do a 30-day trial of the service at no cost. After that, Music Unlimited costs $9.99 a month for non-Prime members, a pretty average price for streaming services. For Prime members that price goes down to $7.99 a month or $79 annually, which brings the price per month to just over $6. The family plan option — which allows you to connect six devices — costs $14.99 a month, similar to Apple Music and Spotify. | - You can use Music Unlimited on your phone or computer. On the computer, you can access Music Unlimited on the Amazon homepage or download the Amazon Music app onto your desktop — you can download this app straight from Amazon. On your phone, you'll have to download the Amazon Music app from the app store. - The selection of curated playlists rivals that of competitors, but Amazon Music Unlimited doesn't offer anything in the way of other content. Spotify has a large selection of podcasts and some fun videos sprinkled throughout the service, Tidal lets you watch music videos, and Slacker Radio has a selection of hilarious stand-up. Amazon does have Side-by-Sides, artist commentary on their own songs and albums, but you can only access this with Alexa. If you just want songs, you won't miss anything with Music Unlimited, but if you want more content this is something to consider. | https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-music-unlimited-review | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
27 | An Indie Musician's Take on Tidal | Matt Pollock | Chicago Magazine | 2015 | US | Jay Z, Lili K, Kanye, Rihanna, Jack White, Beyonce, Mumford and Sons, Death Cab for Cute, Lily Allen, Chance the Rapper | Tidal, Spotify | - Acquired last month for $56 million from Swedish firm Aspiro, the platform offers CD-quality streaming and exclusive content at a premium: up to $20 a month, versus Spotify’s $10, with no option of a free, ad-funded service. By sequestering a pack of Top-40 megastars—Kanye, Rihanna, Jack White, and Beyonce are among the platform’s shareholders—Tidal hopes to increase the value of a stream and pay musicians more. The shtick is that Tidal is for artists by artists, but it’s come under fire as a way to make music’s rich richer. | https://www.chicagomag.com/arts-culture/April-2015/Tidal-Lili-K/ | Ben Gibbard, Death Cab for Cutie /// Mumford & Sons guitarist Winston Marshall/// Lili K, Chicago Jazz singer, streaming exclusively on Tidal | - Gibbard recently condemned the service to failure for “bringing out a bunch of millionaires and billionaires and…having them all complain about not being paid,”/// Mumford & Sons guitarist Winston Marshall called its shareholders “new school fucking plutocrats.” /// [ Interview with Lili K] You’re one of the first independent artists Tidal’s promoting. How did they approach you about streaming Ruby ahead of its release? Well, we wanted to expose the album to as many people as possible, and [Tidal] listened to it and loved it, so they offered to premiere it. They seemed really interested in me. So your team reached out to them first? I believe we contacted them, and then they wrote back, which I didn’t expect. They made me feel really good about the music. What about their platform made you want to stream with them as opposed to somewhere everybody could listen?Well, the album is going to be available for everyone on April 21. It’ll be on iTunes and Spotify. It’s not like we’re keeping it. I want as many people as possible to hear it. That’s one of the reasons I thought Tidal was cool—I thought it would be a great platform to reach listeners that really care about quality of music. Because sonically, Tidal does sound amazing. I thought it was overhyped until I actually heard it. And since [the album] has been [streaming], I’ve had so many people discover me just because they’re on Tidal. They have me really prominently featured on the main page. On sites like Spotify and iTunes, there are so many artists, and it’s easy to get overlooked, especially when you’re an up-and-comer. You mentioned how aggressively they’re promoting your album. What’s their incentive there? Are they taking a cut of royalties from streams they promote? I’m really not sure. My label is dealing with that, but I do know that they’re saying more of the royalties [will] go to the artists than on Spotify. I think the biggest thing for them, honestly, is the backlash they got because of the huge, popular artists being promoted on Tidal. I just happened to come at a perfect time for them to be like, “No, we do support independent artists as well.” They launched my stuff the same day that they launched Tidal Rising. It was an awesome coincidence for them and for me. I’m getting promotion out of it, and they’re getting to show that they support up-and-coming artists. Do you worry about alienating fans by aligning yourself with that sect of musicians—Team Tidal? Not necessarily. It’s not like I’m keeping [the album] only on Tidal. If it was something nobody else could ever see, I’d be more concerned. But it’s just a pre-stream. It’s not a huge deal. And I try to be pretty vocal about my appreciation for my fans and support from any site that wants to lend it. At this stage, there’s not much [I] can afford to turn down. The people at Tidal have been really nice. I hope I’m not alienating people. Does Tidal retain any exclusivity or ownership after the one-week stream is up? No, no. I mean, you have to have the Tidal account to listen to the album there, but that’s not in my control. Tidal is being marketed as artist-friendly. Has that been your experience so far, and if so, what makes them more artist-friendly than Spotify? It’s really early on to tell. I do think it’s cool that artists can make featured playlists. There’s a lot of content that’s focused on artists. There’s music videos on there. But I don’t know. [My music hasn’t] been on Spotify before. My first time will be next week. I’m not sure how different the experience would be. But as far as working with [Tidal’s] editors, they were really, really great and responsive and helpful and eager to put out good music. That’s the experience I got. A lot of the guys you cut your teeth with—Chance, Peter Cottontale, Vic Mensa—have had insane success giving away mixtapes for free. What made you want to go a different route? I had already done three free EPs, and I just thought it was time. So much goes into an album, especially when it’s all live instrumentation. It’s so much work to have complete live bands with live horn sections, live strings. It [takes] a lot of energy and money and time, and you put so much of yourself into it. People appreciate musicians’ art, they listen to it, and I don’t think it’s a problem to have to pay for it. I buy albums that I love. The Tidal thing came across pretty last-minute. It wasn’t my initial plan. It wasn’t replacing anything. You majored in music business. Do you think Tidal can really change the market value of a stream with exclusive content? I might be a little biased because I have an old-school mindset when it comes to music. I’ve always been weird about it being free. Musicians, this is our livelihood, and I think it’s really great to get paid for it. That’s why I buy the albums I listen to. I view Tidal as buying the project. It’s more content. I’d like to see what they’re doing as far as more exclusive content—if there’s going to be things you can’t purchase, or things that let you get to know an artist. So I do think it’s possible. There are still people who are genuine music lovers. It might not be the biggest part of the Internet—a lot of the youth are all about free everything, free content, immediate content. But there are a lot of serious listeners who appreciate [music] as an art form, and those are the types of people who might gravitate toward Tidal. Would you rather a fan stream your album on Tidal or buy a copy? Whatever they want to do. If people are listening to the music and enjoying it and telling people about it, that’s what’s most important to me. If they buy it, I think that’s awesome. That means more. | Steve Albini, Record Producer, music journalist | - Steve Albini told Vulture this week that exclusivity is barely possible on the Internet. | ||||||||||||||
28 | Analysis: the music industry enters 2020 on a wave of growth - and optimism | Stuart Dredge | Music Ally (music:)ally) | 2020 | UK | None | Spotify, Netflix, | on the music industry's revenue: -annual revenues have grown from $14.2bn to $19.1bn, taking it almost back to its 2004 level. If 2019 matched 2018’s 9.7% growth, we could be talking about $21bn last year -quarterly figures show 16% growth for the US recorded music market -Goldman Sachs is predicting that streaming alone will be worth $37.2bn a year to the industry by 2030, while Midia Research reckons consumer-spending on streaming (as opposed to trade revenues) could reach $45.3bn by 2026. globally - France, for example, only saw 1.8% growth in its recorded market in 2018, but then 12.7% growth in the first half of 2019. In Germany, revenues fell slightly in 2018 but grew by 7.9% in the first half of 2019. Spain, meanwhile, saw 5.9% growth in 2018 trumped by a 27% spike in the first half of 2019. -According to the IFPI’s ‘Music Listening 2019’ study in September, 89% of respondents were using some kind of legal, on-demand music-streaming service, including 64% who listen to legal, on-demand audio-streaming services. | This article was a lot more focused on streaming and music consumption from a financial standpoint, discussing artists less and comparing platforms like spotify to other streaming services such as Netflix. Dredge highlights the Goldman Sachs' prediction that streaming is still in upswing and will be a multi billion dollar industry by 2030, and suggests that streaming is a venue for experimentation for both artists and technologies alike rather than caution. There's some discussion about artist pay, with Cooper mentioning a pushback against the devaluation of artists and writers, but regardless, this pushback does very little against the massive growth streaming has undergone over the past decade. It seems as though streaming is an either/or kind of situation, at least in the way that it's portrayed throughout Dredge's article: for new, popular artists, it's fantastic and royalties and streams are quite hefty; for lower down creators, very small royalties for big streaming numbers is a huge issue. | https://musically.com/2020/01/03/analysis-music-industry-2020-growth/ | None | Stu Bergen - WMG rep Steve Cooper - WMG CEO | Bergen on streaming investments: "We should never be complacent and think that happy days are here to stay. You should always be looking to evolve, to anticipate the needs of the market and the changes in the market and to serve your audience and serve your fans,"Cooper on Streaming: "We’re going to continue to push back against the devaluation of our artists’ and songwriters’ music from freemium models, mismanaged family plans and other customer acquisition strategies employed by streaming platforms at the expense of creators and content producers" | ||||||||||||||
29 | Appeals Court Revives Copyright Case Over Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' | Eriq Gardner | Billboard | 2018 | Led Zeppelin, Randy Wolfe, Randy California, Spirit | - A copyright battle over Led Zeppelin's iconic song "Stairway to Heaven" is back on after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday partially vacated the trial court's judgment in favor of the band and remanded the case for a new trial. - Many legal observers expected a legal battle over "Blurred Lines" between the heirs of Marvin Gaye on one side and Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams on the other to provide guidance in song theft cases. Earlier this year, the 9th Circuit upheld the "Blurred Lines" verdict but stopped short of delivering such expected guidance thanks to a failure by Williams' attorney to properly preserve certain issues for appeal. - The appellate decision continues by noting that the jury ended its deliberations after deciding that "Taurus" and "Stairway to Heaven" were not substantially similar under the extrinsic test. Thus, the jury never got to the question of whether copying had occurred. As such, the judge finds the absence of a jury instruction about the inverse ratio rule was irrelevant and harmless. - As part of what will now take place at the trial court upon remand, the appeals court seems to think a playing of the sound recording is in order. Again, while the sound recording can't be protected under federal copyright law, that doesn't mean it's necessarily off limits for all aspects of the adjudication. | https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8477465/appeals-court-revives-copyright-case-led-zeppelin-stairway-to-heaven | None | Copyright Judge Richard Paez | Regarding musical and creative copyright infringement: "Plaintiffs must show a valid copyright and that defendants copied protected aspects of expression... independent creation is a complete defense against a claim of copyright infringement. Paez continues by saying that where there is no direct evidence of copying, a plaintiff can attempt to prove it circumstantially by showing that the defendant had access to a work and that both works share similarities probative of copying. Perhaps most controversially, Paez adopts what's known as the inverse ratio rule: When a high degree of access is shown, a lower amount of similarity is needed to prove copying." | |||||||||||||||||
30 | Apple announces new streamin music service Apple Music | Staff | The Associated Press | 2015 | US | Pharell, Drake, Muse, David Guetta | Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify, Deezer, Beats Music, Rhapsody | - About 41 million people globally now pay for streaming music from Spotify, Deezer and other outlets, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which says subscription revenue grew 39 per cent last year to $1.6 billion. Overall download sales fell 8 per cent to $3.6 billion. Apple Inc. bought the Beats headphone maker and music streaming service for $3 billion last year, but publishers’ data confirmed by royalty tracking company Audiam shows Beats Music had just 303,000 U.S. subscribers as of December, compared to 4.7 million in the U.S. for market leader Spotify. | - With millions of listeners already tuning in to streaming outlets like Pandora and Spotify, analysts and music-industry sources say Apple has been gearing up to launch its own service... Apple is expected to announce the service at its annual conference for software developers, which kicks off Monday in San Francisco... Along with a new music service, industry experts had been expecting Apple to announce a new streaming-video package and upgrades for its Apple TV service. But that may be delayed, according to reports by the New York Times and the tech blog Re/code, which said Apple is still negotiating with broadcasters and isn’t ready to announce the video service. That puts the spotlight on Apple’s music initiative. Analysts say the company needs to build a robust streaming business if it wants to maintain its central role in the popular-music ecosystem../// Along with a lengthy three-month free trial period for the paid service, the company also plans to bolster its free offering, iTunes Radio, with a live online radio station featuring DJs like former BBC host Zane Lowe and artists Pharell, Drake, Muse and David Guetta. | https://globalnews.ca/news/2042533/apple-announces-new-streaming-music-service-apple-music/ | None | Ben Bajarin, Creative Strategies analyst/// Van Baker, analyst at the Gartner research frim | - “Streaming media is increasingly important to the computer-using experience, so it’s important for Apple to have a role there,” said ... Ben Bajarin/// “They are very late to the game on streaming,” said analyst Van Baker... But he said Apple can still catch up by making it easy for iPhone owners to use the new service. | ||||||||||||||
31 | Apple is starting a music publishing business. Huh? | Talib Visram | CNN | 2018 | US | Spotify, Apple Music | - Apple Music is currently growing at a rate of 5%, and Spotify at 2%, according to the Wall Street Journal, and it's on pace to surpass Spotify (SPOT) in subscribers this summer. | - Typically, music publishers work with songwriters, helping with the creative process and ensuring they collect royalties for their compositions. But Apple Music said this won't be the role of its new division. - An Apple Music spokesperson said that the launch of a music publishing department is not a shift into signing songwriters directly. Instead, it'll allow the streaming service to work more closely and effectively with music publishers that represent songwriters. - An Apple Music spokesperson said that the launch of a music publishing department is not a shift into signing songwriters directly. Instead, it'll allow the streaming service to work more closely and effectively with music publishers that represent songwriters. - Publishing experts believe this is a legal move to ensure songwriters are fairly paid from streaming. But industry analysts say this closer connection could also indicate that Apple Music hopes to earn early releases and unique events -- and to finally gain some footing against front-running rival, Spotify. - Every time the song is recorded by an artist, or used in an ad or TV show, for instance, the songwriter may be owed various kinds of royalties. One of the roles of music publishers, which represent songwriters, is to ensure that their clients receive the publishing royalties they're entitled to. | https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/14/news/companies/apple-music-publishing-division/index.html | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
32 | Apple Music Attracting New Streaming Subscribers to Aid in Music Industry's 'Fragile Recovery' | Mitchell Broussard | Mac Rumors | 2016 | Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, iTunes | - RIAA's data showed that streaming revenue in the U.S. grew 57 percent in the first half of 2016, reaching $1.6 billion, and accounted for almost half of industry sales, while subscriptions totaled $1.01 billion. Altogether, the industry grew 8.1 percent to $3.4 billion in the first half of 2016, which is on track to best the $7 billion yearly average of the last six years. /// - At the last recorded subscriber count, Spotify had 40 million paid subscribers worldwide, while Apple music had 17 million. /// - Physical music sales dropped 14 percent in RIAA's data of the first half of 2016, while paid downloads -- like those offered in the traditional iTunes store -- "also shrank by a double digit percentage." Free streaming grew 24 percent in the same data, to $195 million, | - Nor is this the first time new technology has come along to get people to pay online. Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs convinced record labels that iTunes would save the industry from piracy, only to vaporize album sales by selling singles instead. Yet Apple is no longer the only player in the market for digital music. Spotify operates a larger paid subscription service and has showed no signs of slowing down since Apple Music began competing in that market. Most of the users for Apple Music are people new to paying music, not former Spotify customers, according to label executives. /// - retail spending on physical media isn't accounting for any of the overall industry growth. Physical music sales dropped 14 percent in RIAA's data of the first half of 2016, while paid downloads -- like those offered in the traditional iTunes store -- "also shrank by a double digit percentage." Free streaming grew 24 percent in the same data, to $195 million, but "those services aren’t doing enough to convince people to pay for music," nor are they making enough money off free users to continue staying afloat. That could potentially be why popular free music platforms, like Pandora, are gearing up to introduce new paid listening tiers for users. Amazon is planning to do the same, and both services are predicted to match Apple Music's $9.99 per month cost, while offering similar on-demand singles, albums, radio, and playlists for listeners. | https://www.macrumors.com/2016/09/20/apple-music-aid-music-industry/ | None | None | |||||||||||||||||
33 | Apple Music Is Beating Spotify. What Should Spotify Do About It? | Christina Bonnington | Slate | 2018 | US | Spotify, Apple Music, Google, Amazon Music | - Both apps have roughly 20 million U.S.-based subscribers, but Apple Music now has the upper hand. - Spotify is still on course to become a $100 billion company by 2020. - In the streaming music war, Spotify hasn’t yet lost. It has managed to offer a universally well-liked service—it has a 4.8 rating in Apple’s App Store—and has put services and features in place to position the app as MTV meets your corner record store for the 21st century. | - Spotify has led the streaming music space for some time now, but over the past year, Apple Music has evolved into a serious threat. Apple Music’s growth accelerated past Spotify’s, and now, for the first time, Apple has pulled ahead. According to a report from Digital Music News last week, Apple Music has become the top on-demand streaming music service in the U.S. in terms of users. - For Spotify, which went public in April, the news should raise questions about the company’s strategy—questions that have surely been on its mind in the past few months as Apple closed the gap. Luckily, while stock price and user count are two measures of Spotify’s success, they aren’t everything. Spotify’s global subscriber and user numbers still beat Apple by a good margin, but that lead could shrink if it doesn’t take action. - Spotify is trying to become the MTV for a new generation of music fans, acting as a discovery engine and public platform for new and emerging artists. In late 2017, it also began allowing artists to sell merchandise and beauty products through its app. Spotify doesn’t take a cut of sales, so this feature isn’t a moneymaker, but it instead solidifies Spotify’s position as a hub for music fandom, where listeners can keep up to date on their favorite artists and their music, and collect some of their merch as well. Listener count is only one metric. If Apple has more users than Spotify, it won’t matter to Spotify’s bottom line if its listeners are more loyal, more involved, and more profitable for musicians. | https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/spotify-vs-apple-music-how-spotify-can-regain-top-music-streaming-spot.html | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
34 | Apple Music Is Hot — and Messy | David Pogue | Yahoo Finance | 2015 | US | Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, Tidal, Rdio, Google Play Music, Xbox Music, and Rhapsody | - A new, $10-a-month streaming-music service, like Spotify, Tidal, Rdio, Google Music, Deezer, Rhapsody, and others - And with 800 million iTunes account holders in its pocket, Apple has a good chance of making this service a success. - Apple’s streaming-music service costs $10 a month, the same as paid plans from Spotify, Tidal, Rdio, Google Play Music, Xbox Music, and Rhapsody. - It’s not like Apple’s traditional music store, either, where you pay $1 per download and you own the song forever. If you ever stop paying Apple the $10 a month, the music stops | - In Apple’s glory years, Steve Jobs turned simplicity into an art form. - “Being focused means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that are out there,” he once said. “You have to pick carefully. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” - It’s starting to seem as though Apple no longer abides by that religion. The first two major post-Jobs initiatives from Apple are powerful and important, but they’re also bogged down by too many features and a confusing design. First, there was the Apple Watch — and today, there is Apple Music. - In its simplest form, Apple Music is an updated app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, and a new version of iTunes on Mac or Windows; in the fall, it will be available for Android (Apple’s first Android app ever). | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-music-is-hot-and-messy-122870003119.html | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
35 | Apple Music rolls out New Music Daily to keep you updated with the latest songs | Aaron Mamiit | Digital Trends | 2019 | US | Taylor Swift | Apple Music, Lana Del Rey, Missy Elliott, Wiz Khalifa | - The first New Music Daily includes more than 80 songs from other artists such as Lana Del Rey, Missy Elliott, and Wiz Khalifa, with a total runtime of about five hours - Apple Music, which offers 50 million songs on demand, also offers live radio stations and custom playlists. Apple’s music streaming service comes with a three-month free trial, after which subscriptions cost $10 per month or $99 per year for an individual, and $15 per month for a family plan that may include up to six members. - The music identification app has been downloaded more than 1 billion times and is used 20 million times daily, and the data that this activity generates is likely behind the new Shazam-powered playlist. | - Apple Music has rolled out a new playlist named New Music Daily, which aims to keep subscribers updated with the latest songs as the world’s most popular artists release them. - With New Music Daily, Apple Music subscribers will be able to enjoy a more dynamic playlist. While every song on the list will not be different each day, there will be much more variance compared to Best of the Week, which remained static for a full seven days before being updated. - The playlist is the first of its kind on Apple Music that uses Shazam, the music-seeking app that Apple purchased last year. | https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-music-launches-new-music-daily-playlist/ | None | None | |||||||||||||||
36 | Apple Music vs Spotify: Which service is the streaming king? | Josh Levenson | Digital Trends | 2019 | Taylor Swift, Black Keys, The Arcs, Dawes, Neil Young, Jonathan Wilson, St. Vincent, A Trible Called Quest, Ryan Adams, Lifehouse, Mumford and Sons | Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Prime Music, Tidal, Randora | - Apple’s streaming service has had impressive growth in listenership, reaching about 60 million monthly subscribers since it went live in June 2015 — almost a decade after Spotify debuted. In fact, it is now the most popular paid streaming service in the United States. But while Apple Music is king stateside, Spotify remains the global champ with over 100 million subscribers. | - Spotify is the undisputed king of on-demand streaming music. The Swedish-born service helped pioneer the current market and has tens of millions more paying subscribers than the competition, not to mention countless millions more free users. But Apple Music, known for its high-level exclusive releases and full integration into Apple’s popular iOS ecosystem, is hot on its heels, making the question of which is better even more important than ever.... Spotify first took its dominant position on the strength of its impressive 30 million-plus song catalog. Couple this with the fact that it adds more than 20,000 new songs each day.. While several holes do exist in its library, Spotify’s catalog is extremely deep, so much so that even one-time holdout Taylor Swift eventually conceded her protest. The Swedish streaming service also brings all the latest record releases, exclusive live sessions, and various new singles right to its New Releases tab each Friday, providing a great way to hear the latest from established artists and rising stars alike. /// Apple’s service, on the other hand, touts around 45 million songs, which is superior to Spotify’s current 35 million-plus figure, and also outdoes newer contenders like Amazon Prime Music and Jay-Z’s Tidal. Moreover, Apple has taken steps to secure many more exclusives than the competition, largely because it doesn’t offer a free tier. The Swedish streaming giant isn’t too happy with artists signing exclusivity deals with Apple, either; Spotify reportedly has a history of altering search rankings for artists who release their music through Apple first. ... There’s another area where Apple Music has the leg up on its competition: Integration of the iTunes library. Any music you have — whether previously purchased via the iTunes Store, ripped from a physical CD, or uploaded to iTunes Match — will appear in your Apple Music library, giving you the option to freely browse your own music alongside Apple’s standard catalog. Spotify offers a similar function, relegating your local music files to a separate tab, but you can’t access your local music via broad searches as you can with Apple Music/// Apple Music does a great job curating playlists to appeal to your preferences. Playlists might be based on genre, a particular artist, or even a particular activity like driving. Apple claims the playlists are curated by a “team of experts.”... Spotify also offers “expertly curated” playlists, but Apple Music’s playlist selections come from individual DJs on the Apple payroll. Apple Music’s Beats 1 Radio function, which offers live radio 24 hours a day, also plays a major role when it comes to music discovery. It’s refreshing to see Apple move beyond sophisticated algorithms for a human approach to facilitating true music discovery — but Spotify has its own magic at work, and its personalized playlists are only growing. Spotify’s hands-off playlists, with its fantastic Discover Weekly segment, give it the edge. Until Apple Music can compete with this algorithm-based approach, we will give Spotify the win./// Spotify did away with the “radio” tab of the past, replacing it with an “assisted playlisting” feature instead.. This feature gives you contextual recommendations based on your music interests. /// in Beats 1, Apple Music’s premier radio station that runs nonstop music — mixed by DJs — on live radio shows.... the most intriguing shows on Beats 1 are those hosted by notable musicians such as Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Q-Tip (A Tribe Called Quest), and Ryan Adams. These shows provide listeners with a unique look into the tastes of artists they admire... Beyond Beats 1, Apple Music has some more generic radio stations for those who simply want to listen to say, classic rock, jazz, or Top 40 hits. There are also non-music stations such as BBC News and ESPN, creating a menagerie of options that are hard to … well, beat./// Apple Music costs the industry-standard $10 per month, as does Spotify Premium, Tidal Premium, Pandora’s on-demand service, and just about every other on-demand subscription service on the block (Amazon Music Unlimited costs $10 per month for existing users, or $8 for new users and those with an Amazon Prime subscription). Apple originally hoped to undercut its competitors by offering its standard service for $8, or even $5 per month, but that plan was derailed by the major labels that own the rights to the vast majority of the company’s catalog. To make an Apple Music or Spotify subscription a bit more appealing, both companies offer special family packs that allow customers to add up to six individual accounts for a total of just $15 per month.There’s another way to save some cash on both services. New users with an applicable student email can get a discounted monthly subscription of just $5. Spotify adds in a bit more for that bargain, offering ad-supported Hulu access with Showtime into the mix... Apple does not have a free, ad-based tier like Spotify, which is a big reason the Swedish company was able to corral so many users in the first place. The majority of Spotify’s users listen for free, and that’s better than any three-month trial or discounted yearlong subscription Apple could offer/// Spotify’s social functions allow subscribers to follow friends and see both what they listen to and who they follow. It also gives users the ability to share or recommend playlists, along with the ability to publish their listening history to Facebook, which then gives their Facebook friends an opportunity to Like or Comment on the activity. While these features do give Spotify some social clout, we would like to see the service add an easy way to chat with who you follow. It has also now removed the Inbox/Messages feature, which allowed users to privately message each other inside the app — something the company said most users simply weren’t using and therefore was too expensive to maintain. Apple Music’s main social feature comes from what it calls Connect, a Twitter-style feed that brings artists and fans closer together and effectively serves as an all-access pass to your favorite bands.... Apple Music lets you download music for offline playback across ten different devices at once, with no real limit on how much you can download. Technically, the upper limit is 100,000 songs, but you would be hard-pressed to reach that number unless you download every album you see. Spotify lags in this area — with a relatively recent update bumping the restriction up to 10,000 on up to five devices. | https://www.digitaltrends.com/music/apple-music-vs-spotify/ | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
37 | Apple Music's End of Year Rankings Have Landed, And They're a Little Surprising | Jules Lefevre | Junkee | 2019 | AUS | Tones and I, Lewis Capaldi | Apple Music | -Tones and I is the highest ranked Australian on Apple Music for streaming; additionally, she was the most Shazamed artist in Australia and the third most Shazamed artist globally. -Post Malone was #1 for streamed songs in Australia, and Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's "Shallow" was second. Señorita, which made the top of a handful of other streaming charts globally, was not in the top 10 in Australia. -Billie Eilish's "WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?" was the most streamed album globally of 2019, and the track "bad guy" came in fifth for most streamed songs worldwide and seventh in Australia. | Looking at the statistics for Australian charts and streams gives some contrast to the uniformity in Spotify and Apple's global streaming charts, which place the same megastars in the top ten. What's more interesting is that although the artists on Apple Music Australia's top charts are still quite popular, they differ from the top charts globally and suggest a different focus in the country. This article includes some Shazam stats, which aren't often included in articles regarding streaming and offer some insight to the curiosity of Australian listeners. Generally, Lefevre maintains their focus on statistics solely between Australian and global charts. | https://junkee.com/apple-music-rankings/233156 | None | None | |||||||||||||||
38 | Apple Streaming Service Release Date & Apple TV Subscription Rumours | Karen Haslam | MacWorld | 2018 | US | Ed Sheeran | Apple, Netflix, Amazon, NowTV, | - Apple wants to produce its own TV content and it is spending a lot of money on the project. The company is said to have plans to spend $4.2bn on original programming by 2022, including $1bn in 2018, as per this Variety report. This budget is still smaller than Netflix's $6.8bn, and Amazon is expected to spend up to $8.3bn on original content, according to this Guardian report from April 2018, but Apple certainly mean's business - or should we say, Show Business. - Apparently these PVOD (premium video on demand) rentals would be available to download months before they hit services like Netflix and Now TV, but they would have a higher price than Apple's usual rental deals. According to the Bloomberg report, if rented from iTunes the movies could cost between $30-$50, while the average price of a cinema ticket is $8.84. ($30 is about £24). - In a 22 November 2017 research note Munster wrote: "Apple should be able to quickly expand their sub base given they have a running start with just over 30 million Apple Music subs that will have access to the video offering for the same $10 per month." | - Apple is spending billions making its own TV shows for distribution via the Apple TV, iPhone and iPad. Find out what shows Apple is making, who Apple is working with, how much Apple's TV streaming service will cost and when Apple's streaming service will launch in this article. Apple is apparently spending billions making its own TV shows for distribution via the Apple TV, iPhone and iPad. There have been multiple reports about the new shows in the works at Apple, with various high-profile stars, directors, writers and producers, so it is no secret that the company is hard at work producing content. - And in late October 2017 Apple added the former controller of BBC One and chief creative officer of Channel 4, Jay Hunt, to its team of creatives working on video content. Hunt was behind shows like Sherlock, Luther, and then helped Channel 4 buy The Great British Bake Off. In her new role at Apple she will be creative director Europe, worldwide video. It is thought that she will be commissioning programming on behalf of Apple for Europe and the UK market. - Wondering what shows the team at Apple is making? The company has been unable to keep rumours and snippets of information getting out about its plans here, so we already know about quite a few of the shows the company is working on. With so much information about the shows that are coming from Apple, there can be no doubt that the company intends to extend its own offering beyond iTunes rentals very soon. - However, Apple may have since changed its mind. As of December 2018, Apple is reportedly looking for a gritty drama, despite reports that the company was more focused on family friendly drama. Reports claim that Apple is now looking for a show like 24 or Homeland and has purchased the rights to remake a "gritty Israeli TV show", more information below. - Apple's TV app is the closest Apple has come to offering customers all the shows and movies they might want to watch in one place. It pulls the information about all the content from all the different subscription and on-demand services and apps you might have on the Apple TV and your other Apple devices into one place so that you can make a choice about what you want to watch without having to look through all the different apps (although once you make that choice, you will be transferred to the other app to watch the content.) - Even if Apple does charge a subscription for the service, it is thought it will undercut its competition. In June 2018 a Recode report noted that a TV executive had revealed that Apple "intends to sell a standalone subscription to its original video shows, priced below Netflix". | https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-streaming-service-3610603/ | None | None | |||||||||||||||
39 | Apple Wanted to Revolutionize the Way Streaming Pays. Here's Why it Wasn't Allowed | Tim Ingham | Rolling Stone | 2019 | US | Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon Music | - the Copyright Royalty Board, whose three judges ruled last year that composers and their publishers would, by 2022, be paid via the higher outcome of two formulas: either (i) as 15.1% of a streaming service’s total revenues; or (ii) as 26.2% of a streaming service’s “Total Content Costs” — i.e. the total amount of money a platform like Spotify pays to record labels and artists, plus songwriters and publishers. | - The Swedish streaming service has joined forces with Amazon, Google, and Sirius XM/Pandora to appeal a statutory pay rise for composers and their publishers from on-demand streaming services in the United States. That pay rise could be significant, increasing the royalty checks coming out of these platforms, and others like them, by at least 44% between 2018 and 2022./// - Spotify, Amazon, Google, and SiriusXM/Pandora are now appealing this ruling because, to cut a long story short, they argue it could unfairly advantage Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, and Warner Music Group — who all own both major record companies and major music publishers. The digital services are demanding a cap is placed on the maximum amount of money they would have to pay publishers each month. Apple stands alone in refusing to appeal the CRB’s judgement. /// - Apple proposed a much simpler way of rewarding songwriters during the CRB’s decision-making process: a $0.00091 payout for writers and/or their publishers for every single stream (over 30 seconds) hosted by an on-demand audio streaming service. // Both Spotify and Google, to name two, were very keen to throw out any notion of a per-play payment system, after music publishers initially suggested that a per-stream rate of $0.0015 for mechanical royalties /// Apple wanted all services — including those with a free tier that naturally generates less money than a paying subscriber tier — to be forced to pay $0.00091 to songwriters for every play on their services. McCarthy was hinting that such a hard-and-fast rule could cause serious economic problems for a business like Spotify’s./// In the end, the CRB categorically rejected Apple’s proposal. Its judges ruled that Apple’s suggested rate — based on the historical amount it paid to songwriters from iTunes downloads — wasn’t a fair calculation, adding that: “Apple’s proposal fails to reflect the variable WTP [Willingness to Pay] in the market, rendering it a less efficient upstream royalty rate.” | https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/apple-spotify-streaming-song-royalties-880552/ | None | - Dale Cendali of legal giant Kirkland & Ellis/// Zahavah Levine — VP of Partnerships at Google Play/// Google’s hand-picked expert economist, Gregory Leonard /// Paul Vogel, Head of Global Financial Planning and Analysis and Investor Relations at Spotify /// Barry McCarthy, Spotify’s CFO | - Cendali arguing on behalf of Apple on March 8th, 2017... “the current rate structure is overly complicated and lacks transparency because royalties depend on the amount of revenue a service generates … this means you can have one company pay one rate for a stream, and another company pays a different rate … and because of that, songwriters may receive different compensation even though it is the same song being streamed.” ... “Apple doesn’t think it makes sense for [songwriters] to be dependent on the business success of the services that use their music. They should get a consistent, predictable, and transparent per-play rate, and then it is up to the services to run the most innovative and efficient businesses possible for which they can recoup the upside.” Concluded Cendali: “This single per play rate for every stream of the song makes sense. Everyone pays the same amount. Everyone receives the amount. It is simple, transparent, predictable, and fair.” /// - In a written testimony to the CRB dated February 2017, Zahavah Levine ... said: “Google Play Music’s primary objective is to achieve standalone, sustainable profitability.” /// Leonard, revealed that “despite a continuously increasing user base and subscription revenue, Google Play Music has never been profitable”. /// In an earlier submission to the CRB, dated October 2016, Levine slammed calls for a per-play royalty structure — which, she said, combined with an increase in rates for copyright owners, would “guarantee that only those very few companies who could both afford and would be willing to incur tremendous losses could continue to offer streaming music services.” /// Vogel...admitted in October 2016 that “lower royalty rates are critical to Spotify’s future”. He added: “Lower royalty rates would allow Spotify to spend more on revenue growth drivers, which would result in more absolute revenue for everyone as well as for the company … With lower royalty rates, we can develop a better product, and if we can develop a better product, more people will be willing to pay, the market will expand, and the total value to the entire ecosystem will grow.” /// McCarthy... noted in February 2017 that “a per-stream rate applicable to both ad-supported and paid services ignores the different value propositions and monetization structures of the two services”, adding that “all of the problems with a per-stream rate generally apply to Apple’s [$0.00091 per play] proposal.” /// McCarthy further argued that a per-stream rate would “disincentivize Spotify and other providers from encouraging listening” and would in fact “incentivize services to decrease engagement” — i.e., platforms like Spotify might actually try to limit the number of streams being played on their own platforms each month in order to keep costs down./// [Levine] wrote in October 2016: “A per-play rate would punish services with higher, unpredictable royalties and create perverse incentives for music services to discourage use of [their] service.” | |||||||||||||||
40 | Apple's about-face on music royalties a victory for musicians and shrewd business move | Ryan Nakashima and Brandon Bailey | Associated Press | 2015 | US | Taylor Swift, Elvis Costello, Adele | Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music | - While Apple Music doesn’t have any subscribers yet, compared to the 4.7 million Spotify had in the U.S. then, its global launch in 100 countries could quickly change that. | - Apple’s abrupt about-face on paying royalties for songs during a three-month free-trial period for its new music service was a symbolic victory for superstar Taylor Swift and other artists, and a shrewd business move by Apple, at a time when the streaming phenomenon is causing major changes in the music industry. The olive branch extended by Apple comes as music is increasingly being consumed on streaming services like Spotify and Deezer – to the detriment of album sales and iTunes downloads – heightening tensions between artists, labels and service providers over who gets paid and how much. Apple had already agreed to share revenue from the new Apple Music service once users start paying a $10-a-month subscription fee for the service, which it plans to launch June 30. But the technology giant wasn’t planning to pay artists and labels directly for the use of their music during the free, 90-day trial period that it’s offering to get fans to try the service. That changed quickly Sunday, after Swift posted an open letter to Apple opposing the lack of royalties during the free period, and declaring she’d be withholding her latest album “1989” from Apple Music because of it. Apple Senior Vice-President Eddy Cue reversed the company’s trial-period terms, which had gone out to thousands of independent labels, including Swift’s Big Machine Label Group, after the technology giant reached a deal with major label groups Universal, Sony and Warner in early June... Apple hasn’t publicly revealed how much it will pay in royalties for the free streaming period. Cue declined to offer financial details in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, but he said the payments will be based on a different formula than the company had already negotiated for sharing subscription revenue, since Apple won’t be collecting any revenue from the 90 days of free streaming. Instead, Cue said, royalties for the free streaming will be based on a standard amount for each time a song is streamed/// Withholding their latest releases from services like Spotify had already become the norm among top artists who see more to gain from download sales in the initial release period, including Swift and Adele... But few artists have the same clout, and because download sales are falling in favour of revenue from streaming services, few spoke out publicly either for or against the plan. | https://globalnews.ca/news/2069801/apples-about-face-on-music-royalties-a-victory-for-musicians-and-shrewd-business-move/ | Daniel Ives, tech stock analyst with FBR Capital Markets/// Jeff Price, CEO and founder of royalty collection firm Audiam/// Rob Enderle, principal analyst of the Enderle Group/// Ben Bajarin, Founder of research firm Creative Strategies | - The company needed to avoid a “PR nightmare” and quickly extinguish the firestorm that Swift had created, said Daniel Ives... “They needed to handle this perfectly,” Ives said, because Apple is facing an uphill battle against competing services like Spotify that are already well-established. “There can be no snafus or speed bumps, from the artists’ perspective, or any type of consumer backlash.”/// Jeff Price... said the free-period royalties could amount to about $25 million per month in the U.S. alone if Apple Music pays the same as Spotify did in December 2014, according to publishers’ data. Ives noted the cost to Apple is “not even a rounding error” for a company that made $39.5 billion in profit and $182.8 billion in revenue for its last fiscal year./// While Apple Music doesn’t have any subscribers yet, compared to the 4.7 million Spotify had in the U.S. then, its global launch in 100 countries could quickly change that. Still, Price says the gesture will likely be worth it for Apple. “It got them an unlimited amount of public goodwill and artist goodwill,” Price said./// The fact that independent labels drove this change highlights their growing power in the music industry – and Apple’s practice of simply offering independent labels terms that had been negotiated with the majors, said Rob Enderle... “It certainly showcases to Apple that if they step on the labels, some of them can step back pretty hard,” Enderle said./// Ben Bajarin... said he’d never seen Apple make such a quick reversal on a major business issue. But he said Apple had no reason not to change position after it was clear artists were upset. And it will likely even gain more favour among fans.“If there were people on the fence about trying the new service, there are tens of millions that will probably try it now, just to see what it’s about, and that will help Apple achieve its goal faster,” Bajarin said. | The American Association of Independent Music expected a flood of sign-ups at launch, suggesting to its members in an email they should reconsider releasing music to the platform right away: “We are struggling to understand why rights holders would authorize their content on the service before October 1.” | ||||||||||||||
41 | Apple's ITunes Overtaken by Streaming Music Services in Sales | Lucas Shaw | Bloomberg | 2016 | US | Taylor Swift, Adele | Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube | - Streaming generated $2.4 billion in U.S. music sales last year, surpassing digital downloads as the recording industry’s single biggest source of revenue and propelling the business to its first year of growth since 2011. The listening format contributed 34.3 percent of sales, edging past digital downloads, which contributed 34 percent, according to a report by the Recording Industry Association of America released Tuesday. Overall sales climbed 0.9 percent to $7 billion. ... Revenue from digital albums declined 5.2 percent in 2015, while sales of singles declined 12.8 percent. Paid streaming services accounted for half of overall streaming sales, as the number of paid music subscriptions grew to 13 million by the end of December, the RIAA said. The rest of the streaming revenue derives from online radio services owned by Pandora Media Inc. and Sirius XM Holdings Inc., as well as ad-supported streaming services offered by the likes of Google’s YouTube and Spotify. | - Usage of ad-supported streaming is growing faster than sales from those services, the RIAA said, repeating the record labels’ push for Spotify and YouTube to convert more free users to paid subscribers. Spotify is the largest paid music service in the world with more than 30 million subscribers, but many still listen for free. YouTube, the most popular music service in the world, introduced a new paid service last year (2015) /// Spotify must negotiate new long-term deals with all three major record labels. The company’s agreements with two of them -- Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group and Access Industries Holdings LLC’s Warner Music Group -- have expired. Labels and artists have asked Spotify to give artists more control over whether their music is available for free. | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-22/apple-s-itunes-overtaken-by-streaming-music-services-in-sales | None | Cary Sherman, chairman and chief executive officer of the RIAA, | - “We, and so many of our music community brethren, feel that some technology giants have been enriching themselves at the expense of the people who actually create the music,” Cary Sherman... wrote in a blog post. “We call this the ‘value grab’ -- because some companies take advantage of outdated, market-distorting government rules and regulations to either pay below fair-market rates, or avoid paying for that music altogether.” | ||||||||||||||
42 | Are There Too Many Music Streaming Services? | Stephen Lovely | Yahoo Finance / The Motley Fool | 2018 | Spotify, Tidal, Pandora, Apple Music, Amazon Prime, Google Play, YouTube Music, SoundCloud | - Spotify subscriber count: 157 million - Pandora subscriber count: 78 million - Apple Music subscriber count: 50 million - Amazon Prime Music / Amazon Music Unlimited subscriber count: 40 million - Google Play Music subscriber count: 40 million /// [Added to the bottom of the article]: - John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Stephen Lovely owns shares of Amazon, Apple, and Netflix. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Pandora Media. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2020 $150 calls on Apple and short January 2020 $155 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. | - When Netflix first kicked off its streaming video service, it revolutionized video entertainment. It also found that streaming rights were not hard to come by. As the only game in town, Netflix was able to build up an enviable library of licensed content.It didn't stay that way forever, of course. Netflix was soon joined by competitors like Hulu and Amaz on (NASDAQ: AMZN). Exclusive streaming rights deals became more and more expensive, and Netflix was soon investing in original series as a way to keep content costs down.Meanwhile, ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) services like Tubi TV and Sony's Sony Crackle entered the fray with services that offered users free movies and TV shows with ads. There are a few emerging models for streaming rights deals in the video space. There are original series, which give streaming services their own content to control. There are exclusive licensing deals. And then there are non-exclusive deals: for instance, there is significant overlap between the libraries offered by Amazon, Hulu, and Tubi TV as of this writing.... o get subscribers to delete their mp3s, services like Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) need to offer comprehensive music libraries: the idea of "exclusives" is rare in music streaming, and its occasional appearance frustrates music fans (witness the regularity with which Tidal's exclusives strategy provokes outrage and spikes in music pirating). Music rights deals are structured differently from their video counterparts. Exclusivity is far rarer. And, as a result, the differences between various music streaming services' libraries is far less significant than in the video world. That hurts streaming music companies like Spotify -- how can a business increase subscription fees and profits if there are lots of near-identical alternatives? With less to differentiate music streaming services, there just isn't much reason to believe that we need so many of them./// - diversity in streaming services survives in part because of the structure of streaming music deals. Per-stream payments help scale rights fees to demand, which helps streaming services avoid, at least to a degree, the stumbles that video services can take when high up-front rights fees combine with subscriber-based income models./// - The best-positioned music streaming services are the ones with large user bases, established brands, and deep-pocketed corporate backing. That's good news for industry leader Spotify, and gives hope to big-brand entrants like Apple Music. But it's bad news for services like Tidal, which has suffered despite its occasional exclusives. | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/too-many-music-streaming-services-100000983.html | None | None | |||||||||||||||||
43 | Artist managers applaud Sony’s Spotify equity payout policy | David Turner | Music Business Worldwide | 2018 | UK | Spotify, Apple | The terms under which Sony will share its spoils from the sale of 50% of its Spotify stock – amounting to around $750m – have been deemed a “progressive move” by MMF CEO Annabella Coldrick | Sony payouts to artists directly from Spotify - will other companies follow suit? - Music Managers Forum, Spotiy, Sony | https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/managers-applaud-sonys-spotify-equity-payout-policy/ | None | Music Managers Forum CEO Annabella Coldrick - Quoted | On Sony payout to Spotify: “The Music Managers Forum has long campaigned for the income from Spotify equity to be shared with artists whose music the labels traded. “We’re very pleased to hear from Sony that they will be doing this both directly and with artists signed to distributed labels, and not off-setting it against recoupment. “This is a progressive move which we hope to see reflected more widely in the industry and across other non-attributed income such as Facebook. “The music industry is changing and the future will be different from the past. Labels will work increasingly in partnership with artists and not be “owners” of their rights. “This shift should see more equitable shares of all revenue going to the artists and songwriters, not just on a royalty basis.” | |||||||||||||||
44 | Artists are publicly rebelling against streaming services. Will their grievances gather momentum? | David Turner | Music Business Worldwide | 2018 | US | Nicki Minaj, Travis Scott, Ariana Grane, Cupcakke, Thom Yorke, Q-Tip, A Tribe Called Quest, Taylor Swift, Will Toledo, Car Seat Headrest | Spotify, Apple Music | - Last December Will Toledo, known as the indie rock singer Car Seat Headrest, said he made $30,000 through streaming on Spotify to rebut negative Twitter comment made by Geoff Barrow of Portishead towards the streaming platform. - Last year Chance the Rapper in an unprovoked tweet revealed that Apple Music gave the Chicago star $500,000 for early exclusive rights to his album Coloring Book. - Artists can see that Spotify is worth comfortably over $30 billion | Artists opinions/experiences/public feuds/antipathy towards/appreciation of streaming services | https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/artists-are-publicly-rebelling-against-streaming-services-will-their-grievances-gather-momentum/ | Thom Yorke , Taylor Swift | Regarding Spotify: “We can build the shit ourselves, so fuck off. But because they’re using old music, because they’re using the majors… the majors are all over it because they see a way of re-selling all their old stuff for free, make a fortune, and not die.” | |||||||||||||||
45 | Artists Should Blame Record Labels, Not Music Streaming | Bret Kinsella | Xapp Media | 2015 | Taylor Swift | Spotify, Napster | - An analysis of SNEP research by Music Business Worldwide and reported by Techdirt broke down the payouts. Spotify claims to pay out about 70% of revenue and other services have acknowledged paying out similarly high percentages. The SNEP article estimates that after payouts and French taxes, the streaming music services retain under 21% of all revenue, which must then be used to cover expenses. By contrast, record labels retain over 73% of all royalty payments after distributing 16% to songwriters and publishers and another 11% to the recording artists. - When streaming services such as Spotify talk about distributing $2 billion in royalty payments, the analysis suggests that $1.46 billion went to labels while $218 million and $320 million went to recording artists and songwriters, respectively. We had one party saying they had paid out a lot of money (streaming services) and another party saying they had received little (artists). As expected, the missing money wound up with the middleman (labels). It is important to note that the report focused on France and the royalty rates differ by country and by contract. However, this analysis closely matches other estimates of an artist’s compensation. - To be fair, the SNEP report also suggested that 95% of the labels’ take was consumed by expenses. Of course, those expenses include lavish perks and executive salaries that have been maintained despite a 50% drop in industry revenue. That same analysis suggests the streaming services have the smallest post-expense income at just 1% of revenue. - . All evidence indicates that dollars are flowing to royalty holders with RIAA reporting that streaming services provided 27% of industry revenue. - It estimated in October and November 2014 that Taylor Swift was making $84,000 per week on Spotify from just one song, “Shake It Off,” when she pulled her music catalog from the service. At the time, Spotify estimated it was on pace to pay her more than $6 million in royalties. Most artists will never be able to take in that kind of revenue. Even if they could, it looks like the record labels would retain nearly three quarters of it. - Consumers want to use streaming music services and 55-70% of service revenue is already paid to royalty holders. | - Given Ms. Swift’s very public disagreement about royalties and other articles about small checks that some artists receive, many are left with the impression that music streaming services are unfairly benefiting from musicians’ work. Industry data emerged last week suggesting record labels are the real beneficiaries. - The tactic now is to deprive consumers of music on their favorite streaming services in an attempt exert pressure before contract renewals. However, the industry economics have fundamentally changed in the last decade. Shutting down Napster didn’t hurt the bottom line because it didn’t generate any revenue. Putting more pressure on the channel that delivers more than a quarter of industry revenue and is its fastest growing segment may be playing with fire. As we said in the Internet Radio Trends Report 2015, consumers have voted with their ears. Music streaming services are both the present and future of audio consumption. | https://xappmedia.com/artists-blame-record-labels-not-music-streaming/ | Bono, of U2 | Bono: 'The real enemy isn’t between digital downloads or streaming. The real enemy, the real fight… is between opacity and transparency. The music business has historically involved itself in quite a considerable deceit… the record labels haven’t been transparent.' | None | |||||||||||||||
46 | As Exclusivity Takes Charge, How Will Music Streaming Change? | Thomas Steffens | Hypebot | 2019 | Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal | - In the past year alone, a Deloitte study cites the penetration of music streaming services in a consumer’s media experience increased 58% from last year, with the demand being led by Gen Z and millennials, 60% of which subscribe to a music streaming service. | - listening to and streaming music specifically is just a portion of the media consumed by the average person. Video and movies make up a large portion of the rest of this consumption, and on average, the U.S. consumer subscribes to three different services for video and movies alone. Because popular shows and movies are tied to specific platforms, consumers have the incentive to subscribe to multiple services... As it stands, the average consumer only subscribes to a single music streaming platform. However, if the industry continues as it has, this won’t last for long. Major players like Spotify and Apple Music are catered towards the average consumer, but they fall short when it comes to listening and discovering music in niche genres like classical and jazz. Among fans of niche genres we see increasing dissatisfaction with major streaming services, as they tend to not cover and serve these genres in a fully satisfying way. Classical fans, for instance, complain about not being able to (easily) find the recordings they are looking for, insufficient audio quality for the delicate sound of classical and uninteresting, too mainstream recommendations. A substantial part of fans of niche genres would therefore consider a second streaming service if it were to cover unique content./// - Spotify has recently bought rights to exclusively stream certain podcasts to further build out their platform’s user base. Then there’s TIDAL who has worked with certain artists to secure timed exclusives, meaning an album release may only be available on TIDAL for a certain period of time before streaming on additional platforms./// - Exclusive content is therefore not a goal in itself, but one of the differentiators for niche streaming services. | https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/07/is-ai-killing-niche-genres.html | None | Whole Article is Written by Thomas Steffens, CEO, Primephonic | |||||||||||||||||
47 | As students head back to school, streaming services offer discounts to keep them entertained | Mike Snider | USA Today | 2019 | US | Sirius XM, Amazon Prime, Apple Music, CBS All Access, Fubo TV, Spotify, Hulu, YouTube Music Premium, Tidal | - SiriusXM is just the latest to offer lower-cost subscriptions to students with a $4 monthly fee, compared to $12.99 for other subscribers. - Amazon has a Prime Student tier that gives you a free six-month trial with unlimited streaming of thousands of Prime movies and TV shows, tens of millions of songs, as well as free two-day shipping and unlimited photo storage. After the trial, Prime Student costs $6.49 each month or $59 annually. - Students can get Sirius XM's 50-million song service for $4.99 monthly, compared to the $9.99 standard price. That lets you steam ad-free music and offload music to listen to when you are not online. (The Apple Music family plan, $14.99 monthly, lets up to six people have their own account). - CBS All Access is a 25% break on the limited commercial option, which usually runs $5.99 monthly. - Fubo TV, which has more than 100 live channels including CBS, Fox and NBC across much of the U.S., has a family plan that college roommates could consider. Starting at $59.99 monthly, subscribers could see 106 channels – including the recently launched fubo Sports Network – get a 500-hour cloud DVR and watch on three simultaneous screens - Music streaming service Spotify’s student discount plan ($4.99 monthly) includes not only its multimillion-song service, but also video streamer Hulu’s ad-supported on-demand video offering (normally $5.99) with thousands of shows including "The Handmaid's Tale" and movies such as "Ocean's 8." Oh, and students get Showtime (normally $10.99), as well. - YouTube Music Premium gives students a three-month free trial and charges only $4.99 monthly afterwards (regularly $9.99), for ad-free, live and off-line listening and watching of music videos. - Tidal currently has a special limited-time offer for students, letting them get four months of the service for 99 cents (premium sound) or $1.99 (HiFi sound, equivalent to CD or better). After that, the student rate is regularly 50% off the standard price: $4.99 (premium) or $9.99 (HiFi). In addition to 60 million-plus songs, the service has more than 250,000 music videos. | https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/08/22/apple-amazon-hulu-spotify-streaming-services-student-discounts/2072931001/ | None | None | |||||||||||||||||
48 | Beatles music joins streaming services | Leo Kelion | BBC | 2015 | UK | Beatles | Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Tidal, Amazon Prime Music, Deezer, Microsoft Groove, Napster and Slacker Radio | - The deal involves rights to stream 224 songs from the original 13 studio albums released in the UK as well as "essential" collections including Past Masters. The tracks will be made available from 24 December. | - Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Tidal and Amazon Prime Music are among nine services that will offer the band's tracks worldwide./// Other services that have secured the band's catalogue include Deezer, Microsoft Groove, Napster and Slacker Radio. | https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35166985 | None | Chris Cooke, co-founder of the music industry news site CMU /// Mark Mulligan, from research firm Midia | - "In terms of digital the Beatles have always been quite late to the party - they came to iTunes in 2010, which was a good five years after the iTunes Music Store started gaining momentum," said Chris Cooke... "We had expected they would probably do an exclusive deal to stream their music with one service, but it looks like instead they are going to be pretty much everywhere from day one. "So, I suppose that is them accepting that streaming is now a very serious, significant part of the record industry." /// "There's a really simply reason why the Beatles catalogue took so long to join streaming services - their publishers didn't want to do anything to damage potential sales of reissues and retrospectives - it's a very lucrative catalogue," said Mark Mulligan.... "But they've waited until the market has got some scale and they could get the best deal. "It's a big PR catch as it helps communicate that the platforms are 'all the music in the world' - which is the value proposition of streaming services." | ||||||||||||||
49 | Behind the music: the real reason why the maor labels love Spotify | Helienne Lindvall | The Guardian | 2009 | UK | Bob Dylan, Magnus Uggla | Spotify, Last.fm, YouTube | - it was reported that the majors received 18% of Spotify shares. Merlin, who represent a large portion of the independent labels, received 1% (as their labels represent 11-12% of Spotify plays, it appears this is a bit disproportionate to the value of their content). What they paid for their shares is still under debate, with ComputerSweden reporting that it was as little as $10,000. /// Spotify is currently valued at $250m, despite, according to The Register, only having an advertising income of £82,000 and just 17,000 UK users signing up to pay £120 a year for Spotify Premium. | - The launch of Spotify in the UK must surely be one of the biggest PR successes for an online music service. Despite only having spent around £5,000 on marketing since 2006 (according to Daniel Ek, one of Spotify's founders), they've managed to gain huge media coverage... It's been described as sexy, incredibly user-friendly and the future – maybe even the saviour – of legal music consumption... But I wondered how artists could be compensated with so few adverts (sometimes, despite being logged on for hours, I haven't seen any ads at all). /// The major record labels – and the bigger indies – that I spoke to seemed unusually positive about Spotify, which made me think that they must have received a pretty hefty payment and/or equity in the company./// Regarding payments, the labels I spoke to said that they're not allowed to divulge these details. But, as it's common for majors to demand such payments, I'd say it's likely they did./// One of the main reasons why majors have been hesitant to offer their music to start-ups is that they've seen companies like YouTube and Last.fm build businesses, only to sell them off for big bucks without sharing the money with the copyright owners whose music they used./// On Spotify, it seems, artists are not equal. There are indie labels that, as opposed to the majors and Merlin members, receive no advance, receive no minimum per stream and only get a 50% share of ad revenue on a pro-rata basis (which so far has amounted to next to nothing). Incidentally, when I asked a Spotify rep if they would feature music by unsigned artists the way We7 does, he said no, but that all they would need to do was to sign up to a label and they'd get on the site. For artists who "signed up to a label" there's a tangible risk that revenue which comes from a possible sale of shares by the label would end up in the proverbial "blackbox" (non-attributable revenue that remains with the label). There's growing concern about this in the artist management community and, a few weeks ago, Bob Dylan decided to pull his back catalogue from UK streaming services... In Sweden, where Spotify has been running the longest, Magnus Uggla – well-established since the late 70s – has withdrawn his music from the service. | https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2009/aug/17/major-labels-spotify | Magnus Uggla, Swedish musician, well-established since the late 70s | - On his blog [Magnus Uggla] said that, after six months on the site he'd earned "what a mediocre busker could earn in a day". Regarding his record label, Sony Music, he says "after suing the shit out of Pirate Bay, they're acting just like them by not paying the artists". When he found out that Sony had 5.8% equity in Spotify he wrote: "I would rather be raped by Pirate Bay than fucked up the ass by (Sony boss) Hasse Breitholtz and Sony Music and will remove all of my songs from Spotify pending an honest service." | - A source close to Spotify told me he has serious doubts that their business model will add up and that it's a case of "spot the idiot", ie "find somebody stupid enough to buy it before realising that it's too costly to run and that the numbers don't add up to making a profit". | ||||||||||||||
50 | Bigger Streaming Royalties Sound Like Trouble for Spotify | Rhett Jones | Gizmodo | 2018 | Spotify, Google, Pandora | - The review panel in charge of setting rates for songwriter’s royalties reportedly issued the biggest rate increase for artists in its history over the weekend—a 4o percent hike. - By 2022, the digital platforms will be required to pay 15.1 percent of the revenue for a streamed song to the songwriter, up from the current rate of 10.5 percent. Each year, the rate will increase by about one percent. According to the Associated Press, “recording labels will still be receiving $3.82 for every $1 paid to songwriters and publishers.” The final text of the new rules won’t be released until a review by the Library of Congress is complete, for now, it seems that the only losers in this situation are a few streaming services. - “We are thrilled the CRB raised rates for songwriters by 43.8% – the biggest rate increase granted in CRB history,” David Israelite, CEO of the National Music Publisher’s Association (NMPA) wrote in a statement. The NMPA combined forces with the Nashville Songwriters’ Association International to petition the board to make changes to its rates. According to Variety, the two groups initially requested “the CRB to grant [writers] the greater of 15 cents per 100 streams or $1.06 per user per month.” The final decision still pegged the rate to revenue, but the publishers were pleased. - Pandora lost 63 percent of its stock value in 2017. - Spotify loses a lot of money. In 2016, Spotify doubled its losses from the previous year and burned through $581 million, with $3 billion in revenue. But according to The Information, things improved in the first half of 2017. Losses for 2017 were on track to be around the same, but revenues were up 20 percent compared to the previous year. | - Mitch Stoltz, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Gizmodo in a phone interview that most people in the industry—artists, labels, streamers—recognize that the current system for mechanical licensing has a lot of problems and it’s just too complicated. There’s also legislation in the House and Senate right now, known as the Music Modernization Act, that’s being touted as a way to simplify our complicated royalty system. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the tech world seem to both believe that the Music Modernization Act is a step in the right direction. | https://gizmodo.com/bigger-streaming-royalties-sound-like-trouble-for-spoti-1822516333 | None | Mitch Stoltz, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation | Stoltz "told Gizmodo in a phone interview that most people in the industry—artists, labels, streamers—recognize that the current system for mechanical licensing has a lot of problems and it’s just too complicated" | ||||||||||||||||
51 | Bigger than the Beatles? How Drake's historic year solidified him as one of music's biggest stars | Melody Lau | CBC | 2018 | CAN | Drake, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Kanye West | Spotify, Apple Music | - "God's Plan," which dropped on Jan. 19, broke the one-day song streaming record on Apple Music (14 million streams) and Spotify (4.3 million streams). (It has since been surpassed by rapper XXXtentacion's "Sad!") The streams kept piling in, though, when Scorpion was released months later. - The album broke Spotify's one-day record for album streams with 132.45 million streams. That's 50 million more plays than Post Malone's Beerbongs & Bentleys, which previously held that record. Scorpion also broke Apple Music's record for one-day album streams when it reached 170 million streams; the title was previously held by Drake's last release, More Life. - Drake upped his Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hits to 31, beating out Michael Jackson's 30 as the solo male artist with the most hits. Drake then shattered two 54-year-old Beatles Billboard records, one for most simultaneous Hot 100 top 10s (Drake had seven, the Beatles had five) and another for most top 10 singles in one year (Drake earned 12, the Beatles held the record for 11). | - As the year comes to an end, streaming records have proven that Drake is undeniably the biggest artist of 2018. Crowned as the most streamed artist of the year on both Spotify and Apple Music, Drake's success has reached a new level that rivals and, in some ways, surpasses the Beatles and Michael Jackson. | https://www.cbcmusic.ca/posts/20752/drake-bigger-than-the-beatles-biggest-star-2018 | None | None | |||||||||||||||
52 | Bjork Keeping 'Vulnicura' Off Spotify: 'It Just Seems Insane' | Daniel Kreps | Rolling Stone | 2015 | US | Bjork, Taylor Swift, Thom Yorke, Garth Brooks | Spotify | - The premature arrival of Björk‘s Vulnicura forced the singer to make her heartbreaking new album available on iTunes before physical copies were ready to ship. While Vulnicura is available for purchase in the digital realm, don’t expect to hear Björk’s latest on streaming sites any time soon... Artists like Taylor Swift, Garth Brooks and Thom Yorke have pulled their music from streaming services like Spotify to protest the company’s compensation system of paying artists $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream. | https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bjork-keeping-vulnicura-off-spotify-it-just-seems-insane-59159/ | Bjork, singer | - “We’re all making it up as it goes, to be honest. I would like to say there’s some master plan going on [with the album release], but there isn’t. But a few months ago I emailed my manager and said, ‘Guess what? This streaming thing just does not feel right. I don’t know why, but it just seems insane,'” Björk said. “To work on something for two or three years and then just, ‘Oh, here it is for free.’ It’s not about the money; it’s about respect, you know? Respect for the craft and the amount of work you put into it.”/// However, Björk is more opposed to the devaluation of her art so quickly after its released, but she does have an idea to fix the problem. “But maybe Netflix is a good model. You go first to the cinema and after a while it will come on Netflix,” Björk said. “Maybe that’s the way to go with streaming. It’s first physical and then maybe you can stream it later.”// While Bjork was initially taken aback when Vulnicura leaked two months early, being forced to rush-release the record turned out to be therapeutic for the singer. “At that point, I had had two years of things happening to me that I didn’t want to happen to me, so my Buddhist muscle had been well exercised. ‘Okay, another thing has happened to me that I didn’t want to happen to me! I have no choice but to deal with it,'” she said. “So in a strange way, it was in the spirit of the album in that you don’t have a choice. And I was dying to get this album out and over and done with. So I think, in a way, it was a strange kind of blessing.”/// In an interview with Rolling Stone, Björk talked about how important the album was in helping her recovery from a devastating breakup ... which gives further insight on why she isn’t eager to just give it away for free. “I can’t begin to describe how much better I feel, just physically,” Björk said of the album. “Obviously, life is not that black and white. Something will happen to me in five years, and it might come back to life. But I am out of that emergency stage, when you feel like a space alien, just possessed.” | None | |||||||||||||||
53 | Black Keys: Sean Parker Is An A**ole, Spotify Isn't Fair to Artits | Kia Makarechi | Huffington Post | 2012 | US | Black Keys | Spotify, MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody, Pandora | - in September of last year, the company claimed it had already paid more than $100 million [presumably in royalties] /// Billboard reports that it's unlikely that Spotify can outpace iTunes in revenue (and thus, payouts to rights holders). iTunes enjoys a 70 percent share of the digital downloads market, totaling an estimated $1.7 billion in sales last year. In order for Spotify to catch up, it would have to increase its user base from approximately 250,000 to 12.34 million over two years. | - The Black Keys have not made all of their music available on the wildly popular streaming service because they think it's unfair to the artist. Spotify has responded to similar criticism in the past by pointing out the massive payouts they've given to rights holders.. Parker recently said Spotify would make more money for the music industry than iTunes, a claim Carney strongly disputed/// the Keys have kept their music off other streaming services as well. Their album El Camino was not available on MOG, Rdio or Rhapsody. | https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/03/28/black-keys-sean-parker-spotify-asshole_n_1384882.html?ri18n=true | - Patrick Carney, of the Black Keys | - [Carney]: "Because he’s [Sean Parker, of Napster, also an investor in Spotify and Facebook] an asshole. That guy has $2 billion that he made from figuring out ways to steal royalties from artists, and that’s the bottom line. You can’t really trust anybody like that. The idea of a streaming service, like Netflix for music, I’m totally not against it. It’s just we won’t put all of our music on it until there are enough subscribers for it to make sense."/// [Carney] told VH1that as the Keys are "a band that makes a living selling music," streaming services are not a "feasible" option. He does, however, support services like Pandora, as they offer a way for fans to discover one song at a time. | |||||||||||||||
54 | Black Keys: Why We Won't Stream 'El Camino' | Matthew Perpetua | Rolling Stone | 2011 | US | Black Keys | Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, MOG Pandora | - By some industry calculations, a song must be streamed on such a service 100 times or more to generate the same profit that the artist would gain from the sale of one download. | - When the Black Keys’ latest album, El Camino, hit stores last week, it was conspicuously absent from major streaming services such as Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody and MOG. As it turns out, this was a deliberate move by the band, who have opted to withhold the record from such services for financial reasons. | https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/black-keys-why-we-wont-stream-el-camino-177949/ | Patrick Carney, Drummer for the Black Keys | - Streaming services “are becoming more popular, but it still isn’t at a point where you’re able to replace royalties from record sales with the royalties from streams,” drummer Patrick Carney told VH1. “For a band that makes a living selling music, it’s not at a point where it’s feasible for us.” Carney told VH1 that he is fine with services such as Pandora, which are built to encourage listeners to sample new music on a song-by-song basis, but is skeptical of Spotify, which he says is “set up to be a little more fair for the labels than for the artists.” | None | ||||||||||||||
55 | Blockchain Music Streaming Service To Increase the Amount Musicians Earn for Their Work | Katharine Sharp | Cointelegraph | 2018 | Choon, Spotify, Apple Music | - A new blockchain-powered platform, combining streaming services and digital payments, aims to pay musicians 80 percent of the streaming revenue from their tracks, such as subscription services and advertising revenue — more than is reported to be standard practice. - At the time of writing, the Choon ecosystem has over 4,500 artists registered, the company says. According to their Medium blog, almost 6000 tracks have already been uploaded since the platform launch, and the number of new tracks has been increasing 25 percent every week. | - Choon, a recently launched blockchain-based platform, describes itself as “the blockchain’s music solution.” In essence, every time a track is played, the artist earns cryptocurrency. This could, in turn, eliminate another major problem that Choon has highlighted with regular artist royalty systems: as payment is daily, there will no longer be extended wait periods for artists to see a financial return following the streaming of their tracks. - The music industry has recently come under scrutiny for how unfairly artists are treated by major labels and streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. Musicians have highlighted the high volume of revenue that is allocated to streaming services and record companies, instead of back to the creators themselves. A notable example of this was global best-selling artist Taylor Swift removing her music from Spotify for three years, as a protest against the share of royalties artists receive from the platform. - Choon has released their white paper, which sets out the four key methods with which the team aims to enhance the current payment system. First, they would introduce democracy by removing middlemen and enabling direct payment between artists and their fans. Choon also intends to create more transparency by publically publishing stream count data, profit split information and wallet balances. They also say they will be “fair and open about how homepage and playlist content is determined.” Next, they plan to introduce simple contract systems through Smart Record Contracts. Finally, Choon aims to empower listeners to take control and earn cryptocurrency in the form of the platform’s utility token, NOTES. | https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-music-streaming-service-to-increase-the-amount-musicians-earn-for-their-work | None | None | |||||||||||||||||
56 | Blockchain Music Streaming Startup Unveils Source Code, Incentives | Max Boddy | Cointelegraph | 2019 | US | - Audius has so far received $5 million in funding from a number of venture capital firms, including General Catalyst, Lightspeed and Pantera Capital. The startup is now aiming to launch its public beta by the end of September, which is a development stage for the company to invite more artists and users to the network. | - Early node providers will also reportedly be able to get in on the testnet at a discount, since they are allowed to ignore the service’s minimum token-staking requirement. Additionally, these early adopters will apparently receive certain benefits that the company is purportedly legally unable to mention. | https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-music-streaming-startup-unveils-source-code-incentives | None | Roneil Rumburg - Audius CEO | On paying artists: “Every time a user listens to something and is paying an artist, a percentage of that payment is dumped into a pool that is then distributed to stakers of the Audius token.” | ||||||||||||||||
57 | Blockchain music-streaming service Audius gears up for public beta | Guillermo Jimenez | Yahoo Finance | 2019 | US | Spotify, Soundcloud, Audius | - After a year of development, and armed with $5 million in investment capital from VC firms General Catalyst, Lightspeed, and Pantera Capital, blockchain startup Audius is finally ready to show the world what it's been working on. | - Instead of Audius—the company—operating the network infrastructure as it has been during its private beta, its decentralized music-sharing project can now begin in earnest. Starting today, anyone who wants to run a node on Audius can setup a server on Amazon Web Services, or some other provider, and register the end point on the network. In doing so, these service providers will be in a position to begin staking Audius tokens and start earning a share of the revenue generated on the network from music sales. - At the moment, Audius has “a few hundred” artists on its network who are able to engage with and sell their music directly to their fans, said Rumburg. Transactions on the network are made using Audius’s secondary token—a stablecoin called Loud that is itself backed by a basket of third-party stablecoin - Why a proof of stake blockchain alliance is lobbying Congress. Evidently, it really sticks in the SEC’s craw when token rewards and distributions are “broadly marketed”—it being unclear whether digital assets such as these qualify as securities and all. - Audius plans to open up its public beta by the end of September, which is when more artists and new users will be able to join the network. When it’s all said and done, Audius expects to give “everyone the freedom to share, monetize, and listen to any audio that they want.” | https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blockchain-music-streaming-audius-gears-151628457.html | None | Roneil Rumburg - Audius CEO | On development and release: “Over the last year, we developed a first version of the Audius protocol; we’ve been running a private beta for the last two months or so,” Rumburg said. “We feel like things are reaching a point of stability, [and] we want to open this up to the world in a public beta.” On listener experience: “Every time a user listens to something and is paying an artist, a percentage of that payment is dumped into a pool that is then distributed to stakers of the Audius token" On incentives: “There’s a regulated portion to distributing the incentives that unfortunately we’re not able to market effectively,” | |||||||||||||||
58 | Boomplay, a Spotify-style music and video streaming service for African music and Africa, raises $20M | Ingrid Lunden | Tech Crunch | 2019 | US | Boomplay, Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, NetEase | - Boomplay, a service founded by Transsnet — a joint venture between Chinese phone maker Transsion and Chinese consumer apps giant NetEase — has raised $20 million in outside funding as it looks to break into more sub-Saharan countries and continue to build up its database of music tracks. - The company currently has some 5 million music tracks and videos on its platform — with a huge emphasis on African artists — with 42 million monthly active users, some 85 percent of which are on the African continent (primarily Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania). It is adding on average about 2 million users each month, a mix of paid and free subscribers, the latter seeing ads when they use the service. - Phil Choi, the head of international partnerships at Boomplay, confirmed that it was up on its previous round and that the company has raised $25.5 million to date | - The funding is coming from Chinese investors Maison Capital and Seas Capital, with other undisclosed investors. Boomplay is not disclosing its valuation — modest numbers, considering the hundreds of millions that have been poured into Spotify, Deezer and many other streaming services, but a size that fits what is still a very nascent target market. - The company got its start in 2015 when Transsion — the biggest supplier of phones to the African market, with about a 40 percent share at the moment, a mix of feature and smartphones, says Choi — decided to build mobile data services that it could sell to consumers to make its mobile phones more attractive, and to potentially make a little extra service margin on top of hardware sales. - The role that China has played in developing tech in Africa has been an interesting one. It started years ago when Chinese companies like ZTE — looking for growth outside their home market — were winning big deals to build telecoms infrastructure at a time when tele-density on the continent was the lowest in the world. Rather than building fixed-line infrastructure, they built mobile infrastructure, and that eventually led to a wave of Chinese OEMs, making cheap feature and smartphones, becoming some of the biggest handset suppliers. | https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/05/boomplay-a-spotify-style-music-and-video-streaming-service-for-african-music-and-africa-raises-20m/ | None | Joe He - Boomplay CEO //// Tony Li - managing director of Maison Capital | Joe He - On user experience: “Music has no borders, and we’re committed to providing a rich and high-quality music experience for all users — not just in Africa, but around the world,” said Boomplay CEO Joe He. “This investment will help us do just that, by fostering cultural interchange and helping people communicate through the universal language of music.” On payments: “We’ve seen healthy growth, but one of the problems is that there isn’t really a sustainable or efficient mobile payment system" On Chinese Investors: “Chinese investors see Africa as the China of 10 years ago,” he said, “so they feel they can apply the same models to it, and bring it up to being a very prosperous region." //// Tony Li - On opportunity in Africa: “Africa is full of opportunity, from its young demographics to its vibrant culture, and Boomplay sits in the middle of all of that greatness,” said Tony Li, managing director of Maison Capital, in a statement. “Boomplay has incorporated NetEase’s experience in the music streaming business with Transsion’s expertise in local operations, and in doing so Boomplay became the dominant player in the region in a very short period of time. As more of Africa comes online, we are confident that Boomplay will continue to be a major force in business and culture.” | |||||||||||||||
59 | Calculate Your Earnings from Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Amazon, Google Play & More | Paul Resnikoff | Digital Music News | 2018 | US | Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Tidal, Deezer, Microsoft Groove, Google Play Music, Napster | - But even the rank-and-file Spotify employee makes over $100,000 a year, making it a tough pill for struggling artists. - A Spotify stream can be worth anything between 0.001 to 0.007 per stream on average. | - In the old days, it was easy to figure out your payments from iTunes downloads, CDs, and vinyl. Or at least, what you should have been getting paid. But streaming music is almost impossible to calculate. And the main reason is that streaming companies refuse to break down their per-stream rates. - But on top of that, it’s actually hard for companies like Spotify to give reliable numbers. Per-stream rates are constantly shifting, and vary depending on factors like country, ad-supported vs. premium, and total subscribers. | https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/04/25/streaming-music-royalty-calculator-spotify-apple-music-pandora/ | None | Thomas Colley - SRC Streaming | On the character of streaming royalty rates: “The royalty rate for each store comes from a range of different sources. As you know royalty rates can drastically vary due to subscription/country, so to set an average I have used multiple sources for each store. All data comes from a combination of research and experience. A Spotify stream can be worth anything between 0.001 to 0.007 per stream on average. Due to what country you market you’re content too it would be unfair to focus on the very low rates. Meaning an artist operating from the UK with a majority UK fan base would have a lot higher per streaming rate than say an artist operating from Mexico to a Mexican market. This means a working average is the most fair way. Working out ROI is extremely complex for streaming data! I would not like to state THE going rate for any of the stores. Streaming royalty calculator is more to give a brief overview of what you can expect to be earning in your upcoming statements. As stores have this 3 month delay period it can be very important to artist and labels to have a rough overview of their expected income in the coming months. We will continue monitoring people’s accounts of streaming royalty rates as well as in house sales to create the best estimation that we can for the user. A more complex input from the user is on the cards with the growing amount of data we have. In theory in the future a user could enter how many streams they’ve had, what country it’s from etc, to be able to have a more accurate outcome. But for now the calculator gives a great overview.” | |||||||||||||||
60 | Can Adele save the music industry, or just slow its demise? | Sheena Goodyear | CBC | 2015 | Canada | Adele, Flo Rida, Taylor Swift, Beyonce | Rdio, Spotify, Apple Music | - Her last album, 2011's 21, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling album of the decade, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.// The comeback track [Adele's Hello] sold 1.11 million digital songs in its first week, demolishing Flo Rida's previous record of 636,000 for Right Round/// In 2013 alone, overall album sales in the U.S. saw an 11.2 per cent drop, CD sales were down 15 per cent, digital album sales declined 9.4 per cent and digital song sales went down 12.5 per cent. Music streaming, on the other hand, was up 54 per cent. /// Taylor Swift's 1989 has sold a more than 8.9 million copies since its 2014 release. Beyoncé's self-titled 2013 album sold more than five million copies within a year of being released exclusively through iTunes. | - News that Adele is launching a new album following a nearly four-year hiatus came with sweeping headlines hailing the British songstress as the music industry's long-awaited saviour. Hopes are high for 25, the third album from the Grammy-winning artist, due to be released Nov. 20. "Adele is here to save the music industry," pronounced Fortune. "Music industry breathes sigh of relief," said U.K. newspaper the Independent. ... Already her single Hello has surpassed the record for digital downloads, defying the odds in an era where music sales are dwindling as audiophiles turn to subscription streaming services Rdio and Spotify. | https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/adele-album-sales-1.3302090 | None | David Bakula, spokesman for Nielsen Entertainment/// Mark Mulligan, music industry analyst for UK based MiDiA Research/// Ani Johnson, professor of music business and management at the Berklee College of Music in Boston | - "It's really incredible. You've got a market that's shifting dramatically to streaming, that is not as robust from a sales standpoint than it was before, and you get something that breaks the record not only by just a little bit, but really crushes it," said David Bakula... "I think that just goes to show the pent-up demand for Adele's music." /// Mark Mulligan credits [Adele's] "universal appeal" [ as the reason why she's so special in the music industry]... Music aficionados and media-savvy youth are among her many listeners, he says, but her fan base is "very much rooted in the mainstream, the mass market." "Adele is pretty much unlike any other artist out there. Her last album was an anomaly in and of itself. It was an album that managed to transcend different groups of music fans, transcend ages and demographics in a way that most artists don't, particularly to that scale," Mulligan told CBC News. Her younger fans stream her singles — the video for Hello already beat the record for most single-day views on Vevo — but plenty of other people also download her albums and buy her CDs, a medium not to be discounted, says Mulligan. "Across the globe, CDs still account for the majority of music sales," he said. "For Adele, it's probably Walmart and Best Buy that are more important, rather than Spotify and Apple Music."... So can Adele save the music industry, as the headlines suggest? Don't count on it, says Mulligan, who recently penned a blog post titled, "Will Adele Be The Last Hurrah Of The Album Era?" "I'd be too harsh to call it a stay of execution, but it just delays the inevitable," he says. "The industry is in this massive transition, and if Adele's album sells incredibly well, that isn't a sign of the health of the industry. It's almost like a muscle spasm of a dying corpse." A decade ago, it was still the norm for successful musicians to sell millions of copies of their albums, even with the rise of Napster and online piracy, Mulligan says. "Now, that's becoming the exception." "There might be one or two more, but we're seeing the last days of" the music album, he said. "They're not going to disappear as a creative construct and they're not going to disappear as a consumption format, but as a mainstream sales vehicle, those days are definitely numbered."/// "For me, those are legacy artists," Ani Johnson... told CBC News. Johnson said that, like most people, she casually streams and downloads music regularly, but when she buys an album it has to be something special. Beyoncé and 21 are both in her collection. "I purchase those albums because of the lyrics. Their music speaks to me. I can connect to where they are in their life to my life, their pain, their joy, and I want to carry that artist with me," she says. Johnson said she's definitely going to dish out the money for Adele's latest as there is something about the soulful singer that makes her stand out from the pack. "Pop has its place, but she is more about life and life experiences," Johnson said. "She's legitimate, a star in in her own right. She's basically a fully formed woman standing in her power." | ||||||||||||||
61 | Canada's Stingray is taking on the music streaming giants — and its chief executive is worth a listen, too | Kevin Carmichael | Financial Post | 2019 | US | Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, AC/DC | Stingray, Spotify, Google, Apple Music, Amazon | - Here’s a taste of what Stingray is up against in its pursuit of global domination: Stockholm-based Spotify Technology SA is worth about US$27 billion. Apple Music, the other big name in the streaming business, is owned by Apple Inc., which has a market cap of about US$874 billion and a reserve of unused cash worth more than US$200 billion. - Stingray lost $12 million in its last fiscal year after generating net income of $2.3 million and $10.7 million in two previous fiscal years. That’s more money than Spotify has ever made. The biggest name in music streaming has yet to record an annual profit. In February, it advised investors that it likely will record an operating loss of between 200 and 360 million euros in the current fiscal year. | - Whoever wins the fall election will have to confront this issue. Canada’s comparative advantage is talent and it won’t be able to rely on being the beneficiary of U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies forever. At some point, things will normalize, and when they do, the best software engineers will be attracted to the places where they can make the most money. The Canadian political class will have to get over its aversion to writing policy that will help rich people. | https://business.financialpost.com/technology/canadas-stingray-is-taking-on-the-music-streaming-giants-and-its-chief-executive-is-worth-a-listen-too | None | Eric Boyko - chief executive of Stingray Group Inc | On company success: “We want to become the biggest music streaming company in the world" On industry comparison: “The Spotify model is broken...They pay 70 to 80 per cent (of revenue) on rights … and they are fighting against Google, Apple and Amazon. So it’s not sustainable.” Stingray’s focus is “lean-back music... We want to be towards the 90 per cent and not the 10 per cent,” he said. | ||||||||||||||
62 | Canadian band has viral hit of the week, YouTube says | The Globe and Mail | 2012 | Canada | Walk Off the Earth, Adele, LMFAO | YouTube | - Even YouTube itself has declared that the independent band's cover of the song Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye is the viral hit of the week with more than 17 million views// The viral hit has given a boost to the group's other videos too. YouTube says in the span of about a week the band had more than 20 million views overall... The band also found itself at the top of the iTunes Canada singles chart with the Somebody That I Used to Know cover. | - But their web success so far hasn't translated into much money, since their most popular videos have been covers and not original songs. | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/canadian-band-has-viral-hit-of-the-week-youtube-says/article4170883/ | Sarah Blackwood, member of Walk Off the Earth | - "There is a little bit of money involved but it's not a big amount and it's a lot of work," Blackwood said. "We all work different jobs, even if one of our videos gets 300,000 plays if it's not your song you don't make the money off of it. "But for us it's good because you get the attention and then when you do put an original song up, more people watch it."... "People can make a living off having a steady income from YouTube but we're definitely not there yet," Blackwood said. "We don't want people to think we're just a one-hit YouTube sensation off somebody else's song, we're hard-working musicians, we have a lot of great original stuff, and we hope we can do this now as a job for real." | None | |||||||||||||||
63 | Canadian copyright laws a bad deal for musicians, says U of A expert | Geoff McMaster | Folio | 2019 | CAN | Danny Michel, Bryan Adams , Drake | Spotify | - In North America, universal, Sony and Warner control 86 % of the recording and publishing market... 77% of all music income on the continent goes to the top one percent of artists... and the top-ten-selling tracks command 82 per cent more of the market than a decade ago and are played twice as much on top-40 radio /// Michel said his earnings for “Purgatory Cove”—a song on CBC Radio’s top 20 chart for 10 weeks, climbing at one point to number three—garnered a total of $44.99 in sales for 2018. And streaming services have not helped. Spotify, for example, pays an artist $0.003 per play./// With sound recordings accounting for only six per cent of an artist’s income on average, many are now forced to make up the shortfall by performing live shows like never before. | - Convinced the Canadian music industry is in crisis, a University of Alberta music professor has leapt into the copyright fray, hoping to win a better deal for independent artists. Late last year, Brian Fauteux and his research partners presented a report to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage now reviewing the Copyright Act. The report, Putting Users and Small-Scale Creators First in Canadian Copyright Law and Beyond, proposes substantial changes in the way artists are compensated, including programs that would provide federal funding at a grassroots level... One recommendation in the report was to return music rights to artists well before the current term of 50 years after their death, which would allow artists to either reissue their work or reinvent it in creative new ways while still alive. /// Canadian musician Danny Michel is a case in point. As he revealed in a social media post last November, he has recorded 25 albums in the last 13 years, managing to earn a comfortable living without ever producing a hit song, for most of that time. But by 2018 his income from album sales had dropped “an astounding 95 per cent, due to the transition to streaming services,” said Fauteux. | https://www.folio.ca/canadian-copyright-laws-a-bad-deal-for-musicians-says-u-of-a-expert/ | - Bryan Adams, canadian musician /// Danny Michel, Canadian musician | - The recommendation [of Fauteux and collegues] echoes an appeal to the committee made last fall by Canadian rock musician Bryan Adams, who proposed rights return to artists 25 years after a company first acquires them. Adams argued it would be “a very big step in the right direction, to help composers and authors in Canada to own and control their work,” /// “With every band in the world back on the road, venues are clogged and ticket prices have tripled,” wrote Michel in his post. “For me it means being away from home and taking on more work than I ever have.” | |||||||||||||||
64 | Canadian msuicians talk streaming music | David Friend | The Canadian Press | 2016 | Canada | Simple Plan, Taylor Swift, Adele, Weeknd, Drake, Justin Bieber, Alex Pangman, Exco Levi, Barenaked Ladies, Young Empires | Apple Music, Spotify | - Many artists are pushing for boosted payments from increasingly popular streaming music services — like Apple Music and Spotify — but even well known Canadian performers say they're feeling helpless in the campaign for change.// if they pulled their new music from streaming services — as marquee artists Taylor Swift and Adele have done — it would only take Simple Plan off the radar of younger music fans. // Music Canada, the primary lobby group for the Canadian recording industry, hopes to push for higher streaming pay rates in Canada. The organization is in the midst of appealing a recent Copyright Board of Canada decision which they say will pay Canadian musicians 90 per cent less when their music is streamed at home compared to the rates in the U.S. | https://www.guelphmercury.com/whatson-story/6437292-canadian-musicians-talk-streaming-music/ | Pierre Bouvier, frontman of Montreal pop-rockers Simple Plan // Alex Pangman, Jazz singer // Exco Levi, Juno-nominated reggae artist// Steven Page, former lead signer of the Barenaked Ladies // Jacob Palahnuk, of Young Empires, a Toronto rock band | - "Bands like us are standing on the sidelines," says Pierre Bouvier ... "We don't really have the power to change anything." Despite having seven Billboard Hot 100 chart hits to their name — including "Welcome to My Life" and "Summer Paradise" — Bouvier says Simple Plan isn't raking in significant royalties from their millions of digital plays. ... "There is not a whole lot of money to be made unless you're the top one per cent ... streaming a billion ... then you're just swimming in it," Bouvier says. "But if you're streaming a million ... or 10 million that's not really going to pay you anything." Bouvier says that's one reason he's feeling less optimistic about the next generation of musicians hoping to make a living off recorded music. "I feel like if my kids told me right now (they wanted to get into music) I'd be like, 'Forget about it,'" he says.// Alex Pangman.. says the money rolling in from streaming isn't exactly overwhelming. "I get cheques for like three cents or five cents," the Toronto-based performer says. Pangman's payments come through a company that aggregates her music sales revenues across several platforms. "It's tricky, especially for me because I'm playing standards from the 1930s, so I have all those songwriters to pay (royalties)," she adds. Pangman has also seen a dramatic downturn in physical album sales. She estimates she sold about 500 CDs at her merchandise table at the 2011 Montreal International Jazz Festival, while last summer she sold about 120 discs at the same event. "People say, 'No, no. I'll get it online,'" Pangman says. "I'm going to have to get some nice T-shirts cause I don't know if people are buying music anymore. It is a concern." // Exco Levi is taking a pragmatic approach to streaming music. The Toronto-based musician says he considers using streaming platforms to be akin to releasing a free mixtape. "Once people can get something free they're not going to buy it," he says. The rastafarian says that without streaming music his debut full-length album "Country Man" probably wouldn't have been discovered by some fans. "When these songs are bootlegged (or streamed) you get more popular and that's how we get shows," he says. "We really survive from the shows ... (so) it works in a negative way and a positive way."// Steven Page... , says he'd like to see the federal government lay down clearer and more favourable laws for musicians. Even after having megahits like "One Week" and other popular Canadian tunes in their songbook, Page says his former band's evergreen income is "much smaller than it once was" as album sales decline. "If it was up to me there would be ... a levy or tax as part of your Internet bill," he says. "You'd pay a media fee."// "When you're signed to a label it just kind of gets filtered through there," said Jacob Palahnuk .."That's just a whole trickle game. We have no idea how that water falls down, but I assume there's some money there." | None | |||||||||||||||
65 | Canadian music streaming increases by 47% in 2018, Drake topped the charts | Shruti Shekar | Mobilesyrup | 2019 | Canada | Drake, the Weeknd | - Canadians streamed 59 billion songs in 2018, a 47 percent increase from the year before, with Drake’s music listened to the most, according to new research from Nielsen.... The new January 8th, 2019 report revealed that Nielsen saw a 45 percent increase in overall demand for on-demand music and video streaming. Research also noted that last year there was a 22 percent growth in digital purchasing and digital consumption./// Nielsen’s report noted that Toronto’s very own Drake had a record number of streams, with his latest album Scorpion streamed approximately 481 million times. His single “God’s Plan” alone was the top streamed song of 2018, with over 138 million audio and video streams combined... Combined video and audio streams featured on The Weeknd’s My Dear Melancholy EP saw 94 million streams in the past year, the report said. | - Nielsen noted that other homegrown artists saw big streaming numbers, not only in Canada but abroad as well. .. Nielsen noted it analyzed information from last year through to the week ending on January 3rd, 2019. | https://mobilesyrup.com/2019/01/08/nielsen-canada-music-streaming-report-47-percent-increase/ | None | Paul Shaver, vice-president of Nielsen Canada | - “The music industry in Canada is thriving following yet another year of tremendous growth and engagement,” said Paul Shaver... “Canadians are listening and engaging with more music than ever before and we’re seeing an increased diversity of taste among listeners.” | |||||||||||||||
66 | Canadians continue to adopt streaming music, and there’s no going back | Alan Cross | Global News | 2019 | Canada | Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X | YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Prime, FLVTO.biz, 2conv.com | - Canadians now regularly stream well over a billion songs a week - According to Nielsen, the counter and tracker of these things, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Prime, and the rest of them served up 1.431 billion streams to Canadians last week. That represents a 40.2 per cent increase from the same period last year. - If we look at cumulative streams for the year to date, consumption is up 38.3 per cent to 18,876,550,522. Given the clip at which things are growing, we’ll hit the 20 billion mark this week. - YouTube is its own animal when it comes to music. On-demand video streaming has jumped 72.5 per cent since this time last year to about 428 million views per week. - Universal Music Group’s Q1 revenue for 2019 were up 18.8 per cent over a year ago, thanks largely to the money it’s making from streaming. In just three months, UMG brought in US$833 million in streaming money, which is up 28 per cent from the same period in 2018. Today, UMG’s streaming revenue is approaching US$10 million a day. - If we take into account the fortunes of the three major labels (UMG, Sony, and Warner), they brought in US$1.5 billion just from streams. Each of them is now making more money from streaming than from physical product — at least in the West. - According to Nielsen, year-to-date CD sales in Canada are down over 25 per cent from a year ago. Each week, the weekly number of units slips toward staying below the psychological 100,000 mark. Last week, 103,900 CDs were sold across the land. | - Labels are making so much money from streaming that if CDs disappeared tomorrow, the industry would be OK with that. - Canadian rock and country fans are very stubborn when it comes to adopting streaming. I couldn’t find a single rock or country song in the top 200 most-streamed songs last week. Armed with that data, labels are investing the majority of their marketing energies into those genres. Rock and country get the dregs — if there are any left, that is. - With almost the entire archive of human musical endeavour available for free (or close to it) with a couple of pokes at your phone, why would anyone go through the hassle of stealing music? Yet it’s still a problem. According to a recent report from the International Federation of Phonograph Industry (IFPI), 38 per cent of global music listeners insist on acquiring music in illegal ways. The biggest issue is stream-ripping, sites that allow anyone to turn any stream — Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and so on — into a downloadable file that can be kept permanently. Lawsuits abound, but since many of these sites — FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com, for example — are in places like Russia, success has been mixed at best. | https://globalnews.ca/news/5176580/canadians-streaming-music/ | None | None | |||||||||||||||
67 | Check out the coolest non-music content on music-streaming platforms in India (By The Hindustan Times) | Gautam Raj Anand | Medium | 2019 | US | Justin Bieber, Anupam Roy, Mellow Turtle aka Rishabh Lohia, Tre Ess or Sumit Singh Solanki. | Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon, Apple Music, Indus Vox Media (IVM), Hubhopper, Radiofly, Maed | - The reason for all this activity isn’t just the size of the Indian music industry, estimated at Rs 1,068 crore in 2018, it’s also a factor of how music-loving we are. - According to a report released in February by management consultancy Deloitte and music distribution company IMI, Indian consumers spend nearly 21.5 hours a week listening to music, against a global average of 17.8 hours. - We’re currently ranked 15th in the world’s music markets, with a probability of making it to the top 10 by 2022, according to the Global Music Report for 2019 by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents the recording industry worldwide. The same report found that India saw a 31% rise in streaming revenue because of increase in smartphone penetration and low data rates. - Production costs are low for beginners — all you need is a smartphone and a basic sound studio — so producers can mix and match, add and delete, as required. IVM, for instance, has created 73 podcasts since 2015 — of which about 50 are now streaming on JioSaavn. | - As more apps crowd the music-streaming market, homegrown players are finding themselves competing with global giants, and in order to stand out, they’re doing two things — turning to podcasts, and signing exclusive deals with regional artistes. But the big new tool, as they compete with Spotify and YouTube Music (this year’s new entrants), Amazon and Apple Music, and of course YouTube, which isn’t strictly a music-streaming platform but continues to dominate this market globally — is podcasts. - In-house, platforms are turning to comedy, drama and relationships. JioSaavn has Talking Brits, about culture-shocked NRIs returning to their roots and dealing with issues like getting an Aadhar card and dating; also, Bhai ke Raapchik Reviews, where a fictional character named Bhai does three-minute reviews of films like Badla, which he likens to “Amitabh Bacchan playing KBC with Tapsee Pannu” and Gully Boy, which he calls a “Facebook Live of his chawl”. | https://medium.com/@gautamrajanand/check-out-the-coolest-non-music-content-on-music-streaming-platforms-in-india-by-the-hindustan-5ff5757e905e | None | Mae Mariyam Thomas - founder of Maed in India //// Siddhartha Roy - COO of Hungama Digital Media //// Gautam Anand - founder of Hubhopper | Mae Mariyam Thomas - On the Indian music market: “Unlike bigger podcast markets like the US, UK and Europe, the Indian market is highly diverse in terms of language, economic strata and cultural contexts...For such a varied and divergent audience, there is potential to explore all kinds of genres, formats, languages and types of audio experiences.” //// Siddhartha Roy - On customer dynamics: “Consumers are now increasingly seeking content that is different, exclusive and enhances their audio experience,” says Siddhartha Roy, COO of Hungama Digital Media, “and original shows allow us to offer them all three.” //// Gautam Anand - On process: “Once our team checks for parameters like originality and lack of profanity, we approve it and the podcaster is than helped through the process of recording and uploading,” On listener numbers: “We’ve formed a community of podcaster creators and listeners considering that many people signed up knowing that their shows would not get even 15- 20 listens in the initial days,” says Anand. “Now we have anything between a 100 to 1,000 listeners across our platform daily.” | ||||||||||||||
68 | China's Tencent Music raises nearly $1.1 billion in U.S. IPO | Joshua Franklin, Julia Fioretti | Reuters | 2018 | US | Tencent, QQ Music, KuGou, Kuwo, We Sing, Spotify | - China-based music streaming company Tencent Music Entertainment Group TME.N said it raised close to $1.1 billion in its U.S. initial public offering (IPO) after pricing its shares at the bottom of its targeted range. - The music arm of gaming and social network giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (0700.HK) priced its American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) at $13 per share, at the low end of its indicated $13 to $15 per share range, it said in a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange. The IPO values Tencent Music at $21.3 billion and shows how companies are defying a bout of market volatility with flotations. - Tencent Music sold 41 million ADRs, while existing shareholders sold a further 40.9 million, the filing said. - Tencent Music’s IPO tops off a bumper year for U.S. listings by Chinese companies, with $7.9 billion raised before Tencent Music’s debut, Refinitiv data showed. That is the highest amount since 2014, the year of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s (BABA.N) record $25 billion IPO. - Tencent Music’s U.S. IPO is the fourth largest among Chinese firms this year by deal value. Video streaming company iQiyi Inc (IQ.O) leads with its $2.4 billion listing, followed by online group discounter Pinduoduo Inc (PDD.O) at $1.6 billion and electric vehicle maker NIO Inc (NIO.N) at $1.15 billion. - Returns for investors have been mixed, with the 31 Chinese IPOs in 2018 down an average of around 11 percent as of Dec. 10, according to data provider Dealogic. - Tencent Music is China’s largest online music platform boasting more than 800 million active users monthly. - Tencent Music reported a 244 percent profit jump for January-September to $394 million. By comparison, Spotify lost a net $520 million. | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tencent-music-ipo/chinas-tencent-music-raises-nearly-1-1-billion-in-u-s-ipo-idUSKBN1OA2GR | None | None | |||||||||||||||||
69 | Chinese music streaming giant Tencent Music files for U.S. IPO | Michael Grothaus | Fast Company | 2018 | US | Tencent, Apple Music, Spotify | - Tencent Music currently has about 800 million unique monthly users in China. Those users stream over 70 minutes of music a day each. The company says it’s profitable, making $263 million in profit on revenues of $1.3 billion for the first six months of the year. TME is estimated to be worth about $12 billion in total. | - Tencent Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Chinese tech giant Tencent, has filed paperwork with the SEC announcing its plans to go public in the U.S. Under the plans, Tencent Music Entertainment will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “TME.” It will reportedly seek to raise $1 billion in the offering, reports Axios. - Currently, Tencent Music is not available to U.S. customers and TME made no suggestions it will become available in the U.S., where Apple Must and Spotify already dominate the streaming music market. No date has yet been set for its IPO. | https://www.fastcompany.com/90245710/chinese-music-streaming-giant-tencent-music-files-for-u-s-ipo | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
70 | Christmas top 50 shows effect streaming has had on music charts | Phoebe Loomes | News.com.au | 2018 | AUS | Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Travis Scott, Maroon 5, Post Malone, Drake Nikki Minaj, Burl Ives, Drake, Mariah Carey, Wham, Bandaid 30, John Lennon, Jackson 5, Brenda Lee, Paul Kelly, Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Sam Smith, Chuck Berry | Spotify, Apple Music | - Fair enough, it’s Christmas, and you might think this happens every year in the ARIA charts, but in reality having 30 per cent Christmas songs in the top 50 is a big jump for yuletide hits in Australia. Last Christmas, Mariah Carey only peaked at number 16. Wham came in the top 50 last year too, but at a more modest 37. - Paid streaming services are reportedly benefiting artists, who in Australia received 127 per cent more in royalties payments in the year to date from 2016 to 2017. - In Australian charts, the ratio is 175 streams counts as one sale. So if you buy Mariah Carey’s song on iTunes, it counts a fair bit more than if you play it once on Spotify in your car. - It is estimated that around one in eight Australians regularly use a music streaming service. Worldwide, the popularity of music streaming services has been exponential, with the number of paying Spotify users from June 2017 to June 2018 growing from 57 million to 83 million. - The sale of CD singles was retired by major Australian retailers in 2009 as a commercial decision, after reports surfaced that number one singles would sell as few as 300 copies. | - As a slew of songs from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s dominate the top 50, it’s time we asked if streaming services are turning the ARIA charts into a disjointed mess. - There are two songs from 1958, two songs from the ’60s, three songs from the ’70s. At number five is Wham’s Last Christmas, the monumentally popular heartbreaker from 1986. And representing the ’90s is Australia’s own Paul Kelly with his sad Christmas prisoner’s anthem How To Make Gravy. Of course, at number one is the undisputed seasonal anthem All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mrs Claus herself Mariah Carey, first released in 1994. - In 2014 the ARIA charts began including streamed plays along with paid-for downloads and hard copy purchases to make up their weekly singles and album charts. Streamed plays are plays from services like Spotify and Apple Music, where a user plays a song but no hard copy purchase is made. | https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/christmas-top-50-shows-effect-streaming-has-had-on-music-charts/news-story/a022169e79c4303d7ea07bdea869ce09 | None | None | |||||||||||||||
71 | Citi GPS: Putting the band back together | Citi GPS | Citibank - Private Bank | 2018 | US | Apple, Pandora, Sirius, Spotify | - In 2017, artists captured just 12% of music revenue with most of the value leakage driven by the costs of running a myriad of distribution platforms. - The overall revenue proportion captured by artists is, however, on the rise (it was just 7% of industry revenues in 2000) | Consumers are increasingly opting to rent — rather than buy — music. Furthermore, the demise of physical music has prompted artists to tour more often, driving significant growth in concerts and festivals. | https://www.privatebank.citibank.com/home/fresh-insight/citi-gps-putting-the-band-back-together.html | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
72 | Citi's Music Industry Report, Dissected: What the Financial Giant Gets Right and (Very) Wrong | Robert Levine | Billboard | 2018 | US | Prince, Radiohead, Chance the Rapper, Radiohead, Mike Watt | TuneCore, Napster | Artists only get 12 percent of music business revenue. | In the early stages of their careers, individual artists face long odds that they’ll ever make any money at all – as well as a small but distinct chance that they’ll make millions. Changing music business; do artists keep their overall revenues - the importance of investment | https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8469860/citi-music-industry-report-dissected-analysis | None | None | |||||||||||||||
73 | Collapse in illegal sharing and boom in streaming brings music to executives' ears | Alexandra Topping | The Guardian | 2009 | UK | YouTube, Spotify, We7, iTunes | - less than a third of teenagers are now illegally downloading music, the survey suggests. In January this year 26% of 14 to 18 year olds admitted filesharing at least once a month compared with 42% in December 2007. The research revealed that many teenagers (65%) are streaming music regularly, with more 14 to 18 year olds (31%) listening to streamed music on their computer every day compared with music fans overall (18%)./// - Digital singles were up 41.5% in 2008, while physical singles sales plunged 43.5%, according to the BPI. /// - 1,000 face-to-face interviews and a series of focus groups – also revealed that a fraction more music fans are regularly buying single track downloads (19%) than filesharing single tracks (17%). | - Even though users of streaming services are not necessarily buying more music, the industry benefits by learning more about fans' tastes. /// - The government has pledged tougher measures to crack down on illegal filesharing, including sending warning letters to people making illegal downloads of music and films. Repeat offenders could also have their internet connections slowed down. /// - [Ek, Spotify's Founder] recently admitted that the service, which launched in October 2008 and now has 2 million registered users, was not on target to make its revenue forecasts. We7, which launched six months ago and relies on selling adverts of between three to seven seconds before each song, is yet to break even. | https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jul/12/music-industry-illegal-downloading-streaming | None | Steve Purdham, CEO and founder of music streaming service and download store, We7/// Paul Brindley, CEO of Music Ally/// Jim Butcher, a spokesman for Spotify,/// Geoff Taylor, CEO of the BPI /// Francis Keeling, vice president of digital at Universal | Purdham: "They may not buy an album, though they have that opportunity, but you can sell them tour tickets and a T-shirt of their favourite band." /// Brindley - "These figures challenge the idea that filesharing will just continue to grow. While we don't think for a second that it shows the war against piracy is won, it does at least suggest that there is encouraging news for the music industry." /// Butcher said the company was confident that the quality of the product would win over users, premium subscribers and advertisers. "One of the fundamental aims of Spotify was to develop a service that was better than piracy," he said. "We've always maintained that music fans don't want to fileshare illegally but they do want to have everything at their fingertips instantly."/// Taylor: "The industry has worked hard to licence new services, they are great music discovery tools and a new way for artists to get paid and drive new sales."/// Keeling said streaming had to be combined with new services, such as the company's new deal with Virgin Media which will offer broadband users unlimited downloads for a monthly fee. "We are confident that the numerous legal alternatives to filesharing will result in a long term reduction in piracy," | |||||||||||||||
74 | Deezer beats Spotify into Middle East & North Africa market | Byron Jones | The Music Network | 2018 | Deezer, Spotify | - Spotify announced recently announced to the world that it was going to enter Middle East & North Africa (MEANA). But Deezer has beaten it to the punch – and what’s more, in a partnership with Rotana Group, whose Rotana Records is arguably the biggest record company in the Middle East with a diverse range of Arabic music - The app is offering playlists as PopTop Arab, Rapstars Maghreb United and Shaabi Essentials, and also offering new users six months of Premium for free. - According to Deezer, music fans will also be able to instantly access local content from music production group Mazzika and Saudi-based telecom provider Qanawat, in addition to 53 million tracks from global artists. - The service is now available – with local offers – for users in countries including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria, Kuwait, Tunisia, Oman, Jordan, Bahrain and Mauritania. | https://themusicnetwork.com/deezer-beats-spotify-into-middle-east-north-africa-market/ | None | Hans-Holger Albrecht - Deezer CEO //// Salem Al Hindi - Rotana Audio CEO | Hans-Holger Albrecht - On partnering with Rotana: “We are really excited to bring Arabic listeners a unique and unrivalled blend of the best exclusive Arabic music and the most popular international tracks in one place. At Deezer, we understand that people’s music tastes combine local and international tracks. We believe that it is important to be present locally, close to the artists we promote on our platform and to the local music fans who support them." //// Salem Al Hindi - On partnering with Deezer: “As Rotana is the first and leading Arab music company in the world to have always surpassed many other companies in the digital music world, we realised that it was time to conclude a partnership agreement with Deezer, a world leader in high-quality music, in order to reach the largest segment of users in the MENA region and in many parts of the world. This agreement will certainly benefit both parties and the biggest and main beneficiary will be the artists who are signed with Rotana, as well as all music lovers in the Arab music.” | |||||||||||||||||
75 | Deezer Is Exploring User Centric Licensing | Mark Mulligan | Music Industry Blog | 2017 | US | Deezer, Spotify, Apple Music | - Streaming drove $1bn of revenue growth for the recorded music business in 2016, without it the market would have declined by $1bn (due to revenue decline elsewhere). | - Currently streaming services license by taking the total pot of revenue generated, dividing that by the total number of tracks streamed and then multiplying that per stream rate by the number of streams per track per artist. Artists effectively get paid on a share of ‘airplay’ basis. This is service centric licensing.... The alternative is user centric licensing, where royalties are paid out as a percentage of the subscription fee of the listener. So if a subscriber listens 100% to Metallica, Metallica gets 100% of the royalty revenue generated by that subscriber. It is an intrinsically fairer model that creates a more direct relationship between what a subscriber listens to and who gets paid./// - One of the key concerns was that the model could penalize some indie labels as fans of their acts could be more likely be music aficionados and thus listen more diversely and more heavily. This could result in the effective per stream rate for those fans being relatively low. By contrast, a super star pop act might have a large number of light listeners and therefore higher effective per stream rates. | https://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/19/exclusive-deezer-is-exploring-user-centric-licensing/ | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
76 | Digital song downloads slipped further in first half of year | Staff | Associated Press | 2015 | US | Apple Music, Spotify, Rhapsody, Pandora | They show overall music industry revenue fell a half percentage point to $3.2 billion. Revenue from paid subscriptions to services like Spotify and Rhapsody grew 25 per cent to $478 million, while revenue from free services like Pandora grew 22 per cent to $550 million. Streaming revenue as a whole surpassed $1 billion in the first half of the year for the first time. Download sales revenue fell 4 per cent to $1.3 billion, while physical disc sales dropped 17 per cent to $748 million./// The rise of digital streaming has helped the industry maintain annual revenues around $7 billion since 2010, offsetting the decline in revenue from digital downloads of single tracks that began in 2013. But the level is far below the industry peak in 1999 of $14.6 billion when compact discs were dominant. | - Digital downloads of songs continued to fall out of favour with Americans in the first half of the year, while free and paid music-streaming revenue kept growing, even without much of a bump from the launch of Apple Music. That’s according to mid-year sales figures released by the Recording Industry Association of America on Monday. | https://globalnews.ca/news/2232713/digital-song-downloads-slipped-further-in-first-half-of-year/ | None | Cary Sherman, RIAA CEO | - Cary Sherman said in a statement that while streaming music revenues continued to grow healthily, he criticized the rates being paid to labels and artists for streaming music, saying they “do not always equal fair market rates.” Certain rates for Internet radio are set by government bodies. | |||||||||||||||
77 | Does Spotify hurt the music industry? | Nick Wells | CNBC | 2015 | US | Taylor Swift, Radiohead, Ed Sheeran | Spotify | - Adult contemporary star Ed Sheeran gushed in a Spotify blog post last month after his song "Thinking Out Loud" became the first to get 500 million streams on the service./// - Specifically, their [ Aguiar and Waldfogel] estimates show that around 137 streams displace one track sale. Just 47 streams are sufficient to displace one unpaid download./// Some complex data analysis shows that those top 50 tracks according for between 7.7 and 10.8 percent of total Spotify streams.// The average digital track on iTunes sold for $1.17 in 2014, the authors say. After Apple's cut, that's $0.82 to the label.// How much did Sheeran make from those half-billion streams? According to Spotify's own figures, they pay between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream (we'll average that to $0.007), depending on a variety of factors like what country the streamers are in and what percentage of the listeners are premium Spotify users. If that's right, Sheeran would have made between $3 million and $4.2 million for the one song. If we accept the 137 streams per track purchased as the displacement rate, "Thinking Out Loud" would have sold 3.6 million times on iTunes. That's exactly $3 million by the $0.82 figure above. | - Aguiar and Waldfogel penned a paper entitled "Streaming Reaches Flood Stage: Does Spotify Stimulate or Depress Music Sales." In it, they use data to measure Spotify's impact on music sales (permanent downloads) as well as on unpaid consumption (music piracy).The authors find that streaming does disrupt traditional music sales but revenue derived from the recent growth in streaming evens out what is lost in sales. .. To get there, Aguiar and Waldfogel consider an aggregate approach to match sales, streams and unpaid downloads by country on a weekly basis. The authors admit up front that the data is not complete. Spotify only releases the volume of streams for the top 200 songs by week and by country. (It was only the top 50 prior to October 2014.) /// In terms of revenue, the authors find that Spotify is revenue-neutral. If streaming stimulates sales — akin to the way radio used to work — that would be promotion for the music and overall revenue would rise. On the other hand, if the per-stream rate is low, then streaming would be unsuccessful bundling and would decrease revenue. As it is, the authors find that Spotify's royalty rate (how much the company pays record labels per stream) meets the traditional sales displacement rate (an estimate of one stream's effect on a track's sales) in equilibrium. | https://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/04/does-spotify-hurt-the-music-industry.html | None | Luis Aguiar and Joel Waldfogel, economists | -Luis Aguiar and Joel Waldfogel, "interactive streaming appears to be revenue-neutral for the recorded music industry." | ||||||||||||||
78 | Don't bore us, get to the chorus? How streaming is changing songs | Deana Sumanac-Johnson | CBC | 2019 | CAN | Drake, Post Malone and Kendrick Lamar, Willa, Bon Iver, Sarah McLachlan | Spotify, Apple Music | - According to the Recording Industry Association of America, 75 per cent of music industry revenues now come from streaming. Canadians streamed 59 billion songs in 2018, a 47 per cent increase over the year before. /// - While completing his PhD at the University of Ohio, Léveillé Gauvin looked at 303 top-10 singles released between 1986 and 2015. He found that the anatomy of pop music had changed significantly, especially in terms of the length of the instrumental introduction. In the mid-1980s, the intro ran 20 to 25 seconds. By 2015, it had shrunk down to a mere five seconds. /// - tracks on Drake's Grammy-nominated Scorpion, released last year, are on average 11 per cent shorter than tracks on his 2016 album Views. | - At the Grammys this Sunday, the top-nominated artists also happen to be the most-streamed artists in the world. Drake, Post Malone and Kendrick Lamar have cracked the formula for a streaming-platform hit, in an era when streaming is quickly becoming the most important measure of an artist's popularity.... Researchers and people in the music industry say that the importance of having a song do well on Spotify or Apple Music is changing the way songs are written./// - While Léveillé Gauvin's research has shown that the chorus in streaming hits appears much sooner than in the pop songs of yesteryear, the streaming era has also been kind to songs that actually have no chorus, at least not in its traditional sense. /// - There is little doubt that at least a part of the changing anatomy of a pop song is due to the economics. In order for a stream to count towards a song's placement on the chart and for the performer and publisher/label to receive royalties, at least the first 30 seconds of the song must be played, which explains why reeling in the listener is more important now than ever. | https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/streaming-songs-changes-1.5002748 | Canadian pop-electronic singer-songwriter Willa /// - Sarah McLachlan | - "The way that streaming has affected my writing is: trim the fat. I just shorten intros," Willa said... "I try to make sure that there's no wasted space. Everything that's in there is like 10 out of 10." /// - "If people are writing music for that particular format, then I find that sad," [says McLachlan]... "Because to me — and this is a luxurious position to speak from — but as an artist I've always been allowed to speak my truth, to go into whatever kind of head space I need to to write the music I feel is mine, is authentic."/// - "Streaming platforms have allowed me to reach more ears than I ever could have independently just by releasing a CD or trying to get on radio because there are a lot of hoops to jump through," [Willa] said. "My music is where it's at because of the support from streaming platforms and that's incredible. I'm a big fan." | Canadian musicologist Hubert Léveillé Gauvin/// - Michael Goldchain, Producer | - While completing his PhD at the University of Ohio, Léveillé Gauvin looked at 303 top-10 singles released between 1986 and 2015. He found that the anatomy of pop music had changed significantly, especially in terms of the length of the instrumental introduction. In the mid-1980s, the intro ran 20 to 25 seconds. By 2015, it had shrunk down to a mere five seconds. "So the time it takes before ... the main singer comes in has almost disappeared. So we're talking about an 80 per cent decrease in 30 years. This is huge!" Léveillé Gauvin said from his Montreal home.... He attributes this change to streaming's particularly competitive environment, where a song has to stand out quickly among millions of other offerings. "One way to do that is by being front-loaded, by making the voice come in a little bit earlier, by making the chorus come in little bit earlier, trying to get a little bit of an edge in this competitive environment."... "I think it would be naive to think that producers who are betting millions of dollars on a new release do not have those conversations, at least behind closed doors," said Léveillé Gauvin/// Goldchain said he's aware that the desire to craft a "Spotify song" sometimes hinders the creative process. "Sometimes you'll be working on an idea and you kill it before it even becomes a real idea just because you're like, 'Oh, this isn't going to fit into anything, any playlist.'" But Goldchain still wouldn't trade the benefits streaming has offered: eliminating the need for the "middle man" in the form of a record label or radio DJ."You just put your file on there and they will start submitting to playlists for you." | |||||||||||||
79 | Drake was Spotify's most-streamed artist of the decade. What does that mean? | Travis M. Andrews | The Washington Post | 2019 | US | Drake, Ed Sheeran, Post Malone, Ariana Grande, Eminem, the Weeknd, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Sia, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Tool, Kyla, Wizkid, 21 Savage, Halsey, the Chainsmokers, | Spotify, Tidal | about drake; -he has released at least 179 songs on Spotify since 2010. That equates to nearly an 18-track album per year, and doesn’t count singles or songs that feature the rapper only. -“Scorpion,” garnered a record-breaking 745.9 million U.S. streams in its first week and became the first record to globally generate 1 billion streams in a single week. | One of the most stark points in this article was Drake and his success, particularly shown in how many streams his "Scorpion" album garnered despite it being his worst-reviewed album. Andrews suggests that Spotify's promotion of Drake, using his image all over the site and putting his music on curated playlists, has an enormous pull in how much attention the artist got from listeners. Some SPotify users were upset that they were seeing these ads after paying a fee to become premium users (which was supposedly ad-free), and a handful of users recieved refunds for it. Andrews suggests that much of these streams are not organic, particularly with the bringing up of Taylor Swift's album "Lover", which fans purposefully streamed more in order to have it beat Tool's new release on the charts (which Andrews says, more explicitly, is a 'manufactured' popularity fuelled by "stunts like this". Swift and Drake's popularity are, in this article, both attributed to this kind of phenomenon and compared to Beyonce, who has spoken about her lack of care for streaming numbers. Andrews picks apart the meaning of streaming numbers, and ultimately suggests that an artist's streaming stats can be meaningless. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/12/03/drake-was-spotifys-most-streamed-artist-decade-what-does-that-actually-mean/ | Chris Richards - Washington Post's pop music critic | “Streaming is designed to feel cool and undisruptive. It promises fluid, frictionless listening — an experience that can be entirely predictable, even when you don’t know exactly what’s coming next. … Dominance belongs to those superstars willing to replicate their softness in abundance, and then roll it out on the streaming platforms — the way that Drake and the Weeknd have each done on their wildly successful, shamelessly overlong albums of late.” | |||||||||||||||
80 | Eminem publisher sues Spotify for alleged copyright infringement | Adam Wallis | Global News | 2019 | US | Eminem | Spotify | - Eminem‘s longtime music publisher is going up against Spotify in court with a massive lawsuit.Eight Mile Style (or Eight Mile) sued the streaming giant on Wednesday alleging copyright infringement. According to legal documents obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Spotify does not have the "compulsory” licences to host approximately 250 songs on its platform... Eight Mile further claims it has not been compensated based on the billions of streams the 46-year-old rapper’s music has garnered since being added to the streaming platform.// Eight Mile later pointed its finger towards the Music Modernization Act (MMA) — a bill signed into law by U.S. President Donald Drumpf last year — claiming that Spotify did not comply with the law’s requirements properly. The MMA was put into place in an attempt to improve copyright protection and make it easier for rights holders to get paid appropriately when their music is distributed on online streaming platforms./// The document concludes by saying the “plaintiff respectfully demands a trial by jury.” A court date has not been granted or set./// According to Pitchfork, Eight Mile is seeking profits and damages. Complex also reported that Eminem is not a plaintiff in this lawsuit. | https://globalnews.ca/news/5798555/eminem-publisher-sues-spotify/ | - “Spotify does not have a license to display, reproduce, and/or distribute” Eminem’s music as a result of not “procuring an appropriate license as required,” according to the lawsuit.... “Spotify has not accounted to Eight Mile or paid Eight Mile for these streams, but instead remitted random payments of some sort, which only purport to account for a fraction of those streams,” the document says... “Despite Lose Yourself being one of the most famous and popular songs in the world… Spotify simply committed willful copyright infringement,” the document said. “[They] did not pay for the vast majority of the more than a billion unlicensed streams of one of the most well-known songs in history.”“Spotify did not license the compositions from Eight Mile at any time, and subsequently has not complied with the requirements of the (MMA) properly or fully for the interactive streams of the Eight Mile Compositions, including with respect to Eminem’s iconic hit Lose Yourself,” the lawsuit read. “Meanwhile,” they added, “Spotify gained the financial benefit of tens of millions of Eminem fans becoming Spotify users and subscribers.” | |||||||||||||||||
81 | Esthero protests streaming royalties by interrupting her own song on Spotify | CBC Radio | 2019 | Canada | Esthero | Spotify | - Canadian singer-songwriter Esthero is protesting against the low royalties paid by streaming services to artists by inserting an anti-Spotify message into her latest single on Spotify. One minute and 37 seconds in to Gimme Some Time, she interrupts the music with a message that urges listeners to buy her song directly from her website. | https://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/thursday-sept-19-2019-chilina-kennedy-hot-chip-and-more-1.5288615/esthero-protests-streaming-royalties-by-interrupting-her-own-song-on-spotify-1.5288737 | Esthero, Canadian Singer-songwriter | - "It's really hard as an independent artist to make money, and Spotify and other streaming services only pay about .003 to .008 cents per stream," says Esthero over the track. "It's really not a liveable income. So once again, I really hope you enjoy my music, and I hope you enjoy it enough to actually go and support and buy the song from me." | None | ||||||||||||||||
82 | Everyone loves music streaming - except Beyonce, and every other musician | Denise Balkissoon | The Globe and Mail | 2019 | Canada | Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Tanika Charles | Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal | - Globally, there were 255 million paid subscribers to a streaming service last year, the fourth consecutive year of growth for the music industry. In Canada, Nielsen reported a 47-per-cent increase in song streams in 2018./// In 2017, streaming became the single biggest revenue source, and last year, it brought in almost half of the US$19.1-billion for the recorded music industry./// Spotify actually paid labels 1.1 per cent less in 2018 than 2016 | - On Tuesday, she finally made 2016’s Lemonade available to subscribers of the streaming platforms Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer. The news dominated music publications and social media all day. Before that, anyone who wanted to stream the album had to sign up for Tidal, the service co-owned by her husband, rapper Jay-Z./// Recorded music sales plummeted between 2003 and 2014. If I couldn’t figure out how to listen to music, the industry also couldn’t figure out how to sell it to me. Streaming has solved both problems. /// Rolling Stone estimates that average per-song-payout rates for musicians on Spotify, the world’s biggest service with 96 million paid subscribers, at between US$0.006 and US$0.0084.. On release day, songs from Drake’s Scorpion were streamed 302 million times on either Spotify or Apple Music, which Rolling Stone estimates netted him between US$1-million and US$2.5-million../// [Tanika Charles's] income comes from live shows, merchandise and licensing her songs. Her last album earned more from KFC ads and the CBC show Workin’ Moms than streaming. /// The lack of trickle-down to artists is controversial: Last year, Spotify and Amazon legally objected to a U.S. copyright-law change that would have seen them increase payments to songwriters. Apple Music then made a big deal about its respect for artists, but mostly, it’s just coming for Spotify: It now has more U.S. subscribers./// Amazon and Google are launching free streaming services that will cut into ad money Spotify makes from its own free tier. Which is a big reason why Spotify actually paid labels 1.1 per cent less in 2018 than 2016, pleading that it needed a break as it fends off competitors. | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-everyone-loves-music-streaming-except-beyonce-and-every-other/ | Beyonce, music titan/// Tanika Charles, Toronto Soul Singer | - “My success can’t be quantified,”[Beyonce] rapped last year, expressing with an expletive her disdain for streaming numbers./// “I personally don’t think about streaming at all,”... Tanika Charles told me this week... “I don’t have my stats. It’s fractions of a penny.” Streaming does bring new audiences – it’s how she became big in Japan, where a dance group performed to one of her songs on a competition show. “That’s a beautiful thing to see,” said Ms. Charles, who’s figuring out her touring schedule for an upcoming album, The Gumption. “Now the question is, can we afford to go there?” | |||||||||||||||
83 | Exclusive Report: Spotify Artist Payments Are Declining In 2017, Data Shows | Daniel Sanchez | Digital Music News | 2017 | Spotify | - Two years ago, in a funding round, investors valued Spotify at $8 billion. In the latest round, investors pushed that number above $13 billion. - 1,000 streams on Spotify two years ago — when the platform was making less gross revenue — made rights holders more money than 1,000 streams today. - Let’s start with Spotify’s ad-supported tier. In February 2017, a single ad-supported stream generated $0.00014123 on the streaming service. This means an artist would earn $100 in mechanical royalties after 703,581 streams. Although this number represents a 1.1% increase from January, in December 2016, the number was at $0.00022288. - For the premium tier during the same month, Spotify paid out $0.00066481 per stream in mechanicals. In this scenario, artists would earn $100 after 150,419 streams. This number is up 5.2% from January. Sounds great, until you see the year-over-year trend. - Another key thing to notice is the following discrepancies. In December 2016, to earn $100 from ad-supported streams, a song would need be played 448,672 times. Spotify paid out $0.00022288. Yet, just one month later, the number dropped down to $0.00013508. To earn $100 from ad-supporter streams, a song would have to be played 740,302 times. Note that this didn’t apply to premium streams. - 2016 Total Gross Revenue: Slightly over $1.1 billion Average streaming rate: $0.0046524 Total plays: Over 162 billion Royalty pool amount: $75.4 million PRO fees: Almost $72 million | - Recently, Spotify struck new long-term licensing deals with both Universal Music Group and independent music rep Merlin. They’re also rumored to be closing a similar deal with Warner Music Group. Ahead of their long-awaited listing on Wall Street, Spotify seems to have it made. - Top-line revenues at Spotify are surging ahead, thanks to a flood of new subscribers. A boost in monthly premium payments and increased advertising means a lot more revenue. That part is simple. Yet strangely, Spotify’s per-stream royalties across both recordings and publishing appear to be sinking, according to data shared with DMN. That includes per-stream payments to labels (including indie labels and self-administered artists), plus mechanical royalty payments to publishers. - Two years ago, a report published by Audiam found that as Spotify’s revenues went up, artists and label royalties went down. Audiam is a reproduction rights organization headed by Jeff Price, and recently purchased by Canadian rights group SOCAN. The company is basing a lot of its data on payouts reported under Section 115 of US Copyright Law. - As Spotify continues to prepare for their long-awaited IPO, there’s no clear explanation as to why they continue to pay out artists such little money. Audiam posted a publicly available website to show historically falling per stream mechanical royalty rates. And despite Lefsetz’ best attempts to protect Spotify (calling Jeff Price out of touch), his final defense of the company ultimately sounds very hollow. | https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/05/16/spotify-audiam-low-rates/ | None | Audiam - a reproduction rights organization headed by Jeff Price, and recently purchased by Canadian rights group SOCAN //// Bob Lefsetz - 25 year blogger | Audiam/Jeff Price: ...the impact on the artists, songwriters, labels and music publishers is a bizarre, unexpected anti-intuitive equation that seems to subscribe to Newton’s third law of physics: ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ “In this case, as more money is made from the music, music creators and copyright holders are making less.” //// Bob Lefsetz: “You’re being screwed by the label. And Spotify can’t say this, because the labels are their partners.” “What about Jeff Price, its old fired founder, bullsh—ting that Spotify is not paying on so many tracks? That’s a registry problem, that’s not Spotify seeking to rip-off rights holders, that’s the result of an archaic system wherein we don’t know who wrote what and who owns what. Does it need to be cleared up? Yes.” “But you’ve got an historical deal with a label that pays an incredibly low percentage, you’ve got a very low royalty rate, is this a problem? Absolutely. BUT IT IS NOT SPOTIFY’S FAULT!” | ||||||||||||||||
84 | Executive Turntable: Moves at Columbia Records, Island Records, VEVO & More | Starr Bowenbank , Josh Glicksman | Billboard | 2018 | One Direction, Harry Styles, Grace VanderWaal, Juicy J, DJ Khaled, Travis Scott, Yo Gotti | Columbia Records, Island Records, VEVO, Position Music, Pulse Music Group, ICM Partners, UK Live Music Group | - Mike Navarra has been promoted to vp of publicity at Columbia Records, it was announced Tuesday (Sept. 25). Navarra will report to Kimberly Harris, svp of publicity. - Island Records announced on Thursday (Sept. 27) that LaTrice Burnette has been appointed to evp and gm of the label’s senior management team. Burnette will be based in New York and will work across the label’s artist roster. She will report to Darcus Beese, president of Island Records. - Position Music president and CEO Tyler Bacon announced Tuesday (Sept. 25) the promotion of Wendy Griffiths to the position of evp of synch & creative marketing. - Pulse Music Group has promoted Joe Poindexter to svp, digital, the company announced Wednesday (Sept. 26). He has been with Pulse since January 2012, and he previously served as vp. - ICM Partners has promoted Danielle Beckford, Kyle Kernohan and Liz Pantone to agents in the concerts department, it was announced Monday (Sept. 24). All three will report to partners and concerts department heads Steve Levine, Rob Prinz and Mark Siegel. All three were previously coordinators in the concerts department. - UK Live Music Group announced on Thursday (Sept. 27) that Greg Parmley is the new chair of the board. He takes over from Paul Latham, former COO of Live Nation UK, following Latham’s retirement after 30 years in the industry. | https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8477446/executive-turntable-columbia-records-island-vevo-position-pulse | None | Article includes mainly congratulatory comments from industry professionals on new personnel additions/changes to their companies | |||||||||||||||||
85 | Fake Artists' Have Billions of Streams on Spotify. Is Sony Now Playing the Serice at Its Own Game? | Tim Ingham | Rolling Stone | 2019 | US | Sex Pistols, Beyonce, John Legend, one Direction, Childish Gambino, Lorde, Meek Mill | Spotify, YouTube, Sony Music, Apple Music | - In 2017, the 50 “fake artists” outed by MBW – a snapshot of the total number on the platform – had a total stream count of approximately 520 million plays. /// - In the nearly two years since that initial report, those same 50 “fake artists” have done rather well, racking up 2.85 billion Spotify streams between them to date. Indeed, the ten names listed below have cumulatively attracted more than a billion Spotify plays (1.22 billion) alone: ‘Ana Olgica’ – 154 million plays, 1.52 million monthly listeners; ‘Charles Bolt’ – 143 million plays, 1.85 million monthly listeners; ‘Samuel Lindon’ – 145 million plays, 1.55 million monthly listeners; ‘Aaron Lansing’ – 121 million plays, 1.62 million monthly listeners; ‘Enno Aare’ – 120 million plays; 1.15 million monthly listeners; ‘Piotr Miteska’ – 115 million plays; 1.47 million monthly listeners; ‘They Dream By Day’ – 108 million plays; 1.24 million monthly listeners ‘Lo Mimieux’ – 107 million plays, 1.28 million monthly listeners; ‘Karin Borg’ – 104 million plays, 987,000 monthly listeners; ‘Jozef Gatysik’ – 98.8 million plays, 966,000 monthly listeners; These numbers actually downplay the real total, having been obtained from Spotify’s public-facing artist information, which only displays streaming data for up to 10 tracks per act. (Most of the above artists have six or fewer tracks available on Spotify.) ... To put the enormity of “fake artist” popularity into context, acts whose entire catalogs have fewer chart-eligible Spotify streams than 1.22 billion include: Beyoncé, John Legend, One Direction, Childish Gambino, Lorde and Meek Mill. /// - Not counting publishing royalties, the industry standard estimation of Spotify’s payout to recorded music rightsholders, per-stream, is around $0.004. With 1.22 billion plays at that rate, Spotify would typically have had to shell our circa $4.9 million to record labels and ‘non-fake’ artists. | - Two summers ago, Music Business Worldwide ran a report on “fake artists” appearing on Spotify, which caused ripples across the global music industry. The exposé listed 50 artists we suspected were fictional, and who, it was speculated, were playing a key role in a money-saving exercise by Spotify. There were a number of suspicious elements to these acts. Each had only uploaded a handful of songs to their profile, all of which achieved very prevalent placings in first-party Spotify “mood” or “activity” playlists...Yet the same acts barely had any other internet presence – including zero social media credentials – and their names did not appear on any other music services... The hypothesis, later confirmed, was that many of these artists were, in fact, “fake” (i.e. pseudonymous) names attributed to tracks created by composers signed to Epidemic Sound, a Swedish “production music” house. The unproven inkling amongst major music labels was, and remains, that Spotify pays a lower royalty rate for these songs than it does for tracks from “real artists” vying for the same playlist spots.Because Spotify pays out royalties on a pro rata basis. This means... that the firm divides its total industry payout across the entirety of artists on its platform, based on their portion of overall streams. The important bit: if “fake artists” are paid lower contractual royalty rates than “real” acts, and then, driven by playlist inclusion, claim a certain percentage of Spotify’s total monthly streams, Spotify ends up keeping more money. /// - the service is set to renegotiate its global deals with the three major music rightsholders (Universal, Sony and Warner) over the course of 2019. The knowledge that Spotify is willing to “bump” major label artists from some of its powerful first-party “mood” and “activity” playlists – replacing them with faker, potentially cheaper, alternatives – is, prospectively, a useful stick with which to beat the majors during these talks. /// - On Spotify, “Sleep & Mindfulness Thunderstorms” contains over 990 tracks, adding up to more than 18 hours of audio, mainly consisting of continuous storm sounds chopped into minute-long consecutive segments. Nearly all of these tracks are credited to an artist called “Sleepy John,” who, it transpires, is actually a composer named David Tarrodi... A glance at Sleepy John’s profile on Spotify shows that his top ten biggest “tracks” (literally all recordings or interpretations of the sound of falling rain) have jointly racked up over four million plays on the service to date... For starters, the likes of Spotify and Apple Music register a payout for any track, regardless of its length, so long as the listener has heard it for more than 30 seconds. This renders a continuous storm sound – with its “tracks” sliced up into as many minute-long portions as possible – as a smart, if soulless, money-minded strategy. What’s more, “Sleep & Mindfulness Thunderstorms” carries a title which has been carefully calibrated for search optimization, while it also lends itself to elongated listening activity | https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/fake-artists-have-billions-of-streams-on-spotify-is-sony-now-playing-the-service-at-its-own-game-834746/ | None | - Darren Hemmings, founder of digital marketing agency Motive Unknown | - Hemmings summed up Sony’s strategy with distinct annoyance. “So in short: calibrate songs for maximum revenue, leverage your playlist brand to push these f—king *everywhere*, support it with ads and boom – watch the money roll in,” he said. “Behold the music industry in 2019, ladies and gentlemen.” | ||||||||||||||
86 | Five Takeaways From Spotify CEO Daniel Ek's Interview With Fast Company | Cherie Hu | Billboard | 2018 | US | Spotify, Apple Music, Google, Amazon Music | - In 2017, annual U.S. recorded-music revenues increased by 16.5 percent to $8.7 billion, marking the sector’s third consecutive year of growth, according to the RIAA. Yet that figure still trails behind the U.S. commercial radio sector, which brought in $13.9 billion in sales over the same time period -- outpacing recorded music by nearly 60 percent. - Now, Ek makes sure that 40 to 50 percent of his company’s resources are allotted to “10 bets going on at any time, never any more.” | - “Success for us will be determined by our ability to move faster than everyone else in the space. And just keep on innovating.” Those are the words of Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in a lengthy interview published Tuesday (Aug. 8) in Fast Company, conducted both before and after Spotify went public. The interview gives valuable insight not just into Ek’s introverted personality and decentralized, frank leadership style, but also into Spotify’s long-term product roadmap and the challenges the company must overcome in the face of both Wall Street and the wider music and tech industries. - Ek claimed to Fast Company that the average Spotify user spends over an hour every day on the service -- which, while suggesting high user engagement, still falls behind the four hours that the average U.S. consumers spends listening to audio daily, the majority of which is dedicated to radio. - While Spotify execs have explicitly stated in the past that the service is consumer- rather than industry-first, Ek stated in his interview that he also has a long-term interest in engaging with structural innovation on the industry side as well. “If the first 10 years for us was about fixing the consumer experience, the next 10 years is about an equal amount of focus on making sure that the music industry sees the same transformation that the consumer side has seen,” he said. - “The end vision of Spotify is to get a million artists to make a living off of their art,” whereas “the end vision of Uber is to have zero drivers: Be my partner until I don’t need you anymore. That’s a very challenging business proposition,” said Ek. (Ek later clarified on Twitter that these comments were referring to Uber’s previous PR disasters, prior to new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi taking the reins.) - “Both [Spotify and Netflix] are consumer subscription businesses, in media, but that’s where the similarities end,” said Ek. “Our company mission is to have more than a million artists to be able to live off of their art. In that model, it’s almost like you’re managing an economy, not just 10, 15, 100 deals that you’re doing. We’re trying to provide the tools to enable all these different constituents to do better business on our platform. That’s very different from what Netflix is.” | https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8469196/five-takeaways-spotify-ceo-daniel-ek-interview-with-fast-company | None | Daniel Ek, Spotify CEO | “'I don’t think the market [for Spotify] necessarily is purchased music. I think the market is much larger than that. I think it’s audio,' Ek said in his interview. 'Two billion people listen to radio. Most of that today isn’t monetized very efficiently. It doesn’t get back to the artists in any real form. And it’s kind of unclear who gets what.'" On the music industry: "'We’re super dependent on having the labels, the artists, and the songwriters like what we do -- ‘like’ is not the right word -- but accept what we do, agree with the direction that we’re heading, and license us their content... If the first 10 years for us was about fixing the consumer experience, the next 10 years is about an equal amount of focus on making sure that the music industry sees the same transformation that the consumer side has seen'” “The end vision of Spotify is to get a million artists to make a living off of their art" | |||||||||||||||
87 | Fraud Has Become the Latest Hurdle for Music Streaming | Cherie Hu | Variety | 2018 | US | Jay-Z, Beyonce, Ed Sheeran, Post Malone, Rihanna | Tidal, Apple Music, Spotify | - Twitter’s recent housecleaning of some 70 million fake and automated accounts illuminates just how pervasive audience manipulation has become in the digital era. - The average per-stream payout may not look like much — $0.004 for Spotify, slightly more for services like Apple Music and Tidal ($0.008 and $0.012, respectively), although exact rates depend on the type of artist or song. - Using Goldman Sachs’ projection that the streaming sector will hit $34 billion by 2030, millions of dollars in fraudulently acquired funds could be making their way through the royalty chain. Though unlike Twitter, which wiped out 6% of its users, the number of fake music streamers has not been determined. Says one major label head: “It’s not something we’re currently concerned about, but that’s not to say we won’t be in the future.” - In 2017, Post Malone’s label, Republic Records, found itself the center of controversy for a seemingly sanctioned loop of the hook to his song “Rockstar” that was posted on YouTube. Although it contained only a snippet of the tune, it played continuously for three minutes and 28 seconds and quickly racked up more than 40 million views. - Spotify has kicked outlets like Spotlister off its platform on a case-by-case basis — stand-alone sites like Social Media Experts, Streamify and StreamKO offer “Spotify promotion” with prices ranging from $5 to $995 — but concerns remain about whether that enforcement is being replicated meaningfully across entire platforms. - Moreover, on Spotify’s free tier, ad fraud is also becoming more prevalent. Spotify had to decrease its total reported content hours streamed in 2017 by 500 million, due to 2 million listeners who used unauthorized apps that blocked ads on the service. - nterestingly, the Q2’18 report still included these aforementioned, suspicious ad-blocking users — which account for just under five percent of the company’s total ad-supported base — among the service’s 180 million total monthly active user count. - For instance, if a subscriber paying $9.99 a month for Spotify listens exclusively to Rihanna, Rihanna will get all of that user’s $9.99, rather than having that cost distributed pro-rata among the platform’s millions of artists. | - Tidal has found itself awash in accusations of data manipulation. As recently as May, Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) accused the Jay-Z-owned service of falsifying tens of millions of streams for Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” and Kanye West’s “The Life of Pablo” albums. While Tidal has denied the claims on multiple fronts, a company rep tells Variety that several investigators are currently on the ground at the company’s offices looking into a potential data breach. - Here’s how “playola” works at playlist-promotion companies like Spotlister: A customer pays the company to secure prominent placement of a song on key playlists, such as those on Spotify. When a track is uploaded, it is analyzed and its metadata is used to send it to the most appropriate playlists. | https://variety.com/2018/music/news/music-streaming-sites-fraud-1202905665/ | None | Christine Barnum - director of finance at CD Baby //// Rami Essaid - cofounder of bot-defense start-up Distil Networks //// Patrick Vonderau - professor at Stockholm University | Christine Barnum - On fraud: “It’s pretty easy to buy guides online on how to stream your own content repeatedly. There are also more instances of well-meaning artists accidentally signing up for some sort of ‘marketing service’ that’s actually committing fraud.” //// Rami Essaid - On subscription models: “With the subscription model, there’s a finite number of dollars to split up, and if part of that goes to fraud, no one else in the ecosystem is happy.” //// Patrick Vonderau - On fraud: “In general, we should not think of fraud as the polar opposite of what Spotify and other platforms do. I do not believe that bots are a total breach with Spotify’s own informational norms. As reports have shown, the system can be easily gamed. A word like ‘fraud’ does not acknowledge these fleeting boundaries between what is legal and illegal, acceptable or not.” | ||||||||||||||
88 | From Aaliyah to Garth Brooks, here is the music you can't find on Spotify | Kailla Coomes | Digital Trends | 2018 | US | Garth Brooks, Aaliyah, Tool, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Joanna Newsom, King Crimson, Bikini Kill, Dr. Dre, Smog, Ty Segall | Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music | - The two-time Grammy winner Garth Brooks refused to put his music on any streaming services for years — that is, until Amazon was able to convince the country star to release his albums exclusively on Amazon Music Unlimited in 2016. Brooks was reluctant at first to make all of his albums available, but has since released his entire collection. /// - Aaliyah released music in her 22 years of life that is still played on the radio today. Sadly, these songs ... cannot currently be found on Spotify or any other streaming service. Apparently, her albums are locked away with her uncle and manager Barry Hankerson. There’s been no recent news on when or if her albums will be released, so for now, you can only listen to her first album, Age Ain’t Nothing but A Number, on Spotify./// Tool’s catalog has never been available on Spotify or any other streaming service. It’s hard to say if a band that hasn’t released music in 12 years will ever be on Spotify, though, they are rumored to be releasing new material within the next year or so /// Lemonade was one of the most lauded albums of 2016, but it’s exclusively streaming on Tidal, her husband Jay Z’s streaming service. And since Jay Z owns Tidal, none of his albums are on Spotify, either./// the only thing you will find on Spotify under [Joanna Newsom's] name is The Muppet Show Theme, which is, arguably, not her best work. Other Drag City artists — Smog, Ty Segall, etc. — have made their way to Spotify, but Newsom’s catalog remains absent, despite her music having made its way to Apple Music in 2017. /// you won't find [King Crimson's ablums] In the court of the Crimson King, Red, or any of their other material on Spotify. Legendary guitarist Robert Fripp briefly made a couple of their songs available, but removed them soon after, noting how little streaming services paid artists at the time. Luckily, there is a bright side: Three live albums from King Crimson are currently streaming on Spotify./// . Though you can find Rebel Girl on Spotify, the rest of their hits — which are strewn across two albums and an EP — are nowhere to be found. Bikini Kill has acknowledged that Spotify is a way for people to discover new music, but they believe the streaming platform doesn’t financially support bands the way it should./// fans looking for [Dr. Dre's music on Spotify will find next to nothing. His ties with Apple run deep, especially given Apple acquired Beats by Dr. Dre in mid-2014. These days, iconic albums such as the Chronic and Compton can only be found on Apple Music. But if you really need to listen to The Next Episode, you’re in luck, as Dre’s second studio album 2001 is available on Spotify. | https://www.digitaltrends.com/music/artists-not-on-spotify/ | Joanna Newsom, renowned singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist | - Newsom...once called Spotify, “a villainous cabal” and “a garbage system.” | None | |||||||||||||||
89 | Global Music Streaming Service Market 2019 To See Worldwide Massive Growth | Jean Salerno | Biz Insights News | 2018 | Apple Deezer iHeartMedia Pandora Media Spotify Guvera Microsoft Slacker Saavn | - International global music streaming service market report has been replete with step by step analysis from exhaustive research, notably on questions which boundary on global music streaming service market size, creation environment, autonomous progress, functionality position, pathways, and directions. These are all of understanding the situation that a is currently in 2019 offshoots including North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa - The Scope of the International music streaming service Industry: This report assesses the growth rate and the current market value on the grounds of the fundamental market dynamics, in addition to the growth causing variables. The analysis is by growth potentials the industry information and global music streaming service market trends. Also, it comprises an analysis of scenario and this sector, along with the music streaming service analysis of their competitors. - The important objectives of the study are to run and supply an in-depth analysis of their global music streaming service industry development rates, size, value, stocks, and promote development in addition to the market tendencies and market variables influencing the music streaming service growth and development. This report believes the risks in regards to the music streaming service market providers and also that the hindrances in addition to the manufacturers from the market. | https://bizinsightsnews.com/global-music-streaming-service-market-market-us/ | None | None | ||||||||||||||||||
90 | Global Music Streaming Service Market 2019-2023 | Introduction of Differentiated Music Streaming Services to Boost Growth | Technavio | Bakersfield.com | 2019 | US | YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, Technavio | - The global music streaming service market is expected to post a CAGR of over 16% during the period 2019-2023, according to the latest market research report by Technavio. However, the market is expected to decelerate on a year-on-year basis during the forecast period. - With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio’s report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio’s comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. | - The increasing preference for music streaming services is expected to drive market growth during the forecast period. Globally, the development of wired and wireless technologies and telecommunication standards such as 3G, 4G, and 5G have resulted in an improvement of Internet bandwidth, thereby supporting the adoption of music streaming services across the world. - Vendors are increasingly introducing differentiated music streaming services in the global music streaming service markets such as easy accessibility on various platforms, auto playlist customization, and high audio quality. For instance, YouTube Music (a product of Alphabet) and Pandora are providing personalized recommendations to their users, which is one of the differentiated services compared to other vendors. Furthermore, players such as Apple and Amazon have synchronized their music streaming services on their respective hardware such as smart speakers, so customers do not have to install streaming software on their hardware systems. As a result of such advanced features, the market for music streaming is expected to show optimistic results during the forecast period. | https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/news/global-music-streaming-service-market---introduction-of-differentiated/article_d173cb91-f3c2-56c0-be8f-aab917d51cb9.html | None | None | |||||||||||||||||
91 | Google Launches 'All Access' Music Streaming Service | Alex Pham | Billboard | 2013 | US | Google, Spotify, Rhapsody, Xbox Music, Sony Music Unlimited, Slacker, Rdio | - Dubbed All Access, the service debuts Wednesday in the U.S. at $9.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial. Subscribers who sign up before June 30 will get a special rate of $7.99 a month. - Google's shares soared past the $900 mark Wednesday, gaining $28.90, up 3.3%, to close at $916.00 following its announcements, which also included updates to Google Maps, Photo, Search and others. - Even the price points, $7.99 to $9.99, are comparable to what other music services charge. | - The announcement, made at Google’s I/O conference for developers, came soon after the Silicon Valley technology giant cleared licensing deals with Warner Music Group in March, and in recent days with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment to be able to offer "millions of songs" for the service. It also has a deal with Merlin Network, which represents independent labels such as Rough Trade, Beggars Group and Warp Records. - "Anytime a mainstream company decides to invest in digital music that is good for the entire industry," said Scott Ambrose Reilly, the North American Chief Executive of X5 Music Group, a boutique label based in Stockholm, Sweden. "But seeing a mainstream advertising company like Google launch a paid only service does raise some eyebrows. Hope springs eternal and let’s all hope this product lives up to the Google reputation for worldwide mass market appeal. If not at launch then hopefully in the very near future." - The service also has a “Listen Now” option that contains new releases, recently added tracks and automatically generated radio stations so “there’s always a great selection for me, and every day, it surprises me,” - All Access's features are less surprising -- its recommendations, integration with its existing locker service, personalized radio stations and availability across multiple devices and platforms are standard among rival on-demand services such as Spotify, Rhapsody, Xbox Music, Sony Music Unlimited, Slacker and Rdio. - What is surprising is that Google, whose primary business is advertising, has decided not to have a free, ad-supported tier that would have been competitive with Spotify's offerings. Instead, All Access is one of the few products that Google has decided to charge customers for the full-freight, with no subsidies. | https://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1562280/google-launches-all-access-music-streaming-service-updated | None | Scott Ambrose Reilly - North American Chief Executive of X5 Music Group, a boutique label based in Stockholm, Sweden //// Russ Crupnick - industry analyst with the NPD Group | Scott Ambrose Reilly - On Google's paid digital music service: "Anytime a mainstream company decides to invest in digital music that is good for the entire industry...But seeing a mainstream advertising company like Google launch a paid only service does raise some eyebrows. Hope springs eternal and let’s all hope this product lives up to the Google reputation for worldwide mass market appeal. If not at launch then hopefully in the very near future." //// Russ Krupnick - On paid vs free services: "There’s a big difference obviously between free and $9.99...And most listeners still say they aren’t willing to pay. With other subsidized options out there like Spotify, they don’t have to." | |||||||||||||||
92 | Google to retire music streaming service Songza as of Jan. 31 | David Friend | The Canadian Press | 2015 | Canada | Taylor Swift | Songza, Google Play Music, Spotify, Rdio, Apple Music, Tidal | - Google announced Wednesday it would be shutting down Songza on Jan. 31 as it integrates the popular Concierge playlist features into Google Play Music... The move comes nearly a year and a half after Google acquired Songza in an attempt to step up its game in the increasingly competitive streaming music industry. Once the changes take effect, users who visit Songza’s website or open its app will be pushed to Google’s service.// Google Play Music – which has only been available in the past as a paid subscription service – will now expand its free version supported by advertisements to Canada, after it launched this summer in the United States. The free service rollout puts it in line with Spotify, one of its biggest competitors. Both also offer a paid commercial-free service for $9.99 a month. // Last month, Rdio filed for bankruptcy and sold its technology and intellectual property to competitor Pandora for US$75 million. Rdio plans to wind down its service over the coming weeks. Spotify has grown its number of listeners in Canada by pairing with Rogers Communications to offer its subscription service as part of a wireless phone package. Even Apple Music, one of the laggard entrants to streaming music last June, has launched an app compatible with Android phones as it reaches for an audience beyond its iPhone users./// Spotify strives to stand out with its emphasis on social media sharing, while Apple has grabbed attention for its catalogue of huge artists like Taylor Swift. Smaller competitors like Tidal emphasize their exclusive music videos from a roster of Top 40 artists. Google says its service – with the help of Songza – gives users the right playlist for each moment. It’s also planning to begin carrying podcasts in the coming months, a first for a streaming service in Canada. Songza was formed in 2007 and arrived in Canada about five years later when alternate streaming music options were sparse. The company built a reputation on its Concierge feature, which offers up playlists designed for various moods and a roster of listener activities | https://globalnews.ca/news/2376343/google-to-retire-music-streaming-service-songza-as-of-jan-31/ | None | Peter Asbill, Songza co-founder turned Google's global streaming merchandising lead/// Carmi Levy, Technology analyst | - “Over the past year and a half we’ve worked really hard to take all of the best of Songza and bring it to Google Play Music,” [Asbill] told a Toronto news conference.“We’ve decided to focus our energy and attention on building one amazing product instead of two.”/// With so many options on the market it’s surprising how few differences exist between the streaming competitors, said technology analyst Carmi Levy. “Right now all we’re seeing are multiple variations of similar themes,” he said. “That’s going to continue to drive consumer disinterest into 2016 until someone comes up with something that’s truly innovative.” | |||||||||||||||
93 | Google Tries, Tries Again With New YouTube Music Service | Bill Rosenblatt | Forbes | 2018 | US | YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Music Key, Deezer, YouTube Red, Amazon Music Unlimited | - Google's first attempt at bridging the gap between the two was YouTube Music Key, which launched in late 2014 and offered ad-free music videos and background playing (listening to music while using another app on your device) for $10 per month or equivalents in other countries. - Google needs to do better in the white-hot paid music subscription market, which now brings in the majority of music industry revenue, amounting to over $4 billion last year. Paid subscription revenue has been growing at an astounding average rate of 65% per year since Spotify launched in the U.S. in 2011 - Google has lots of catching up to do in paid subscriptions: while Spotify has 70 million paying subscribers worldwide, and Apple Music has 36 million (but is growing at a faster pace), Google Play Music and YouTube Red only had 7 million combined as of last July, fewer than Deezer and Amazon Music Unlimited as well as Spotify and Apple Music. | - Google's recent launch of YouTube Music is its latest in a series of attempts over several years to create a compelling paid music offering. Now that Spotify and Apple Music each have subscriberships well into the tens of millions, this is serious business — and Google is late to the party. What Google just launched and how it got there provide a window into the state of both the digital music industry today and Google's position within it. - Then there's Google Play Music, which Google launched in late 2011 as an iTunes-style paid download service with cloud storage. This was one of a few content apps that Google introduced for the Android platform to compete with Apple's iOS/iTunes/iBooks ecosystem. Then, in May 2013, Google added a paid on-demand subscription option to compete with Spotify, which it called All Access. Google Play Music got some traction as part of the out-of-the-box Android environment but nowhere near the public profile of iTunes, Pandora or Spotify (or YouTube), in part because Google didn't expend much effort to market it. Eventually, the "All Access" moniker faded away, and now "Google Play Music" encompasses the paid subscription service as well as paid downloads and other features. - The biggest problem with YouTube Music compared with Spotify and Apple Music is its lack of human curation. Spotify and Apple Music have both invested heavily in resources for tasks such as creating curated playlists, working with artists to present their music properly, and cleaning up music metadata — tasks that can be unglamorous gruntwork and don't benefit from the scale economies beloved by the tech industry. There is no quick fix for this, and it's not in Google's DNA. - But YouTube Music also has drawbacks. Some are related to the fact that some people watch music videos on YouTube for other purposes than they might listen to music on a pure music service. For example, it has a feature called Your Mixtape, which is Google's attempt at creating a single personalized music channel for every user, optimized for factors such as your location and the time of day. | https://www.forbes.com/sites/billrosenblatt/2018/05/27/google-tries-tries-again-with-new-youtube-music-service/#7656696dce2c | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
94 | Has 10 Years of Spotify ruined music? | Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Laura Snapes | The Guardian | 2018 | UK | Basshunter, Scouting for Girls, BTS, Daddy Yankee, Stefflon Don, Ed Sheeran , Migos, Drake, R Kelly, XXXTentacion | Spotify, YouTube | - While adverts between songs jarringly juxtapose the beauty of art with the brutality of capital, it is at least free to listen to them. Thanks to Spotify and YouTube, no one with internet access – 90% of the UK – needs to pay for music, an important and seismic shift from the vinyl, CD and download eras when, for many people, music ownership was a luxury or treat. For £9.99 – the going price of one newly released CD album in 2008 – you can have uninterrupted access for a month. /// - You can already hear the effects of this democracy on music itself. The global profile of non-Anglophone pop has risen... in part thanks to this levelled playing field; the multicultural hybrid music of stars such as Stefflon Don feels like the natural result of a culture that can access anything, anytime. Critics point out that you don’t own the music you pay Spotify for, but effectively rent it... It can also be argued that Spotify’s quality is lower than that of a CD, which is true, and the muso in me trembles to think how many people are listening to Spotify on its low, data-preserving quality, which sounds as if the songs have been irradiated. But its 320kbps “high quality” setting will satisfy all but the most sensitive listener. /// - If I compiled the off-record remarks from my interviews over the past decade, the majority would concern Spotify – namely how much artists hate it. “Please don’t put that in,” they panic after slagging it off. “I really need it to support my new album.” /// Spotify prides itself on its personalised recommendations, which work by connecting dots between “data points” assigned to songs (from rap, indie, and so on, to infinite micro-genre permutations) to determine new music you might like. Its model doesn’t code for surprise, but perpetuates “lean-back” passivity. There is no context on the platform, merely entreaties to enjoy more of the same... It limits music discovery and the sound of music itself. Singles are tailored to beat the skip-rate that hinders a song’s chances of making it on to a popular playlist: hooks and choruses hit more quickly. Homogenous mid-tempo pop drawing from rap and EDM has become dominant: New York Times pop critic Jon Caramanica regularly disparages this sound as “Spotifycore”. /// - Spotify looks like a neutral platform but behaves like a gatekeeper. It faced a backlash this year after censoring R Kelly and XXXTentacion for their alleged acts of violence against women (only to grossly promote XXX after his murder)... a report by Pelly found that despite the “woke optics of playlists like Feminist Friday”, women are underrepresented on its most popular playlists. | https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/05/10-years-of-spotify-should-we-celebrate-or-despair | None | |||||||||||||||||
95 | Hearo.fm launches cryptocurrency that will be integrated with new music streaming service Tune.fm | Music Business Worldwide | Music Business Worldwide | 2018 | US | Hearo.fm | - Hearo.fm is currently in the public presale phase of launching its cryptocurrency ahead of its Initial Coin Offering (ICO) which takes place in Q1 2019. - Hearo.fm was founded by Philadelphian brothers Andrew Antar and Brian Antar and is currently running as a fully functional demo platform with over 5,000 artists already making use of it. - “Hedera Hashgraph is the only platform that will truly fit our technological need to enable lightning fast micropayments for music streaming around the world,” saidhearo.fm Founder Andrew Antar in August when the startup first revealed its plans to use the Hedera Hashgraph for its cryptocurrency. - “Enabling artists to benefit from their work directly is a perfect use case for the Hedera Hashgraph public distributed ledger,” said Jordan Fried, Global VP of Business Development at Hedera. | https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/hearo-fm-launches-cryptocurrency-that-will-be-integrated-with-new-music-streaming-service-tune-fm/ | None | Andrew Antar - saidhearo.fm Founder //// Jordan Fried - Global VP of Business Development at Hedera | Andrew Antar - On technological streaming: “Hedera Hashgraph is the only platform that will truly fit our technological need to enable lightning fast micropayments for music streaming around the world...When the music gets played, the artist gets paid" //// Jordan Fried - On artist benefits: Enabling artists to benefit from their work directly is a perfect use case for the Hedera Hashgraph public distributed ledger | ||||||||||||||||
96 | HI-RES MUSIC STREAMING SERVICE QOBUZ TO LAUNCH IN US IN ‘EARLY 2019’ | Murray Stassen | Music Business Worldwide | 2018 | US | Qobuz | - It offers more than 40-million ‘CD-quality’ tracks and over 2 million hi-res tracks up to 24-bit resolution. - The company will offer four different subscription tiers for US subscribers: The Sublime+ tier will cost $299.99/year, which gets you full Hi-Res streaming and substantial (40-60%) discounts on purchases from the Qobuz Hi-Res (up to 24-bit) download store. The Studio tier costs $24.99/month or $249.99 annually for unlimited Hi-Res streaming. The company’s Hi-Fi streaming tier costs $19.99/month or $199.9 annually for 16-bit CD quality. Lastly, the Premium tier will cost $9.99/month for 320 kbps MP3 quality streaming ($99.99 annually). | - Ahead of an official US launch date announcement, the company says that it has opened a US HQ in New York and secured exclusive editorial content. In July, the company announced that it had hired three well-known music executives, including US MD Dan Mackta, to lead its US launch. - Founded in 2007, Qobuz is a Paris-based streaming and download service that’s currently live in 11 European markets. - | https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/hi-res-music-streaming-service-qobuz-to-launch-in-us-in-early-2019/ | None | None | ||||||||||||||||
97 | Hi-Res Streaming Service Qobuz Makes Inroads Six Months After U.S. Launch | Jem Aswad | Variety | 2019 | US | Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer | - The RIAA estimates that 1,000 albums per month are released in hi-resolution audio. Qobuz says it has almost 200,000 customers across the 12 markets in which it operates, with over 25,000 in the U.S. already. While it doesn’t offer as deep a catalog as other streaming services, for many the sound quality may make up the difference. - The company launched in 2009 as a hi-res download service, with its streaming option rolling out gradually over 2014 and 2015. And while its catalog isn’t as complete as that of other streaming services, it offers up CD-quality audio of more than 40 million tracks, and millions of Hi-Res tracks up to 24-bit/192 kHz resolution from all genres. It also offers playlists, exclusive editorial content and other standard streaming service amenities. | - While Tidal and Deezer have long offered solid hi-fidelity options, and Apple Music launched one just a couple of weeks ago, the French-based company Qobuz, which launched in the U.S. six months ago this week after a decade of success in Europe, is one of the few companies that’s designed with the audiophile in mind, bringing hi-res music to a hybrid streaming and download platform. - Specifically, whether listening to a song released this year or one released in 1980, Qobuz’s sound is bright and clear, with ample bottom and pristine definition. Its high end is often brighter than Tidal’s, although on some hip-hop tracks Tidal’s low frequencies were a bit beefier. | https://variety.com/2019/music/news/hi-res-streaming-service-qobuz-makes-inroads-six-months-after-u-s-launch-1203302742/ | None | Dan Mackta - U.S. managing director | On market share: “We’re not competing with the big guys,” says U.S. managing director Dan Mackta. “Our aspiration is to reach 1% of the market.” | |||||||||||||||
98 | How 'Playola' Is Infiltrating Streaming Services: Pay for Play Is 'Definitely Happening' | Glenn Peoples | Billboard | 2015 | US | Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music | - Playlists were once a democratic realm of tastemakers, but the most popular ones have been influenced -- and in some cases purchased -- by promotion companies, one of which was recently hired by the world’s largest music corporation. As the Internet has leveled many power blocs of the old music business, playlists have become valuable currency in streaming’s new world order, so much so that record companies now actively promote -- and sometimes pay for -- their songs to appear on such services as Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music. | https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6670475/playola-promotion-streaming-services | Must be a member to read article | ||||||||||||||||||
99 | How a new law aimed at streaming music brought the industry and Congress together | CBS News | CBS News | 2019 | US | Smokey Robinson | Apple Music, Amazon, Google, Spotify, Pandora | - Nielsen says 76 percent of music listeners now stream their music. But musicians have not always been paid fairly for digital distribution of their work. Any songs recorded prior to 1972 had zero protection under federal copyright law. | - In Washington, the Music Modernization Act aims to help by streamlining music licensing and closing a loophole in copyright law so it better fits the digital era. President Trump signed the landmark bill in October 2018, after it passed unanimously in both the House and the Senate. | https://www.cbsnews.com/news/music-modernization-act-how-a-new-law-aimed-at-streaming-music-brought-the-industry-congress-together/ | Dionne Warwick | On togetherness: "Once we all realize that we're human beings, that God put us all here on this Earth to be of service to each other, we've become a nation of I, me, my. What happened to we and us? You know, I think that's what we have to get back to." | Garrett Levin - CEO of the Digital Media Association (DiMA) //// David Israelite - president and CEO of the National Music Publishers Association | Garrett Levin - On artist payouts: "Not only were the services getting sued, but songwriters weren't actually getting paid because of longstanding challenges and actually finding the right people who are owed the money," said Levin. "That kind of lose-lose situation is the alchemy that kind of brought everyone to the table to say, 'How do we get to the art of the possible?'" //// David Israelite - On lesgilation getting passed: "I actually think one of the reasons why this happened is because Washington has become such a difficult place to get things done," he said. "Instead of going to Congress and each fighting for our own interest and probably getting nothing, we all understood that the only way we would get legislation is if we could figure it out ourselves and agree." | |||||||||||||
100 | How an indie artist earned $56k from one song on Spotify (an interview with Perrin Lamb) | Chris Robley | DIY Musician | 2015 | US | - [Perrin Lamb] earning roughly $56k for more than 10 million streams of one of his songs on Spotify. | - How music streaming can benefit independent artists 1. When you retain ownership of your master recordings, the payouts are better than many news stories lead you to believe. When major label artists complain about minuscule payouts from streaming services, you rarely hear about the chunk of change that’s being kept by the labels. After all, most major label contracts, even in the digital age, employ outdated accounting practices in order to make sure they profit first before the artist... As an independent artist, it’s very likely that YOU are the label. YOU own your masters. You keep 100% of your net streaming revenue. 2. You’re ALSO owed publishing royalties, and those add up quick if you retain 100% ownership of your publishing. You’ve probably also heard quite a few complaints about insufficient publishing royalties generated by streaming. But another important detail that usually gets left out of the discussion is splits, or how the money is divvied up between multiple songwriters and publishers...s an independent, if you’re the songwriter, you retain 100% of your total publishing rights. And you are owed publishing royalties every time your music is streamed, in addition to the fee you receive for the stream of your master recording. 3. The end of shelf life means you have a looooong time to create momentum (or, “Your old music will always be new to someone!”)... With streaming, a song can “catch” years or decades after its release, so it’s important to keep leveraging the power of your entire back catalog. 4. The connected digital ecosystem provides far more opportunities for fans to drive plays... 5. Streaming activity begets streaming activity... The more an artist’s music is streamed, the more people will listen to other tracks by the same artist. And again, this is truer in the world of streaming than in the worlds of downloads or physical media. With streaming, there’s no monetary risk. ...6. Streaming activity doesn’t live in a vacuum | https://diymusician.cdbaby.com/music-rights/artist-earned-56k-from-spotify/ | Perrin Lamb, singer-songwriter | Lamb: - When I started out, I had no delusions that I would be a “rock star.” I just wanted to support my family by doing what I love to do. My parents were teachers, so I thought, if I can make as much as a teacher, then I’m golden. It’s a tough road, definitely, but with support, perseverance, and a little stubbornness, it can work.... - I think streaming platforms are the best source of, not only revenue, but discovery at the moment for independent artists. It’s in it’s infancy and will eventually get all the copyright issues sussed out. But for now, I think it’s invaluable. As long as you as an artist have your own business in order and not too many hands in the cookie jar, it can be very lucrative. - (Interviewer) : The amount you earn per stream on Spotify is much more than what is commonly reported in stories about major label artist earnings. Any theories on that? [Lamb] : I don’t really have a “soapbox” on the streaming issue. My experience is totally different than say, Aloe Blacc’s experience. So I don’t really want to speak to that, but for me, I am the artist, sole writer, and publisher for most of my music. So, zero hands in the cookie jar.... - I think Radio still drives taste cycles. So, what is popular on the radio will color what types of songs music supervisors are looking to place, or what the public is looking to stream. But as a modern independent artist you don’t have to live and die by radio play anymore. There are infinite ways to make a living in music now, which is exciting! - [Interviewer] : Have you actively promoted your music on Spotify? [Lamb]: No. It’s happened organically. I’ve taken the less is more approach as an artist. I’m not as active on socials as most folks and I don’t tour. So I think there is a bit of mystery there, which I feel like is intriguing and it fits my personality. I found over the years that the more I try to self promote, the less I connected. If I let the music speak, it works better. | Josh Collum, indie Songwriter in a Music Business Worldwide Op-ed | - Collum: Perrin Lamb is your typical, Nashville indie singer-songwriter. He’s been in town for over a decade. He’s never been signed to a publishing or record deal. His music is delivered to Spotify by CD Baby, an indie music distributor that works with over 400,000 artists like him. He’s done well with syncs in TV and film, but income from songwriting and being a performing artist has never paid all of the bills. He’s always had other jobs along the way. He’s doing ok, but it hasn’t been easy. Then, in January of 2014, a song of his called “Everyone’s Got Something” was put on the Your Favorite Coffeehouse playlist on Spotify by their editorial team. The song had been out a year and hadn’t really done anything to that point. But, once it found its way onto the playlist… boom. Hundreds of thousands of plays turned into millions. To date, the song has about 13 million streams. And the streams have increased, not peaked, over time. He’ll make substantially more in the second year of being on the playlist than in the first. For transparency’s sake, our friends over at CD Baby sent over Perrin’s most recent sales report. You can view it here (right). When it comes to streaming fees, at last report, he’s been paid on 10,929,203 of those 13 million Spotify streams of “Everyone’s Got Something” to the tune of $44,100.60. After a distribution fee of 9%, $40,131.55 goes straight to the rights holder: Perrin.(Note: this report only shows streaming fees or “sales.” Mechanicals and digital performance royalties make up the remainder of the total $56,329.35, but historically lag behind in reporting and collection. As they have with Perrin.) And keep in mind, the Spotify streams of one song don’t live in a vacuum. They are a driver for Perrin’s business and art as a whole. They drove up the streams on other songs he has on Spotify (you’ll see another song on this report called “Little Bit” that’s made about $37,000 in sales from about 11 million Spotify streams). Perrin’s download sales have gone up. Fan-made YouTube videos have been posted and he’s collecting on those royalties through our friends at Rumblefish (CD Baby’s YouTube Monetization partner). You see, the “Post-Napster” digital ecosystem is a connected one. And if your business is structured in a way to capitalize on it, that connectivity can be incredibly powerful. And profitable. So, my hope in sharing this is to show that there is in fact… hope. And even beyond hope, there is reason to be excited. We are still in the infant stages of this digital migration, and there are already thousands and thousands of true success stories like Perrin’s. There are already artists and songwriters that are figuring out how to build strong, agile businesses for this new age. As we navigate the growing pains of this migration, and potentially decide on law, we have to be just as willing to hear their stories as we are to hear from songwriters and artists that are signed. It’s too important not to. And who knows, maybe we’ll find some solutions that work for everyone. |