Music Industry News Roundup For The Week Of 12/9/16

Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup for the week of December 9th, 2016. There’s a lot of news this week, especially on the streaming side of things, so let’s get right into it.

The three major labels experienced growth this year, all thanks to streaming. Many feel that the industry has finally turned the corner on revenue, especially with Amazon Music finally launched.

Apple Music has topped 20 million users. A milestone for sure, but it still trails Spotify by a lot.

Pandora’s new interactive service has finally launched. Pandora Premium is here, but will anyone really care?

This Quartz article thinks that Apple Music and Spotify are too far ahead for Pandora Premium to matter. Maybe so, but this is more for shareholders than users at the moment.

This survey says yes, at least for the new iHeartRadio Plus service, pegging the potential subscribers at around 4 million.

Speaking of streaming numbers, there’s a new king of Spotify streams. Drake loses his crown to The Weeknd.

YouTube announced it’s paid over $1 billion in royalties to artists, labels and songwriters this year. This is strictly from advertising revenue as the YouTube Red subscription service has yielded essentially zilch in terms of users or royalties.

YouTube offers some big numbers, but the music industry claims that’s not enough. The royalty split still doesn’t work, but there no immediate relief in sight.

Brits now spend more money on vinyl than on downloads. No surprise here, except for how quickly downloads are slipping from our digital vocabulary.

A US court ruled against Duran Duran in regards to reclaiming the rights to their first 3 albums. It claims they are bound by an English contract, not an American one.

Finally, a law against ticket bots. New York signed into law legislation against unfair ticket purchasing and reselling practices, which could soon mean better seats and better prices for everyone if the law spreads to other states.

That’s the Music News Roundup of what went on in the music industry last week. Let’s see what next week brings.