Music Industry News Roundup For The Week Of 3/10/17

Music Industry News Roundup Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup for the week of March 10th, 2017. Nothing major, but a lot of interesting business tidbits this week. Let’s get into it.

Streaming music is a bad business according to this article. It is if that’s the only product you have. As I’ve explained before, it’s a loss-leader for Apple, Amazon and Google.

But the music business is a model for non-music businesses. Which means, learn by our mistakes.

Spotify is quietly A/B testing the pricing for a high-resolution tier. It’s called Spotify Hifi, and it will be either $5 or $10 more than the normal paid subscription.

And Spotify has hit 50 million paid subscribers. That said, it’s beginning to look like the streaming business is slowing down. Time to lower the price? That will give it the kick it needs.

Ed Sheeran is dominating Spotify. He breaks a single day record for streams with his new album, then tops a billion views on YouTube.

Nirvana’s Nevermind is still on the charts 350 weeks later. It has a way to go to top Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon ( 741 weeks), but that’s still pretty impressive.

Another indie artist goes #1. Move over Chance the Rapper, Stormzy hit the top of the charts in the UK.

Indie artists should not skip streaming. CD Baby’s CEO gives some pretty interesting numbers that just backs up what we all know – the music industry is quickly become all about the stream.

Songwriters are pushing hard for increased royalties from interactive streaming. It’s currently a pittance of a pittance, and they deserve more.

New York City is the center of the music universe. More ticket sales there than anywhere else, and it even has twice as many digital music startups than Silicon Valley or Los Angeles.

Iron Maiden is beating the scalpers. They’ve managed to bypass 3 of the top secondary ticket sellers in the UK. Quite an achievement!

That’s the Music News Roundup of what went on in the music industry last week. Have a great week ahead!

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