Music Industry News Roundup For The Week Of 3/24/17

Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup for the week of March 24th, 2017. Spotify gets a lot of attention because it’s getting serious about its upcoming public offering, but lots of other news as well. Let’s get into it.

Spotify is nearing a new licensing deal with the major labels. It’s been out of contract for the last 2 years, but needs to reup before its IPO this year.

The Street takes a grownup look at Spotify’s current financial situation. There are a lot of forces currently at work here that are pushing Spotify to make deals that it might not want.

Speaking of Spotify, it’s collecting a huge amount of data from you. It doesn’t care much if you stream for free because it’s learning so much about you that it’s turning into cash.

Voltra has a different approach to monetizing music, both for the consumer and artist. The question is, will it survive against the deep pocketed services that have a big head start?

Just after you thought no one can top Ed Sheeran, here comes Drake again. He breaks both Apple Music and Spotify records with 90 million streams in 24 hours for his latest release.

Vinyl versus streaming – the future. Experts predict what may happen to both, but they’re actually pretty vague, and I think off the mark.

Discogs is bringing record collecting into the 21st century. Although there are many who go along kicking and screaming.

Google Hangouts gets a makeover. It’s not only going after Slack, but WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger as well.

LiveNation has acquired 13 companies in 13 months. The latest is the UK’s Isle of Wight festival. Talk about a rollup.

Radio is listened to at the same rate in all age groups. Surprising numbers from Nielsen, but these numbers have been holding steady for years.

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