Music Industry News Roundup For The Week Of 5/19/17

Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup for the week ending on May 19th, 2017. The big news in the streaming world again this week, and once again, some of it is not good. Let’s get into it.

Apple to stop exclusives. After much negative feedback from the industry, it looks like it has backed off.

Jimmy Iovine thinks a free Apple Music tier would have 400 million users. He’s probably way off, but it would be the largest in the world if it went that way.

Amazon says it has no intention of becoming a label. And why would it want to? It has the best of both worlds already.

Pandora is trying to sell Ticketfly. It says it wants to concentrate on the streaming business, but this sounds more like it’s trying to raise operating capital.

And it looks like the Sirius XM buyout of Pandora is back on. It will happen eventually, at the right price.

Google says that all its free music is a good thing. What else are they going to say? I mean, it is a good thing – for them.

YouTube Go Live is now open to everyone. It was limited to users with at least 1,000 subscribers but no more. You have to have a verified channel and no recent restrictions though.

eMusic is going to relaunch. The big question is – why? It’s not like the world needs another streaming alternative.

The debt has finally caught up with iHeartRadio. It’s now signaling it might not make it through the year.

Universal Music signed a big licensing deal with China’s Tencent. It looks like I nailed this one in a previous post. This could be a precursor to a bigger deal.

20 music startups that will present at MIDEM. It will be interesting to see how many are funded, and how many actually survive 5 years.

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