Category Archives for "Music Industry News"
May 7, 2018
Don’t Look Now But Twitter Is Making A Comeback
For a while it looked like Twitter would eventually become a casualty of the social media wars, as its user base had plateaued and it continued to lose money. That now looks to be in the past as Twitter has just posted its second consecutive solid quarter of profits. On top of that, the service […]
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May 4, 2018
More Music Is Played On YouTube Than All Other Platforms Combined
The latest IFPI report describing the economics of the recorded music business of 2017 is out and among the interesting tidbits is the fact that there was more music streamed from YouTube last year than Spotify, Apple Music and all other streaming platforms combined. Considering that the per user royalties paid back to the music […]
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May 2, 2018
With A U.S. IPO, Tencent Will Become The Next Big Streaming Service In North America
There have been multiple reports that Chinese streaming service Tencent Music is getting set to file for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) very soon. An even bigger story is the pegged valuation is in the neighborhood of $25 billion, which would make it the 4th largest U.S. listed tech stock ever, just a little behind […]
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April 27, 2018
Music Modernization Act Unanimously Passes The House
The Music Modernization Act is getting closer to becoming the law of the land as the bill was unanimously passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday (April 25), with 415 voting in favor and 16 representatives not voting. It now goes to the Senate for the final vote, then must be signed by […]
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April 26, 2018
It Looks Like Google Will Shut Down Its Play Music Service
There are big changes coming to Google and YouTube’s music streaming services soon as the company tries to consolidate them all into one offering. According to a report at 9To5Google, Google will shut down its poorly titled Google Play Music streaming service and merge it into the new upcoming YouTube Remix service. YouTube also has […]
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April 25, 2018
Spotify Rolls Out A New Interface For Freemium Users
Spotify’s direct listing earlier this month on the New York Stock Exchange doesn’t mean that the company is taking it easy, as it has just rolled out a new user interface with a number of new features on its freemium tier. The catch, for the moment at least, is that only new users will see […]
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April 23, 2018
Smart Speakers Help Amazon To 100 Million Prime Subscribers
Amazon has never officially discussed its Prime service subscriber numbers in the past, leaving room for lots of speculation. Was it 90 million? 120 million? 60 million? Finally we get some real confirmation from CEOÂ Jeff Bezos himself, who announced in its annual shareholders letter that the company has broken the 100 million barrier, a new […]
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April 20, 2018
Indie DIY Artists Are 2.7% Of The Music Market
Depending on how you look at it, new figures from Midea Research examining the total revenue for recorded music last year are either good news or bad news for indie DIY artists. As the study points out, DIY artists who release music through Tunecore, CD Baby and Bandcamp took in a total of $472 million last […]
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April 18, 2018
Capitol Records Launches Innovation Center
Record labels, especially large ones, are often seen as just exploiters of artists and their music. That may be so in many cases, but labels by and large can also be centers for incubation of new artists and ideas. The problem is that it’s so often behind the scenes so it’s not brought to the […]
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April 16, 2018
Music Modernization Act Passed By The House Judiciary Committee
There’s a lot about copyright and licensing that needs to be brought into the digital age, but now we’re one step closer to that becoming reality. The United States House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously last week (32-0) to approve the new Music Modernization Act (H.R. 5447), in the first step of the process. The Music Modernization […]
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April 13, 2018
Your Label A&R Person May Soon Be A Robot
Automation is taking over so many aspects of the workplace these days, but the last place you’d ever think it would happen would be in record label talent scouting. Having a feel for new music and artists that may resonate with large segments of the population is a talent in itself, and one that’s been rewarded […]
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April 11, 2018
Under The Radar Amazon Music Adding Millions Of Subscribers
Amazon has always been the sleeping giant in music streaming. It’s Prime Music comes as a part of Amazon Prime, and although there are no official numbers as to the number of subscribers, the company hints that it’s at least hundred million. Amazon also has a stand-alone service as well called Amazon Music Unlimited, which […]
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April 9, 2018
Spotify’s Market Cap Shows Just How Powerful Apple Really Is
Spotify’s direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange last week proved to be a little underwhelming in that most existing stockholders decided to hold on to their shares, a good sign for the company’s long-term future. Its stock price at the end of the week ended up at just shy of $148, which translated […]
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April 5, 2018
Which Streaming Service Pays The Most? You’ll Be Surprised
Streaming royalties are a completely moving target, and what’s reported as the average payment today will certainly change tomorrow. The reason is that there are so many variables that go into calculating a stream payment. That said, the chart below from Statista provides the gross payouts to labels per stream from each major streaming service. […]
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April 5, 2018
Spotify Finally Goes Public, And Sony Sells Some Of Its Stock
Spotify finally went public yesterday in a unique direct listing that had Wall Street watching the offering closely. The stock opened at a price of $165.90 per share but fell to $149.01 by the end of the day. The stock dropped down another 8% to $140.02 by midday Wednesday. That said, even at $140 per […]
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