Lead: we report back on our recent New Kids On The Block: Insight Into A New Generation online conference that we ran in conjunction with UK trade bodies the BPI and ERA, drawing out the 10 key lessons from the different panels and presentations. These include: children are much more active (and increasingly so) than previously presumed; […]

Singapore’s digital music business is small but – relatively – thriving, with a large number of streaming services, a strong tech scene and a high conversion rate from free to premium streaming. The post Country Profile – Singapore 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We like to keep an eye on subscription-based entertainment businesses outside music, and yesterday two big companies’ financial results offered us some new data to consider. Sony Corporation’s results included the announcement that there are now 44.9 million people paying for the PlayStation Plus service, up from 41.5 million a quarter ago. PS Plus costs $9.99 a […]

We’ve written before about one area where Chinese music streaming services like NetEase Cloud Music beat most of their western equivalents: they have a thriving comments ecosystem where listeners are giving their views on music. The flipside of that: those western streaming services don’t have to worry about comment / community moderation, which can be […]

This will soon be the Daily Hipgnosis Cash-Splashing News Site if the company continues at this rate of snapping up music catalogues. This morning’s announcement concerns Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, the co-founders of Blondie, who have sold 100% of their writer’s share and neighbouring rights royalties to Hipgnosis for an undisclosed amount. This is […]

It’s not just the US where short-video apps are facing pressure from music rightsholders over their licensing deals (or lack of). It’s happening in India too, where a number of these apps have been spiking in popularity since TikTok was banned there in June.  Livemint reported that four music labels – including India’s biggest, T-Series – have […]

Earlier this week, we wrote about a controversy brewing Denmark with a dispute between collecting society Koda and YouTube. Koda announced that YouTube would be removing its members music from its platform, after the society declined a temporary extension to its licensing deal (while a new one is being negotiated by pan-Nordic hub Polaris) that […]

As long goodbyes go, Google Play Music’s has been LONG. It was July 2017 when YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen first revealed plans to merge Google’s music streaming (and cloud locker) service with YouTube’s equivalent – then called YouTube Red, but since rebranded as YouTube Music. Nearly three years later, in May 2020, YouTube […]

Having published its latest financial results this morning, Warner Music Group held its quarterly earnings call this afternoon, with CEO Steve Cooper and CFO Eric Levin fielding questions from analysis. One of those questions focused on Spotify’s podcasts expansion, and whether it’s causing tensions around the potential impact on royalties paid out to companies like […]

Warner Music Group has published its latest quarterly financial results, for its fiscal third quarter (calendar Q2). They reveal the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic continues to have on its business. WMG generated revenues of $1.01bn last quarter, down by 4.5% year-on-year. However, its digital revenues grew by 11% to $720m as part of that, […]

It seems to be the season for TikTok alternatives to be staking their claims for young video creators. The latest example is a new app called Clash Video, which soft-launched last week for iPhones in the US. “We’re building the first Creator-Founded social network, empowering short form video creators through innovative monetization options, inclusive communities, and […]

Apple Music is working with artist Victoria Monét on “an exclusive virtual listening party” taking place this Thursday (6 August) to celebrate the release of her new album ‘Jaguar’ the following day. The event will be presented by Apple Music’s ‘Today’s Hits’ playlist and hosted by Beats 1’s Nadeska Alexis. According to Broadway World, this is […]

Warner Music Group’s push for diversity and inclusion across its company has a new boss. Dr Maurice Stinnett will be WMG’s new head of global equity, diversity and inclusion, having joined from a similar role at BSE Global, owner of NBA team the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center venue. Stinnett certainly has seniority: he’ll […]

Storied label Motown Records is holding its second accelerator for artists this year, although thanks to Covid-19 the program will be virtual this time round. The 12-week program will see four artists from Detroit – Madelyn Grant, Curtis Roach, B Free and Sara Marie Barron – sharing $20k in grants and working with the label and […]

It’s clearly the time of year for lawsuits and legal threats. Publisher Round Hill Music is suing distributor TuneCore and its parent company Believe. The lawsuit claims that the two companies “reproduced and distributed musical compositions owned or controlled by Round Hill… despite knowing that the Round Hill Compositions were never properly licensed. Moreover, beyond failing […]

Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc has signed music licensing deals with Warner Music Group, Warner Chappell, Universal Music Publishing, Merlin and a number of members of US publishing body the NMPA. Bloomberg reported on the deals this morning, adding that Snap is testing a new feature in Australia and New Zealand that lets people add […]

Shooting music videos is possible but challenging within the social distancing measures of this Covid-19 pandemic. The latest example of an artist getting a creative way around those barriers is Noah Cyrus, as part of the ‘A Sony Collaboration’ series of projects. You may remember we wrote about a Nicky Jam TikTok video created through the scheme […]

Events have moved fast since Friday for TikTok’s business in the US, it’s fair to say. We’ll start with the latest news: confirmation from Microsoft that it’s in talks about an acquisition of TikTok in the US and certain other countries, with a mid-September deadline to reach an agreement with the app’s parent company ByteDance […]

One Direction and Goldie? Now that’s a collaboration made in musical heaven, possibly. Sadly they’re not working together (yet!) but they have both just got new websites to celebrate significant anniversaries. It’s 10 years since One Direction were formed during TV show The X Factor, and their 10 Years of 1D website offers an interactive […]

We first wrote about startup Audius when it raised a $5.5m funding round in August 2018 for a service that was described as ‘SoundCloud on the blockchain’. When it launched its public beta a year later, it was interesting, but its ‘censorship-resistant’ philosophy created some headaches in the potential for unauthorised uploads, and the difficulty […]

Bandcamp has been getting a lot of love from artists in recent months, thanks to its Covid-19 relief and Black Lives Matter sales. One artist who’s not quite so keen, though, is British post-punk band Wire, who’ve been having some problems with their albums appearing on Bandcamp without their say-so. “You may have recently seen […]

Twitch is building on its recent growth of music livestreams by launching its first ever ‘Music Month’. It’ll be spending August promoting some of the musicians who are operating on its platform, including featuring their streams on the service’s homepage and its own official channel. The latter will include a show every Friday called ‘Follow […]

Another day, another big deal for UK-based Hipgnosis Songs Fund, which continues to enthusiastically splash its cash on music catalogues. The latest belongs (or rather, belonged) to Barry Manilow. “Hipgnosis has acquired 100% of Barry Manilow’s worldwide recording royalties (excluding Sound Exchange royalties) in his Catalogue comprising 917 songs,” announced the company this morning. We […]

The founders of music management company ATC Management have launched a new firm called Driift, to produce and promote ticketed online concerts. The team has already worked on recent livestreams for Laura Marling (who sold 6,500 tickets for her recent Union Chapel concerts), Lianna La Havas and Dermot Kennedy (who Driift says sold more than […]

Something is kicking off in the state of Denmark, and it’s the latest music licensing controversy around YouTube. Danish collecting society Koda issued a press release last week titled ‘Google removes all Danish music from YouTube’, although the first paragraph makes it clear that this removal hasn’t happened yet. The background is negotiations for a […]

As predicted, Facebook is officially launching music videos, courtesy of licensing deals with all three major labels plus indie licensing agency Merlin, as well as BMG, Kobalt, and other labels, publishers and collecting societies. It’s not a global launch. For now, it’s in the US, as well as in India and Thailand, where the new […]

Anjunabeats A&R & Recordings Manager (Involved Productions) London, Bermondsey UK Salary dependent on experience  With a rich 20 year history, Anjunabeats remains one of the world’s best-loved independent dance labels. We’re looking to grow our music team with a new A&R hire as we continue to redefine and evolve the sound of electronic music.  Working […]

FitXR is the UK-based startup that’s had a hit with virtual reality fitness game BoxVR. Earlier this month, the company raised $7.5m of Series A funding, and now it’s announcing a major overhaul of its main product. Renamed FitXR, the app will start with more than four hours of boxing workouts, each with their own musical soundtrack, […]

Spotify announced its latest financial results yesterday, with growth in listeners and subscribers at the top end of its forecasts, despite the Covid-19 pandemic. CEO Daniel Ek talked to Music Ally after the financials were announced, starting with his view on the growth. “It’s very encouraging. Already last earnings call we were seeing a lot […]

The early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic’s global spread didn’t hamper Spotify’s growth in the first quarter of this year. But how about Q2, the first full quarter (near enough) of lockdowns, furloughs and financial uncertainties across much of the world? Today we have our answer, with Spotify’s latest quarterly financial results. The post Spotify […]

UK firm Shodement has been building its ‘talent network’ since 2012, working on music projects and developing artists – the latter including investment, signing brand deals, booking live shows, managing releases and building fanbases. It also has a creative agency division working with big brands of all stripes, and runs events and festivals. Now it’s also in the […]

Audiobridge is one of the startups trying to do clever things in the cloud with the music recording process. Its iOS app enables musicians to work remotely on multi-track projects, recording and uploading tracks from their smartphones to sync them across the devices of their collaborators. The company is also raising money through an equity crowdfunding campaign, hoping to […]

Taylor Swift’s new album ‘Folklore’ may have been a surprise release, but its popularity is entirely unsurprising. According to Republic Records, the album sold more than 1.3m copies in its first 24 hours, and was streamed 80.6m times on Spotify and 35.5m times on Apple Music. Critical acclaim has been flooding in for the album, […]

British artist Wiley had something of a meltdown on social media on Friday and Saturday, posting a series of antisemitic tweets and Instagram videos over a period of several hours. Eventually his account on Twitter was temporarily suspended and many of the tweets removed, although a number of his posts are still live on Instagram […]

Fresh from striking an exclusive deal with Apple Music, the Verzuz battles series garnered its highest viewing figures yet from its latest episode. That’s the one where Snoop Dogg and DMX went head to head in a ‘battle of the dogs’ last Wednesday (22 July). Verzuz posted the stats itself, noting that the battle had […]

Will Josh Richards be the next new music star to emerge on TikTok? TalentX certainly hopes so. It’s the digital talent management company behind influencer collective Sway LA, of which Richards is a member, and he’s the first signing to the company’s new label TalentX Records. It’s a partnership with Warner Records, which it claims […]

MyPart is the Israeli startup that’s been working on technology for deep analysis of music, for A&R and other purposes. Part of the Abbey Road Red incubator, we profiled the startup earlier this year, and reported on its pitch at the NY:LON Connect conference in January. Anyway, you know another company that famously built tech […]

BeatStars is the online music marketplace that famously sold Lil Nas X the $30 trap beat that he’d use for ‘Old Town Road’. By June 2019, the company had paid out more than $50m to its community of producers supplying beats for sale, and that had grown to $70m by April 2020, when BeatStars signed […]

We reported earlier this month on plans by Indian collecting society IPRS to start charging licensing fees for music livestreams – and initial criticism that the plans could leave artists out of pocket. Now the plans are changing. Medianama reported that the introduction of the new tariffs appears to have been delayed until September, amid […]

‘Tencent Musician’ is Tencent Music’s program for independent artists in China, offering them distribution and promotion across its three streaming services. To celebrate the initiative’s third birthday, Tencent Music (TME) has published some figures. “The program has generated 590 million yuan in revenue for original music content creators since its inception,” it announced. That’s around […]

‘Fake music’ on streaming services is an ongoing challenge for labels and artist teams to tackle. That’s the case whether the music is really by a star but uploaded without their permission under a different artist name, or the flipside of that: music by an unknown artist uploaded in a way that makes it appear […]

The first edition of MUdaL was a great success – fostering new thinking, initiatives and connections for the region during these difficult times. (Translated from Spanish: Spanish language version) MUdaL managed to bring together, in its first edition, 3,000 registered participants , including artists, bands, booking and management agencies, along with industry professionals across Latin America and beyond […]

Digital Deliveries & Rights Manager  Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep are two of the world’s leading independent dance labels. Based in Bermondsey, London, Anjuna celebrates 20 years at the forefront of electronic music this year. We’re growing rapidly and need an experienced, meticulous and solutions-oriented individual to bolster our digital supply chain and rights management capabilities. You’ll […]

Another Covid-19 lockdown trend is the sharp growth of viewing hours for livestreaming video services, particularly Twitch. Industry firms StreamElements and Arsenal·gg have published their latest ‘State of the Stream’ report quantifying this growth. “Twitch’s 2nd quarter chart bars look like skyscrapers compared to Q1’s single floor dwellings,” it claimed, with a chart showing monthly viewing hours […]

The key Covid-19 trends for social media seem clear: spikes in users and engagement (because lots more people are at home doomscrolling through their feeds) but big challenges to ad revenues, with brands holding back their budgets. Twitter’s latest financial results are the latest evidence for both. The company averaged 186 ‘monetisable daily active users’ (mDAUs) in the […]

This should be received wisdom by now, but still isn’t: getting on streaming playlists isn’t a marketing strategy. It’s certainly part of a wider plan, but putting your faith entirely in getting a prominent slot on a playlist is a big eggs-in-one-basket mistake. And besides, in 2020, it’s all the other activity and your story […]

Facial recognition technology is currently a hot potato in all kinds of sectors, music included. So the idea of a music app that monitors the listener’s facial expression to provide recommendations may spook a fair few people. It’s interesting to see what’s possible though, and a new app called MMP is using machine learning technology to […]

Research news of the day! “Millennials know ‘No Diggity.’ But Gen Z? Maybe half of them, at best.” This is one of the findings from an interesting study published by The Pudding on how well (or not) hit songs from the 1990s are being remembered. It’s based on more than 3m datapoints collected via a music quiz […]

TikTok is paying a growing number of music creators through its licensing deals – see this week’s agreements with Believe and the NMPA for the latest on that. Now the social app is launching a $200m fund in the US for ‘creators’ more generally – as in people creating videos on its platform. “We’re launching the TikTok Creator Fund to encourage those […]

Streaming service Pandora is getting into the livestreaming game with a series of performances branded Pandora Live. The first one takes place next week (28 July) with country star Kane Brown, with the promise of more “across country, Latin, R&B, pop, and rock” to follow this year. Besides streaming performances live, Pandora said that there’ll be […]

Bandcamp has held four of its special sales – Fridays where the platform waives its revenue share of all music and merch sales – since March, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. According to CEO Ethan Diamond, those four days generated more than $20m of sales for artists and […]

“Surprise,” wrote Taylor Swift in a social post yesterday. “Tonight at midnight I’ll be releasing my entire brand new album of songs I’ve poured all of my whims, dreams, fears, and musings into.” The album – ‘Folklore’ – was written and recorded in Covid-19 isolation. “Before this year I probably would’ve overthought when to release this […]

Another day, another licensing deal for TikTok, and this one’s a biggie. It’s signed a global, multi-year agreement with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) in the US. That’s big because the NMPA has been rattling its sabre at TikTok for some time over licensing, with publishers angry at the lack of royalties coming their […]

Apple is facing antitrust scrutiny over the way it runs its App Store, including the 30% cut of in-app purchases (which drops to 15% for subscriptions after a year of someone paying) that it takes. But look! Here’s a study that has found “Apple’s App Store commission rate is similar in magnitude to the commission rates charged […]

Ninja Tune-signed artist Actress has launched what we can term a “guess-to-unlock” campaign for new (and free) track ’88’. The British electronic act started it all rolling by tweeting a very simple message on 14th July. “Album on bandcamp in 24hrs,” he wrote. There was some speculation among his fanbase that this was going to be the […]

We’ve already reported on BTS’s successful ‘Bang Bang Con’ livestreamed concert in June. Now it’s been awarded an official Guinness World Record for attracting the ‘most viewers for a music concert live stream’. The official figure is 756,000 fans from more than 100 countries – and what made that even more impressive was that this was a paid livestream, with […]

Lots of music companies see India and Africa as important areas for growth in the coming years, and that applies to companies focusing on lyrics too. LyricFind announced its expansion plans yesterday, with two new remote teams in India and South Africa. The Indian team will be focusing on providing lyrics in Hindi and Marathi, […]

Napster has launched a new charitable giving programme in the US called Napster4Good. People taking out a new Napster subscription can nominate a charity to receive a portion of their $9.99 a month, for as long as their subscription lasts. What’s more, the entirety of their first month’s subscription will go to that charity. Napster has […]

“Who in the room knows Roblox?” asked WMG’s chief innovation officer for recorded music Scott Cohen at the NY:LON Connect conference in January. Only a few people put their hands up in response. “It’s a gaming platform for kids, and they not only play games, they create their own games and play those games with […]

Lead: Music-centric filters on social apps are designed to appeal not just to hardcore fans but also to get enough “shareability” to pull in potential new fans. They are also being used by labels themselves to create a form of augmented branding. We look at who is doing them well, if they are worth the investment and […]

In a fast-growing region for recorded music income, Mexico has continued to shine, its impressive annual results showing continued growth and impressive numbers. The post Country Profile – Mexico 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Imagine if, a few weeks after you started paying for Spotify or Apple Music, some of your favourite artists’ back catalogues disappeared from the service? There have been pullouts like this in the past (Taylor Swift, most famously) but in 2020, we take it for granted that the catalogues of music streaming services are both […]

British artist Lianne La Havas has just released her latest, self-titled album, and one of the marketing elements for it wants to encourage fans to get planting… virtually. The ‘Flowerbed’ website is exactly that: a digital flowerbed where fans can plant a new flower every day. They make those flowers bloom by signing in to Spotify […]

The longer this lockdown goes on, the more artists are finding different ways to experiment with the format of livestreams – and also to charge for them. Country star Tim McGraw is the latest example. He’s going to be holding a “unique all-live album premiere” event on 22 August, broadcasting from Nashville to tie in with […]

British artist Ellie Goulding has a pair of new videos out for her new tracks ‘Brightest Blue’ and ‘New Heights’. They’re the result of a partnership between label Polydor and Vevo for the latter’s ‘Official Live Performance’ series, but what’s notable is their use of ‘XR’ technology, which blends camera footage with computer-generated content in […]

“KKBOX Group and Bitmark’s Open Letter to Beatmakers” may be slightly over-egging the pudding of what’s basically the launch of a new licensing platform. The letter, from Taiwan-headquartered digital music firm KKBox’s group chief content officer and rights tech company Bitmark’s CEO, is announcing OurBeat, which in fairness is an interesting thing. “Anyone who registers […]

On 17 July, artist Logic announced his retirement ahead of the release of (seemingly) his final album ‘No Pressure’ a week later. “It’s been a great decade. Now it’s time to be a great father,” he tweeted. As it turns out, it’s also time to sign a megabucks exclusive deal with a livestreaming video service. […]

Joe Rogan, Kim Kardashian West, Michelle Obama… and now Addison Rae. Spotify’s lineup of podcast exclusives continues to swell, with Rae the latest to join its roster. She’s currently the second most popular star on TikTok with 51.4 million followers – behind only Charli D’Amelio’s 72.6 million – and now she has a deal with Spotify’s […]

Who needs expensive Bluetooth headphones or fiddly earbuds that get lost somewhere between the sofa and the shops? Not Elon Musk, that’s for sure. His latest startup, Neuralink, is reportedly working on a brain/computer interface that can stream music straight to your grey matter. “If you’ve solved hard problems with phones / wearables (sealing, signal […]

In February this year we wrote about Amplify London, a new partnership between YouTube Music and UK charity London Music Fund to support grassroots projects for young musicians. Now the first five projects to benefit have been announced, which will reach up to 200 11-21 year-olds across London in the UK. The projects include: a […]

The Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS) has signed a deal with Facebook for use of the repertoire it represents in videos, music stickers and stories on the platform. The deal also covers similar usage on Instagram, with IPRS saying it “will cover licensing and royalties whenever music represented by the IPRS is used on Facebook […]

One of the hits of the Covid-19 lockdown has been the Verzuz battles on Instagram, where high-profile artists go head-to-head for… well, they’re less battles and more mutual love-ins, exchanging their hits in an atmosphere of respect. Anyway, they’ve been hugely popular on Instagram Live: Jill Scott and Erykah Badu attracted more than 740,000 viewers […]

Our main feature explores the evolution of live music, as we look towards a time when concerts are able to resume safely. What have we learned from the livestreaming boom during the Covid-19 lockdown, and what are the prospects for ‘hybrid’ online/offline concerts in the coming months? We’ve also got a feature recapping two thought-provoking […]

We reported recently on production company Broccoli Content’s launch of an ‘Equality in Audio’ pact to change the lack of diversity in the podcasting industry. Spotify was one of the companies signing up – admittedly after a bit of public nudging from Broccoli Content boss Renay Richardson – and now the streaming service has published some research that shows […]

Metalcore band Underoath are the latest artist to do something more involved with livestreaming. Underoath: Observatory is a series of three concerts, each of which will see the band playing one of their albums in full, from a venue in Florida. Tickets for each show cost $15, while a three-show ticket bundle is $45. However, each […]

Earlier this year, we published an article about how Atlanta rapper K Camp’s ‘Lottery’ track went viral on TikTok and Instagram last year, kickstarted by teenager Jalaiah Harmon’s video of herself dancing to the track. The track was renamed ‘Lottery (Renegade)’ early this year to ensure that people searching for its ‘Renegade’ hook found it on streaming […]

UK collecting society PRS for Music is suing airline Qatar Airways for copyright infringement, and the case will be heard in the English courts – an early boost for the society. “The airline, which operates over 200,000 flights per year, and offers music as an integral part of its in-flight service with up to 4,000 entertainment […]

We sometimes use ‘fight’ and ‘battle’ metaphors when talking about the music streaming market. Well, you wouldn’t want to get into a scrap with the latest entrant into that market. Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the popular mixed martial arts organisation, and now it’s launched its own music streaming app: UFC Ultimate Sound. It’s the result […]

Reliance Jio Platforms is the parent company of Jio, the largest telco in India and the owners of the JioSaavn music streaming service. The company has been on a spree of funding announcements in recent months – raising more than $20.2bn from various technology companies and investors. We reported on Facebook taking a $5.7bn stake in April, […]

Joe Biden, Kim Kardashian West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Wiz Khalifa and Apple’s official Twitter account all had a message for followers last night: to send them bitcoin, and because they were feeling generous, they’d send back double. Sit down and grab the smelling salts for this revelation: their accounts had been […]

And still the new livestreaming startups keep coming: we have two more to tell you about today. Gramrphone was one of the six winners in the #NextStageChallenge hackathon earlier this year – Music Ally was a partner in that event. Its service helps artists to stream live from their digital audio workstation (DAW) via Gramrphone’s software, creating their […]

Amazon already owns one of the key livestreaming video platforms, in Twitch. Now its Amazon Web Services division is launching something that could help brands (perhaps including labels) to create their own-brand versions of Twitch. It’s called Amazon Interactive Video Services (IVS) and is described as “a managed live streaming solution that is quick and easy to […]

In the Q1 2020 edition of our Music Ally Report (which you can read here if you missed it) we looked at ‘the hi-power growth of lo-fi hip-hop playlists’ on YouTube and Spotify alike. Round-the-clock streams of chilled-out hip hop have attracted millions of subscribers to YouTube channels run by curators like ChilledCow and Chillhop Music, […]

Liteboxer is the latest fitness startup that’s making music a key part of its service. It launched yesterday, with both TechCrunch and Engadget running with the ‘Peloton of boxing’ shorthand to describe the company’s offering. That means a combination of hardware and software: a free-standing machine with lights to guide your punches, which connects to a smartphone or tablet app […]

Another day, another catalogue acquisition for deep-pocketed investment firm Hipgnosis Songs Fund. This time it belongs to Grammy-winning songwriter and producer RedOne, whose credits include collaborations with Lady Gaga (‘Poker Face’, ‘Bad Romance’ and ‘Just Dance’ included); Nicki Minaj, Enrique Iglesias and Jennifer Lopez. Hipgnosis has acquired 100% of RedOne’s songs and recorded music interests: […]

Amazon Music is the latest streaming service to launch a programme to push emerging artists. It is called Breakthrough and echoes the initiatives of Spotify (Radar), Apple Music (Up Next), Deezer (Next) and other rivals. The initial crop of acts is drawn from the US, UK and Germany – Arlo Parks, Jay1, Kiana Ledé, Gabby Barrett, Provinz […]

Spotify’s ‘audio-first’ strategy – as originally outlined here – is about one audio app to rule them all, currently focused on music and podcasts, with an eye to other kinds of content in the future. All delivered through the same app. Apple’s strategy is markedly different: its audio is split between three different apps. Music in Apple […]

It’s important that the industry (us included) starts to move away from talking about the ‘live concerts shutdown’ as a global trend, now that a growing number of countries are tentatively opening up their live industries again. In Japan, for example, the government has further relaxed its restrictions on mass gatherings. Having previously capped indoor events […]

Let us take you back on a short tour of Facebook music-video speculation. Start in 2012 when reports claimed Vevo – then the key aggregator of music videos – was in talks to ditch YouTube in favour of a partnership with Facebook. Then move to 2015, when video was one of the topics in the social network’s tentative talks […]

Advertising industry body the IAB has published its latest figures on the podcast ads market in the US. “With an expected growth rate of 14.7%, US podcast advertising revenues are nearing the $1bn mark,” it claimed. Are they really, though? The report doesn’t actually give a figure for its 2020 revenue prediction, but it does […]

We’ve reported on Linkfire’s various partnerships to get conversion (or ‘attribution’) data from streaming services, so that music marketers can tell not just that fans tapped or clicked on smart links, but whether they streamed, followed etc afterwards. But this isn’t an idea confined to one smart-links company. Feature·fm has just announced the addition of […]

Pitbull is the latest artist looking to do more with livestreaming and video content, and he’s found a partner to help. He’s working with US firm LiveXLive in a “multi-year revenue-share content partnership” that will see Pitbull play a series of pay-per-view livestream concerts, while also launching a video podcast (or ‘vodcast’). The latter will […]

Slowly but surely, the crossover between Amazon Music and its parent company’s Twitch subsidiary is growing. Amazon Music’s channel on the livestreaming platform has been ramping up during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the streaming service has also been throwing some promotional weight behind artists’ own streams on Twitch. Now it’s launching a series of ‘Amazon […]

To adapt the old cliché about buses: you wait ages for a music livestream startup to arrive, then two come at once! Except actually, the two are arriving just after what feels like another couple of dozen. Can FanTracks and Bulldog DM stand out from the crowd? FanTracks is launching with a prominent artist at […]

SoundCloud’s evolution from a streaming service to a suite of distribution and related tools for artists continues. The company now has a ‘Mastering on SoundCloud’ service, powered by Dolby. “As the last step of your upload flow, you can make any track release-ready in minutes for one low cost per master,” promises SoundCloud. “Pick from […]

TikTok remains banned in India, and some of the rival short-form video services there are enjoying their moment in the sun as a result. One of them, Roposo, has given some startling figures to Bloomberg on its growth in the wake of the ban. “It’s peaking at 500,000 new users an hour and expects to […]

British collecting society PRS for Music has offered another warning that the Covid-19 pandemic will be delivering its biggest hit to songwriter royalties later this year. PRS has just paid out its July 2020 distribution, £132.4m, which was up by 3% year-on-year. However, CEO Andrea Martin warned the society’s members that there are tough times […]

Last week’s reports of an imminent Spotify launch in Russia were correct, but it’s part of a wider expansion in eastern Europe for the streaming service. Yesterday, it launched in 13 new countries in the region: Russia plus Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The […]

The latest music company making promises about how it plans to make its senior management more diverse is Live Nation. “We commit to increasing diversity at every level of our company. This will start at the very top with our Board of Directors, where we plan to nominate more Black, indigenous and people of color […]

Apparently rumours on Twitter have suggested that music artist Jason DeRulo earns around $75k for every TikTok video that he posts. Complex went to the horse’s mouth to establish whether it’s true, asking DeRulo about it in an interview. “I think it’s tacky to say what I do make from them, but it’s far more than […]

“The MP3 file has become the URL,” said Spotify boss Daniel Ek 10 years ago, in 2010. Yet the MP3 lives on: it’s actually celebrating its silver (25th) anniversary today, with the file extension name .mp3 having been minted on 14 July 1995 by the Fraunhofer Society. Within five years, the MP3 would be turning the record […]

You might know Music Tectonics for its music industry podcast, or for its conferences in the US. Created by PR company Rock Paper Scissors, it’s now pulling its content and community together in a mobile app. Released for Android and for iPhone yesterday, it’s aimed at anyone working in / interested in the intersection of music and technology. It offers […]

Nielsen Music / MRC Data has published its mid-year report on the Canadian music market, revealing that despite the Covid-19 pandemic, total audio consumption rose by 5.7% in Canada in the first half of 2020. That’s based on the research firm’s formula blending album and track sales with on-demand audio streams. Breaking that down, Canadians […]

Midia Research’s latest blog post digs in to how the structure of music hits has changed over the past 20 years, albeit with a limited dataset: the Billboard top 10 in July 2000 and July 2020. It offers four main conclusions. First, songs are shorter overall: a 16% decrease from an average length of four minutes […]

More than 15 million people follow Spotify’s ‘Global Top 50’ music chart, making it an important discovery channel on the service. Now it’s looking to do the same thing for podcasts, albeit locally. This afternoon, Spotify is launching podcast charts in 26 countries, including the US and UK. The format mirrors its music rankings: the […]

Besides being musicians, Zoë Keating and David Lowery have been two of the most prominent voices for artists’ rights in the streaming era. Solo artist Keating has regularly published her streaming income data to further transparency around payouts for artists. She was an early adopter of Bandcamp, went public with her concerns about YouTube’s artist […]

K-pop is the genre that ate the world whole. Acts like BTS, Blackpink, Twice and TVXQ are not just some of the biggest acts within the genre – they are some of the biggest acts in the world. There is a lot that other artists can learn from how K-pop markets itself, how its acts […]

Musixmatch provides licensed lyric features to the likes of Google, Apple Music, Amazon and Instagram, having deals in place with over 10,000 publishers globally. It also has direct relationships with over 1m artists who are verified on the platform through their labels, their publishers or even directly.  Hot on the heels of the announcement that […]

More than 70k videos appeared in YouTube’s ‘trending’ section last year. That’s the tab that spotlights videos that YouTube’s algorithm thinks are currently taking off, and it can drive significant traffic to them. So how does it work? Data scientist Ammar Alyousfi has been doing the hard work, analysing the data from those 70k videos […]

Warner Music Central Europe has created a stream-to-unlock initiative to push ‘100Tausend’ (‘100 Thousand’), the new single from German artist Mike Singer which is released on 17 July. Users going to a page on his website pick their streaming service of choice and then they have to play ‘Paranoid’ (the first single from the new […]

The Streets are the latest artist to explore ticketed livestreams, with plans for a pay-per-view concert on 6 August filmed at the Earth venue in London. It’s part of the band’s series of drive-in concerts across the UK, planned to replace the string of festival dates which were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The […]

Spotify Singles has been combining artists’ re-recordings of their own songs with covers of other musicians’ tracks for some time. Now Apple Music is getting in on the idea with its new ‘At Home With Sessions’. Emerging British artist Arlo Parks is the first to feature, reworking three of her own tracks. As the name […]

We reported on Friday about the bumpy start for Rave Family Block Fest, the dance music festival being held within the game Minecraft. People who’d paid for tickets to attend were finding it difficult to access the event, and when they did get in, they realised that the music itself had to be streamed separately […]

Music Ally is long enough in the tooth to remember the days when big music stars really could cause traffic spikes that might crash big digital services. That’s rarely the case nowadays, which is why we were extremely sceptical on Friday when we saw the headline ‘Juice Wrld’s fans crash Spotify as posthumous third album […]

The US’s new Mechanical Licensing Collective body (MLC) has provided an update on its plans to launch a portal for independent songwriters to register their works. At the NY:LON Connect conference in January, MLC chair Alisa Coleman said the aim was to have the portal live early in the second quarter of 2020. Then the […]

The Financial Times is the latest publication with an approving profile of Bandcamp. It’s part of a wave of admiration for the platform after its recent Covid-19 and Juneteenth / Black Lives Matter rev-share waiving sales, as well as the wider issue of artists’ income from streaming. There’s a new figure too. “Over a 30-day […]

The mobile games industry is one of the sectors benefitting from the Covid-19 pandemic, at least in terms of people’s engagement with its products. According to analytics firm App Annie, there were an average of 1bn mobile game downloads a week during the second quarter of this year, up by 20% year-on-year. “Quarantined consumers also set […]

As the guests on the recent #TheShowMustBePaused edition of the Music Ally TV Show made clear, music companies promising to address a lack of diversity in their businesses is good, but the proof will be in what they actually do to make that happen. With that in mind, see what book-publishing giant Penguin Random House UK […]

Sony Music’s parent company is investing $250m in Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite. Sony Corporation announced the deal yesterday, and said it “allows Sony and Epic to aim to broaden their collaboration across Sony’s leading portfolio of entertainment assets and technology, and Epic’s social entertainment platform and digital ecosystem”. That could spell more opportunities for […]

Artist Ashnikko’s breakthrough last year was fuelled by TikTok, when her track ‘Stupid’ went viral. Now, for her new track ‘Daisy’ she is prioritising the platform – this time with Apple’s music hardware brand Beats by Dre on board as a marketing partner. That means a music video with prominent placement for the new PowerbeatsPro headphones, […]

We’ve written about UK-based startup NumberEight a few times in the past: for example its Midemlab contest pitch in 2018, and its first funding round later that year. The company has been working on “contextual intelligence” technology, using various sensors on smartphones to understand what their owners are doing, and then (after anonymising them) to help digital services serve […]

If Music Ally’s news has packed a little more… punch recently, it might be because our editor’s lockdown-fitness activity is jabbing, hooking and upper-cutting thin air in virtual reality game BoxVR. Now the game’s developer, British startup FitXR, has raised $7.5m of Series A funding – specifically $6.3m from VC firms and a $1.2m innovation loan […]

US industry body the Recording Academy has faced a lot of criticism about the diversity of its membership in recent years. It’s hoping to win some praise for its 2020 intake though. More than 2,300 new people have been invited to join, and while the big names include John Legend, Ozuna and Yolanda Adams, it’s the demographics […]

Music distributor UnitedMasters has launched a new tier for the artists who use its service. it’s called UnitedMasters Select, and it’ll cost them $5 a month – but will enable artists to keep 100% of the royalties for their music. The alternative is a free tier where the royalty split between artists and UnitedMasters is 90/10. […]

Spotify’s algorithm tried to make us stream R3HAB and we said… yes, yes, yes! The streaming service is celebrating the fifth birthday of its algo-personalised ‘Discover Weekly’ playlist by revealing that Moroccan-Dutch DJ R3HAB is the ‘most discovered’ artist from the playlist in the most countries – 16 – since its launch in 2015. There’s also a big […]

In June 2019, Wixen Music Publishing sued streaming service Pandora, alleging ‘unauthorized commercial exploitation’ of lyrics from songs in its catalogue. The case focused on Pandora’s feature showing lyrics from partners including LyricFind, which was mentioned in the lawsuit. How’s the case going? Well, there’s been a development this week. The latest filing reveals that Pandora moved to […]

Warner Music Group bought the Songkick app and website in July 2017, and has continued to run it since as a way for people to find out when artists they like are playing concerts near them. WMG is also continuing to invest in Songkick: today, for example, it announced the appointment of a VP of technology […]

Research firm Counterpoint Research has published its latest estimates for the size of the music streaming market globally. It claims that by the end of March there were 394m music subscriptions globally, representing year-on-year growth of 35%. Counterpoint also offered its estimates for some of the biggest players, suggesting that Spotify accounted for 33% of […]

People in the music business (us included) bang on about Fortnite a lot, but we think Roblox is another gaming platform that should be less under the radar for our industry. A new report by children’s media research firm Dubit offers some stats that might help. “Half of all children aged 9-12 in the USA […]

If you’re a regular reader of Music Ally, you may have spotted that we have some Animal Crossing fans on the team. We’ve seen a couple of music marketing campaigns make use of the latest version of the game, Nintendo Switch title Animal Crossing: New Horizons – pop artist Alice Chater turning her music video […]

Spotify’s latest campaign to create personalised playlists for listeners is called Soundtrack Your Workout, aimed at people who are exercising. On the new website, they choose a workout length (from 15 minutes to two hours); choose to include only music, only podcasts, or a mix of the two; explain what exercise they’re doing (yoga, running, […]

Veeps! Another new livestreaming startup for artists? Actually, no, this one’s been around since 2017, and was founded by Benji and Joel Madden from rock band Good Charlotte. It’s a platform for ticketed livestreams, and the latest artist to sign up is a biggie: former One Direction star Liam Payne. He’s going to be launching […]

We wrote about startup Yoop in May, as the latest entrant to 2020’s livestreaming-platform scramble. Its concept was an ‘eSpace’ virtual venue, which artists would be able to play ticketed live performances in. Now Yoop is expanding its activities: it’s creating eSpace venues in Los Angeles, New York, Nashville and the UK, to complement its […]

Podcasts have sent Spotify’s valuation soaring in recent weeks, but they’re also starting to generate income for the company. Yesterday, it announced a ‘strategic podcast advertising partnership’ with advertising giant Omnicom Media Group, which sees the latter committing a $20m spend for the remainder of 2020. Note, this is a drop in the ocean of […]

In November 2018, YouTube said it had spent $100m developing its Content ID system for detecting copyrighted music in uploads and giving rightsholders options to remove, leave or monetise those videos. That level of investment is beyond many music startups, but there are partnerships to be done. The latest example is with US streaming service […]

Spotify’s head of songwriter and publishing relations Jules Parker says that the streaming service’s addition of songwriter credits had a knock-on effect for labels and distributors. “Since we began publicly displaying song credits on Spotify in 2018, we’ve seen a 60% increase in how often labels and distributors credit songwriters on their new releases, allowing […]

Analytics firm Sensor Tower has published its latest rankings for mobile apps, reporting that TikTok was the most downloaded non-gaming app globally in June 2020, ahead of Zoom and Facebook. The company claims that TikTok was downloaded more than 87m times across Apple and Google’s app stores, up 52.7% year-on-year. However, its top two markets […]

Lead: Livestreams have moved to try and fill the massive hole left by the total cancellation of tours and festivals around the world. As more acts do them, however, it becomes incrementally harder to stand out and draw in big enough audiences to make them worthwhile. We speak to those building a whole new gig economy here […]

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have been hit by a ban in India as part of a wider crackdown on apps of Chinese origin. But there may be trouble brewing for the companies in the US, too, due both to the political jockeying around hardball trade negotiations between the US and China, and specific […]

Happy International Indie Music Season! Well, it’s not quite started yet: the three-month project (IIMS for short) starts on 17 July with a three-day conference and performances series, which has been designed as “a platform for the global music industry and China to meet”. Music Ally China is an official partner of the event: our […]

A report published by the research division of the South China Morning Post puts some new figures on the growth of internet access in China – a key driver for the streaming music market there. The report claims that there are now 904 million internet users in China – 63% of the population – with […]

We reported last week on VR music startup MelodyVR’s financial performance in 2019 – £195k of revenues but a net loss of nearly £15m. The company is continuing to explore new partnerships to grow its business, though, with the latest being a deal with Live Nation in the UK. The pair will launch a series of […]

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about livestreamed concerts during the Covid-19 lockdown, it’s that fans relish interactivity: at its simplest level seeing an artist read and respond to comments in between songs. Genius is going further though: it’s launching a new “performance-oriented livestreaming and experiential platform” called Genius Live, with lots of interactivity. Wiz […]

US industry body the Recording Academy has announced a partnership with racial justice organisation Color of Change, including making a $1m donation to it. The pair will be working together on initiatives including creating a Black music advisory group for the Academy; a membership campaign to sign up more Black voting members; and an industry-wide […]

Research firm Nielsen Music/MRC Data has published the ‘fifth wave’ of its ongoing study of Covid-19’s impact on the music and entertainment industries, based on surveys in the US up to the week of 10-14 June. Among the findings: audio and video music streams have recovered from their initial decline in the early weeks of […]

In June, creative-software company Adobe announced the launch of a library of royalty-free music and audio with partners Epidemic Sound and Jamendo. Now two bodies representing musicians in the UK have attacked one of those deals. The Ivors Academy and the Musicians’ Union aren’t happy about Epidemic Sound’s business model of paying composers upfront in […]

Universal Music Group has big ambitions in India, having launched local hip-hop label Mass Appeal India last August; building its VRYL Originals roster of artists; and expanding its leadership team early this year. Now UMG has announced a distribution deal with Indian label Desi Melodies, which focuses on Punjabi music – at a time when […]

YouTube had analytics that musicians were using long before Spotify for Artists, Apple Music for Artists, Amazon Music for Artists and the rest. Along with SoundCloud, it was an early tool for artists to see (for example) where their fan hotspots were around the world, and plan tours accordingly. YouTube’s analytics weren’t specifically for musicians though: […]

There’s an ongoing debate about why the base cost of a music streaming subscription ($9.99 a month) hasn’t risen since 2008. What’s happening in adjacent entertainment markets? The Washington Post reports that the recommended retail price (RRP) of major games is set to rise by 10 dollars when Sony and Microsoft release their next-generation consoles later this […]

Is there any country in the world where BTS aren’t big? They’re certainly big in Cape Verde: their ‘Black Swan’ track has gone to number one in the country’s iTunes chart. Why are we writing about this? Well, this was the 103rd country where the track had topped the iTunes rankings, breaking Adele’s record of […]

“Hello. I’m Harry Styles…” Those four words have set off some social-media excitement overnight, spoken by Styles himself in a promo video for meditation app Calm. He’s going to be reading one of the ‘sleep stories’ that have been so popular in the app, with the idea being that Harry’s voice will send fans off to […]

In March, anti-piracy firm AudioLock and distributor Label Worx launched a campaign called The Music Mission, to try to shut down paid piracy websites, with backing from dance labels like Defected. Now the initiative appears to be releasing some findings from its investigations, according to filesharing-focused news site TorrentFreak. Some of those findings are eye-opening. “One particular […]

British charity Youth Music is launching a £2m ‘Incubator Fund’ that aims to help 18-25 year-olds – particularly those from under-represented groups – get into the music business. The fund itself is for music companies, offering grants of between £5k and £30k to spend on wages and support for these young people. Youth Music is especially […]

Podcasts are firmly part of our media diet – with some turning into huge brands and others happy to cater to the most niche of interests.  The podcast economy boom is now so great that not only did Spotify pay $100m to secure the exclusive licensing deal for the enormously popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast, […]

With the UK ‘Brexiting’ the European Union, it’ll need a new trade deal with the US. Unsurprisingly, the big American internet companies have views on what that trade deal should require from the UK in terms of copyright and safe harbour rules. And no, sticking to the spirit of the recent European Copyright Directive isn’t […]

Apple Music really is going big on music from Africa. The service’s latest move is a bi-monthly ‘artist program and companion playlist‘ which it says will focus on emerging talent from across Africa. Every two months, a new artist will be chosen to focus on – Nigerian-born Omah Lay is the first – with plans to “use […]

Artist and composer Maria Schneider has criticised YouTube publicly several times in the past. For example this open letter in 2016 calling the service “a resounding disaster” for musicians; and this piece in 2017 about the net neutrality issue which included the claim that “they deny musicians like me access to their Content ID blocking program”. Three years on, […]

There’s a big, startling figure in the latest story about the Indian government’s decision to ban 59 Chinese-origin apps, including TikTok. “An insider at TikTok parent ByteDance is telling Caixin the ban could come with a heavy price tag, costing the company more than $6 billion in lost revenue — a sum greater than all […]

Hipgnosis Songs Fund has been snapping up a series of publishing catalogues in big-money acquisitions, and it has no plans to stop – but it needs another injection of funding to fuel its ambition. “With over £1 billion of acquisitions in the pipeline covering some of the most important songs and artists of all time, much […]

Microsoft may have closed its Mixer livestreaming service and thrown its lot in with Facebook, but another of Twitch’s live-video rivals has just raised a big funding round. Caffeine is the company, and the round is $113m, with VC firms Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock Partners joining media group Fox Corp in the investment. Bloomberg reported that it values Caffeine […]

For every social-media hashtag campaign that takes off, many more wither and die without anyone noticing. So hats off to the British music industry for avoiding the latter fate with its #LetTheMusicPlay campaign this week across Twitter, Instagram and other platforms. Artists, industry folk and fans alike were sharing their memories of live music, and the campaign undoubtedly […]

More Japanese people are willing to engage with music via streaming during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, according to a survey of Japan’s music industry conducted by Music Ally. Music Ally Japan surveyed labels, managers, producers and other industry figures in the months of April and May, asking them about the impact that Covid-19 has had […]

Deezer is doubling down on Latin America courtesy of a partnership with Mexican broadcaster TV Azteca that it says values the music streaming service at €1.3bn ($1.4bn). That’s based on a $40m investment in Deezer by TV Azteca over “a multi-year period”, and would mean that Deezer has not just maintained its ‘unicorn’ status – the […]

Digital music revenue in Israel will reach $40m in 2020, according to Statista, which also predicts an annual growth rate of 6.6% from 2020 to 2024, with streaming revenue to expand by 15.6% in 2020 to $36m. This result would put Israel – the subject of our latest country profile – roughly on a par […]

Music publishing company The Royalty Network has launched an initiative to help emerging Black musicians, producers and songwriters build contacts and careers in the music industry. Called Black Empowerment Thru Music, the scheme will include offering free studio time at the company’s Los Angeles facility; financial support for organisations; grant matching; mentoring; webinars; donating instruments to […]

We wrote last month about the launch of a ‘Stop Hate for Profit‘ campaign encouraging brands to pause their advertising on Facebook and Instagram, in protest at Facebook’s policies around hate speech and groups. The boycott kicked off yesterday (1 July) with Reuters reporting that more than 400 brands are taking part, despite “last-ditch” meetings with Facebook executives who […]

“Can Facebook ‘Lasso’ teenagers with its new music app?” was the question in a Music Ally headline back in November 2018, as the social network launched a new app heavily inspired by TikTok – complete with a big (and licensed) library of music clips. Now we have the answer to our question: no it could not. […]

His mammoth Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour might be on hold for now, but Elton John is making a series of archive shows available exclusively on his official YouTube channel. The series premieres on Friday (3 July) with the stated aim of raising $500k in donations for the Elton John AIDS Foundation Covid-19 Emergency Fund. Each […]

Our first response to Apple Music’s new playlist ‘INDIY‘ is wondering how to pronounce it: is it ‘indie’ or ‘indie-why’ or ‘in-D-I-Y’? Whatever: its focus is on independent artists who, for the most part, are self-producing and self-releasing their music. It’s also mining a particular musical landscape: “the dissolution of borders between indie and R&B” […]

Spotify started testing its Premium Duo subscription plan in March 2019 in five countries: it was a $12.99-a-month Spotify subscription for couples, complete with a ‘Duo Mix’ playlist blending their tastes. It expanded to 14 more countries in Latin America in September last year, but now it’s going more global, launching in 55 markets. The idea is to tempt […]

Twitch is one of the platforms seeing a big spike in usage during the Covid-19 pandemic. A new report claims that in the second quarter of this year, Amazon’s live video service was watched for 5.07bn hours. That’s up from 3.11bn in the first quarter of this year – a 62.7% quarter-on-quarter increase. The report comes […]

Using smart links is now standard practice for artists of all sizes and, as a result, competition among smart link companies has increased exponentially. Because of this, they are all trying to develop and innovate in ways that make them unique and that help them stand above their competitors.  Here we overview the latest updates […]

Israel offers unique challenges and unique opportunities to the global music business – a relatively small country with a strong tech culture, where music streaming has, perhaps, yet to really catch on The post Country Profile – Israel 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In the music industry, arguments over creators and ownership tend to focus on master recordings and publishing rights: how musicians can retain them from the start, or get them back later in their careers. Interestingly, there’s a similar debate starting in the podcasting industry.  As The Verge explains, it’s not just about the rights, but […]

BandLab is one of the most popular and longest-established online tools for creating music and collaborating with other musicians, although its parent company has diversified into physical instruments and music media – including buying magazines like NME and Uncut. Now it’s getting into digital distribution for independent artists, with a tool called ‘BandLab Albums’ and […]

During the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of musicians have been thinking about doing more with live-video platform Twitch. But what should they do? Live performances, DJ sets (even though there are issues here), fan Q&As, playing games… All these have been tried. Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park has been using Twitch to broadcast his actual creation […]

There’s a notion you’ll see voiced quite often in 2020, which is that ‘people don’t care about the charts any more’ – referring to the official music industry charts, rather than the rankings on streaming services (which are perceived to still carry a certain degree of clout). The UK’s Official Charts Company is offering a […]

We’ve been writing about startup Weav Music since 2017, when the company co-founded by Google Maps co-creator Lars Rasmussen signed its first major label deals. Its first app, Weav Run, was an app for runners with ‘adaptive’ music that changed according to their pace, but not just through speeding it up and time-stretching the tracks. Now […]

We’ve written about Delic before: it’s a service for musicians and rightsholders to manage, share and collaborate on music, which launched in beta last year, then raised £250k of funding early this year to prepare for launch. That launch happened yesterday. Musicians can sign up; collaborate with one another and manage those projects, including sharing the files; and also use […]

The music industry has been talking and thinking about internships a lot recently: specifically how to use them to make sure a diverse group of people are entering the industry, rather than (for example with unpaid internships) catering to a narrow demographic. One new challenge, however: internships are tough during a global pandemic when many […]

Landr began life as a startup with an AI-powered tool to automate the mastering of recordings, before expanding into distribution and promotion. It also raised a $26m funding round in July 2019 for more expansion. Part of that growth involves the launch of ‘Landr Pro Network’, which the company describes as a “digital marketplace that enables professionals […]

Virtual reality music startup MelodyVR has published its financial results for 2019. The company’s revenues were £195k ($242k) last year, down from £1.2m in 2018. MelodyVR’s content sales – people paying to watch VR music performances in its catalogue – nearly doubled from £19k to £36.7k, but its revenue from content licensing dropped from just under £1.2m […]

In June, we reported on a claim by French industry body SNEP that the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic could deliver a €235m blow to recorded music revenues in France this year. But that’s just a fraction of the anticipated losses, it turns out. Another industry body, TPLM (Tous Pour La Musique) which represents all aspects of the French […]

Could a global pandemic take the shine off the growth in the amount of money people spend on and within mobile apps? It could not. “Consumers spent a combined total of $50.1 billion worldwide on the App Store and Google Play in the first half of 2020,” claimed app analytics firm Sensor Tower. “This was 23.4 […]

Kirt Debique met his SyncFloor co-founder Cestjon McFarland during a 20-year stint at Microsoft. Immersed in the Seattle music scene, he left the tech giant to start a label (Brick Lane records, named after his favourite part of London) when the music industry was struggling. “I spotted the bottom of the trough of the last […]

Ninja Tune/Counter Records act The Midnight have a new single out called ‘Prom Night’ and have created a special prom-themed playlist generator for it. On a dedicated website, users input their name as well as the date (month and year) of when their prom would have been – for non-US readers, this usually happens when you […]

“Unreleased rock songs are hiding all around North America. That’s right. You could be sitting on a song right now,” is the blurb from new app Hipster Bait’s website. Launched for Android and iOS devices, it’s an “interactive rock’n’roll music discovery game” that uses augmented reality (AR) technology. The idea: every week the company will ‘release’ […]

Israeli firm Artlist is one of the companies offering a royalty-free catalogue of licensed music (plus video clips and sound effects in its case) to filmmakers, YouTubers and games developers. Launched in 2016, it now has more than one million customers, with YouTube creators having swelled those ranks in recent years – making it a competitor to Epidemic […]

This one is going to get the K-Pop stans roused up. In April 2019, BTS broke the record for one-day video views on YouTube, with the 78m views of their ‘Boy With Luv’ video trumping the previous record-holder, ‘Kill This Love’ by fellow K-Pop group Blackpink. Now the record has been broken again… by Blackpink! […]

Today we’re announcing the first confirmed speakers and outline agenda for our Sandbox Summit Global conference, which takes place online in September. The event will include Platoon’s Denzyl Feigelson in conversation with Q&A’s Troy Carter, as well as interviews with K Camp (the artist behind the viral hit ‘Lottery (Renegade)’ and business partner Genius. The […]

Outdustry has long been one of the most respected companies helping western music firms and artists do business in China (and more recently, India too). Its services have mainly focused on marketing and rights management / licensing, but now Outdustry is launching a music publishing arm focused on China called Outdustry Songs. It has non-exclusive direct […]

“Black artists consistently top the popular music charts, but African-Americans and other people of colour are not adequately represented in decision-making roles in the music business,” is the first line of a press release from… the biggest label group in the music business. So what is Universal Music doing about this disparity? Having already pledged a $25m ‘change […]

There has been a lot of debate about which music licences TikTok has already, which ones it doesn’t (publishers have been particularly sharp on this one) and what it needs to do next to ensure performers and songwriters are getting paid for usage of their work in its app. So it’s interesting to see TikTok press-releasing […]

YouTube is testing a new feature for people to upload videos that are 15 seconds in length. We can’t think where it got that idea from… Okay, this isn’t a pure TikTok clone: there are some interesting aspects to it. “We’re testing out a new way for creators to easily record multiple clips directly in […]

Imagine if 2D was four times better, or if 3D was, ahem, 2.67 times better. That’ll be 8D! And it’s 8D that Finnish artist Artem, who’s signed to Warner Music, is exploring with his new music video. We should stress, 8D isn’t about extra dimensions, but rather about a recently-developed way of recording and editing […]

‘Marquee’ is Spotify’s tool that pops up in its mobile app suggesting that people listen to a new release by an artist that they like. In the US and Canada, it’s currently being beta-tested as a paid advertising slot. Now Spotify has launched a new web page promoting the feature itself, including some stats on those […]

Chinese technology firm Huawei is a controversial company in the west, but it is still hugely successful globally, having shipped 240m smartphones in 2019 alone. A trade ban with the US has meant the company can’t preload Google’s Android apps on those handsets however, so Huawei has developed its own ‘AppGallery’ app store as an alternative to […]

Earlier this week we reported on UMG’s latest success story in China: strong figures for the new album by artist Linong Chen. Now it’s talking about a new signing in the country: Sunnee (杨芸晴) from girl group Rocket Girls 101 (火箭少女101) who split up earlier this week. UMG is releasing Sunnee’s new single ‘By Your Side’ […]

The debate about how Apple runs its App Store continues to rumble, and politics website Politico suggests that there could be a significant development in the US soon. “The Justice Department and a coalition of state attorneys general are taking the first steps toward launching an antitrust probe of Apple,” it claimed, adding that the probe may […]

In May we reported on Marshmello teaming up with creative-software firm Adobe on a ‘Be Kind’ campaign, getting fans to create a short video based on his new single. Now the company is launching a new contest with Lady Gaga based around her latest album ‘Chromatica’. Gaga is providing her own assets for the competition: photos, illustrations, logos, icons […]

Livestream music concerts can air globally, but that doesn’t mean they have to. We’re seeing a growing number of artists experiment with geofenced online concerts, which can only be viewed by fans in a particular part of the world – sometimes as part of virtual ‘tours’ with a string of performances. Now deathcore band Suicide Silence […]

Music Ally last covered Kosovo-based artist DJ Regard in September 2019, when his ‘Ride It’ track became a TikTok-assisted viral hit. Now the artist, signed to Ministry of Sound, is getting his own casual game, Regard Runner, which can be played on mobile devices and computers alike. Ministry commissioned digital agency The Creative Corporation to make the […]

RightsHub is one of the companies developing technology for managing music rights data and assets. It’s just announced five partnerships with music recognition technology (MRT) companies to help its customers get their music registered with those services. The five are: Gracenote, DJ Monitor, Soundmouse, BMAT, Yacast. The company says that getting music registered with MRT companies […]

Connected audio firm Sonos is the latest company to announced plans for layoffs as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. “The Company initiated a plan on June 23, 2020 to eliminate approximately 12% of its global headcount. In addition, the Company is closing its New York retail store and six satellite offices,” revealed Sonos in a regulatory […]

A coalition of US music industry organisations has launched a campaign called Fair Trade of Music, banging the drum for American musicians to be paid what it sees as their rightful royalties for usage of their music abroad. “Many countries deny some non-native music creators royalties for the use of their work even though royalties are […]

Last December, Music Ally wrote about a report from startup Rostr analysing its database of music management companies and their artists. Now it has repeated the trick for 2020. Its report, which is free, is based on more than 3,000 management firms’ data, and ranks them by roster size, Spotify audience and YouTube subscribers. It also looks at […]

Attempts by Live Nation to change its agreements with artists for concerts and festivals in 2021 have sparked a big row in the US which shows little sign of abating, even as the company began to row back from some of the controversial changes. A memo sent to talent agencies had suggested that “unprecedented times” required […]

Lead: K-pop is eating the world whole and is changing what marketing – especially superfan-centric marketing – can do. We speak to those working in and around the K-pop world to learn how the genre markets itself, where its acts engage with their fans to build incredible levels of loyalty, why trans-media marketing underscores everything they do […]

Instagram has updated its ‘commerce eligibility requirements’ dictating who’s allowed to use its Instagram Shopping feature to sell products directly from their profiles. Good news: musicians are now included. And candle-makers will be waxing lyrical about the change too… “Whether you are a candle business making a foray into e-commerce, a musician selling merch or […]

Concerts are returning in some countries as Covid-19 lockdown measures ease, but with a variety of social distancing measures. Grid is a new app that’s positioning itself as helping: not just music concerts, but other kinds of hospitality and events businesses too. The app can be used for mobile ticketing and checking in to events; to […]

June is the annual Pride month celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community, although due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this year’s celebrations will by necessity be much more digital. Music streaming services are joining the party with playlists and other activations, as usual. In the case of Pandora, that includes launching a new radio station called Qmunity. Sponsored […]

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a grim period for independent music venues and record stores alike, as they ponder not just when they’ll be able to reopen, but whether. It’s been heartening, at least, to see the success of several campaigns to support these businesses with artists and fans chipping in. The latest initiative sounds […]

Spinnup is one of Universal Music Group’s distribution services for independent artists, which originally launched in Sweden in 2013 before expanding to other countries. Artists can use it to upload their music to digital services, with the additional hope of being spotted by UMG’s A&R teams – more than 80 Spinnup-distributed artists have been signed by […]

The debate about streaming royalties and ‘user-centric’ payments – primer here if needed – has largely been confined to the music industry so far. Could politicians get involved? Jo Stevens of the UK’s Labour Party, who’s the shadow secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, got involved during a radio discussion last night. Asked by presenter […]

Spotify launched its ‘Artist Fundraising Pick’ feature in mid-April, enabling artists to raise money from their Spotify profiles either for themselves and their teams, or for one of the charitable funds and organisations taking part in the streaming service’s Covid-19 Music Relief project. By the end of that month, around 50,000 artists were using the new feature. […]

There were 341 million people using paid music subscriptions at the end of 2019, according to global music industry body the IFPI. Now we’ve got an update on that figure, albeit from a different source. Consultancy firm Midia Research has published its music subscriber market share figures for Q1 2020, claiming that by the end of March […]

Mixer was tech giant Microsoft’s rival to Twitch and other livestreaming video platforms, focused squarely on gaming. You may remember that in August 2019 it signed an exclusive deal with Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins (of ‘played Fortnite with Drake’ fame, although to many young people, it’s more Drake who’s of ‘played Fortnite with Ninja’ fame). More on that […]

Spotify is trying something new around podcast advertising: ‘in-app offers’. It means that when someone’s listening to a podcast and hears an ad from a sponsor with a particular offer, they’ll also be able to tap on a link to redeem that offer from within the podcast’s episode page in Spotify’s mobile app. “Most podcast […]

Last week, we covered Twenty One Pilots’ scavenger hunt to promote their new single, ‘Level Of Concern’, which got fans to track down codes hidden online to unlock content. Which they did much faster than expected. “We didn’t think you would tear through the codes so easily,” the band tweeted. “Should have taken a week but you did […]

Music Ally knows card game ‘Uno!’ best for being second only to Monopoly in the chart of ‘games most likely to cause almighty family rows at Christmas’. What we don’t know it for, until now, are digital marketing campaigns with world-famous K-Pop groups. But yes: BTS are taking over the mobile game version of ‘Uno!’ […]

We’ve written regularly about music/tech accelerators and incubators like Techstars Music, Abbey Road Red and Marathon Artists Labs. Another one that’s well regarded is Music WorX in Hamburg, run by the publicly-funded Hamburg Kreativ Gesellschaft body. It’s kicking off a new cohort for 2020, with a three-month program for “teams who have not yet or […]

Finland’s digital music industry is in relatively good health after years of steady growth, although it lags behind its Nordic neighbours in terms of premium music subscribers. The post Country Profile – Finland 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Legendary producer Quincy Jones is opening up his Qwest TV educational platform to school pupils and music-college / university students around the world. They’ll have free access to more than 1,000 concerts, documentaries and pieces of archive footage covering the full gamut of genres. P eople wanting access can pre-register now, with the content to be accessible […]

US collecting society ASCAP has launched a new paid internship program for students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Five students will work for ASCAP (remotely) during July and August, with plans to repeat the scheme every summer in future years. “We have a responsibility to seek to nurture talent and empower the next […]

We’ve reported recently on one trend in DJ apps, which is Spotify shutting down their access to its API, forcing those that use streaming services as a source to turn to other DSPs, or even license directly. Still, those DJ app companies are also pressing on with new features, with two of them – Algoriddim and VirtualDJ […]

British collecting society PPL has announced its annual charts of the most played tracks and artists in the UK, based on data from radio, TV and public performance locations (pubs, bars, shops etc). No surprises for guessing who tops the artists chart: Ed Sheeran, the fourth time in five years he’s headed that list. There’s […]

LiveXLive is the US-based company that’s been increasingly active around music livestreaming, as well as owning audio-streaming service Slacker. The firm has announced its financial results for its fiscal year 2020, which ended on 31 March. The company’s annual revenues grew by 15% to $38.7m, while its number of paying subscribers grew by 25% to 849,000. […]

The major western music companies are, it’s fair to say, very keen to expand their foothold in the Chinese music industry. From beefing up their offices in China to taking investment from its digital industry’s giant Tencent, Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music are all making the country a growth priority. Some new numbers […]

With the European Commission’s formal investigations of Apple getting underway, Spotify has seen some people and companies rallying to its antitrust cause this week. For example, the chairman of the US House’s antitrust subcommittee has been (perhaps surprisingly, given that role?) outspoken on the topic, in an interview with The Verge. “Because of the market power that Apple […]

The search for ‘the next TikTok’ is – spoiler alert – going to turn up a LOT of apps that are not, in fact, the next TikTok. Which is to say, there’s an explosion in experimentation around short-form social video, often with music too, but many of these apps will struggle to cut through the noise […]

Canadian startup Lucid has launched its first music app, called Vibe. The app “draws upon cognitive science, music theory, and artificial intelligence to develop a personalised profile for each user” before offering them playlists “to help you reach a mental goal”. Said goals including calm, focus, sleep, energise and ambience – the latter is a mixture […]

Björk is adding her entire back catalogue to D2C platform Bandcamp, with a launch offer that will see proceeds from all sales donated to Black Lives Matter UK until the end of today’s Juneteenth fundraiser on the site. Her studio albums will be sold in digital, vinyl, CD and cassette formats on Bandcamp, making her one […]

There’s a new statistic on the audience for streaming service Mixcloud to be found in the latest blog post from its CEO Nikhil Shah. “We’ve had 10s of millions of people download our apps, and 20m people tune into Mixcloud every month across all the different platforms,” he wrote. That means its audience has doubled over […]

The latest project representing a creative blend of artistry and AI is called ‘Spleen Machine’. It’s the work of Alex Braga, who’s both a composer and an inventor. For this EP, he invented his own AI music-making instrument called A-Mint. According to the album announcement, A-Mint creates “augmented music” after learning a musician’s style. “When A-Mint […]

Classical music streaming service Idagio is launching in Japan later this month, tying in with its live video stream of a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra on 21 June. The Japan launch will include Idagio’s catalogue of more than 2m tracks, and its ‘Global Concert Hall’ series of livestreams. There’s certainly an audience to […]

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Spotify was ending its support for DJ apps, meaning that they’d be unable to use its API to provide music for their users. One of the main DJ app makers, Algoriddim, is switching to Tidal and SoundCloud, while another, Pacemaker, recently told Music Ally that it would be striking its own […]

Charity The Circle, which was founded by artist and activist Annie Lennox, has launched a global music auction to raise money for its Covid-19 Emergency Appeal. The charity is raising funds for women and girls who’ve been disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus crisis this year. The auction is taking place on the Charity Stars platform, […]

Apple Music is placing a big strategic focus on Africa this year, and the latest emerging artist to join its ‘Up Next’ programme is the latest example. Nigerian Afropop star Rema will be getting some promotional welly from Apple’s streaming service this month, building on the success that has seen him already become the 18th […]

Label Ghostly International is merging with fellow indie Secretly Group, in a deal that Billboard reports was delayed from earlier this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “We had poor visibility on how revenues were going to change and how the economy was going to go. It caused us to ask hard questions: Why now? Should we […]

The rise of TikTok, and the assorted controversies around it, have meant there’s a lot more scrutiny of the economics of the app and its parent company ByteDance. Which is welcome for the music industry, as rightsholders go into licensing negotiations keen to strike as advantageous deals as possible. There are two new bouts of […]

You wait for a news story about ‘smart links’ for music marketing to come along, then three turn up at once… Linkfire has announced its latest conversion-data deal with a streaming service: Deezer. Artists and marketers sending fans to Deezer via Linkfire smart links will now get data like streams, follows and playlist adds to understand how […]

Adobe is the tech company behind creative software like Photoshop and video-editing tool Adobe Premiere. It also has a library of royalty-free images and other visual assets called Adobe Stock. As of yesterday, that library also includes music and audio. Adobe has partnered with two companies to fill that catalogue: Epidemic Sound and Jamendo. The non-watermarked […]

June is Black Music Month in the US (or African-American Music Appreciation Month if you prefer: it was renamed by President Barack Obama in 2009, but its previous name is still often used). Spotify has revealed its plans for the month, including its previously-announced plan to devote its entire ‘New Music Friday’ playlist to Black artists for […]

Research firm Roy Morgan has published a report on music streaming usage in Australia. It claims that more than 12.7 million Australians – 61% of the population – now stream music on a monthly basis. That’s 3.7 million more than did so three years ago. The report also has some figures for the market shares of the various […]

We reported yesterday on the news that the European Commission is launching two formal investigations of Apple, including one sparked by anticompetition complaints from Spotify and an e-books / audiobooks firm (not Amazon, but Rakuten subsidiary Kobo). Yesterday afternoon, Spotify held a Zoom call with journalists to offer its views on the news. You can read our […]

Livestreamed concerts can be great for reach as free events, but can they be money-spinners for artists as paid events? There’s a lot of experimentation going on around this, and Laura Marling’s recent concerts broadcast from London’s Union Chappel venue were being watched as a key case study: the £12 tickets were sold through the […]

About Fanbytes. Starting 3 years ago, we’ve worked with the world’s largest labels and artists including Atlantic, Virgin, Universal and everyone in between to reach audiences on social media through influencers and branded content on Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. This role combines both account management and sales with you responding directly to the exec team […]

Earlier today, the European Commission launched two formal antitrust investigations of Apple, including one spurred in part by Spotify’s complaint to the EC last year. This afternoon, Spotify held a Zoom call for journalists where its head of global affairs and chief legal officer Horacio Gutierrez discussed the investigation, with added comments from external counsel […]

Epic Games isn’t just the publisher of Fortnite: it also owns also-popular-with-the-kids game Rocket League; video-chat app Houseparty; the Unreal Engine game development engine; and its own digital games store. No wonder its valuation is high: Bloomberg reported that Epic Games is about to raise a $750m funding round that values the company at around $17bn. That’s […]

Cameo is the app that lets people pay for celebrities to record personalised video messages for them (or friends and family as a gift). We wrote about it last June when the company raised a $50m funding round, noting that Snoop Dogg and Ice T were among the musicians available on Cameo. Now it has launched […]

In March 2019, Spotify filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission, accusing the latter company of anticompetitive behaviour in the way it managed its App Store and in-app purchases. 15 months on, the EC has now launched a formal antitrust investigation of Apple. In fact, it has launched two, although they’re not just […]

Tracklib has been around since 2016, helping artists and producers to find and clear music for sampling. The company has just announced a $4.5m funding round from Sony Innovation Fund – the early-stage investment arm of Sony Music’s parent corporation – and Eelko van Kooten, founder of dance label Spinnin’ Records. Sony Innovation Fund had already […]

Earlier this year, Spanish industry body Promusicae predicted a €100m hit to recorded music revenues in Spain this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Now French body SNEP has come out with a comparable prediction for its own market, suggesting that recorded music revenues will fall by €235m this year due to Covid-19 – a drop of […]

Music marketing firm Linkfire has announced a deal with Deezer to access data on what music listeners do after following one of its ‘smart links’ to the streaming service. Artists, labels and marketers using Linkfire will now be able to see, for example, whether fans have gone on to play a song, add it to […]

Friday’s Music Ally TV Show focused on the #TheShowMustBePaused campaign, and the next steps that the music industry needs to take as a result. Our panelists were Mulika Sannie, Keith Harris and Estée Blu. Sannie is VP of business affairs at Kobalt, and also founded the UK Black Music Lawyers Network in 2018. Harris is […]

We wrote about the Equality in Audio Pact earlier this month. Launched by podcast producer Broccoli Content, it was a list of five pledges that audio production companies could make, including paying interns; hiring LGBTQIA+, black people, people of colour and other minorities for projects that aren’t just related to their identity; releasing race pay gap data; […]

Pre-release music promo and sharing service Byta has announced a new seed funding of $1.9m. The round was led by the Canadian Media Fund as well as private investors, such as Scott Kannberg (of indie band Pavement). The platform lets artists and labels securely share music with others in the industry ahead of release in a […]

The latest artist sending fans to different corners of the internet to unlock content around a new album is Twenty One Pilots. It kicked off with a livestream (although fans who missed that can check out the ‘START HERE’ YouTube video that the band posted on Saturday). It prominently features a US phone number – 1-877-LVL-CNRN – note: […]

Music Ally has done its time in the blockchain trenches: our reports on the technology’s potential for music from 2016, 2017 and 2018 are evidence of that. One of the conclusions we’ve drawn: the ‘sweep away the middlemen’ startups that only work for artists who control 100% of their rights without even a collecting society in sight are not, in […]

Independent musicians, especially the ones who made the majority of their income, are having a very tough 2020. In the US, there’s a new body aiming to protect their interests, though. It’s called the National Independent Talent Organization (NITO) and it’s been formed by a group of talent agencies to create a “broader coalition of the live […]

On Friday it emerged that Chinese tech giant Tencent had bought a chunk of shares in Warner Music Group… but confusion reigned over exactly how much it had invested. The Wall Street Journal claimed it was $200m, while MBW said it was around $100m. As it turned out, both were right. Tencent Music Entertainment, the music streaming […]

Yesterday, Snapchat’s parent company Snap, Inc announced a swathe of new features for the social app, including some that are directly relevant to music. One of those features is dedicated music lenses, explained yesterday – this link takes you to the relevant part of the YouTube video of the event – as “our new category of music lenses, […]

British regulator the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been investigating the merger of secondary ticketing firms Viagogo and StubHub. Its latest update on the investigation isn’t good news for those companies. The CMA says it is “concerned that the loss of competition brought about by the merger could result in customers who buy and resell tickets […]

One of the key points about the #TheShowMustBePaused campaign last week was that it was not a single day of action, but rather the springboard for much, much more. Today, there’s a lot to report on in that regard, within both the music and tech worlds. Start by reading Billboard’s interview with Brianna Agyemang and Jamila […]

Music marketing platform Linkfire has a new feature that could be very useful for artists. It’s called ‘Artist Bio Links’. According to Linkfire, it “brings together all your promotions in one personalised microsite. Drive fans to your releases, merch, SoMe profiles, tours, and more, all with one shareable link”. The idea is that this will […]

STIM is the main collecting society in Sweden, and like many of its counterparts around the world, it enjoyed healthy growth in its royalty collections last year. According to its annual report, STIM’s revenues grew by 15% in 2019, to SEK 2.4bn (around $259m), with SEK 1.8bn paid out to songwriters and rightsholders. 38% of […]

Job opportunity: Digital Rights Manager Based in our London office, Domino Recording Company seeks a full-time Digital Rights Manager, to be employed on a 1 Year Fixed Term basis.  In this role you will be working with YouTube and Facebook’s content management systems on a daily basis, with responsibility for channel and rights management on […]

*Check some of the best music marketing campaigns of 2019 here *Take inspiration from the best music marketing campaigns in recent history   The initial response within music marketing to lockdown was to charge into livestreaming – seeing it as a way to plug at least part of the hole created by mass concert cancellations. […]

Noting how the music industry lacked an equivalent to what the film industry had with IMDb – and also how it was missing a verified source of data from across the music supply chain – Jacqui Louez Schoorl, with a background in both film and music, began working on what was to become Jaxsta in […]

British independent label One Little Indian Records was the home of Björk, Skunk Anansie, Crass and other artists. Why the past tense? Because One Little Indian is no more: the label has changed its name to One Little Independent Records. MD Derek Birkett explained why in a social media post, citing “an eye-opening letter from a Crass […]

Some racists are skinheads. Many skinheads aren’t racists – in fact, many are among the most committed anti-racists. This is hardly a secret, but Facebook got a blunt reminder this week, after mistakenly removing the accounts of hundreds of anti-racist skinheads, as well as pages devoted to ska and reggae music, and the organisation Skinheads Against […]

Back in January, we wrote about Show4Me, which described itself as a “music interaction network”. It had raised $13.5m in funding and was offering acts a variety of tools such as music and concert crowdfunding campaigns, sales of music, D2F interaction and even a $1-per-year fan membership model. The company launched an online ticketing option in […]

Rock band Def Leppard hold the record for playing the most gigs in different continents in one day (three: Africa, Europe and North America). Meanwhile, Jeff Aug holds the record for most gigs in different countries in a day (nine: Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria). Now artist Tom Walker is making his own globetrotting move, albeit […]

Tuned Global is one of the companies focusing on business-to-business (B2B) digital music: helping brands and other companies launch music services without having to build them and license them from scratch. Headquartered in Australia, it’s now making a push in Europe by poaching from one of its main rivals, British firm 7digital. Tuned Global has appointed […]

US publishing body the NMPA held its annual meeting yesterday – the first time it’s been online. It included some new stats from president and CEO David Israelite. He revealed that US publishing industry revenues grew by 11.6% in 2019 to $3.72bn, making last year the fifth consecutive year of growth for the sector. However, the […]

Vivendi’s Brand Marketing division has been talking about its latest study: a survey of more than 7,200 people about their entertainment habits during the Covid-19 lockdown – and their plans once it eases. There’s another encouraging data point about digital subscription services (including, but not exclusively, music): according to Pollstar, 60% said they used more paid […]

It’s been a difficult couple of years for many virtual reality startups, with VR headset sales slower than expected, and in some cases funding drying up as investors lost their appetite for immersive content. There have been success stories though: musical VR game Beat Saber has sold more than 2m copies, with Facebook acquiring its developer last […]

Lead: If you aren’t making or appearing on a podcast, do you actually exist? Even with DSPs and record labels investing in them heavily and building whole podcasting divisions, there is still the issue of licensing music for them that is holding back their creative potential. Yet beyond that knotty problem, the sector is still an […]

Canvas is the feature on Spotify where artists can upload eight-second looping videos to accompany their tracks when played in the streaming service’s mobile app. It’s been growing steadily in popularity, and earlier this year Spotify started letting artists share their Canvas videos out to Instagram stories. Now that ability is being extended to listeners as well. […]

We’ve been writing a lot about live venues in the context of the contemporary music scene, but classical music certainly isn’t immune from the impact of Covid-19. The Guardian has a feature on the challenges facing the classical scene as it tries to bring back concerts post-pandemic. The headline suggests an existential threat: ‘We could go […]

Yesterday, we covered the news that the team behind Shangri-La at Glastonbury are running Lost Horizon, a ticketed VR event, next month. We can add Belgian dance festival Tomorrowland’s Around The World event to this growing list of virtual replacements for the hole blown in this year’s summer festival season. It takes place on 25-26 July, although […]

We’ve been reporting recently on the #saveourvenues campaign in the UK, which identified 556 venues that were in danger of permanent closure as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown. Last we heard, its fundraising had enabled 140 of them to be taken off its ‘critical’ list, which was a positive step. There’s a similar campaign underway […]

Music Ally wrote about Swedish startup Corite when it launched last year as the latest way for artists to make money by selling off stakes in their songs to fans. In its first month of operation, it raised $24k in fan-funding for its first crop of artists. Now the company has been raising some funding of its own: a […]

A group of Black executives working within the British music industry have published an open letter, through the Black Music Coalition and The Show Must Be Paused UK groups, with five “immediate calls to action” for the industry. They include mandatory anti-racism / unconscious bias training for non-Black staff at music companies; a specified annual budget […]

The question of when the Swedish music industry will plateau is a crucial one for the global industry, which looks to Spotify’s homeland for an indication as too how far streaming-led growth can go. Before Covid-19, at least, the signs were promising for Sweden’s continued growth: in 2019 recorded music income in Sweden grew 3.5% […]

In yesterday’s bulletin, we covered the news that livestreaming platform Twitch has reminded users that DJ sets are among the “types of music content you may not use in Twitch streams or VODs”. We suggested that the new guidelines may have been in response to an uptick in copyright takedowns filed by music rightsholders, and… […]

Livestreaming has never been more prominent than it is now as artists and venues try and plug that massive hole left by the cancellation of shows, tours, festivals and clubs. Now there’s some consolidation afoot in this area: a company called eResonate Media is buying another livestreaming startup called Livit Media. The companies have been working together since […]

If you’ve ever lost yourself in the Glastonbury Festival’s Shangri-La zone, you’ll understand why for many people this year, the festival’s cancellation is carrying an extra tinge of sadness. However, the team behind Shangri-La is hoping to plug the gap with a virtual-reality event called Lost Horizon on 3-4 July. They’re working with VR startups Sansar and […]

This story begins with an article by author and activist Cory Doctorow on the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation: ‘A Plan to Pay Artists, Encourage Competition, and Promote Free Speech’. It proposed extending the kind of blanket licensing that allow clubs, restaurants and radio stations to play music to the internet as a whole, […]

The global music industry may be watching Sweden closely to see when the streaming pioneer will plateau, but the signs, pre-COVID anyway, indicates that Spotify’s home country still has potential for further growth. The post Country Profile – Sweden 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It hasn’t been available to musicians in the past, but YouTube’s tips economy – where viewers can buy ‘Super Chats’, ‘Super Stickers’ and channel memberships for the creators they love – has been something Music Ally has been keeping an eye on as it has grown. Now YouTube has revealed a new figure for the growth in the number […]

Something that came through very clearly about last week’s #TheShowMustBePaused day when music companies of all kinds paused their regular work to respond to the protests about racism and police brutality was that it couldn’t just be about one day: it was about paving the way for a host of actions and changes over the […]

The esports community has been chattering about Twitch’s latest guidelines on using recorded music in live broadcasts and video-on-demand uploads to its platform. Dot Esports’ top angle was the fact that using music from streaming services like Spotify is not allowed, but after looking at the guidelines, we think that there are also other points for musicians […]

The easing of lockdown restrictions on music concerts has begun in some countries, but others are still looking ahead and making plans for what’s needed when this happens in the future. Australian live-industry body Live Performance Australia published its AU$345m plan to rebuild the ‘restart’ of the live performances industry – not just music, but theatres, arts […]

Spotify and other streaming services have been luring talent away from radio for a long time now, with British public-service broadcaster the BBC suffering particularly from the brain drain. However, it’s also making its own moves that encroach onto what streaming services do. Witness last week’s announcement that it is expanding the ‘Mindful’ and ‘Pace Setter’ […]

Solfeg·io, Super Hi-Fi, Audoo and Uptune have been named as the winners of this year’s Midemlab startups contest, held as part of the Midem music industry conference. Like the conference, Midemlab was an entirely-online affair, with the pitches of all 20 finalists broadcast this afternoon, followed by the announcement of the winners. Music Ally is […]

Sit down for this shocker: children spend quite a lot of time on YouTube and TikTok! Who knew? Next thing, someone will be telling us that they quite like Fortnite too. But no snark: a company called Qustodio, whose product is a parental control app, has been digging into its data to quantify exactly how […]

12 June is the 50th anniversary of ‘Lola’ by British band The Kinks, and there’s a digital campaign up and running to celebrate the anniversary. A dedicated microsite to celebrate #LolaDay (as it’s being dubbed) will have digital stickers available for fans to ‘Lolafy’ their own photos and share them on social apps. Meanwhile, on the […]

There have been some excellent bananas in music: Andy Warhol’s artwork for the Velvet Underground & Nico; Bananarama; Melt-Banana… Can Conkarah feat. Shaggy’s single ‘Banana’ follow in their footsteps? It’s already a bona-fide TikTok sensation. The track is based around Harry Belafonte’s 1956 hit ‘Banana Boat (Day-O)’, and comes with a #BananaDrop challenge based around […]

Gismart is the company behind music-making apps like Beat Maker Go, Piano Crush and WeDrum, as well as non-music ‘hyper-casual’ games like Cool Goal, Domino Smash and, er, Pregnancy Idle 3D Simulator – a catalogue that’s so far generated 500m downloads. Now it has launched a new partnership programme aimed at musicians called ‘Games for Artists’. Through […]

Jayne Stynes, general manager at management body the MMF, hopes that some of the innovation around livestreams during the Covid-19 pandemic will lead to lasting change. “At my most optimistic, I would love to believe that what is happening right now will open up a huge cultural shift towards consumers valuing online content beyond its […]

TikTok tends to get the headlines when a music track goes viral through short-form videos. However, rival app Triller has also fuelled its fair share of hits by artists including Lil Tecca, Calboy, K$upreme, Rich The Kid, Darkoo and Chantel Jeffries. Now you can add Nigerian musician DJ Neptune to that list. His track ‘Nobody’, […]

Livestreams are plugging some of the gap left by the shutdown of live concerts, but people are already looking ahead to what those physical gigs might be like as the lockdown eases. One Night Records is the latest idea. Opening in October at “a secret London Bridge location” in London, it’ll be a musical installation “designed as […]

We’ve reported regularly on British music-making app startup Endlesss: from our interview with its CEO last year to its recent launches of an iOS app and its own record label. Now Endlesss is turning to crowdfunding to take its next step: the development of a desktop (Mac and Windows) application and a network for musicians to collaborate. It’s called Endlesss […]

Nicole Wyskoarko is EVP of urban operations at Interscope Records, and Amber Grimes is SVP of global creative at Capitol Music Group. Their joint keynote for the Midem conference, a video interview conducted by Billboard’s Gail Mitchell, was published this morning. It addresses topics including the current Black Lives Matters protests following the killing of […]

Streaming service MePlaylist, whose president of global marketing is Mathew Knowles (aka Beyoncé’s father), is aiming to challenge the traditional way African music is pigeonholed in the west. “There’s a tendency to always put African music and African artists in a bucket, and that bucket is called ‘World Music’. We want to change that perception,” said […]

Last month, we reported on research published by Goldman Sachs predicting that global music industry revenues would drop by 25% this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Those figures included a 75% plummet for live music revenues, and a slowdown in growth for recorded music (to 3%) and music publishing (3.5%). Yesterday, we reported on Kobalt CEO […]

Last October, we reported on the latest podcasting joint venture by Sony Music: British company Broccoli Content, led by producer Renay Richardson. Its shows include ‘Anthems’, ‘Money 101’ and ‘Your Broccoli Weekly’, with a mission to tackle “the lack of opportunities for minority talent both in front and behind the mic”. Now the company has launched an […]

Warner Music Group had a good first day of trading following its IPO this week. The company priced its shares at $25, valuing the major label group at $12.75bn. By the end of the day, WMG’s share price had risen to $30.86, sending its valuation to around $15.36bn. The IPO is being watched closely by […]

Last week, Warner Music Group filed to go public in its IPO: you can read our analysis of the filing’s juicier bits here. According to the Financial Times, WMG was planning to announce the pricing for its shares in the IPO yesterday – which would in turn reveal the valuation of the company – but decided to […]

Spotify’s ‘Sound Up’ program aims to help people from underrepresented backgrounds take their first steps into the podcasting world. 60 people have so far gone through its program in the US, UK, Germany and Australia, with more than 20,000 having applied over the first two years of the scheme. Now Spotify is launching the third […]

Spotify’s management team must quiver every time they see the word ‘fake’ deployed in a headline, given past controversies around ‘fake artists‘, ‘fake albums‘ and ‘fake streams‘ on the service. But here we are with another one for the list: fake features. OneZero has a story about how “scammers are gaming Spotify by faking collaborations […]

Recently, Goldman Sachs published a report with new predictions for music industry revenues in 2020, Covid-19 impact included. It forecast a 75% drop for live music revenues, but growth of 3% for recorded music and 3.5% for music publishing in 2020. Kobalt founder and chairman Willard Ahdritz isn’t so sure. “Overall I do believe that […]

As one of the main pan-African music streaming services, Boomplay has grown rapidly in the past couple of years. In July 2018 it had 17 million monthly users, but grew this to 53 million by August 2019, and then 62 million by the end of that year. The latest figure for Boomplay is 75 million users, with 86% […]

This year’s Midem music industry conference is online-only, with new video sessions being published daily this week. One of today’s crop sees SoundCloud’s Kerry Trainor, Downtown Music’s Justin Kalifowitz and Raine Group’s Fred Davis discussing artist and label services. Trainor dropped an interesting pair of stats about his platform. “On SoundCloud we have content from […]

A new social-video app called Zynn has been making waves by springing from nowhere to top Apple’s App Store chart in the US. It looks a LOT like TikTok: you can create and watch 15-second videos (“with massive music library”). But as it turns out, the app didn’t just spring from nowhere: Turner Novak of investment firm […]

In August last year, we reported on a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Spotify by Eminem’s publisher Eight Mile Style, based on around 250 songs from the company’s catalogue. The latest development in that case is a surprise: Spotify is dragging Kobalt Music Publishing into the lawsuit, claiming that the latter company is at fault. Spotify’s legal […]

Stitcher is one of the longer-established podcast services, and now it has published a report exploring some of the podcasting trends of 2020 (and the last decade) based on its data. Among the points: nearly 7m podcast episodes were published to Stitcher in 2019 alone; the top genre that year was true crime; the average […]

Like many people around the world, we’ve been watching the events of the past week in the US with shock and concern: the death of George Floyd on 25 May; the subsequent protests; clashes with police across the country; the (un)presidential tweets; and powerful video testimonies like Killer Mike’s speech at an Atlanta press conference. He’s […]

Last week, we wrote about a livestreamed set by Dutch DJs W&W, for which they had a virtual stadium full of dancing fans created. Now British duo Prospa have put a different kind of virtual environment through its paces: a warehouse for an old-school rave. It was the result of a partnership between Polydor, Prospa’s label […]

We’ve mentioned the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons several times in this bulletin recently, mainly because it’s one of the chosen stress-busters for several members of the Music Ally team. But it’s also a fascinating cultural thing, including the ability for players to design their own clothing and share it for free with the wider community. That […]

British mobile-ticketing firm Dice is one of the startups most affected by the Covid-19 impact, but the company has been pivoting during the pandemic to focus on livestreams. Now its CEO Phil Hutcheon has published an article about 20 things Dice has learned about music livestreaming, which we think has some practical, helpful advice for artists […]

We’ve been running a series of stories (you can find the archive link below) about some of the positive news in our industry relating to the Covid-19 pandemic, such as relief efforts for and from the music community, and tools to help artists adapt to the situation. Start today with a new campaign from Global […]

Secondary ticketing company StubHub isn’t having a good 2020, by any stretch of the imagination. Not only has the live industry shut down in many countries, but the eBay subsidiary’s planned $4bn acquisition by Viagogo has yet to see the two companies actually merge, amid regulatory investigation. Given past controversies around Viagogo and secondary ticketing more […]

Lots of artists and especially DJs are livestreaming on Facebook and Instagram, but as the latter platform recently made clear, there are some licensing restrictions on what music can be played. Canadian collecting society SOCAN has done something interesting though: a new program called ‘Encore!’ that will pay songwriters and publishers when their work is used in livestreams […]

Spotify was ‘the audio platform with the highest daily engagement’ in the US last year, according to a new study by research firm Insider Intelligence. How is that measured? By daily minutes spent listening. The study claims that this metric jumped from just under eight minutes in 2018 for Spotify to just over 10 minutes in […]

Apple Music’s growing focus on African music and artists continues, with a new show on its Beats 1 radio station called ‘Africa Now Radio‘. Hosted by Nigerian DJ Cuppy, it’s a spin-off from Apple Music’s ‘Africa Now‘ playlist, and will be playing new African music across genres including Afrobeats, highlife, alté, amapiano and kuduro. The […]

CISAC is the global body representing collecting societies. Its last president was Jean-Michel Jarre, and before him it was Robin Gibb from the Bee Gees. Big shoes to fill for its next president, right? Step forward… Björn Ulvaeus. The co-founder of ABBA will serve a three-year term as president of CISAC, having been elected by […]

Travis Scott is the latest act to turn an appearance in Fortnite into a landmark event for music, building on what Marshmello achieved within the game last year. Scott’s first concert there drew in 12.3m people and he will have made significant income from sales of digital peripherals. The runaway success may – only in […]

When lockdown started, artists around the world swiftly jumped onto platforms like Instagram and Twitch, in order to livestream from their homes. But, with social distancing restrictions in place for the foreseeable future, and no real sense of when live music could return, the idea that livestreams could help to partially offset the enormous losses […]

Lead: We are now several weeks into lockdown and have moved far, far beyond just “doing a livestream”. There was some wavering at the start as to whether albums should be delayed by several weeks or brought forward, but now everyone is having to roll their sleeves up and get on with it. The music […]

Author and activist Cory Doctorow elicits some strong opinions within the music industry, it’s fair to say: he was a key figure in the opposition to the European Copyright Directive (including encouraging “targeting and destroying the political careers of any politician stupid enough to vote in favour of this idiocy”) for example. So, news that he has […]

In April this year, we reported on the acknowledgment by a couple of Instagram executives that they had plans afoot to help creators (musicians included) to make money from their livestreams on the platform. Yesterday, Instagram made its first announcement on that score. “To give fans another way to participate and show their love, we’re introducing badges that […]

We are seeing more artists embrace the possibilities of voice assistants, led by Amazon’s Alexa music + Alexa. Witness The 1975’s recent use of an Alexa skill to nudge fans towards their latest website. Amazon, too, is encouraging artists and labels to experiment with voice technology more, including through partnerships on its own content features. This week, […]

The latest startup hoping to make a livestreaming splash is called Clubify, and its pitch to fans is “your favourite DJs, clubs and festivals live at home”. The UK-based startup’s focus is on electronic music, then, but also on charging for access rather than free streams. Its subscription membership will cost £14.90 a month or £149.90 […]

Instagram has music licensing deals for user-generated content through parent company Facebook, but even it recently had to clarify its guidelines for people broadcasting music on the platform. The wider question of licensing for online livestreams is provoking debate across the world, including this week in Kenya. The Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) has delivered a warning […]

Peter Chou used to be the CEO of technology firm HTC. Now he’s launched a startup called XRSpace, and unveiled its first virtual reality headset, the XRSpace Mova. It’s lighter than many rivals, and is a ‘standalone’ headset like the Oculus Quest – which means it doesn’t need to be connected to a PC to run its […]

Earlier this month, we wrote about a marketing campaign for Ministry of Sound that made inventive use of Instagram Stories to create a motorbike-racing game – with fans tapping to avoid obstacles and ravines (i.e. to move to the next story post). Now the digital agency behind that campaign, F-That, is at it again – this time […]

“Dear Stan, I meant to write you sooner, but I just been busy,” wrote Eminem on Instagram yesterday. “text me, ill hit you back” – with an accompanying phone number. And no, of course Eminem isn’t giving out his cellphone number to 30.1 million people on Instagram: it’s part of a marketing campaign involving one of […]

Music analytics firm Chartmetric has published the third and final part of its analysis on Covid-19’s impact on music consumption. The study focuses on livestreams, and the extent to which they boosted artists’ social media followings. The conclusion: yes they did. Chartmetric says that “live streams scheduled by artists from their own channels generated significant […]

Aimed at electronic music fans, a new app called AiMi is using AI technology to turn existing tracks from artists into adaptive experiences for listeners. The idea: listeners set the ‘energy’ rate they want, based on a scale of 1 to 10, and the app delivers a flow of continuous music to suit their requirements. AiMi uses […]

shesaid.so – the organisation pushing for gender equality in the music industry – is launching new virtual mentoring schemes for women and gender minorities in Italy and France.  The schemes will be supported by YouTube Music, and will recruit 12 mentees in each country who will them be paired with either a local or international […]

We reported yesterday on concerns that India’s growth in paid music subscriptions has slowed down. Now one of the main Indian streaming services, JioSaavn, has a new initiative that it hopes will make its JioSaavn Pro subscription tier more attractive to listeners. The new feature is called JioSaavn Pro Rewards, and it’ll offer a range […]

Facebook’s experimental apps team, NPE, is launching a new app – and it’s focused on music. The app is called Collab, and it’s launching today for iOS as an invitation-only beta that, in the team’s words, “brings together creators and fans to create, watch, and mix and match original videos, starting with music”. The app […]

There’s been a radical shift in the way we make, deliver and experience music over the last decade, driven by innovation and partnerships between the music and technology industries. Innovation isn’t just about the biggest tech companies though: the music industry has its arms open wide to talented music-tech startups of all kinds. That’s why […]

In the Music & Tech Springboard series of videos we’ve produced with the BPI, we’ve heard from collecting societies, lawyers, advisors, accelerators and incubators, and labels about their advice for music/tech startups. But what about hearing from some startups themselves? That’s what this video does. A group of British startups who’ve all signed licensing deals […]

Technology and music may be two separate industries, but there are a number of people whose jobs revolve around bridging the gap between the two: helping startups to understand the strategies and priorities of rights holders, and helping rightsholders to grasp the needs of startups. It’s not uncommon to find these advisors working with one […]

If a music-tech startup’s product or service involves making the actual music available, that company will need licences for the music. Understanding how licensing works is one of the first and most important things that these startups need to understand. At its simplest level, that also means understanding whether you need to be talking to […]

Like any industry, music has its own set of trade publications and websites that are pored over by executives and staff in the labels, publishers and collecting societies. Meanwhile, there’s also a thriving technology industry media covering startups of all kinds, music/tech included. Getting featured by key media, from news stories and founder profiles to […]

Warner Music Group’s initial public offering launches today, with the music group offering 70m shares in a public offering whose price is expected to be between $23 and $26 per share. “The offering consists entirely of secondary shares to be sold by Access Industries, LLC and certain related selling stockholders,” explained WMG in its announcement. […]

Warner Music Group’s initial public offering launches today, with the music group offering 70m shares in a public offering whose price is expected to be between $23 and $26 per share. “The offering consists entirely of secondary shares to be sold by Access Industries, LLC and certain related selling stockholders,” explained WMG in its announcement. […]

We’ve been thinking a lot about Fortnite and music recently. Travis Scott attracted 27.7 million people to his recent ‘Astronomical’ concerts within the popular game, while its new Party Royale mode has already hosted DJ sets from Diplo, Steve Aoki and Deadmau5. There are quite a few unanswered (as yet) questions around this: for example, […]

Customers paying their subscription even though they’re not using your service? The stuff of dreams, so you’d think (well, you would if you owned a gym, for example). In a world where streaming services have to keep a close eye on their ‘churn’ rate (cancellations) it might not seem in their interests to boot off […]

Andy Day is a popular children’s TV presenter in the UK on TV channel CBeebies, but he’s also been building a music career as the frontman of Andy and the Odd Socks. The band’s new album comes out today (22 May) through Sony Music’s children’s entertainment label Magic Star, and there’s an inventive marketing campaign around […]

TikTok is not the only short-form video game in town and Triller has been snapping at its heels for some time, making a strong splash in the US and drawing in hip-hop acts in particular. Triller has now landed the exclusive on the video for ‘Come Back To Me’ by US singer/producer/model/YouTube personality Chantel Jeffries. The video is […]

Livestreams are all the rage in 2020, but the related ‘virtual concerts’ category is seeing some activity too. Travis Scott’s performances in Fortnite, which attracted 27.7 million people in total, are the obvious example, but there are also experiments happening around virtual reality, as well as other online games. VR startup MelodyVR has expanded on its […]

When people in the music industry talk about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, they’re often thinking about the immediate hit that artists have taken to their live revenues. It’s worth remembering that there’s another sucker-punch lying ahead for musicians and rightsholders alike though. “The particular challenge for the music industry is surmounting the delayed […]

In 2011, the US accounted for 26% of global recorded music revenues. In 2019, that share had grown to 36% according to industry body the IFPI’s figures, despite that period covering considerable global expansion for music streaming services. Why is the world’s biggest music market taking an even bigger share of the revenue? Former Spotify […]

Just finished a book and looking for a new, gripping read for the weekend ahead? Here’s a recommendation for you: ‘Section 512 of Title 17’. Admittedly, it’s got no wizards, romance, clutter-clearing tips or Henry VIII lopping people’s heads off. But in terms of music industry politics, it’s got the makings of a thriller. The […]

The album isn’t completely dead and the playlist isn’t yet the be-all and end-all – which means that artists are somewhat creatively discombobulated in what is really a curious transition period. But with that comes the scope to experiment and push the boundaries. Justin Bieber could be the one firing the starting pistol for the […]

We’re sorry to report that another physical music industry conference has bitten the dust in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. Music Biz 2020 was due to be held in August in Nashville, but has now been cancelled by organiser the Music Business Association. Well, the physical event has. “We plan to follow up the success […]

In February this year, we wrote about The 1975’s ‘Mindshower’ campaign, which saw the band create a fictitious ‘digital detox’ retreat called Mindshower, complete with its own website and a spoof video ad on YouTube. Now, days ahead of the release of the band’s new album ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’, the website has reopened to the […]

The number one question for anyone in the music industry now – recorded or live – is what shape the business will be in when we finally emerge from the lockdown. Anything close to certainty is, of course, impossible but it some countries will inevitably emerge stronger than others. Colombia – the subject of our latest […]

Licensing music for podcasts is a bit of a tangle. We know that. But how many podcasts are using music, be it licensed or unlicensed? That’s data that analytics firm Pex has been ferreting out for its latest study, announced in a series of tweets yesterday. “To date we indexed 32,402,790 unique podcast episodes. 5,447,823 of those contained […]

Verzuz battles, Robbie Williams’ kitchen karaoke, KT Tunstall solo raving… There have been some joyful musical broadcasts on Instagram Live during the Covid-19 pandemic. But as a blog post from Instagram noted yesterday, the recent boom in livestreams has “highlighted some confusion across the community — especially around the use of recorded music in Live on […]

The #BrokenRecord campaign has been gathering momentum in recent weeks – and was even the subject of our own Music Ally TV Show last week. Now ERA, the body that represents retailers and digital music services in the UK, has weighed into the debate. ERA CEO Kim Bayley has published a blog post with her […]

Growing an artist’s listenership in specific markets or their social following is one part of the equation of nurturing fan bases and driving revenue. But what is often missing, is actually knowing who the fans are and getting a complete picture of how they’re behaving and presenting themselves online, which provides a more strategic approach […]

Colombia’s music industry has gone from strength to digital strength, giving some hope that it may come out of the global pandemic in relatively healthy shape. The post Country Profile – Colombia 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

A blunt truth underpinning the ‘value gap’ debate: if YouTube is going to pay music rightsholders more royalties, one of the best ways will be by increasing its advertising revenues. Which, as we reported earlier this year when parent company Alphabet started disclosing them, have grown from $8.15bn in 2017 to $11.16bn in 2018, then $15.15bn […]

Shopping on Facebook is already A Thing thanks to the social network’s ‘Marketplace’ feature, an eBay-like service connecting private buyers and sellers. Now Facebook is pushing on with its own ecommerce strategy, announcing Facebook Shops yesterday. “Facebook Shops make it easy for businesses to set up a single online store for customers to access on both […]

Polydor-signed act Gracey is promoting her ‘Empty Love’ single with an AR filter for Instagram that plays an instrumental passage from the song which can then be played around with by the user. It works by opening the selfie camera in Instagram so that anyone using it can use an on-screen slider to lower or increase the […]

We first wrote about startup SendMusic in late 2018, when it emerged as a way to help musicians, producers and music industry colleagues to send big files to one another, including for promotional purposes. Now there’s an update: SendMusic has launched its official iOS app. “You can now send, receive, listen and reply all in one place… […]

YouTube set up its Foundry initiative back in 2016 as a way to offer emerging artists marketing, promotional and technology support. The 12 acts shortlisted for the class of 2020 have just been announced and include: Jaykae (from the UK); Joesef (UK); TESSÆ (France); Tems (Nigeria); Adam Melchor (US); Eladio Carrion (Puerto Rico); Gabriel Garzon-Montano (US); Natanael […]

We first wrote about stem licensing service Tracklib back in June 2016 when it pitched at MidemLab. It is aimed at the DJ and remixer worlds, allowing users to buy and license track stems in one location. In October it signed a deal with the estate of Isaac Hayes to make a number of his unreleased tracks available for […]

People often ask how the economics of podcasting work. Well, here’s how they worked for Spotify yesterday. The streaming service announced an exclusive licensing deal with one of the biggest podcasts, The Joe Rogan Experience. The Wall Street Journal claimed the deal was worth “more than $100 million”, but the ensuing spike in Spotify’s share price added […]

Virtual reality has yet to become a wildfire success, but within the sector, Facebook’s Oculus Quest headset has been a bright spot. Now the company has offered some stats to celebrate the one-year anniversary of its launch. Owners of the $399/$499 (depending on storage) headset have spent more than $100m on games and applications in the […]

TikTok has a new boss, and he’s a media-industry heavyweight. Kevin Mayer is joining TikTok’s parent company Bytedance from Disney, where he was most recently chairman of direct-to-consumer and international – a key role overseeing the launch of the Disney+ video streaming service. Mayer will be chief operating officer of Bytedance, leading “music, gaming, Helo, […]

We’ve written regularly about Australian AI-music startup Popgun, including its belief that AI could be the secret sauce for a service “where teenagers come together to make music for each other… the ‘pop stars on training wheels’ place where they make music for each other, release it and watch each other pretend to be pop […]

Squeezing new uses from existing technology sparks creative revolutions. Dancing to recorded music was weird until someone who understood the crowd started to link the right songs together in the right place, and created the nightclub. (It’s probably best not to dwell on one of the main claimants of that innovation, mind…) Fast forward to […]

The #BrokenRecord campaign started by musician Tom Gray in the UK is gathering steam. Next Sunday (24 May) will see an online Tim’s Twitter Listening Party Festival allied to the campaign, which is calling for changes to the music streaming ecosystem that will benefit artists and songwriters. Last Friday (15 May) Gray was one of […]

Facebook has acquired Giphy, the popular library of animated GIFs, and plans to “further integrate” it into Instagram and other Facebook apps, while still making it available to non-Facebook apps too. “We’re looking forward to investing further in its technology and relationships with content and API partners. People will still be able to upload GIFs; […]

One of 2018’s cleverest music marketing campaigns was the one for US group Khruangbin. It included the AirKhruang website, which asked fans to input details of their upcoming flights, then created Spotify playlists to match their length, drawing on tracks that the group would use in their DJ sets, as well as artists from the countries under […]

We reported on the launch of Trash last June: an AI-powered video editing app launched by Hannah Donovan, formerly of Vine and This Is My Jam. Then, in January this year, her pitch won the startup showcase section of the NY:LON Connect conference in New York, with Donovan explaining that Trash had been licensing music for use in […]

The Spotify for Artists dashboard is no longer just for artists. “We’re bringing artist teams, labels and distributors to Spotify for Artists so you can manage your profile, see and analyze your data and pitch to playlists, together,” announced the streaming service on Friday, in what it described as “an effort to empower artists, managers, and labels […]

Earlier this year, indie licensing agency Merlin appointed Facebook music exec Jeremy Sirota as its new CEO. On Friday (15 May) he gave his first public speech in the role at AIM’s online ‘AIM House’ conference. It included some colour about Merlin’s plans, and its recent growth. “I see a lot of value in taking […]

Industry body Songwriters of North America (SONA) has launched a new hardship fund for songwriters, which will distribute emergency grants of $1k to creators hit by the Covid-19 pandemic’s economic impact. The new fund was set up thanks to a donation from publisher Sony/ATV last month, reported Billboard. Also in the US, collecting society BMI partnered […]

Fans of Puerto Rican star Bad Bunny had been raging last week after his ‘Safaera’ song was removed from Spotify. Now it’s back, along with an explanation from the streaming service about why it had been rendered unplayable for a few days. “We are happy to report to Bad Bunny fans that Safaera is once […]

Nobody can know exactly what the overall financial impact of Covid-19 will be on the music industry in 2020, but that isn’t stopping analysts from guessing. Goldman Sachs made its prediction last week, and it’s a sobering one. “Global music revenue will drop by 25% in 2020 on our estimates, largely due to the widespread […]

The Chinese music industry saw 16% growth in its recorded music revenues in 2019 according to the IFPI, but it was also the first country to be affected by the Covid-19 outbreak. Does that make it a canary in the coalmine for the global music industry, in terms of learning lessons from the coronavirus impact, […]

In February 2019, TikTok paid $5.7m as part of a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission following a child-privacy investigation dating back to the Musical·ly app (not us!) that TikTok merged with in 2018. Besides paying the $5.7m, TikTok promised to make changes that would ensure children’s personal information was not being shared, alongside other protections […]

We have not covered ViRvii before but it describes itself as “a technology firm that develops proprietary user experiences merging music, art and virtual reality” and was founded last year. Why we are writing about it now is that it has just signed a deal with Facebook-owned Oculus to develop VR content for the platform starting next […]

Video-chatting app Houseparty has been one of the big hits of the Covid-19 pandemic, alongside Zoom, with people using it to chat to friends and family, and sometimes to play its embedded games. Now Houseparty is exploring music and livestreams through a three-day event called ‘In The House‘, which launches tomorrow (15 May). It’ll be […]

Unsurprisingly, Sofar Sounds isn’t hosting any physical gigs at the current time. It has, however, launched an online ‘Listening Room’ for livestream performances by artists, which it says is earning them an average of $500 in donations from fans, as well as a performance fee from the company itself. Now Sofar has launched a Spotify playlist based […]

In January we reported on plans to hold an ‘AI Song Contest’ for “European teams of musicians, artists, scientists and developers” working with music-generating AI systems. It turns out they weren’t just Europeans: an Australian team called Uncanny Valley was announced as the winner of the contest this week with a track called ‘Beautiful The World’. “The team trained […]

Adult colouring books are a significant part of the book publishing world, with plenty of apps offering this too – usually in the name of mindfulness. Now Sony Music UK is getting in on the colouring action with a new site called The Colouring Sessions. It’s based around album artwork from artists including Elvis Presley’s debut […]

In the streaming age, what is a ‘deluxe’ album anyway? It’s more than just extra tracks and alternative versions. A number of artists have explored Spotify’s ‘enhanced’ playlists format, which inserts videos between the music tracks, for example. And video is also at the core of the strategy for the deluxe version of Lil Baby’s […]

We’re fairly sure Travis Scott made a killing from virtual items around his recent Fortnite concert, although a figure hasn’t yet been announced. One artist that is announcing some numbers from an online performance, though, is veteran British act OMD. Last Saturday (9 May) they streamed a recording of a November 2019 concert on YouTube […]

When it comes to music ambassadors, the UK is really spoiling us this week. British artist trade body the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) has announced 15 new ‘artist ambassadors’ to join its efforts. Skin from Skunk Anansie; duo Nova Twins; house music legend Larry Heard; Stiff Little Fingers frontman Jake Burns; and The Anchoress are […]

Last October we reported on a startup called Reveel that was promising to help musicians to ensure they were credited correctly on all the songs they work on, through a ‘creator ID’ linked to each song or recording. Now Reveel has launched its actual platform (as opposed to just registrations for creator IDs) in beta. “Reveel is a collaborative […]

Ticketing firm Eventbrite has published its quarterly shareholder letter accompanying its financial results. Unsurprisingly it focuses heavily on the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic is having on the live industry. In Q1, its revenues fell by 40% year-on-year to $49.1m, leading to a net loss of $146.5m compared to $10m a year ago. “First quarter net loss […]

This is an edited version of an article that appeared in Music Ally’s Q1 2020 report. In the light of the current #BrokenRecord campaign around music industry economics – see our piece last week for more on that – we wanted to also share it in front of our paywall. The topic of user-centric music […]

Production music firm Epidemic Sound is making 79 of its 419 staff redundant, although the company says that this is not the result of a drop in revenues. The majority of the layoffs have come from its sales department, with the other redundancies coming from support roles including finance and training. Staff were told about […]

A new music app called Top Mix is promising that “anyone can make music with the swipe of a finger”. Released for iOS, it’s the work of a team led by former executives from social mobile gaming company Crowdstar. Top Mix is free to download, and in its App Store blurb’s words “allows you to mix songs […]

Zhu is the latest dance artist doing something interesting on Twitch – a livestreamed concert this Thursday (14 May) that will be used to premiere new single ‘Only’. However, it’s part of a wider deal for Zhu with a company called Enthusiast Gaming, which focuses on games and esports – the latter through its Luminosity Gaming […]

*This topic was discussed in-depth on Music Ally TV. Watch the show in full here   In a world where the playlist is king, it is hardly surprising that getting on New Music Friday (NMF) has become the be-all and end-all of music streaming marketing, an opportunity to get your track in front of 8m people worldwide, […]

“Our goal is to provide the best virtual flower delivery service that can help you tell someone you care, you love them, you miss them, or simply thank them for believing in you. Select a bouquet you wish to share and write your personal message to go along with it.” No, not the latest Silicon […]

It’s fair to say that the Verzuz battle between Jill Scott vs Erykah Badu was hotly anticipated – and thankfully (given the technical difficulties we’ve seen in previous battles) lived up to expectations. It did pretty well in figures too: Scott posted a follow-up Instagram pic celebrating “1+ Billion Impressions” for the event, which saw both stars spinning […]

“Country music is going to be the biggest sort of paradox for AI because the underlying melodies and so on are very formulaic. But the lyrics are based on human experience. I’d be very interested how long it would take an AI to come up with this… Tammy Wynette song, D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Unless that AI spent […]

Tech firm RealNetworks has published its quarterly financial results, including as usual figures for music-streaming firm Napster, in which it holds an 84% stake. Napster’s subscription revenues grew from $24.3m in the first quarter of 2019 to $26.3m in the first quarter of 2020: an 8.2% rise, albeit one that reflects the small scale of the […]

The UK’s Musicians’ Union and The Ivors Academy have teamed up for a campaign called ‘Keep Music Alive’ which the two organisations say “aims to ‘fix streaming’ and calls for industry stakeholders to come together to agree an equitable, sustainable and transparent model for royalty distribution in the streaming era”. It kicks off this morning […]

Spotify, Pandora, Deezer and other music services are thinking hard about how to make it easier for listeners to discover podcasts that they might like. Now tech firm Gracenote is launching something that could help: “a standardised and enriched dataset enabling powerful navigation, search and discovery of more than 35 million podcast episodes across all […]

Fresh from hosting a Major Lazer-themed DJ set from Diplo, Fortnite’s new ‘Party Royale’ mode is set for its next music concert tonight. The ‘Party Royale Premier’ will take place at the virtual island’s ‘Main Stage’ venue, with DJ sets from Steve Aoki, Deadmau5 and Dillon Francis. As with the Diplo set, there will be two chances […]

There will be no physical Midem conference this year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the event will live on digitally – including its annual Midemlab startups contest. Yesterday, the 20 finalists for this year’s competition (disclosure: Music Ally is one of the selecting partners) were announced, narrowed down from 226 entrants this year. The Music […]

The Nordic region is one of the most mature territories for music streaming in the world. Now the Polaris Hub – the licensing hub formed by collecting societies in Denmark, Norway and Finland – has published its annual report on digital music in the region. “The number of inhabitants subscribing to a music streaming service has gone […]

Warner Music Group announced its latest quarterly financial results yesterday, but in the earnings call, CEO Steve Cooper kept his cards close to his chest regarding the label’s upcoming IPO. “The current market conditions are obvious, so our board and management will continue to monitor the situation,” Cooper told analysts. However, there was some news later: “We have […]

Epic Games has put put a couple of new figures for its flagship game Fortnite, and they’re big. “Fortnite now has over 350 million registered players! In April, players spent over 3.2 billion hours in game,” tweeted the official Fortnite account yesterday. Note, the 350m figure isn’t active players – we don’t know how many of the registered […]

Last year in Sandbox, we covered the campaign for Finnish hip-hop duo JVG’s RATA/ RAITTI album where they used their links to the world of ice hockey (absolutely massive in Finland) and also Warner Music Live to get to arena level. Now they’ve done something else inventive. On Vappu Eve (the night before May Day […]

We are seeing lots of campaigns having to quickly adapt their planned real-world elements to work as purely online initiatives – and the immersive video for Rita Ora’s ‘How To Be Lonely’ single is a very good case in point. The video was directed by Dave Myers and was made in partnership with Wonderland Agency. […]

Well, the partnership is more than just a tile, but given Garth Brooks’ status as an “avid Words With Friends player” we suspect he’s pretty proud of that achievement. The partnership with games firm Zynga is actually part of Brooks’ longstanding relationship with Amazon. “Under the arrangement, Brooks will promote Words With Friends with original […]

Telco bundles can help drive up subscriber numbers when certain networks buddy up with particular DSPs. It is no surprise that T-Mobile US users are being offered three months of Tidal for free given that Tidal has a long-standing relationship with Sprint (notably a $200m investment for a 33% stake in the music service), with Sprint and T-Mobile merging […]

Twitch may be preparing a slate of original, live TV shows, according to a report by Bloomberg. It claims that Amazon’s video service will be commissioning and funding “a slate of original, unscripted series that would be live and interactive, airing two to three times a week”. What’s more, the genres in play are expected to […]

Spotify’s next move in podcasts will be letting people watch as well as listen. The Verge reports that Spotify is running tests with YouTube stars Zane Hijazi and Heath Hussar for their ‘Zane and Heath: Unfiltered’ show. “The global test, which allows the creators to upload their recorded video footage to the app, will show up for […]

Recorded music revenue in Nigeria will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 5.6% over the next five years to reach $40m in 2023, according to PwC, which is tipping the country to be the world’s fastest-growing Entertainment and Media market over the next five years, albeit in percentage terms. In PwC’s Entertainment and […]

Fitness firm Peloton is one of the businesses for whom the Covid-19 pandemic has a silver lining, with many people unable to visit gyms and thus working out at home. The company’s latest quarterly financial results reveal that its number of ‘connected fitness subscribers’ (people paying for a Peloton subscription) grew by 94% year-on-year to more than […]

Nigeria is bursting with musical talent. But should it also be considered a potential source of revenue for labels? The post Country Profile – Nigeria 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Music Tectonics is one of our favourite music industry podcasts (and not just because they’ve had us on), and it’s also held well-regarded conferences. Like everyone else in the conference industry, it’s being forced to go virtual this year. On 19-20 May, it’ll hold Isolate or Innovate, a Zoom form that will “bring together prominent industry […]

Spotify doesn’t think exclusives are good… for music. Spoken-word content? That’s a different story: the streaming service has been eagerly striking exclusive deals with podcasters and investing heavily in its own original shows. Now audiobooks are joining the party. Well, a new all-star reading of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone isn’t strictly exclusive to […]

Forget Fortnite: 2020’s most intense battle royale might just be between all the livestreaming-video services promising to help musicians make back at least some of the revenues they’re losing from the concerts shutdown. The latest to join the fray is US startup Yoop, which has created an ‘eSpace’ that it describes as “a new immersive virtual venue designed […]

At the recent superfans event we held with the BPI and ERA, Wicksteed Works’ Jessie Scoullar was one of our experts, explaining how artists can make better use of mailing lists. Now she has launched a separate guide offering musicians and their teams an introduction to setting up a fan club or membership scheme for […]

UK body ERA has published some new research showing that Brits aged 55 and over are the fastest-growing segment of music streamers. From its panel survey, ERA estimates that 2.3 million over-55s were using subscription music streaming services in February 2020 in the UK, almost double the 1.2 million figure a year before. That 90.2% […]

There’s plenty of uncertainty around when live concerts will resume in different parts of the world, but don’t forget the related question of what they’ll be like. Specifically: how will music concerts comply with whatever social distancing rules remain, as the lockdown eases. We’re getting some early hints in the US. Artist Travis McCready will […]

Music Ally is delighted to announce that we are taking our successful Sandbox Summit events online with a new global edition taking place from 21st September to 25th September across two hours each day. The event is supported by Linkfire and Chartmetric and is entirely free to access thanks to this support. The event will […]

It’s back! Some days we’re not running a ‘positive news’ roundup, which doesn’t necessarily mean everything’s bleak and terrible: it might be that we’ve broken out a bigger positive story on its own, or just that there’s a lull in announcements. Good things to tell you about today, however, include Bandcamp’s announcement that last Friday’s revenue-share-waiving sale […]

It’s all gone a bit quiet on the antitrust complaint front regarding Spotify versus Apple. Spotify filed a complaint in Europe against Apple more than a year ago, sparking a sharp rebuttal from the tech giant. We’re still waiting to see what action, if any, the European Commission takes over the complaint. However, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek […]

The demo days of music/tech accelerator Techstars Music are usually a big draw in the physical world, with music industry execs and tech investors convening in Los Angeles to watch its startups pitch. By necessity, its 2020 demo day was different: streamed online with pre-recorded pitches. It was an impressive and varied selection of companies […]

Earlier this week, we covered the IFPI’s latest figures for global recorded music revenues, which grew by 8.2% in 2019. Artist rights group the Future of Music Coalition made an important point when it shared our story on Twitter. It’s true. In 2019 the recorded music industry enjoyed its fifth consecutive year of growth, taking […]

In November 2019, WMG’s head of innovation, recorded music, Scott Cohen told Music Ally that he was interested in the ways that blockchain technology could create new value for the industry. One example: digitally-scarce collectibles that fans would buy and show off. Fast-forward six months, and one of the startups in the latest cohort for […]

We reported on the #NextStageChallenge last month: it’s an initiative that’s trying to round up developers for a hackathon and accelerator to tackle some of the challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic has created for musicians. Music Ally is one of the companies collaborating on the challenge. We’ve now got an update on participation: 425 applicants from […]

We covered the launch of the IFPI’s latest Global Music Report yesterday, and the official figures showing that global recorded music revenues grew by 8.2% to $20.2bn in 2019 – the biggest total since 2004. Now the analysis is continuing of what the figures tell us about trends in the market. Midia Research, which put out its own […]

Ministry of Sound has found an inventive use for Instagram stories: it’s turned them into a game to promote the single, ‘Mightnight (The Hanging Tree)’ by Hosh & 1979 ft. Jalja. The Sony-owned label worked with digital agency F-That to create the game, which involves driving a motorbike through a snowstorm while tapping to avoid obstacles […]

Two more artists have revealed plans for weekly YouTube formats during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Rolling Stones have launched something called ‘Extra Licks’, which will stream past live performances on their YouTube channel every Sunday, using YouTube’s ‘premieres’ feature. The first, focusing on the band’s 2016 ‘Ole!’ tour of Latin America, can be watched here and has […]

Nick Cope was lead singer in British indie band The Candyskins, who were Oxford contemporaries of (if not as big as) Supergrass back in the 1990s. They broke up in 1998, and although they’ve reunited for a few one-off concerts since, there’s also an interesting postscript to their story in the new career of frontman […]

In the middle of April, music compilations brand Now That’s What I Call Music added a free ad-supported tier to its previously subscription-only app. Now it has made its latest album, Now 105, available exclusively through the app for its first week of release. The album went live on Friday (1 May) ahead of its physical and […]

We’ve written a fair amount about the differing strategies of Spotify and Apple Music when it comes to spoken-word content. Spotify is piling in to podcasts and giving them equal billing to music on its ‘audio-first’ platform, while Apple is keeping Apple Music and Apple Podcasts as separate entities and apps. But wait: Apple Music […]

We tend to focus on startups’ tech and business models rather than their founders’ psychology, but new livestreaming startup Sessions is fascinating on both counts – in the latter case, seemingly as a response to CEO Tim Westergren’s experiences at Pandora. “The big piece of unfinished business for me at Pandora was, ironically, the artists,” he told […]

The RIAA has published its annual year-end report on Latin (recorded) music revenues in the US, revealing that they grew by 28% to $554m in 2019. That’s more than double the rate of growth of the overall US market, which was 13% that year. $529m of those Latin revenues (i.e. 95%) came from streaming, helping the category […]

Music industry body the IFPI was due to publish its annual Global Music Report in March, with data on worldwide recorded music revenues in 2019. The launch was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the report has now been published today. The headline figure: global recorded music revenues grew by 8.2% to $20.2bn in […]

Quick work, Fortnite. Last week we reported on the addition of a ‘Main Stage’ music venue to the game in its new Party Royale mode, and speculated that it could be used for live performances and DJ sets. On Friday night, Diplo rocked up to play a Major Lazer set, giving us the first glimpse […]

We’ve been looking for the positive news around the Covid-19 pandemic in our industry, but we can’t avoid the challenges. That includes the news that one of those positive developments, the rapid raising of nearly $14m for the US-focused MusiCares Covid-19 Relief Fund, is rapidly being depleted. “It is the largest amount of money raised, […]

US radio group NPR and research firm Edison Research have published their latest Smart Audio Report, which usually has plenty of interesting data on digital listening habits in the US. The new edition, for spring 2020, has added interest because it’s been asking people how Covid-19 and its accompanying lockdown has changed those habits. 26% of […]

Streaming service Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren stepped down as CEO and from its board of directors in June 2017. Since then, he’s been a venture partner at VC firm Khosla Ventures; joined the board of AI music startup Popgun; and founded a new company called Next Music. What’s that? Well, it’s the firm behind a new […]

Apple published its latest quarterly financials yesterday, for the first quarter of 2020 (the company’s fiscal Q2). Services were once again a standout category for the company, setting another quarterly record of $13.3bn in revenues. There was also an announcement (of sorts) about Apple Music’s growth within that segment. “Apple Music and cloud services, both set […]

Spotify is facing another lawsuit, although this one isn’t focusing on licensing or royalties. Instead, a Canadian company called VoxTonePro is accusing the streaming service of stealing its trade secrets, and using them to build its Spotify Ad Studio – that’s the tool that brands and businesses can use to create their own audio ads to […]

OpenAI is the non-profit artificial intelligence company backed by (among others) tech mogul Elon Musk. Just under a year ago it showed off Musenet: “a deep neural network that can generate 4-minute musical compositions with 10 different instruments, and can combine styles from country to Mozart to the Beatles”. Now it’s following up with a new system […]

This is the second part of our Amazon Music piece, based on a face-to-face interview in February that was being held for our Q1 2020 report in early April. Given the impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic since February, we had a follow-up conversation with Amazon Music VP Steve Boom. Part one is based on […]

“It’s been very gratifying to see the music community pull together… It’s gone really well: we’ve raised over $10m now. Unfortunately, the need is enormous. We’ve had over 10,000 applications for aid already, and we’re only six weeks into this thing. The crisis is going to be long lasting…” Steve Boom is VP of Amazon […]

On many levels, Amazon has already proven its worth in shaking up the music streaming business – not least because it offers the most diversified selection of subscription tiers to consumers. It also made headlines last year by propelling Ellie Goulding’s Amazon-exclusive (a cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘River’) to the top of the UK charts, […]

Lead: The playlist hasn’t killed the album… yet. Instead, artists and labels are caught between both and are starting to experiment with the shapes that releases can now take. Justin Bieber has begun chopping up his album into a series of EPs, designed in part to find the sweet spot on streaming services that drive […]

You’d be forgiven for the tart reply ‘Well of course they do’ – even the world’s largest social network can’t be immune from the Covid-19 pandemic’s economic impact. “We experienced a significant reduction in the demand for advertising, as well as a related decline in the pricing of our ads, over the last three weeks […]

Music Ally readers may be familiar with Patrick Sullivan, who co-founded video copyright protection company Source3 and sold it to Facebook in 2017. (That team had previously set up RightsFlow and sold it to YouTube in 2011.) Sullivan’s new venture is Bonsai which is designed to give individuals seeking career advice access to one-to-one video meetings online with […]

Spotify launched its Spotify Kids app partly to reassure parents that their children would not encounter ripe phraseology when streaming music. Now Deezer is also looking into the challenge of ensuring family listening doesn’t accidentally turn the air a distinct shade of blue. The team behind its Spleeter stem-isolating tool have added in a ‘Keyword Spotting System’ […]

US satellite-radio firm SiriusXM is launching a bunch of authorised artist channels on its service on 1 May. It’s a raft of big catalogue artists: David Bowie, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, George Strait, Guns N’ Roses, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Prince and The Rolling Stones. Produced with the artists’ teams / estates, the channels will broadcast a mixture of […]

The idea that Fortnite is more than a game, it’s a social network has been floating about for a while – tweens and teens especially have been using it as a virtual space to socialise (and, indeed, watch the odd music concert) for a long time. The game’s new mode reinforces that point though. It’s called ‘Party Royale’ and it […]

Today was going to be the day for an insight session put on in London by British industry bodies the BPI and ERA in partnership with Music Ally about ‘Serving the Superfans’. Covid-19 put paid to the in-person plans, so the event was taken online via Zoom. Here’s our report of some of the key […]

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and CFO Paul Vogel have been fielding questions from analysts following the company’s publication of its Q1 2020 financial results earlier today, and their interview with Music Ally shortly afterwards. There were not many surprises, but Ek’s desire to (as he described it several times) “uplevel” the conversation around Spotify and […]

More research firms have been putting out numbers on the market for smart speakers and voice assistants. Juniper Research claims that by 2024 the number of devices with voice assistants in use will “overtake the world’s population” with more than 8.4bn devices – up from a predicted 4.2bn at the end of 2020. It sees big growth […]

Red Light Management – through its Hot Command gaming subsidiary – is partnering with esports company HyperX for a series of online streaming events. It will match Red Light’s artist roster with major esports names on HyperX’s books. The companies have not yet announced specifics of any of these pairings, but it’s another sign of […]

Instagram is opening up its Live feature to allow users to create a fundraiser initiative where 100% of the money raised will go to a nominated cause. There are a number of caveats – notably that fundraisers can only be undertaken for nonprofits and Instagram has its own list of approved nonprofits that any money raised can […]

Earlier this month, we profiled Ampled, a new platform for artists to raise money directly from fans. At the time we noted that Ampled’s original business plan initially involved taking 15% of each transaction on its platform, with the aim of lowering that cut in the future. Now there’s been a change. “As a response to […]

One of the factors in YouTube’s viewing increase (see story higher up this bulletin) is the fact that schools are closed in many countries, and children are getting (even) more time on screens. At the younger end of the age range, that’s having a notable impact on the figures for children’s music channels. Witness the latest […]

It won’t come as a big surprise to learn that TikTok is one of the digital services benefitting from the Covid-19 lockdown – in usage, if not necessarily in revenues. According to eMarketer, in March TikTok added more than 12 million unique visitors in the US alone. Wait: ‘visitors’? These are based on figures from comScore, […]

European indie body Impala has published its latest thoughts on the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the music industry. It’s a ten-step ‘recovery roadmap’ that sets out what it would like to see governments across the European Union doing in the coming months. Immediate steps that Impala would like to see include EU states recognising music and culture […]

It should come as no surprise that Covid-19 is figuring prominently in the Q1 financial results of every public company. Alphabet announced its figures yesterday, and warned that although its revenues were up 13% to $41.2bn in the first quarter of 2020, in March it saw a “significant slowdown in ad revenues”. YouTube is part of […]

US satellite radio firm SiriusXM published its Q1 financial results yesterday, including updated figures for its Pandora subsidiary. The good news for Pandora: its ad revenues were up 4% year-on-year to $241m. The not-so-good news: its monthly active users are still falling: down from just over 66 million a year ago to 60.9 million now. Ad-supported […]

The Covid-19 pandemic is leading some labels to postpone big album releases, especially those for which tours were a big part of the marketing plans. Some big artists, like Dua Lipa and The Weeknd, have put out their albums as planned. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek thinks they may offer encouragement to other artists and labels […]

With recent reports that audio music streams had fallen during the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve been waiting for Spotify’s Q1 2020 financial results with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. Would they reveal a decline in listening, but more importantly, about an impact on paid subscriptions? The figures are out, and it’s good news – for now […]

TikTok is launching a new feature, ‘Donation Stickers’, that will enable creators on the app to encourage their followers to donate to charities. This isn’t only about music, but music industry charities MusiCares and Help Musicians are two of the first to be supported through the feature. The stickers can be added to videos, and […]

Spotify unveiled its latest personalised playlist yesterday, although for now ‘Daily Wellness’ is only available in the US and UK. Like ‘Your Daily Drive’ which launched in June 2019, the new playlist blends music and podcasts, except the focus now is on helping listeners find “positivity, mindfulness, or peace” throughout the day. Also new: ‘Daily Wellness’ […]

The sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia has acquired a 5.7% stake in Live Nation, for a price estimated at nearly $500m. Live Nation is a public company, so this was a transaction on the open market, revealed in a filing by the ‘Public Investment Fund’ with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to Billboard, this […]

We’ll put the big caveat up front: predicting the impact that the Covid-19 coronavirus will have on any industry or sector this year rests on the supremely shaky notion that anyone can predict what will happen with the pandemic itself over the next eight months. Some countries are getting back to work and easing social […]

We wrote earlier this month about L Devine’s inventive ‘URL Tour’ in which she held livestreams on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, as if each platform was a stop on a tour. Now US duo Lion Babe have put their own spin on a digital tour with ‘Around The World At Home‘. It’s based on only […]

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, we’re seeing a growing number of artist marketing campaigns – and even the music that’s at the centre of them – address the crisis. The latest marketing example is from Colombian artist Carlos Vives, whose latest single is called ‘No Te Vayas’ (translation: ‘Don’t Go’). That theme has been adapted for […]

Earlier this month, we wrote about Erykah Badu building her own livestreaming destination rather than using the big social platforms to reach her fans during the Covid-19 lockdown. Now we’ve got some more information about the technology she used to do it. Badu’s partner was a startup called Maestro, which helps artists to create and stream shows from […]

Dance artist Zedd has launched an official Twitch channel. It went live on Saturday with a stream of a 90-minute concert video from his Orbit World Tour. “I’m so excited to relive this show with everyone this weekend, and while so many of us are staying at home right now, I hope that this show will […]

If you missed the Travis Scott concerts in Fortnite, and don’t want to have to watch with excitable YouTubers chattering over the top, there’s now an official ‘full event video’ (with well-chosen camera angles to get the full impact) on Scott’s own YouTube channel. It’s already been watched by nearly three million people at the time of […]

The UK’s Music Venue Trust (MVT) is launching a campaign called #saveourvenues, which aims to drum up support for 556 ‘grassroots music venues’ that it says are in danger of permanent closure in the UK. “The situation is dire, government support has been exhausted, and it now falls to artists, music fans, local communities and the […]

Universal Music Group’s latest partnership is with Lego. Announced this morning, it’ll see the pair teaming up for “the development of a new suite of Lego products launching in 2021, created to encourage and inspire the next generation of musicians, creatives and fans”. Details of what those products will be have not been announced yet: […]

It’s hardly a surprise that physical music sales have taken a big hit during the Covid-19 pandemic, through a mixture of physical stores being closed, and Amazon prioritising other products for its online store. Now the Financial Times has been talking to some companies in the UK to quantify the decline, suggesting that “sales of vinyl records […]

In terms of reach, Facebook is a hugely powerful platform for livestreams, which is why many artists have been using it during the Covid-19 lockdown period for performances, fan Q&As and other live broadcasts. Making money directly from those broadcasts (as opposed to indirectly through promoting streams, merchandise etc) hasn’t thus far been the goal. […]

A flurry of recent reports have noted that in the initial weeks of the Covid-19 coronavirus lockdown, music streams declined. Should the industry be worried? Universal Music Group’s EVP of digital strategy Michael Nash has dampened down those fears. “The subscription business, which is the big driver for revenue, is relatively stable based on its […]

We last covered Gotickety when it launched in September 2018, calling itself the “Candy Crush for the Music Industry” where users of the app play games in order to win meet and greets with musicians, personal video messages from stars as well as tickets/merchandise. The company has now revealed the results of a recent partnership with […]

It’s the 50th anniversary of the release of ‘Young, Gifted and Black’ by Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths, and label Trojan Records is gearing up to celebrate it in style. It has launched a campaign of the same name, with an emphasis on fans. “Join in the celebrations by uploading a photo/video of yourself along with […]

Remember the days when you couldn’t stream Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ album anywhere except on Tidal? The album eventually made it to other streaming services (including Spotify) in April 2019, three years after its initial release. More evidence of times having changed: ‘Lemonade’ is the subject for the latest season of Spotify’s music podcast ‘Dissect’, with two episodes […]

The first of Travis Scott’s ‘Astronomical’ concerts within Fortnite happened overnight, and it was a big hit with the game’s players. “Over 12.3 million concurrent players participated live in Travis Scott’s Astronomical, an all-time record!” tweeted the official Fortnite account. That means Scott beat the 10.7 million audience for Marshmello’s Fortnite concert in February 2019. The post 12.3m […]

Travis Scott is coming to Fortnite this weekend with his ‘Astronomical’ event. Ahead of the multiple performances, the game has added several Scott-themed virtual products to its item shop. Fans wanting all of them will be spending nearly $35. Here’s how that breaks down. There’s an Astronomical Bundle including two skins (characters) – Travis Scott and […]

Is more than $2.6bn of funding enough to insulate a tech startup from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic? Not in the case of augmented-reality firm Magic Leap. “The recent changes to the economic environment have decreased availability of capital and the appetite for longer term investments. While our leadership team, board, and investors still […]

How’s your dubstep and UK garage knowledge? If you’re clued in, you might want to tune in for artist Plastician on his Twitch channel, where he’s been holding regular pub quizzes on the genres. He’s one of the DJs profiled in a new Pitchfork article about livestreaming, which notes that Plastician has gone more down the interaction route […]

This Saturday (25 April) a sing-along edition of The Beatles’ 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine will be screened on the band’s official YouTube channel. The film – which was remastered and restored for theatrical and DVD release in 2018 – has never been available on YouTube before. Well, not in an official capacity. This screening is […]

Pharrell Williams and his I Am Other creative company are working with SoundCloud to create a compilation for new artists. Artists hoping to take part must upload a track to SoundCloud with the #SCxiamOTHER hashtag, then the best 10 (or possibly more) will be picked by Williams and his team. The resulting ‘SoundCloud Presents: i am OTHER, […]

Start today with YouTube’s announcement of a slate of Covid-19 related original shows, with several involving music. Stay Home With: Yungblud will explore the UK artist’s quarantine life, with viewers encouraged to donate to the No Kid Hungry charity, for example. Also positive is Abbey Road Studios’ new Topline Songwriting Competition, with songwriters, artists and producers invited to […]