The global recorded-music market was worth $17.3bn in 2017, up 8.1% on 2016 in what was a third consecutive year of growth for the industry. This is according to the IFPI’s Global Music Report, which is being published today. No surprises in terms of what’s driving this. Music-streaming revenues grew by 41.1% to $6.6bn, and […]

We’re looking for a Social Media & Digital manager to work across our roster of artists.  This role will focus on devising and executing social media and streaming strategies as well as maintaining artist websites and mailing lists. A commitment and passion for the DEF artist roster is essential. This should not be considered an […]

The opening address at AIM’s Music Connected conference in London last Friday came from Paul Sanders, co-founder of Consolidated Independent. He delivered a warning around the ability to stay independent, for music companies and tech startups alike. “As independents we’re usually small, and it’s very hard to get the concentration of expertise in one place […]

B2B digital-music firm 7digital has published a trading update for its business in the first quarter of this year, which it describes as “positive” for the company. “Trading in the first quarter matched the company’s expectations, with turnover slightly ahead of budget,” explained 7digital in its release to the AIM stockmarket this morning. “Altogether, contracts with a […]

It’s fair to suggest that Vevo is having a difficult Spring: following the recent hacking of some of its key accounts, now the company has confirmed new layoffs within its product and engineering teams.  Variety first reported on the cuts, suggesting that they were “significant” and noting that chief technology officer Alex Nunes has also […]

Facebook announced its latest set of music-licensing deals on Friday, with independent labels the latest frontier for its (currently) UGC-focused efforts. Beggars Group, PIAS and Ingrooves were the latest partners, as well as indie licensing agency Merlin. As with Facebook’s major label and publishing agreements, the deals cover Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Oculus VR […]

British collecting society PRS for Music is the latest PRO to publish impressive numbers for 2017. Its revenues were up by 12.7% year-on-year to £717m (just over $1bn) while its payouts to members grew by 14.7% to £605.1m ($848.3m) to set a new record. The figures included a 5.2% rise in international revenue generated by […]

From copyright, production and A&R to consumption, sync and advertising, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning are already having an impact on the modern music industry. A panel at AIM’s Music Connected conference in London today explored this from an independent perspective. The panel included Lydia Gregory from FeedForward AI; Simon Wheeler from Beggars Group; and Sophie […]

Vezt is one of the blockchain-music startups that Music Ally is keeping tabs on in 2018. Its pitch to fans is ‘share ownership in your favourite songs’, with artists able to sell portions of their rights to fans and investors through – snappy buzzphrase alert – ‘initial song offerings’. It’s yet to launch fully. However, Vezt […]

Idagio is one of the streaming services focusing on classical music, with a catalogue of more than 650k tracks. That catalogue is getting bigger from this week, thanks to a new deal with Warner Classics. Over the coming weeks, WMG’s classical division will add its new and recent releases to the platform, as well as […]

Spotify has confirmed reports earlier this week about it poaching Apple Music’s hip-hop and R&B curator Carl Chery. He’s joining Spotify as its new head of urban music, slotting neatly into the position previously filled by RapCaviar creator Tuma Basa. Spotify said that Chery will be based out of Los Angeles and ‘working closely with […]

Apple Music has just reached the milestone of 40 million paying subscribers, but how fast will it grow in terms of the revenues it’s bringing in to Apple’s overall business? One analyst quoted in the Wall Street Journal has made a prediction. “Ben Schachter of Macquarie Capital estimates that Apple Music will average 40% annual growth over […]

‘Divinely discontent’ customers, perfect handstands, six-page narratives… There’s quite a lot to parse in Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ latest letter to shareholders: it’s an interesting insight into how he sees the culture at his company evolving. But there’s also a big headline in the ‘recent milestones’ section of the letter, relating to Amazon’s Prime membership scheme. […]

French collecting society Sacem has reported that in 2017, its collections from online surpassed those from physical music products for the first time. But both revenue sources are still behind that coming in from private-copying levies. Total collections for 2017 stood at €1.4bn, an increase of 3.2% from 2016. Of that, online made up €83.8m, […]

Sensor Tower is the latest research firm putting out numbers on the apps market for 2017, this time focusing on iPhone app spending in the US. It claims that the average amount spent per active iPhone in the US was $58 last year, up 23% from 2016’s figure of $46. This covers spending on premium (pay up-front) […]

Everyone’s a broadcaster now, both in terms of the individuals streaming live video from their phones using apps like Live.me, and in the way these apps can themselves become commissioners of TV-style shows. Live.me is certainly doing that: it’s working with music-production firm The Code on a show called You Need The Code. It’s focusing […]

On a recent family road-trip, while skipping the *many* tracks currently in Spotify’s Top 50 chart that have explicit lyrics, we wondered again why the streaming service hasn’t ever offered a ‘radio edits’ mode for child-friendly listening. If streaming services have ambitions to replace broadcast radio, especially in the car, it seems like an obvious […]

User-generated content (UGC) featuring music, specifically on YouTube, continues to be the biggest source of tension between music rightsholders and Google. Yet could we be on the verge of UGC becoming one of the most exciting areas of growth for the industry? Midia Research thinks that Facebook’s music-licensing efforts, which so far focus on UGC, may […]

Predicting Apple device sales is a risky business, especially if you’re saying they’re going to disappoint: the company has a habit of proving naysayers wrong. Still, research firm KGI’s analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s tealeaf-reading skills are generally respected within the tech industry, so his latest prediction is getting plenty of airing. Kuo claims that Apple could sell between […]

Ceek is one of the startups looking for a business model in broadcasting music concerts in virtual-reality. Now it’s adding a splash of blockchain technology into its mix, and yes, inevitably this involves a token sale. “Ceek tokens can be used to purchase VR event tickets and access VIP interactions with artists,” explained tech site TheNextWeb. “Users […]

We’ve heard about some intriguing music-focused blockchain startups in our time, but Soundpruf is taking a new spin entirely on the intersection between cryptocurrencies and music. “Soundpruf will offer a web/mobile software application, built on blockchain technology, that aggregates every user’s music listening portfolio and pays both artists and listeners in cryptocurrency for every streaming session (via […]

Spotify’s latest acquisition is its latest move to tackle the problems it has faced identifying, tracking and paying royalties to music publishers and songwriters. The company has snapped up Loudr, which does exactly that, for an undisclosed amount. “Loudr will continue to provide select services to its publishing and aggregator partners, while contributing to Spotify’s continued […]

SoundCloud has published its financial results for 2016 through Companies House in the UK. They show that the company’s revenues grew by an impressive 88.9% to €50.3m that year (around $62m) but that its net loss grew by 45.4% to €74.5m ($91.8m) in 2016. That was based on the company’s cost of sales – including royalties – […]

EMMA is a new collective body that has been created for the artist management community. It stands for the European Music Managers Alliance and links management bodies in the UK, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland, Norway and Finland. It also has connections to similar organisations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. The focus […]

Last week, we reported on the “story” linked to someone claiming to be at Apple France who suggested that Apple Music was now on 40m subscribers. It was repeated in several outlets as fact despite the “executive” in question having the most dubious LinkedIn profile at a leading tech company we have ever seen. We […]

How lucrative was the market for virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) apps in 2017? According to research firm IHS Markit, it was worth $3.2bn, representing 72% growth from 2016. Of that, $2bn came from apps with AR features – a category that includes the Pokémon Go mobile game. The report also has some […]

India is clearly the next battleground for smart speakers. Shortly after Amazon launched its Alexa-powered Echo devices there, Google has followed suit with its Google Home and Google Home Mini. The speakers are being sold for Rs 9,999 and Rs 4,499 respectively (around $154 and $69). “Google Home understands Indian accents, and will respond to […]

Universal Music subsidiary Capitol Music Group is deepening its partnership with startups and the tech industry, by launching its own Capitol Innovation Center (CIC) based at its famous headquarters in Los Angeles. It launches on 15 April with what’s being described as “a collaborative workspace and songwriting studio” designed to house musicians, technologists and students […]

News site 9 to 5 Google has been rooting around in the code for the latest version of the YouTube Music Android app, and has noticed an interesting change from the last version. Previously, the app included text saying “Your Liked music is grouped together so you can find it later. The more you like, […]

The US National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) says its members have won a “critical victory” in their nearly-three-year legal battle with the Wolfgang’s Vault website. The site specialises in archive live recordings, but publishers have argued that it is not correctly licensed. A 54-page opinion published by Judge Ramos of the Southern District of New […]

Steve Greenberg is certainly a music man with some pedigree. The renowned music executive and founder of S-Curve Records is also a Grammy-winning producer of hits for artists including Joss Stone, Hanson, Baha Men, Jonas Brothers, AJR and Andy Grammer. In his time he’s also been head of A&R at Mercury Records, president of Columbia […]

Virginie Berger has joined Belgian venture-capital fund LeanSquare as a venture partner, moving from pan-European licensing platform Armonia, where she served as CEO for the past two years. As well as being founder of Paris-based tech/media consultancy DBTH, Berger’s career has also included stints at Microsoft, NRJ, Omnicom and MySpace France. Her role at LeanSquare […]

After a lengthy beta-test period and a succession of licensing deals with music companies, VR music startup MelodyVR is preparing for its commercial launch. In an announcement this morning, the publicly-listed company revealed that it “intends to launch its flagship music product (The MelodyVR app) in the coming weeks”, including a version for Facebook’s upcoming […]

Yesterday was the deadline for all British companies with more than 250 employees to report their ‘gender pay gaps’ to the UK government’s Equalities Office. The definition of this being the difference between the average hourly earnings of men and women for each company. Each firm has reported their ‘mean’ gender pay gap (based on […]

“China was my hobby for the best part of 10 years: something which the company allowed me to run as a hobby on the side as long as I wasn’t spending too much money. It was five years before we made any money whatsoever, and 10 years until we felt we had a business…” Simon […]

This may seem obvious in the light of some recent news stories, but prominent artists really do need to be careful when endorsing brand-new blockchain startups running ICOs. The latest example is a company called Centra, which raised more than $32m last year from an ICO based on its CTR token, with plans to build […]

The idea of a crossover between music videos and online shopping has been floating around for a long time – it seemed a logical extension of product-placement deals if fans could buy what they were watching in a video. Nobody has made a significant business out of the idea though: neither for themselves nor for […]

HTC is expanding its Vive X global VR and AR accelerator program, with a new ‘hub’ based in London. It has also appointed Dave Haynes as its director of Vive X in Europe. He’s a familiar face for the music industry over here, joining from a post as head of business development and partnerships at […]

Music Ally’s latest country profile focuses on Brazil, including an interview with Deezer’s country manager Bruno Vieira. He expresses optimism about the growth not just of music-streaming in Brazil, but of people willing to pay for a streaming subscription there. “We are very positive that over time users will adopt the premium model because it […]

If Spotify needed a reminder yesterday to focus on the music-streaming competition rather than swinging share prices, Apple provided it. The latter company announced that The Weeknd’s new EP ‘My Dear Melancholy’ was streamed more than 26m times in its first 24 hours on Apple Music, including 6m streams for its lead track ‘Call Out […]

“Our goal is to write music as well as John Williams, which then sounds like it’s recorded at Abbey Road and produced by Quincy Jones. Obviously we’re not there yet…” No, this isn’t the latest ambitious young band with an eye for a pullquote. It’s Drew Silverstein, CEO of startup Amper Music. And the music […]

Applications are underway for 2018’s crop of music/tech startup contests. Besides Midemlab in June, there’s Primavera Pro Startups 2018 in May, as part of the Primavera Pro conference in Barcelona. Registrations are open until 20 April for this year’s contest, with five startups due to be chosen to pitch at the event, which was won […]

The Position Production Associate will assist all efforts surrounding the organization, coordination, and execution of production and content rights management under the guidance of the Director for Production and A&R Admin. Responsibilities Assist production department and client teams in the distribution, manufacturing and setup of releases. Liaise between our production department, and all key internal […]

We first wrote about Fortnite: Battle Royale last month, when Drake popped up on Twitch playing the game against a popular streamer. But the rise of Fortnite is well worth following for its own merits: a gaming brand that’s come from nowhere to generate more than $100m a month from in-game purchases, and become a […]

Mark Zuckerberg’s apology tour of the media continues, with an interview with website Vox about Facebook’s recent data controversies. “I think we will dig through this hole, but it will take a few years,” said Zuckerberg. “I wish I could solve all these issues in three months or six months, but I just think the […]

Fresh from being acquired by Sony Music, dance label Spinnin’ Records is experimenting with its streaming playlists – with a particular focus on how they’re accessed through smart speakers. “While curated music content is becoming the norm, voice-recognition is rapidly changing the digital landscape. According to Google, about 20 percent of all mobile search queries […]

We reported last Thursday on Apple Music adding a dedicated music-videos category. Just after we clocked off for Easter, Spotify launched its own salvo in what’s shaping up as a new battle for ‘exclusives’ between the two companies (not to mention YouTube and Vevo). Taylor Swift debuted a new vertical-orientation video for her track ‘Delicate’ […]

Latino boy-band CNCO have a new album on the way, and for the second time they’re working with location-based-marketing startup Landmrk to promote it. In August 2016, their label Sony Music US Latin used Landmrk for a campaign called CNCO Go, which encouraged fans to visit ‘hotspots’ in Latin America and Spain to hear the […]

Streaming-radio service TuneIn is trying something new for Amazon’s Echo speakers. It’s a discounted premium subscription tier, which will cost $2.99 a month from Alexa-enabled devices, compared to the usual $9.99-a-month cost of TuneIn’s premium tier. The strategy matches what Amazon has done with its $3.99-a-month ‘Echo Plan’ for its Music Unlimited music-streaming service. The […]

2018 is already a very active year for lyrics-focused company Genius: its latest $15m funding round was revealed in early March, before a partnership with Spotify on a podcast called Déjà Vu which was announced last week. Now Genius is working with YouTube on something else: a new format called ‘Song Stories’ which will tell […]

Music firm Kobalt’s latest financial results show that its revenues grew by 23.5% to $321m in its last fiscal year, which ended on 30 June 2017. However, the group’s operating loss grew by 45.6% to $24.3m, while its net loss for the year grew by 69.8% to $33.1m. Although given the company’s ability to raise […]

SoundCloud CEO Kerry Trainor has been talking to the Financial Times about what he says is a corporate comeback for the streaming service, following its troubles of 2017. According to Trainor, SoundCloud’s revenues last year surpassed its goal of $100m, with its user base growing in each of the last three quarters after an (underreported […]

One of the co-founders of ticketing firm Ticketfly, Dan Teree, is now working on a blockchain-based ticketing startup called Big Neon. Teree left Ticketfly in September 2013, and his LinkedIn profile lists him as co-founder and COO of a ‘Stealth’ startup. However, investment database AngelList is more forthcoming about what he’s up to. “Big Neon […]

Research firm Verto Analytics has put out some new numbers comparing Apple Music and Spotify in the US, but it’s important to understand exactly what it’s measuring. And what it isn’t. “This month’s Verto Index looks at the top streaming music properties, from Apple Music to TuneIn Radio, among U.S. adults (ages 18 and above)” […]

Apple Music is expanding its catalogue… with music videos. From today, Apple will have a catalogue of music videos – including curated playlists – sitting within its subscription service. Apple is describing this as “one of the most extensive music-video catalogues available” – although without a specific number on that – and will make it […]

Facebook has announced that it’s shutting down its ‘partner categories’ ad-targeting feature. “This product enables third party data providers to offer their targeting directly on Facebook,” explained the social network in a brief blog post. “While this is common industry practice, we believe this step, winding down over the next six months, will help improve […]

Spotify’s latest podcasts move is a partnership with lyrics-focused firm Genius. The companies have collaborated on a podcast called Déjà Vu, which launched yesterday. It’s a panel-based podcast discussing “the ways that modern hitmakers connect to the iconic musicians from the past who paved the way”, focusing on a different current star each episode. “Does […]

The first two episodes of K-Pop stars BTS’ new ‘Burn the Stage’ documentary series went live on YouTube overnight. The first episode was made available for free on the band’s own channel, with the second (and future) episodes being kept behind the YouTube Red subscription paywall. That first instalment is already proving popular: the 21-minute […]

Indian music giant T-Series has long been one of the most popular channels on YouTube, and its growth is continuing apace. Its film-music focused catalogue has just reached a new milestone on Google’s video service: more than 40 million subscribers. Indian news site RadioAndMusicBiz notes that this is up from 30 million in December 2017, […]

British broadcaster the BBC has published its latest ‘annual plan’ report setting out its creative plans for the year, and its wider strategy. There are some interesting bits on music. Like this: “For the first time, in October-December 2017 we estimate 15-34s listened more to streaming music services than all BBC Radio (5 hrs vs. […]

Spotify has Discover Weekly, Release Radar and Daily Mix. Apple Music has My New Music Mix and My Favourites Mix. Now Pandora is launching its own personalised playlists for listeners. Well, it’s testing them with a “small group” of its Premium subscribers anyway. And Pandora is going bigger with the number of playlists: more than […]

Two separate announcements yesterday highlight the fact that big-data and machine-learning for A&R purposes are enjoying a bit of a moment – after years of being mostly seen as a controversial niche when they cropped up in the on-stage conversations at industry conferences. Music Ally has been to countless panel sessions where A&R veterans scoffed […]

The latest startup trying to create a business out of gig-goers social-media habits is Live Music Loyalty. The New Jersey-based company has launched a free iOS app billed as a “concert photo community” that encourages people to share their gig photos, mark their upcoming concerts, and follow artist profiles. There are also rewards and rankings […]

Janelle Monae is the first curator for a new Spotify initiative called Black History is Happening Now. She’ll get her own ‘hub’ within the music-streaming service to highlight her favourite established and emerging artists of colour, as well as a documentary film about the Afrofuturism movement. There’s more to this initiative though: Spotify is also […]

Music Ally is in the process of compiling a list of current blockchain-music startups, and at the time of writing we’re up to 31. One of them is Opus, which has been developing an “open-source decentralised music-sharing platform” with a demo based on the Ethereum blockchain and peer-to-peer technology IPFS. The company is one of […]

More Facebook/privacy news – and stop us if this sounds familiar – the social network reportedly WON’T be unveiling its new hardware products at its f8 developer conference in May, as planned. As we predicted earlier this week, the ongoing revelations about how startup Cambridge Analytica accessed and used data on up to 50 million […]

Want to launch a new Facebook Messenger bot in the next few weeks? Good luck with that. As part of the fallout from the ongoing Cambridge Analytica revelations, the social network has “paused” app reviews while it implements changes to its platform. It has now emerged that this also applies to the approval of all […]

Music Ally is pleased to announce some of the key speakers for Sandbox Summit NYC – the one-day music marketing conference sponsored by Linkfire and Push Entertainment which takes place at Opry City Stage, Times Square, New York on Wednesday 25th April. After the hugely successful inaugural Sandbox Summit in London, we have responded to demand in the US […]

Andre Benz is the founder of Trap Nation, a YouTube music channel that launched in 2012, and has since grown to 18.8 million subscribers, notching up 6.65bn views in the process. Under the banner of The Nations, it has also led to spin-off channels including House Nation, Bass Nation, Chill Nation and Rap Nation, all […]

The founders of startup Spotlister have denied that it was designed as a way for artists and labels to pay for inclusion on Spotify playlists. The company shut down earlier this month after having its Spotify API key revoked, with an article on tech site Daily Dot referencing the site in the context of ‘playola’. […]

It’s hardly a shock to suggest that Spotify’s $1-for-three-months premium trials increase its subscribers. But Midia Research has calculated how much this boost is worth. “On average, Spotify’s global subscriber base grew by a net total of 2.8 million each quarter between Q4 2015 and Q4 2017 in the quarters that these ‘super trials’ were […]

We already knew that Spotify had some ‘fake’ premium subscribers: people getting access to its premium tier without paying, through modified smartphone apps. Now we know how many: or rather, we know how many Spotify claims were doing this. “On March 21, 2018, we detected instances of approximately two million users as of December 31, […]

Indian telco Reliance Industries is merging its own music-streaming service JioMusic with independent player Saavn, in a deal that it says values the merged entity at more than $1bn. It’s promising that the resulting business will offer “global reach, cross-border original content, an independent artist marketplace, consolidated data and one of the largest mobile advertising […]

Spotify has published some guidance on its financial outlook for 2018, including predicting that it will have 92-96 million premium subscribers by the end of the year. That would represent annual growth of between 30% and 36% from the 71 million subscribers that Spotify ended 2017 with. The new guidance also suggests that Spotify is […]

“The reality, particularly for artists, is that people want to feel like they can connect with you. And it’s really hard to connect when you’re perfect all the time…” It’s interesting that Lauren Wirtzer Seawood is saying this, given that she’s the head of music partnerships at Instagram – a social-media platform that’s still seen […]

US industry body the RIAA has published its figures for recorded-music revenues in 2017, and they show a 16.5% rise in ‘estimated retail value’ to $8.72bn. That represents accelerating growth, after an 11.4% rise in 2016 to $7.65bn. On a wholesale basis – the revenues collected by labels after retailers and digital services have taken […]

For all its troubles in the last year, SoundCloud still elicits affection from a lot of artists who made their first moves on the platform – including some who’ve since become global stars. Now the streaming service is flagging that up much more prominently with a new initiative called ‘First on SoundCloud’. It’s partly about […]

There’s another once-promising music startup heading for the deadpool, and this one’s a shame, because when it first emerged, Cymbal was one of our favourite music-discovery apps. The app was a way to search for songs and see what ‘likeminded’ people were listening to, but like its closest equivalent Soundwave (later bought by Spotify in […]

I love you for your pink Cadillac, crushed velvet seats, riding in the back, streaming Discover Weekly down the street… Spotify’s latest partnership will put its service onto the dashboards of Cadillacs (not just pink ones) through their ‘infotainment’ systems. Spotify and Cadillac have designed the app with a car-friendly interface, as well as prioritising […]

There’s a new trade body for independent musicians and labels in Japan. It’s called the Independent Music Coalition of Japan (IMCJ for short) and is a merger of three existing organisations: the Independent Records and Musicians Association, the Independent Label Council Japan and the Japan Net Creators Association. Billboard reports that the IMCJ will be […]

That speculation that Apple Music’s Jimmy Iovine is on his way out of the streaming service – and its parent company – won’t go away. This time it’s the Wall Street Journal reporting that Iovine “will transition into a consulting role in August and step back from daily involvement with the company’s streaming-music business”. The […]

We know from Spotify’s growth that free music-streaming can be a powerful funnel towards paid subscriptions. We also know that YouTube’s catalogue of music videos is the biggest free music-streaming funnel of all: but one where the upgrade path to a subscription is currently geographically-limited (with YouTube Red) and much-discussed over whether it’s effective. But […]

Spotify and Deezer have announced their latest artist-focused partnerships. For Spotify, that’s an initiative called ‘Louder Together’ which is an extension of its Spotify Singles program. The new thing isn’t just about getting artists in the studio to record covers, but rather about organising collaborations between different artists on original songs. Artists Sasha Sloan, Nina […]

Chinese technology company Huawei may be best known in the west for its hardware, but it’s also gearing up to launch a music-streaming service in South Africa. Huawei Music will launch this year, with a catalogue initially made up of 80% South African music, with plans to add international content later. According to local news […]

Research firm Morning Consult has published the results of its latest survey, of 2,201 American adults, focusing on the music-streaming market. It found that 30% said they have a Pandora “subscription”, while 21% have Spotify and 15% Apple Music. We’ve put subscription in quote marks because, unhelpfully, Morning Consult is talking about free users as […]

More than 26m smart speakers were shipped globally in 2017 according to research firm Futuresource, with the Amazon Echo and Google Home ranges proving popular devices. That was the spur for an event hosted by British music-industry bodies the BPI and ERA last night in London, and a report exploring the impact for music, published […]

If you haven’t read this weekend’s articles about data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, it’s well worth spending 10 minutes with this piece from the Guardian and/or this piece from the New York Times. Then, perhaps, another five minutes revoking the access to your Facebook account for every unknown-developer personality test app you’ve ever completed on the […]

US band OK Go’s latest brand partnership is with Google, and it has an educational focus. The pair have launched something called the OK Go Sandbox, which they describe as “a collection of materials created for and with K-12 educators: design challenges, educator guides, and more”. K-12 meaning primary and secondary education: so the full […]

When it comes to experimenting with virtual-reality technology, Sony Music has one advantage over other labels: its relationship with Sony’s consumer-electronics division, with its PlayStation VR headset. We’ve seen that relationship work last year with a VR experience for classical musician Joshua Bell, but now in 2018 it’s rising star Khalid getting the virtual treatment. […]

The latest twist in the controversies around ‘notices of intent’ (NOIs) in the US concerns the most famous band of all-time: The Beatles. The Music Tech Policy blog notes, with clear scorn, that Google, Amazon and Spotify have all filed NOIs for works by The Beatles, including ‘Love Me Do’, ‘With A Little Help From […]

Facebook’s music-licensing efforts continue apace, with the announcement of three more deals this weekend. The social network now has agreements with French collecting society Sacem; Canadian PRO Socan; and music publisher Wixen Music Publishing. As with Facebook’s other recent deals, these are licensing agreements covering user-generated content across Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Oculus VR. […]

Spotify held its ‘investor day’ event earlier this evening, revealing that it will go public on 3 April in the process. You can read our liveblog of the event here. But what did we learn from the nearly-three-hour series of presentations from Spotify’s management? Here are some takeaways to chew on. The post 10 key […]

Indie licensing agency Merlin has announced agreements with the three biggest music-streaming service owners in China: Tencent, NetEase and Alibaba. The deals will see the catalogue represented by Merlin – music from more than 20,000 independent labels and distributors – made available on Chinese streaming services including NetEase Cloud Music, Xiami, QQ Music, Kugou and […]

Spotify is going public next month, and today is the company’s ‘investor day’ where its key executives outline its pitch to potential shareholders ahead of the listing. Unusually, Spotify is streaming the event live to anyone who wants to watch. The event is expected to last two hours, starting at 1pm Eastern-time. Music Ally is […]

Indie-labels licensing agency Merlin says that its members’ earnings from Latin America have grown five-fold in the last three years, fuelled by music-streaming services. The company expects to generate more than $60m of audio-streaming revenues from Latin America for its member labels in 2018. Merlin CEO Charles Caldas will be flagging up the Latin American […]

Linkfire has become a popular tool for music marketers using ‘smart links’ to direct fans to artists’ music on digital services, while getting analytics back from those clicks. Now the company has announced a deeper partnership with one of those services, Pandora, which will be providing Linkfire with “advanced attribution data” for its customers to […]

Why did Lyor Cohen take the job as head of music at YouTube in 2016? In his keynote speech at SXSW today, the music-industry veteran explained. “My greatest fear at the time was that distribution was going to be too highly consolidated between Apple and Spotify. It was scary that this could be a two-horse […]

As part of our research service for Music Ally subscribers, we publish a daily news bulletin, sent out by email every morning. It celebrated its 15th birthday last year, which means we’ve got archives covering the bulk of digital music’s history. It can be fun looking back through those archives, so we thought we’d share […]

Among the areas of historical tension between music rightsholders and Google has been the use of its advertising network on piracy sites. Although in this case, Google has been pretty responsive, regularly providing updates on how it’s cracking down on ‘bad ads’ and advertisers across that network – something that’s not just about piracy. The […]

YouTube has been one of the main engines behind the global success of K-Pop band BTS in the last year. Now they’re getting their own series on its YouTube Red subscription service. The eight-episode series is called BTS: Burn The Stage, and will launch on 28 March, offering fans an “intimate, personal portrayal” of the […]

Last year, we wrote about a Google research project called Magenta, which is exploring the intersection of machine-learning / AI and creativity, music included. Among its releases was a ‘neural synthesizer’ called NSynth, which used AI technology to “learn the characteristics of sounds, and then create a completely new sound based on these characteristics”. Now […]

Grammofy was a classical music-focused subscription-streaming service that launched in May 2016 in the UK and Germany, but then shut down in November 2017. At the time, the company said that despite “continued growth and vigorous efforts” it hadn’t been able to “build the necessary mid-term financial solidity to fund the man-hours needed to continue […]

Artist, songwriter and producer Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds is launching a new publishing company called Good Vibes Music Group. One of the most interesting things about it is the publisher’s relationship with Spotify. Good Vibes is hunting for emerging songwriters by holding ‘Discovery Song Camps’ in LA, Atlanta, Nashville and London in the coming months, with […]

Six months on from its public-beta launch in the US, Spotify’s Ad Studio is expanding to the UK and Canada. The self-serve advertising platform lowers the minimum price of an audio-ad campaign on Spotify, opening it up to smaller businesses – music companies included. Spotify says that 1,025 advertisers have created 4,736 campaigns using Ad […]

In early February, Apple revealed that its Apple Music streaming service had 36 million subscribers. A month on, and that figure has increased to 38 million. The new figure was provided by the company’s SVP of internet software and services Eddy Cue during his appearance at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. It’s a significant […]

Augmented reality (AR) technology is about seeing virtual content and information in the real world around you, whether you’re looking through a smartphone or a pair of smart glasses. But can there be augmented reality without a visual element? Audio-hardware firm Bose hopes so. It has been showing off a pair of AR sunglasses that […]

As the founder of Playlists.net and subsequently a playlists/streaming-focused executive at Warner Music, Kieron Donoghue knows a thing or two about the streaming ecosystem. Now running indie label Humble Angel Records, he’s published a blog post calling for Spotify to offer better and more-affordable self-serve advertising options for artists on its platform. Donoghue compares Spotify […]

Amid all the industry conversation about how smart speakers will affect the way people listen to music, the assumption has been that the music in question will be made by humans. Here’s a new Alexa skill to make you think, though. It’s called DeepMusic, and has just launched for Alexa-powered devices like the Echo speakers. […]

There’s already a couple of powerful search engines for music: they’re called Google and YouTube, and they’ve sparked the odd controversy, as Music Ally readers will know. But is there room for a *dedicated* music search engine? Startup Quant hopes so: it’s launching Quant Music at SXSW this week with the ambition of becoming “the […]

A $670m pot of music-licensing revenue that hasn’t been tapped? That’s the kind of claim that gets rightsholders’ interest, although there’s a natural scepticism too when the goldmine is being quantified by a company whose business is focused on tapping that revenue stream. Still, Clickamix is definitely worth investigating: it wants to work with publishers, […]

India has long been one of the most interesting music markets in the world, and one that dances to its own rules, particularly with the influence of the film industry – Bollywood included. So how is the Indian market evolving in the streaming age? A panel at Music Biz and Music Ally’s NY:LON Connect conference in […]

The question of what appears in Google search results when people look for their favourite music artists has sparked controversy in the past: rightsholders regularly attacked Google for returning links to illegal downloads. They’ll be happier about Google’s latest search feature, which has been announced tonight. It’s called ‘search posts’, and will offer social network-style […]

Here’s something to try on Spotify, if you have a few minutes. Using its desktop client, turn off the ‘crossfade’ feature in advanced settings, turn shuffle mode on, and play the first track on this Drum & Bass Fix playlist, and see what happens with the transition to the next track. For us, at least, […]

Kobalt is making AWAL the brand for its entire recordings division, while promising to invest $150m and hire 100 more staff to build up that side of the business. Kobalt acquired digital distributor AWAL in 2012, as it prepared to launch its own label-services division. Since then, AWAL has been the entry level for Kobalt’s […]

Startup Pacemaker has been putting its artificial-intelligence DJ technology through its paces, in what it’s describing as a ‘DJ Turing Test’ against dance star Steve Aoki. Pacemaker’s AI DJ is part of its iOS app, where it automatically turns people’s Spotify playlists into flowing mixes. The company has run a test in which 100 people […]

A year ago, Music Ally ran the first-ever interview on New York startup Stationhead as the company emerged from stealth mode. Since that first interview, publications including Billboard, TechCrunch and Forbes have followed up with positive takes on the potential of Stationhead’s app. This week, its team is going through the final stages of design tweaks and […]

“You’d be surprised by who’s willing to support your music.” 

These were the words of my singer songwriter friend E.W. Harris back in 2010 (insert a thick US Southern drawl for a more accurate quote). He had just financed his new album via a crowdfunding campaign, a concept still alien to me at the time. […]

After the AirPods earphones and HomePod smart-speaker, what next for Apple’s audio-hardware ambitions? According to Bloomberg’s resident Cupertino-whisperer Mark Gurman, a pair of noise-cancelling, over-ear headphones could launch as early as the end of 2018. Or not. “It’s possible Apple will redesign the headphones again before launch, or scrap the project altogether,” warned the sources […]

German hip-hop group Die Fantastischen Vier is the latest example of an artist exploring the potential of augmented reality (AR) technology. The band have launched a free iPhone app called Tunnel AR, which is an interactive music video for their recent single ‘Tunnel’. The app enables fans to project the video onto a nearby table, […]

What is Palo Santo? It’s a fictional city where androids and humans live side-by-side, of course. But don’t worry if you didn’t know that: this is only just being revealed, bit-by-bit, to fans of British band Years & Years. Or perhaps we should say bit-by-bot, since one of the initial planks in the campaign for […]

Like us, you’ve probably been wondering when a prominent vodka brand would weigh in to 2018’s music-industry debates around diversity and inclusion. Congrats if you had ‘early March’ in the sweepstake: Smirnoff has teamed up with Spotify on a marketing campaign called the Smirnoff Equaliser. It’s based on the fact that the top 10 tracks […]

The Pew Research Center’s surveys of Americans are well-respected, so its new study of social-media habits is well worth perusing today, to see some of the trends at work. Facebook remains the top platform overall, used by 68% of American adults according to the survey, with around three quarters of them logging in every day. […]

British startup TickX is a ticketing search engine, aggregating listings from other ticketing firms, growing to a catalogue of more than 125k events. Now it has raised a Series A funding round of £3m, led by investment firm BGF Ventures with previous investor Ministry of Sound among the companies chipping in. CEO Steve Pearce told […]

Last week brought confirmation that Spotify’s hip-hop boss Tuma Basa was leaving the company, having helped to make its RapCaviar playlist a well-known standalone music brand. So why is he leaving and where will he end up next? The answer to both questions, according to Billboard, is a new job at YouTube. The trade site […]

Universal Music Group’s expansion plans are making Africa a priority, with the latest example being UMG’s acquisition of a majority stake in Kenyan label AI Records. According to news site Business Daily, Universal has bought a 70% stake in the label, whose artists include well-known east African artists like Orchestra Super Mazembe, Afro 70, and […]

While recent ERA and BPI figures have made much of the growth in revenue and consumption of music streaming services in the UK, they didn’t explains how many people in Britain pay for a music subscription. Now we have a – tentative – answer: ERA consumer tracking figures – which are based on 2.5k people […]

‘User-centric’ streaming payouts refers to a proposed system where the royalties generated by someone’s subscription would be divided only between the artists that they listen to, rather than going into a central pool divided by market-share on the platform as a whole. ‘If you only listen to Ed Sheeran, your money only goes to Ed […]

Music Ally recently interviewed BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor about the UK’s recorded-music market trends in 2017: from the growth of subscription streaming and safe harbours to Brexit and diversity. Recent BPI and ERA figures show a big increase in music streaming in the UK in 2017 – why was this? This increase is being […]

‘User-centric’ licensing is where the royalties from a streaming subscription only go to the artists who that subscriber listens to, rather than into a bigger pool split by overall share of all the streams on the platform. There have been calls for streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music to switch to user-centric systems, partly […]

Silicon Valley is always keen to understand how scaleable a startup’s business model is: what will make them the next billion-dollar unicorn and beyond? But in music, is that line of thinking problematic? A panel run by Music Ally at the by:Larm conference in Oslo today explored the question of whether the search for the […]

We’ve already seen strong recorded-music revenue growth in the 2017 figures from a number of countries, but Germany isn’t among them. Stats published yesterday by industry body BVMI revealed that recorded music generated €1.59bn (around $1.94bn) in Germany last year, down 0.3% on the previous year. This is perhaps not a surprise, given the continued […]

Christof Ellinghaus, founder of Berlin-based indie label City Slang, is keen for governments to take action to remove YouTube’s safe harbours, and thus address the ‘value gap’. “We’re all stopping to sell records at this moment. Our bands are getting bigger and bigger, but we are selling less and less of their music,” said Ellinghaus, […]

There’s been a lot of public worrying about the future for magazine journalism in recent times, with magazines and blogs shutting down, freelance journalists scratching around for work, and tensions around issues like clickbait and sponsored content. The panel was moderated by Roisin O’Connor from The Independent, and included Tshepo Mokoena from Noisey in the […]

Today’s by:Larm conference in Oslo included a panel on blockchain technology and the music industry. No wait, stop! Don’t click away! Come back! In fact, there have been so many blockchain panels at music-industry conferences in the last two years, we’ve probably used that intro joke before. It’s true, though, that there’s a bit of […]

Are the new wave of artificial-intelligence startups here to eat musicians’ lunch, or to help them become even more creative? A panel run by Music Ally at the by:Larm conference in Oslo today explored the sometimes-sensitive issues around AI and music. The panel included Scott Cohen from The Orchard, Sophie Goossens from Reed Smith and […]

“Feels great to have the cat out of the bag. Transparency breeds trust,” tweeted Spotify CEO Daniel Ek last night. The cat in this instance being Spotify’s long-awaited filing for its direct public offering (DPO), which was published last night. The document offers the most detailed insight yet into Spotify’s current business and future prospects. […]

Views are no longer the most important currency on YouTube: it’s been watch-time for a while now – as shown by the fact that the platform’s new minimum requirements for ‘partner’ status include 4,000 hours of watch-time in the last year, rather than a certain number of views. So, a new study of YouTube based […]

Last November, YouTube produced a mini-series of behind-the-scenes videos for Camila Cabello, focusing on the production of her ‘Havana’ music video. Now it has revived the partnership for what it’s describing as an ‘Artist Spotlight Story’ – a 17-minute mini-documentary – focusing on Cabello’s journey “from arriving in Miami to topping the global charts”. While […]

We’re delighted to announce that Trap Nation founder Andre Benz will be one of the keynote speakers at our Sandbox Summit conference in New York this April. Benz founded the YouTube channel when he was 15, and has grown it to more than 18.3 million subscribers and 6.5bn lifetime video views – one of the […]

Can Spotify, Google and Amazon *really* not identify who to pay publishing royalties to for Drake’s global hit ‘God’s Plan’? Or for Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect’? Or for Post Malone’s ‘Rockstar’ or Camila Cabello’s ‘Havana’ or… Well, you get the picture. Artist-rights blog The Trichordist has published a post from industry lawyer Chris Castle in which […]

It will come as no surprise that a study commissioned by collecting-societies body CISAC criticises ‘safe harbour’ exceptions in copyright law. But the study, from Ashbel Smith Professor Stan Liebowitz of the University of Texas at Dallas, is a good summary of the arguments being marshalled by music rightsholders as they campaign for reform of […]

US radio group iHeartMedia is battling to restructure its debts in order to avoid bankruptcy, and its latest potential saviour is a fascinating one: Liberty Media. That’s the same Liberty Media that’s the majority owner of satellite-radio firm SiriusXM, which recently acquired a $480m stake in Pandora, which competes directly with iHeartMedia’s iHeartRadio service. The […]

2017 was a good year for Live Nation in financial terms, with the live-entertainment giant’s revenues rising by 24% to $10.3bn last year, according to its latest financial results. 86 million people attended concerts put on by Live Nation, which was up 21% year-on-year, as the company hailed “its seventh consecutive year of record results” […]

Two separate announcements from major labels Universal Music and Warner Music shed some light on how they’re tackling content around the music of their artists. UMG has appointed Celine Joshua to a new position as general manager, commercial, content and artist strategy. Her role will include heading a new label called ’10:22 pm’ focused on […]

Indian streaming service Gaana has raised a $115m funding round led by Chinese tech firm Tencent, as it sets its sights on growing to 200 million active users in the next three years. That would be a sharp rise from the 60 million monthly active users that Gaana has now, with parent company Times Internet […]

The by:Larm festival and conference is always a highlight of the year for Music Ally, and we’re delighted to be heading back to Oslo this week for the 2018 event. We’re also running five panel sessions and a couple of insights talks during the conference, covering some of the digital topics close to our heart […]

Vero isn’t a new app: it launched in in July 2015 as a way for people to share photos and other content with friends and the wider world, with an emphasis on privacy and the promise of no advertising. Two and a half years later, it has suddenly spiked to become the most popular app […]

The live-video competition between YouTube, Facebook, Twitch and other platforms is spurring rapid development of new features for broadcasters of all kinds – musicians included. YouTube unveiled its latest additions yesterday. They include ‘chat replay’ to follow the live (text) comments around livestreams when watched after the event; automatic English-language captioning for livestreams; and the […]

As of 20 February, YouTube’s new monetisation policies went into effect, with channels required to have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch-time in the last year before they are allowed to be ‘monetised’ through ads. When YouTube announced the changes, it claimed that around 90% of channels affected were making less than […]

There is more consolidation afoot in the digital music-making space, following the news earlier this month that BandLab was buying Gibson’s Cakewalk division. Now one of its rivals, Splice, has snapped up veteran remix-contests site Indaba Music for an undisclosed amount. “Over the years, Indaba has connected its community of musicians to over a thousand […]

2018 may be the year of the AI/human music collaboration. British AI music startup Jukedeck is the latest company to work with musicians in an effort to show it’s a friend not a foe for human creators. The firm has teamed up with South Korean music stable Enterarts, with some of its K-Pop songwriters taking […]

The proposed Classics Act is trying to clear up the digital-licensing status of songs recorded before 1972. When it was introduced earlier this year, we noted that Pandora was supporting the bill, in stark contrast to satellite-radio firm SiriusXM – despite the latter now being one of its main investors. Now SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer […]

Fears that the mania for blockchain startups and initial coin offerings (ICOs) are a bubble will hardly be assuaged by a new report published by news site Bitcoin.com. “Tokendata, one of the more comprehensive ICO trackers, lists 902 crowdsales which took place last year,” it explained. “Of these, 142 failed at the funding stage and […]

The mobile-phone industry has swooped in to Barcelona for the annual Mobile World Congress event this week. Expect all manner of new smartphones to be announced, as well as related technologies. The news got underway this weekend with a pair of Android handsets at opposite ends of the smartphone spectrum. The Alcatel 1X is a […]

We say ‘WMG’s Songkick’ here to differentiate the concert-discovery website and app – which the major label acquired last year – from its former owner, which shut down operations but went on to prevail in its legal battle with Live Nation. It’s business as usual for WMG’s operation, which announced a pair of new partnerships […]

Startup Auddly’s service aims to help songwriters and musicians to start creating metadata around their songs from the earliest stages of writing and recording. Now it’s launching a campaign to promote these practices, called #MetadataPays, in partnership with British collecting society PRS for Music. The campaign will focus on a three-step process for musicians to […]

Airbnb isn’t just a platform for finding non-hotel accommodation around the world. It’s been edging in to music for some time via its ‘Experiences’ initiative, which includes getting hosts to hold secret gigs in unusual locations. Now that’s getting a proper rollout to 25 cities including London, New York, Tokyo, Paris, San Francisco, Sydney and […]

Digital music firm LiveXLive, which focuses on live-music videos as well as its recently-acquired streaming service Slacker Radio, has been approved to list on the public NASDAQ market. Boss Rob Ellin described it as “an exciting and major milestone in our evolution that we believe will expose the company to a wider audience of potential […]

Deezer has announced its latest deal with a mobile operator: Singtel in Singapore. It’s not quite a hard bundle, but it’s more than just a marketing partnership. Singtel’s post-paid customers will be able to pay 0.88 Singapore dollars a month (around US$0.66) for the first two months of a 12-month Deezer Premium subscription, then will […]

Billboard’s recent Power 100 list of music-industry executives was criticised for being dominated by men. Now industry network Shesaid.so has opened nominations for its own Alternative Power 100 list – the second year for an initiative that aims for a more diverse selection of executives and creators within the industry. It’s not just about gender. […]

The ‘Bulgarian scam’ on Spotify, revealed earlier this week by MBW, allegedly involved an entity uploading a collection of sub one-minute tracks to Spotify; then arranging them into a few playlists. Devices tied to Premium Spotify accounts were then used to stream those playlists round the clock: even at a monthly cost of nearly $12k […]

89% of Americans who’ve bought a smart speaker so far are satisfied with their device, according to a new survey published by investment firm Loup Ventures. “A closer look at the results reveals the reason for this high satisfaction; early use cases are simple (Music, weather, general questions),” wrote analyst Gene Munster. “While questions remain […]

Music virtual-reality company MelodyVR announced a multi-year licensing deal with publisher Warner/Chappell yesterday. The agreement covers VR distribution of the publisher’s catalogue of songs around “an extensive library of original content, throughout numerous European territories”. MelodyVR has been signing a succession of deals with labels and collecting societies, but executive chairman Anthony Matchett said that […]

Apple Music and YouTube may have been the key digital and sponsorship partners for last night’s Brit Awards, but it was Spotify that got an (admittedly-unwanted) shout-out from the event’s host, comedian Jack Whitehall. Speaking about two-gong winner Dua Lipa: “If she had a pound for every time someone listened to her on Spotify, they […]

The music agreements keep coming for Facebook, which now has a deal with online licensing and processing hub ICE – the joint venture between European collecting societies PRS for Music, STIM and GEMA. “The licence covers Facebook, Instagram, Oculus and Messenger and provides online music licensing for over 290,000 rightsholders, across 160 territories,” explained ICE […]

How did Chance the Rapper, Lil Uzi Vert and other artists have such success building an audience on SoundCloud? Because they saw it as more than just a music-streaming service. That’s according to SoundCloud’s director of label relations Julia Killer, who was talking at the FastForward conference in Amsterdam last week. “Do not think of […]

As we suggested last time the ‘Spotify making hardware’ speculation bubbled up, it would be surprising if the company *wasn’t* mulling physical products, given its current reliance on devices from Apple, Google and Amazon as its route to market. So, the latest evidence of Spotify’s ambitions – again, from a recruitment ad on its website […]

Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s global head of music, has told Music Ally that 2018 will be “the year of music for YouTube and Google” and suggested the animosity between the video platform and the music industry will soon be a thing of the past. “It’s too easy of a soundbite – ‘value gap’,” he said. “I […]

Finnish mobile games firm Supercell has published its financial results for 2017, revealing that it made $2.03bn of revenues, and a profit of $810m. The twist: the company did that without even releasing a new game that year. Supercell only has four games available: Hay Day and Clash of Clans were originally released in 2012, […]

How to follow up the success of a video where the highlight was your dad-dancing on a flight of stairs? For Drake, the answer is giving away $996,631.90 to strangers. That’s the clever premise of the video for ‘God’s Plan’ – already a big global hit thanks to the streaming services – which sees Drake […]

How much money does YouTube make from advertising? Parent company Alphabet has never announced that, leaving analysts to make their best guesses. In 2013, eMarketer claimed that the site was generating $5.6bn in annual revenues, for example, while in 2015 UBS suggested that had grown to $8.5bn. A recent claim from Nomura that an advertising […]

One of the key selling points for ticketing app Dice has always been its promise not to charge booking fees for its mobile tickets. Now the company has changed its policy, and has been explaining the decision to customers after a Twitter spat with British band Shame made it public. “Everyone’s favourite ‘no booking fees’ […]

A new report published by a lobbying coalition called Re:Create – we’ll get to who that is in a bit – is trying to put some numbers to the independent creative economy in the US. The report is deliberately narrow in focus, attempting to calculate how much musicians, filmmakers, artists and other creators earned from […]

FastForward prides itself on doing things a bit differently from other music-industry conferences, from its diverse speakers and youthful audience to its now-traditional alcohol-fuelled closing panel, with its promise of less-guarded views on the industry’s key trends. Cue this year’s session, with panelists including Communion Music’s Chris Scott; PPL’s Mark Douglas; Remote Control Agency’s Pat […]

It would be a marvellous world indeed if every music-marketing campaign went to plan with spiffing results. But in an imperfect world, how can a label or management team get a challenging campaign back on track? Nikoo Sadr from The Orchard (and formerly of Music Ally) offered her tips, in a speech today at the […]

From the recent open letters from women working in the Swedish and Australian music industries condemning harassment to the ‘step up’ storm currently engulfing Grammys organiser the Recording Academy, diversity is a huge topic for our industry in 2018. The term covers a number of related issues, from harassment to equal opportunities to enter and […]

Forget big-budget TV ads, billboard campaigns and radio promos. How can labels and other music marketers capitalise on new technologies to run the most effective advertising campaigns for their artists? And how will these techs evolve in the future? That was the topic for a panel at the FastForward conference in Amsterdam today. Speakers included […]

NoCopyrightSounds first came to the attention of many people in the music industry for its role as the launchpad for Norwegian artist Alan Walker’s track ‘Faded’. How could a YouTube channel devoted to making tracks available royalty-free for gaming channels on that service to use as their backing music spawn a global hit? It’s a […]

There is, to put it mildly, a lot of hype and misinformation around the world of blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings (ICOs) – including their potential for the music industry. Music Ally has already noted a blockchain backlash within many rightsholders, who question whether the tech and its fresh-faced startups can ever deliver […]

When Alex Kennedy founded his own startup, he was excited about the potential. What he didn’t realise was that the ride would be an emotional and financial rollercoaster. The post Healthy startup life: ‘Read more books and less tweets’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

From merchandise and ticketing to crowdfunding, modern music artists have more options than ever to go ‘direct to fan’ and build a sustainable income to complement their recordings. But how can they make the most of those options? A panel at the FastForward conference in Amsterdam today debated how the D2F (or D2C) world is […]

The music industry is understandably excited about its streaming-fuelled return to growth over the past couple of years, but there’s also a widespread awareness that this isn’t the time for resting on laurels. The challenges and opportunities around how streaming should evolve were a topic up for discussion in a panel at the FastForward conference […]

Music Ally first encountered British artist ShaoDow earlier this month at AIM’s Indie-Con event in London. Less than a fortnight later, he was holding court at the FastForward conference in Amsterdam. The topic: ‘The Artist Entrepreneur’ – an exploration of how this particular musician has built his fanbase and income not just from his tracks, […]

“Does Anyone’s Spotify Look Like This?” wrote a plaintive poster on Spotify’s Android support forums a couple of weeks ago, with screenshots showing what appears to be a stripped-down, spacier user interface for the streaming service’s mobile app. This being the internet, the comments on the short thread include “I really do not like it. […]

Coming off the back of 2014’s Dissecting The Digital Dollar report and 2017’s guides on both digital deals and transparency (as well as the beta launch of the Digital Deals Comparison Calculator), music management body the MMF organised a managers roundtable in London earlier this month, chaired by Music Ally. The purpose was to openly […]

A pair of interesting articles on blogging platform Medium may provide some industry inspiration today. First, there’s Idagio product director Bas Grasmayer’s piece asking “what people in music tech would tell their 18 year-old selves”. From former Geffen CTO Jim Griffin (“Get 8+ hours of regular sleep a night. Doing it right is like the […]

The initial wave of reviews in the press about Apple’s HomePod smart speaker have been very positive about its hardware – specifically its audio quality. Now Consumer Reports has published some ‘early results’ of its comparative tests pitting the device against rivals. “Apple’s speaker does deliver very good audio performance, though it’s not the best-sounding […]

The fact that ‘AI music’ can mean several, very different things is well illustrated by the latest pair of startups exploring strains of artificial intelligence tech applied to music. Musiio’s focus is on using AI to analyse large catalogues of music. “The tools we provide allow you as a business to process more data than […]

Direct-to-fan platform Bandcamp has published its annual review of its business, including the stat that its all-time payments to artists are now past the $270m mark. That compares to nearly $200m at the end of 2016, meaning that the $70m+ paid to Bandcamp artists in 2017 represents a quarter of all payouts since the platform […]

Three separate stories this morning come together into a strand illustrating 2018’s status as a continued landgrab for new music-streaming subscribers. YouTube is finally readying a global push for its YouTube Red tier; Apple Music is launching its student membership plan much more widely across the world; and Spotify is offering lovebirds a Valentine’s-themed two-month […]

If you are going to give your company a name like Terrible Merch, it’s going to attract questions. Is it a post-modern double bluff? Is it a ‘get out of jail free’ card? Or is it a sly dig at the competition? For Terrible Merch founders Tersha Willis (a streetwear designer) and Jack McGruer (a […]

Vlogger Logan Paul wins this month’s award for being the least self-aware social-media influencer on the planet. Shortly after sparking outrage with a video shot in a Japanese forest infamous for attracting suicide attempts, Paul had attempted to make amends with a suicide-awareness video and numerous apologies. Only to then return to his vlogging by… […]

‘Young people are ditching Facebook’ is a tech-industry trope that’s been running for at least five years now, without yet having an obvious impact on the social network’s growth or revenues. However, eMarketer’s latest report at least has data to back up its claim: “This year, for the first time, less than half of US […]

We can’t resist an app pitch that includes the phrase “revolutionary 4D magic coming” with a man in a cape flying out of a smartphone screen. The app is called Like, and it’s the latest social music/video app that is showing the first shoots of becoming a Musical.ly-sized craze. At its heart it’s still a […]

Having conversations through the medium of 15-second video clips, which may or may not include ending up getting a video back from Snoop Dogg and/or Chamillionaire? There’s an app for that! It’s called Convoz, and the latter artist is actually its founder. Chamillionaire describes the app as “the place where you go to talk to […]

Music virtual-reality startup MelodyVR has been in closed beta since the end of 2016, holding its plans for a commercial launch until it judges the market is ready. The company has just reiterated that this will be in 2018. “MelodyVR is well positioned for a successful public launch of its VR music platform in 2018,” […]

JOB SUMMARY Kobalt Music Recordings is looking for a flexible, confident and highly organised International Label & Product Manager, based out of our London office. Reporting to the International Marketing Manager, the role will involve working with our artist and label clients well, alongside our network of International marketing managers, distribution partners and licensees to […]

Shock news! A social network that isn’t Facebook *can* be profitable after all. Twitter’s latest quarterly financials included an important milestone for the company: its first quarter in the black. The company’s revenues of $732m in the fourth quarter of 2017 were up 2% year-on-year, but it flipped from a net loss of $167m in […]

Yesterday, we reported on Google implementing its new policy for secondary ticketing ads on its search engine. Now UK lobbying group FanFair Alliance has issued its response, which welcomes the changes while urging Google to go further. “FanFair unequivocally welcomes the updates to Google’s ad policies. As a result of these changes, we are already […]

B2B digital-music firm 7digital has issued a trading update showing strong growth in its full-year revenues. The company says it expects to report revenues of £17.3m for 2017, up 52% year-on-year. “Losses at Adjusted LBITDA level are expected to be significantly reduced from the previous period and be better than market expectations,” claimed the company […]

Streaming service Napster has a new, permanent boss. Bill Patrizio is no stranger to the company though: he was named as interim CEO in May 2017, while retaining his position as president of consumer media at RealNetworks – which continues to hold a stake in Napster. “He has led a resurgence of the company in […]

Amazon hasn’t made a big deal of its latest smart-speaker feature, but it’s an extremely interesting development for anyone who’s been thinking about how playlists evolve in a world of voice control. Users – initially on Prime Music and Amazon Music Unlimited in the US, we think – can now say commands like ‘Alexa, create […]

Earlier this month, a group of six senior women from the music industry wrote to the Recording Academy calling for it to up its game on diversity, and offering their help. One report yesterday suggested that they have been “seriously underwhelmed” by the response. So, in a world where the term ‘hepeating’ has been coined […]

In a world of streaming, social networks and the ability for any artist to get their music up on digital platforms, how is the role of the label A&R evolving? A panel at AIM’s Indie-Con conference in London today addressed the topic of ‘A&R in the digital age’. The speakers included Vidhi Ghandi from Ninja […]

Around 20,000 new songs are added to streaming services like Spotify every single day. A sobering statistic for an independent artist wondering how they can cut through the noise to reach people who’ll love their music. So how are artists using streaming services, social networks and other means to build their audiences and sustain their […]

If Music Ally had a pound for every time we’d heard someone predicting The Death Of The Label, we’d have enough money by now to buy at least two of the majors. The post Record labels, huh? What are they good for in 2018? appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Modern life is rubbish, as a wise Britpop band once told us. At least, it can be, if digital noise, work pressures and an always-on lifestyle start to get on top of you, or if you’re not receiving good enough support for your mental-health needs. The music industry certainly isn’t the only sector where these […]

What’s more important for an independent artist in 2018: getting A-listed by prominent radio stations, or bagging some prominent slots on the playlists curated by Spotify and Apple Music? A panel at AIM’s Indie-Con conference in London today explored the evolving world of plugging with a focus on independent artists and labels. It included Secretly […]

Laura Marling’s last album, ‘Semper Femina’, is a wonderful piece of work: something I’ve returned to again and again since its release, discovering new details every time. Hats off to that, then. But also to the team that worked hard on the marketing campaign for an album, released through More Alarming Records via Kobalt Music […]

Since its IPO last year, Snapchat parent company Snap, Inc has had a rough time of it on Wall Street, with investors uneasy about the social app’s sluggish growth. Yesterday brought some good news for the company in its latest financial results though: it beat analyst forecasts with stronger-than-expected growth, and saw its share price […]

We were starting to wonder why Amazon’s Twitch live-video platform hadn’t published its usual year-end review of its stats. It turns out the company was turning the annual post into a comic strip. Among the key stats revealed: Twitch now has more than two million people broadcasting on a monthly basis, with more than 27,000 […]

Ticketing firm Eventbrite has joined UK lobbying group the FanFair Alliance, to ‘support the fight against industrial-scale online ticket touting’. This follows Eventbrite’s partnership with face-value-resale platform Twickets last year, as well as the company’s ongoing expansion of its music-ticketing activities. The post Eventbrite joins the UK’s FanFair Alliance lobbying group appeared first on Music […]

Apple announced plans to acquire music-recognition firm Shazam in December 2017, but European regulators may yet throw a spoke in the works of the deal. “The European Commission has accepted a request from Austria, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain and Sweden to assess under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of Shazam by Apple,” […]

Apple’s HomePod smart speaker goes on sale this Friday (9 February) in the US, UK and Australia, with the first wave of reviews published yesterday. How does it compare to the Amazon Echo and Google Home ranges? Reviewers have been broadly positive, with the HomePod’s audio quality coming in for particular praise. “From dance pop […]

Google has implemented a new policy on secondary-ticketing websites, which will now have to ‘radically increase their transparency’ to be certified to book advertising on its platform. To be certified, secondary sites will have to not ‘imply’ that they are a primary marketplace; prominently disclose their status as a ticket reseller / secondary marketplace; prominently […]

Warner Music Group’s latest global expansion is Warner Music Middle East, a wholly-owned affiliate which will cover 17 markets across the Middle East and North Africa. Moe Hamzeh is the new division’s managing director, having joined the label group from Beirut-based video-streaming platform m.media. He’ll be responsible for establishing the new unit, growing its digital […]

It’s been a while since anyone thought mobile games would be the next big revenue stream for the music industry. But experiments continue, with dance star Avicii the latest to test the app-store waters. He’s fronting a game called Avicii Gravity HD, developed by Swedish mobile games firm Hello There. “In fast-paced Avicii Gravity HD, […]

Nelson: not just the chap whose statue stands on a column in Trafalgar Square seething at pigeons. Nelson is also the name of a “friendly in-browser Spotify jukebox” that’s gone live this week. Using Spotify’s recommendations API and web playback SDK, it’s a nifty way to play with Spotify’s recommendations engine. After logging in with […]

Lino wants to build “a decentralised autonomous content economy, where content value can be recognised efficiently and all contributors can be incentivised directly and effectively to promote long-term economic growth”. Not bad for something named after your carpet, eh? Lino is the latest startup hoping to tap blockchain technology in an attempt to eat at […]

Is it that time of the year already? We mean the time when a press release lands in Music Ally’s inbox about YouTube and the BPI, and *doesn’t* mention the ‘value gap’. The British industry body has enlisted YouTube as its international streaming partner for the Brit Awards for the fifth year in a row. […]

Canadian PRO Socan has launched a new royalty income and tracking system for customers of its Audiam subsidiary. Called ‘Layla’ (we’re sorry for the guitar-solo earworm you’ll be enjoying all morning now) it’s aimed at publishers and self-published songwriters. The system promises to track who’s recording their songs, where they’re being listened to and how […]

We’ve seen a few blockchain-music startups in our time, but Choon is the first one named after what you might shout at the DJ when feeling over-excited and emotional in a club. That’s a world that the startup’s founder Gareth Emery knows well, mind. His career has seen him crack the top 10 twice in […]

Social Media and Digital Content Editor Warp Records is looking for a Social Media and Digital Content Editor to join us, promoting our roster of groundbreaking artists. You should be an all-rounder with great copy writing skills, plus the eye for and the skills to create and commission engaging images, film and design for social media […]

YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki has outlined her ‘five priorities for creators in 2018’ in a blog post, which includes a promise to prioritise transparency and communication for YouTube’s community of video-makers. She also said that YouTube will expand its monthly ‘sponsorship’ model (under which fans can sponsor their favourite YouTube gamers for a monthly fee) […]

Here’s a startup slogan to make the music industry’s ears prick up: ‘Create Alexa skills without coding’. That’s the pitch for a new company called Storyline, which has developed a visual drag’n’drop interface to help people create the conversational apps for Amazon’s Echo speakers (and other Alexa-toting devices). Storyline’s tool enables skills to be built […]

Research firm eMarketer has published some data for YouTube viewership in the UK, claiming that more than 90% of people classed as ‘digital video viewers’ regularly visit the service. “In 2018, 40.4 million people, or six out of 10 people in the UK, will watch video via the YouTube app or website at least once […]

Cür Music was one of the digital music services that shut down in recent years: having rebranded personal-radio service Raditaz in 2014, its owners raised $9.6m in funding; launched in beta in January 2016 with $2.99-a-month and $6.99-a-month subscription options; agreed to pay $8m in advances to major labels; and then in August 2016 laid […]

Apple says its Apple Music service now has 36 million subscribers, up from “well over” 30 million in late September 2017. The milestone was shared with the Wall Street Journal as part of a wider piece on Apple Music’s progress – including the claim that it’s growing faster than Spotify in the US. “Apple’s subscriber-account […]

In late January, former Playlists.net and Warner Music Group executive Kieron Donoghue launched his new venture, a ‘streaming-first’ independent label called Humble Angel Records. He promised royalty payout rates for artists ‘at least double’ the average of those offered by major labels – paid on a monthly basis, using startup Stem’s platform – as well […]

Major labels are very excited about upping the audio quality of music-streaming services, under the banner of ‘hi-res music’. Audio hardware firms are excited too, while some streaming services (Tidal, Deezer and dedicated services like Qobuz for example) have adopted the technology. And music fans? That’s the challenge: as yet there isn’t an obvious surge […]

Spotify is adding credits for songwriters and producers to songs on its service, although for now they’ll only appear within its desktop app. From today, listeners can right-click on a track and choose a ‘Show Credits’ option to see the credited performers, songwriters and producers in a pop-up window. The post Spotify adds songwriting and […]

Warner Music Group continues to capitalise on the music industry’s streaming-fuelled return to growth. The major label recorded revenues of $1.05bn for the fourth quarter of 2017, up 14% year-on-year. Its digital revenues grew by 20% to $533m as part of that – 51% of the total. However, WMG’s operating income fell by 4% to […]

Abbey Road Studios in London has announced that HumTap and Lickd will be the next two companies to join its Abbey Road Red startup incubator, under the wing of a new boss for the program. Karim Fanous, formerly head of research and insight at Music Ally (that’s us!) is taking over from Jon Eades, who […]

British artificial-intelligence music/tech startup AI Music is raising £5m of funding, as it prepares to launch its first product. The company has developed technology capable of “shapeshifting” songs, using AI to remix tracks on the fly. “We’re raising £5m, and we have a lead investor that’s happy to take the whole thing,” said CEO Siavash […]

British startup Vochlea Music is raising a seed funding round of £250k ahead of launching a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for its first product. The company has created an artificial intelligence audio engine which can recognise human vocals, and use them to control instruments. For example, a beatboxer can trigger drum samples, or a musician can […]

Drag’n’drop audio-mastering startup CloudBounce is joining the blockchain bandwagon, with plans to launch an initial coin offering (ICO). The company, which competes with services like Landr, announced its plans tonight at the Abbey Road Red incubator’s demo event in London. “We’re doing the next step in building a better community and better and faster audio-processing […]

It’s unusual to see a company proudly announcing in its quarterly financial results that people have been using it less. But Mark Zuckerberg’s 2018 goal of focusing more on ‘time well spent’ on Facebook makes it an unusual case. “Already last quarter, we made changes to show fewer viral videos to make sure people’s time […]

Two new Music Ally webinar training courses start next week: ‘Connections’ and ‘Advanced’. A great way to start the year, our ever popular training courses will provide you with a solid grounding of digital knowledge with the best tips and practical insights whilst preparing you for what the future holds in this space too. Don’t […]

Mix-licensing startup Dubset Media Holdings has announced its three latest pieces of content, which appear to be exclusive to Apple Music. At least it’s getting first dibs on the DJ mixes by Steve Aoki, Sigala and DJ Suss One, which have been released on Apple’s streaming service this week. Dubset says it’s part of a deal to deliver “hundreds” […]

Telco partnerships have always been a key part of Deezer’s business model, and its latest sees the company expanding its ambitions in Asia. It’s working with Hutchison 3 in Indonesia, through its Tri operator brand in that country. Tri customers will be able to pay for a monthly Deezer Premium+ subscriptions using their balance credit, […]

2017 was a good year for Canadian collecting society Socan, which has reported record revenues and distributions to its membership. The society’s performing-rights revenues grew by 6.4% to more than $350m in 2017, with more than $300m distributed to songwriters, composers and publishers. These figures included $49.3m of ‘internet audio streaming’ revenues up 46% year-on-year. However, […]

Fresh from its stock-swap with Spotify, Tencent Music has another interesting partnership with a western firm: Sony Music. The pair have teamed up to launch Liquid State, a label that will focus on dance music from Asian artists, as well as live events. “Liquid State has been created to support and enhance the discovery and development […]

YouTube was criticised last month after a report claimed that the company is binding musicians to ‘non-disparagement’ clauses, in contracts signed when it is providing funding and promotional support for their video projects. The company has now clarified its intentions, and stressed that such clauses are not being applied more generally on its platform. “We […]

It’s just over a year since Pandora laid off 7% of its staff in the US in order to “to focus and realign existing resources on execution and make further investments in product innovation to drive advertising revenue and subscription growth”. Now it’s in for another round of layoffs, this time “an organisational restructuring designed to […]

When you have sold over 100m albums and shift more tickets today than you did in your supposed peak in the 1980s, you are “not exactly hurting” for money and can therefore afford to take your time when considering the leap into new, digital revenue streams. This, according to Def Leppard’s lead singer Joe Elliott, […]

UK-based musician Laura Kidd writes, produces and records music as She Makes War, with three albums under her belt so far. She’s crowdfunding her fourth using PledgeMusic: here’s her take on the experience as an artist. “In the time since I crowdfunded my second album ‘Little Battles’ in 2011, using sites like PledgeMusic to raise […]

Rights Negotiator (Mid-level management) Permanent Who are PPL? As a collective rights management organisation at the heart of the UK’s music industry, PPL ensures those who invest their time, talent and money to make recorded music are compensated when their music is used in public by businesses or broadcast on TV or radio. Based in […]

On the same day that Billboard covered a study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (a think tank within the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism) showing how massively underrepresented women are in music production/creation/performance, it also unveiled its 2018 Power List, ranking the most influential people in the music business. And, well, you can […]

Elton John held a press event with YouTube yesterday (24 January) to announce his farewell tour – a 300-date, multi-continent extravaganza that will start in September and run into 2021. While that news dominated the headlines, he also used the event to unveil a potted history of his career in music in VR as well […]

As Music Biz and Music Ally’s NY:LON Connect conference drew to a close, eight emerging music/tech startups pitched their wares to the industry audience: from music-discovery to AI, location-based marketing and analytics. Here’s how it all went down. The post Startup Showcase: 8 emerging music/tech firms pitch at NY:LON Connect appeared first on Music Ally. […]

The first afternoon session in the second day of the NY:LON Connect conference focused on artist services, starting with a speech from Matt Young, EVP of Warner Music Artist Services. The post Trendwatch: fan relationships 3.0 and the rise of artist services appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The most pointed quote of the second day of Music Biz and Music Ally’s NY:LON Connect conference in New York came from Jesús López, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Latin America and Iberian Peninsula. He used US president Donald Trump’s infamous ambitions to fortify the US border with Mexico as a jump-off for a reminder […]

Kobalt CEO Willard Ahdritz delights in ruffling feathers within the music industry, so his appearance as a keynote speaker at Music Biz and Music Ally’s NY:LON Connect conference in New York promised to deliver a fair few zingers. He was interviewed by Music Ally CEO Paul Brindley. The post Kobalt CEO blasts ‘elitist’ concerns about […]

Is it too much to hope that we’ve seen the last ‘death of labels’ story in the modern music industry? Labels aren’t dying as an industry entity, but they are evolving in interesting ways, as are management companies, publishers and music companies with their roots in the digital world. It’s the blurring of the boundaries […]

What kind of partner does the music industry make for music/tech startups in 2018? There have certainly been bumps in the past, from venture capitalists swearing never to invest again in startups requiring music rights, to shutdown firms blaming rightsholders for their business failure. Yet for their part, rightsholders argue that their focus is rightly […]

Smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo and Google Home are selling in their tens of millions, and it’s becoming clear that voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant (and Apple’s Siri once its HomePod device ships) will be increasingly-common ways people interact with music. But what does this really mean? What should the music industry be […]

Should Ed Sheeran be getting worried about artificial intelligence dethroning him from his place atop the modern pop pantheon? It may sound like crazy foolish talk, but that was the question sparked by a session on creative AI at Music Biz and Music Ally’s NY:LON Connect conference this afternoon in New York. There is already […]

Seth Farbman used to be chief marketing officer at clothing retailer The Gap. Now he’s marketing a music-streaming service, as CMO of Spotify. Farbman joined Music Biz and Music Ally’s NY:LON Connect conference in New York this morning for a fireside chat on how he sees the world. The moderator was Music Ally’s head of […]

‘Growth hacking’ has been a buzz phrase within the tech world for years now: referring to inventive (and sometimes unconventional) ways to attract more and more users and/or revenue to a fast-growing startup’s product or service. Is it a phrase we should be applying to music-streaming on a global basis? The very first session at […]

Apple HomePod, the company’s first smart speaker, will go on sale on 9 February in the US, UK and Australia, with pre-orders kicking off online this Friday (26 January). The company announced the dates today, having delayed the device’s planned launch in December 2017. It will compete with Amazon Echo and Google Home among other […]

Def Leppard, one of the last multi-platinum digital holdouts, have licensed their entire catalogue to download and streaming services. It is available today (19 January) on all the major streaming and download platforms. The band, whose global album sales top 100m, were conspicuous by their absence from iTunes, Spotify and more. This was partly down […]

Spotify’s latest announcement focuses less on music, and more on the other kinds of audio content available on the streaming service: podcasts, audiobooks and news. The company is launching a new ‘multimedia format’ called Spotlight, which will show photos, video and text as people listen to spoken-word content. The post Spotify debuts ‘Spotlight’ format for […]

The music industry is very familiar with the all-you-can-eat subscription model for streaming. Now Native Instruments is applying it to a different audio market: loops and samples. The company, best known for its Maschine music-production hardware and its Traktor DJing tools, has launched a new site called Sounds.com which will offer a catalogue of more […]

The successful candidate will account manage SME’s business relationship with Spotify, and will quickly become SME’s global internal expert on this distribution channel having assumed responsibility for the macro operation of our business partnership, as well as for developing projects and initiatives that optimise revenue/opportunities for both Sony Music and Spotify. Responsibilities will include, but […]

What does the year ahead hold for technology, media and telecoms? Consultancy firm Deloitte has published its annual ‘TMT’ trends report with plenty of topics to chew on. Here’s a grab-bag of some of its most interesting predictions: More than one billion smartphone users will create augmented-reality content at least once in 2018, with 300 […]

2017 was a good year for Facebook Messenger, as the social network’s own-brand messaging app grew to 1.3 billion monthly active users. However, its boss David Marcus has admitted to one downside in his annual blog post predicting trends for the year ahead. “Over the last two years, we built a lot of capabilities to […]

To the list of ‘surprising things we’ve seen on Facebook in 2018’ we can now add ‘Nightmares on Wax talking about the early days of Warp Records’. Not that this is surprising in itself, but the source of the video is interesting: Spotify. The streaming service has created the minute-long promo featuring musician George Evelyn […]

YouTube’s latest response to what it calls “bad actors” on its platform are stricter requirements for channels to gain ‘partner’ status – required to earn money from advertising on the service. Since April 2017, channels have needed 10k lifetime views on YouTube to apply to become a partner. And now? “Starting today we’re changing the […]

Music virtual-reality startup MelodyVR is preparing for its long-awaited commercial launch, with more than 5k hours of live performances and other content shot with artists. “We’re not going to say we want to be the killer app for VR because we’re not that arrogant, but we want to be in the top five to ten […]

US satellite-radio firm SiriusXM has launched the latest iteration of its in-car service, called 360L. That represents “360-degree listening” with a blend of satellite radio and streaming to pipe music into vehicles, starting with the 2019 Ram 1500 truck. Drivers will get SiriusXM’s lineup of 200+ live radio channels, as well as recommendations for other […]

Musician David Lowery has published the latest data on payouts from a range of streaming services, sourced from “a mid-sized indie label with an approximately 200+ album catalog now generating over 200m+ streams annually”. It’s a very interesting snapshot as ever: both of average per-stream payouts and of the market shares of the various services. […]

A study conducted by CrunchBase has found that only 17% of startups receiving their initial round of venture funding in 2017 had at least one woman as a founder. What’s more, that percentage has stayed static since 2012, having risen steadily in the three years before that. In 2017, all-women teams accounted for 3% of […]

Anyone thinking about music in emerging markets may already be following the story of Chinese tech firm Transsion Holdings, which has several mobile-phone brands as subsidiaries including Tecno, Itel, Infinix and (via a 2017 takeover) Spice. The South China Morning Post has the latest profile of the company’s success in India and Africa, claiming that […]

Finnish electronic duo Phantom have become the first artist to use new technology from Notch, which is best known for its software providing live visuals for a host of big acts. Its new tool aims to help artists create virtual-reality videos based on the music itself. “The interactive music video visualises sound in VR. It […]

Jorja Smith will be the first global artist promoted as part of streaming service Deezer’s ‘Deezer Next 2018’ initiative. She’ll get playlist and promotional support on the platform, with three more global ‘priority’ artists set to be announced later in the year. Up to eight more artists will be announced in each of Deezer’s key […]

Transparency remains a big challenge for the music industry in 2018, according to Gregor Pryor, co-chair of law firm ReedSmith’s global Entertainment and Media Industry Group. “As ever, the challenge with distribution is data hygiene. Getting composers and creators focused on all of the supply chain is a difficult thing to do,” he said in […]

We’ve come a long way from Scary Spice, Sporty Spice, Ginger Spice, Baby Spice and Posh Spice, it’s fair to say. Japanese pop group Kasotsuka Shojo have been getting a wave of coverage in the west for being the first J-Pop group where each member “represents a different cryptocurrency”. “We want to promote the idea […]

B2B digital-music firm 7digital has signed a contract with US streaming service 8tracks. The company says the deal has a minimum term of one year. 7digital has also signed a new contract with its largest shareholder, retailer MediaMarktSaturn, to migrate the latter’s Juke streaming service on to 7digital’s platform. The post 7digital signs contract with […]

Pandora was the fourth biggest non-game app across Android and iOS in 2017 in terms of revenues, according to app analytics firm SensorTower’s end-of-year report. Its analysis of in-app purchases ranks Pandora behind only Line, Tinder and chart-topper Netflix – with the latter thought to have earned $510m from in-app subscriptions in 2017, up from […]

January has already seen a flurry of new research into smart speakers, timed to coincide with the CES show in Las Vegas. The latest example comes from NPR and Edison Research, who surveyed 1,816 Americans in November and December. 16% said that they own a smart speaker, which scales up to around 39 million people […]

There has been a surprise ending to the long-running legal battle between Live Nation and the owners of ticketing firm Songkick: a $110m settlement that sees Live Nation acquiring some of the company’s remaining technology assets and patents. This, despite Songkick suffering several setbacks as it pursued litigation against the live-entertainment giant. “We are pleased […]

Samsung will soon be unlocking the FM radio chip in its smartphones in the US and Canada, according to the maker of the NextRadio app. Note, this isn’t (yet) an official announcement from Samsung itself, but NextRadio owner TagStation claimed that the move will mean owners of the smartphones can listen to broadcast-radio while consuming […]

Pandora signalled its interest in the world of podcasts in late 2015 when it became the ‘exclusive streaming partner’ for the second series of podcast Serial. Now its recently-appointed CEO Roger Lynch says the company is ready to double down with the intention of creating “the podcast genome project” – referring to its famous system […]

Media group Vivendi isn’t due to publish its next quarterly financials until mid-February, but the company issued a statement on “preliminary positive trends of 2017” yesterday including a couple of Universal Music stats. “Universal Music Group (UMG) confirmed its excellent momentum during the fourth quarter of 2017, which should lead, as expected, to revenue growth […]

YouTube is planning to launch its YouTube Red subscription service in a number of countries outside the US this year, according to its chief business officer Robert Kyncl. “In December we announced an agreement with Universal Music giving us the licenses to distribute their catalogue on the free and paid part of our platform and […]

Rumours have been bubbling for several months that Facebook was planning a shift for its news feed back towards ‘personal’ content from friends and family, rather than ‘public’ posts and content from brands and media. Now CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed the changes, which he says are part of the social network’s determination to make […]

Facebook’s latest music-licensing deal, following its agreements with Universal Music Group and Sony/ATV, is something a corker: it’s with Irving Azoff’s Global Music Rights. That would be the Irving Azoff who’s regularly castigated YouTube in recent times over its licensing and royalty payments? The very same. “Today, we are excited to announce that Global Music […]

Video-streaming service Hulu has announced its latest milestone: 17 million subscribers. That’s up from 12 million in May 2016, which means the service has averaged just 263,000 net new subscribers a month over that period. Compare that to Netflix, which has been adding around five million subscribers a quarter in recent times, albeit with a […]

We know from Snapchat’s last quarterly financial results that the social app had 178 million daily active users, but the company hasn’t broken down what those people are doing within its app. The Daily Beast has now got its hands on some internal metrics that show how popular – or unpopular – individual sections of […]

An article by musician Blake Morgan about an artists meeting held by Spotify has been ‘unpublished’ by Huffington Post, in a move that’s already giving the piece a wider airing on other sites. “If anyone were to dispute your account of the meeting in question, we wouldn’t be able to verify or stand behind the […]

The parent company of distributor CD Baby has executed a mini-rollup of B2B services. AVL Digital Group has acquired AudioMicro, which in turn owns YouTube-monetisation tool AdRev and label-services provider DashGo, as well as its own sync-licensing platform. The intention here is to offer AudioMicro’s services as part of CD Baby’s package for artists and […]

Yesterday saw a meeting in Brussels between a group of European Commission representatives and (unnamed) internet platforms to discuss illegal content. While piracy was included in the brief, the driving force behind the meeting was more about extremist content and hate speech. “Terrorist propaganda and content that incites violence and hatred online is a serious […]

JOB SUMMARY: We’re looking for a Digital Marketing Manager to join the Kobalt Music Recordings team and work with our growing roster of emerging and established talent from all over the world. Based out of our London office and reporting to the General Manager you will be working within the UK & International marketing teams […]

Spotify is testing a new feature that replaces static artwork for songs on its service with GIF-like looping videos uploaded by their artists or labels. In place of the full-screen artwork (accessed by tapping the now-playing bar at the bottom of the screen) there was a looping video featuring cats, prawns and the band’s singer. […]

App analytics firm Apptopia claims that 825 iOS apps released in 2017 used Apple’s ARKit augmented-reality framework. That included around 300 when the technology went live in Apple’s iOS 11 software in September, plus another 525 over the final three months of 2017. The post Report: Apple’s ARKit has been used by 825 apps so […]

Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and the rest of the voice-assistant gang will soon be getting a new member, from an unexpected source. Set-top box maker Roku has announced plans to launch the ‘Roku Entertainment Assistant’ by this autumn, which will be used to control entertainment on its own devices, as well […]

AdAge has been profiling Lyor Cohen’s plans for 2018 as head of music at YouTube, including boiling down his pitch to artists, managers and labels as “We’re going to make you rich and famous”. That includes providing financial support for music videos and promotion for new releases, as well as the previously-reported plans for a […]

We reported on the latest music-consumption stats from the UK yesterday, but now Nielsen has published its data for the US, revealing even bigger growth for 2017. Specifically, sales and streams of albums and songs grew by 12.5% last year in the US, driven by a 59% increase in on-demand audio streams. Nielsen also noted […]

Spotify may go public in the first quarter of this year, according to several reports citing the company’s confidential filing of documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in December. “All indications are that Spotify wants to list in Q1, and timing of the confidential F-1 filing would support such a calendar,” claimed Axios. […]

Here at Music Ally, we covered a lot of new music/tech startups for the first time in 2017. We’ve now chosen 20 of them that we think have the potential to make an impact in 2018 and beyond, from analytics to artificial intelligence, and from blockchain tech to radio monitoring. The post 20 music/tech startups […]

Universal Music Group enjoyed a stonking 2017 according to chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge’s year-end memo to staff. “The dramatic worldwide increase in streaming has been the single most important catalyst in returning UMG – and the music industry at large – to growth,” wrote Grainge. The post UMG boss hails ‘best financial performance in […]

Business Insider has been mining some stats for some of the most well-known YouTubers, and has identified a decline in their monthly views during 2017. PewDiePie, Zoella and DanTDM all saw their monthly views fall in the last year, as well as the number of new subscribers to their channels every month. The piece notes […]

Fresh from the pre-Christmas news of its first licensing deal, with Universal Music, Facebook has continued to build out its music team, with former Googlers looming large. Among Facebook’s latest hires: Joe Bognanno, former manager of music content partnerships at Google and also director of royalties at SoundCloud, who is now Facebook’s commercial music publishing […]

If Spotify was hoping 2018 would see its publishing woes die down… well, Wixen Music Publishing has put those hopes to rest. The publisher has filed a lawsuit seeking damages of at least $1.6bn for Spotify’s use of songs written by Tom Petty, Rage Against The Machine, Neil Young, Stevie Nicks and other artists/songwriters. The […]

Brits spent more than £1.2bn on recorded music in 2017, a year-on-year increase of 9.6% fuelled by the growth of streaming subscriptions. Figures released by the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) revealed that people spent £577.1m on streaming subscriptions, up 41.9% from 2016’s £406.6m. This more than outweighed a 3.4% decline in physical sales to £459.4m […]

Guitarist Scott Henderson’s career has seen him mixing jazz, blues, funk and rock in his solo work, as co-leader of fusion band Tribal Tech, as well as playing with artists like Joe Zawinul and Chick Corea. He’s also got more than 30 years’ experience teaching other people to play, in his role as an instructor […]

Ticketmaster’s latest mobile app is called Shortlist – Concert Tickets, and it’s promising music fans “last-minute tickets to great concerts”. Released in the US for iPhone and for Android smartphones, the app is clearly aiming to fill venues by appealing to fans making their ticket-buying decisions just before the events. “More tickets often become available […]

At the end of September this year Music Ally was invited to attend the inaugural All About Music conference in Mumbai, India. We’ve since been speaking to some of its main contributors, and taking a look at the key themes that emerged on how India is evolving as a music market. All About Music is […]

Music labels and publishers have spent much of 2017 wondering what Facebook’s plans were for licensing music. Today the social network announced its first major-label licensing deal, with Universal Music Group. The companies are describing this as a “global, multi-year agreement” that will license Universal’s recorded-music and publishing catalogues for “video and other social experiences […]

2017 has been an exciting year for online video of all kinds, music videos included. Now there’s a new awards ceremony for that, which aims to celebrate emerging talent creating music videos and other short-form music-related work. The Shiny Awards take place on 22 February 2018 in London, and the deadline for entering is the […]

Here it is – Sandbox’s massive run down of the best, most innovative and most exciting music marketing campaigns of the past 12 months. Download the report HERE. As usual, all campaigns are listed in non-partisan alphabetical order. But this year there is a twist. We have given campaigns that have impressed us special commendations […]

Bloomberg has an interesting piece about Apple’s potential plans to bring its iOS and MacOS app ecosystems together. “Starting as early as next year, software developers will be able to design a single application that works with a touchscreen or mouse and trackpad depending on whether it’s running on the iPhone and iPad operating system […]

We reported earlier this month on new Apple guidelines that seemed to squash iOS apps created using template-based tools – for example, the various platforms that help musicians create and release their own mobile apps. After protests, Apple has changed the guidelines, which should mean these platforms can continue operating. The rules did say that […]

Gracenote has a new customer for its MusicID music-recognition technology: streaming service Mixcloud. The latter is going to start using MusicID to fingerprint music in the 1,000 hours-plus of DJ sets, radio shows and podcasts uploaded to its platform every day. The post Mixcloud will use Gracenote’s MusicID to identify tracks appeared first on Music […]

This guest column comes from Maarten Bloemers, CEO and co-founder of GUTS: “The secondary ticketing market has recently been under scrutiny in the UK, with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) this month publishing the findings of a year-long investigation. The post Guest Column: How fixing the secondary ticketing market will help future music events […]

Despite the continuing rows over the ‘value gap’ and safe harbour, YouTube has struck its second new licensing deal of 2017 with a major label: Universal Music Group. The new global, multi-year agreement follows a similar deal with Warner Music Group in May, although both parties are keeping the details private beyond official statements from […]

This guest column comes from Robert Ashcroft, CEO of PRS for Music: “The issues of data, value and protection for songwriters have never been so high on the agenda. In early 2016 I had a conversation with George Howard for a blog he was writing for Forbes about the biggest issue facing the industry in […]

Taylor Swift caused a bit of a stir with her recent gamification of Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan scheme, sparking complaints about whether fans would feel forced to buy merchandise and physical albums to boost their chances of getting concert tickets. We wonder if Swift’s new mobile app could fall prey to similar sentiments. The app, created […]

With the year almost over, it’s time to look back, reflect on what we have learned in the music business in 2017, and consider how we’ll build on it in 2018. That’s a huge job, so we’ve tried to do some of the heavy lifting for you with our review of the year, looking back […]

Spotify and Deezer’s CEOs have both signed a letter to European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker calling for the EC to ensure they get a “level playing field” on platforms owned by large US technology companies including Apple and Amazon. The pair – along with a group of European games companies – are calling for “clear […]

In the mid-2000s, Pete Downton had a PowerPoint presentation. It included a slide with a map of the world plotting Warner Music Group’s licensing partnerships with 40 mobile operators: a network with a theoretical reach of 1.8 billion customers. “There was a certain amount of truth in that, because we had deals in place to […]

SoundCloud is redesigning its app’s home screen with more focus on playlists and recommendations, including two new own-brand playlists showcasing trending hip-hop and dance tracks. The app’s homepage will now be based around sideways-scrolling carousels of playlists and albums, some of which will be tuned to the listener’s tastes. These will include ‘More of what […]

Imogen Heap’s Mycelia event in London today wasn’t just about announcing a world tour and Creative Passport initiative for artists. There was also a panel of ‘reflective bytes from absorbent minds’ about some of the issues raised in Heap’s keyonote. The panel included Eva Kaili, Member of the European Parliament; Sammy Andrews, CEO of Deviate […]

We’ve seen a few music-industry conference venues in our time, but never a giant tipi until today. Built in the grounds of musician Imogen Heap’s home in Havering-atte-Bower, it was the location for Heap to talk about the next steps for her Mycelia project. She was unveiling Mycelia’s proposal for a ‘Creative Passport’, which is […]

Lead: Labels and artists spent 2017 getting their heads around how playlists have created a new centre of gravity for the record business. The old ways of promoting a record (discounting at retail, plugging at radio, pitching to the specialist music press) have all gone and now playlists are the conundrum everyone wants – and […]

Deezer is launching its hi-res ‘HiFi’ tier in Japan this month, working with local partners Onkyo, Pioneer Marketing and Yamaha. Deezer HiFi will offer FLAC-quality streaming in Japan with a catalogue of more than 36m songs, according to its announcement. A three-month free trial will be offered to people signing up with devices bought from […]

Vevo is the world’s leading all-premium music video and entertainment platform with over 24 billion monthly views globally. Vevo delivers a personalized and expertly curated experience for audiences to explore and discover music videos, exclusive original programming and live performances from the artists they love on mobile, web and connected TV.   Take a look […]

The music industry’s growth story continues: Warner Music Group has just announced its financials for its fiscal fourth quarter, and thus its full financial-year figures. The headline: 10.2% growth in total revenues. In fact, WMG saw its revenues grow from $3.25bn in the year ended 30 September 2016 to $3.58bn in the year ended 30 […]

YouTube and Finnish collecting society Teosto have resolved a situation that saw a number of music videos on the service blocked from being watched in Finland. The message shown to users pointed to Teosto as the cause, but this did not turn out to be a prolonged GEMA-style dispute between YouTube and the society. The […]

Research being conducted in Finland into a ‘user-centric’ payments model for music-streaming suggests that the biggest tracks may be the main losers under such a system. That’s according to Lottaliina Pokkinen, head of legal affairs at the Finnish Musicians’ Union, although she stressed in a session at the Slush Music conference in Helsinki this week […]

“The industry’s problem to solve is we’ve been addicted to promotion for the entire time that the music industry has existed. We’ve always given stuff away to sell something. But that mindset in the consumption world just doesn’t really stack up…” The music industry’s view in the ‘value gap’ debate, at its simplest is ‘YouTube […]

Beggars Group (4AD, Matador, Rough Trade, XL, Young Turks, New Gen) is looking for a talented London-based Designer/Front-End Developer to work with our artists and labels. We are looking for someone with a real love for music and an interest and awareness of how the industry is developing and changing online. We love coming up […]

“I would once and for all like to kill the myth that it’s just about something called skip rate.” Spotify’s Nordic head of shows and editorial Daniel Breitholtz was keen to make something clear in his speech at the Slush Music conference in Helsinki today: the streaming service’s editors aren’t ruled by skip rates when […]

As CEO, international and global commercial services at Warner Music Group, Stu Bergen has become one of the main spokespeople for WMG’s strategy in the streaming age. At the Slush Music conference in Helsinki today, Bergen appeared in a session with the event’s co-founder Kalle Lindroth – a musician in his own right – to […]

Jaak is one of the startups exploring the potential that blockchain technology has for the music industry. The company is working on a number of pilot schemes, and its CEO Vaughn McKenzie has been a regular speaker on blockchain panels at industry conferences. Yesterday he flew solo at the Slush Music conference in Helsinki, interviewed about […]

Attendees at the Slush Music conference in Helsinki this morning may have turned up expecting to hear The Orchard co-founder Scott Cohen telling them why the music industry is broken, and how he’s going to fix it. That was, after all, the title of his session. It was a red herring. “Once a week somebody […]

JOB SUMMARY AWAL serves a growing roster of emerging talent and already established independent artists from all over the world. As our AWAL community continues to grow, we’re now looking for someone to join our client management team to help support these labels and artists using the cutting-edge AWAL tools. You need to have exceptional […]

Earlier this month, 1,993 women signed an open letter calling out sexism, sexual harassment and assault within the Swedish music industry. One prominent major-label executive there has since been suspended following multiple accusations of harassment. This is the tip of the iceberg, there will surely be more dominoes falling, and discussion of how the music […]

Musical VR is creatively exciting but commercially nascent: key startups are still in their early days, while there’s no clear path for artists and labels to make decent money (or even a return on their investment) in virtual reality right now. Should that stop them trying? You’ll be enormously unsurprised to hear that the answer […]

As SVP of digital strategy and business development at Universal Music Group, Jonathan Dworkin is playing a significant role in how the biggest major label wants to steer the digital music world in the years to come. His speech at the Slush Music conference in Helsinki this morning focused on ‘the globalisation of the music […]

2017 has been a fascinating year for digital music, from the growth in paid streaming to a wave of new accelerators and initiatives to help talented music startups get up and running. A pair of sessions at the Slush Music conference in Helsinki this morning provided some insights into the music/tech world. Raine Group partner […]

We’ll be blunt: for many music startups, the ‘exit’ is either shutting down when nobody wants their product or service, or an ‘acquihire’ of their team and/or tech by a bigger fish without the kind of valuation that gets investors salivating. Might there be bigger and better exits ahead? A panel at the Slush Music […]

Google is updating its rules on how ticket-resellers can advertise on its search engine, with the changes due to take effect in January 2018. Secondary ticketing services globally will have to be certified with Google before they can advertise using its AdWords platform. “To be certified, resellers can’t imply that they are the primary or […]

Sorry, at the time of writing Taylor Swift hasn’t put her new album ‘Reputation’ on streaming services as a post-Thanksgiving gift to fans. Today’s Taylor story focuses on another aspect to the album’s rollout: cracking down on piracy. Messaging app Telegram has blocked one of the channels (i.e. messaging groups) on its service after a […]

Spotify users have streamed 6.6bn songs from K-Pop artists since the company launched its K-Pop hub in 2015, racking up more than 14.4bn minutes of listening. That’s according to a blog post published by Spotify yesterday hailing the growth of streams for South Korean pop artists on its service since its hub went live in […]

The market for ‘paid online music’ in China is expected to grow by 59% this year to $455m according to research firm iResearch, whose prediction is quoted prominently in the Financial Times’ latest piece on China. It focuses on the evolving dynamics of the Chinese streaming market, where the exclusive licensing deals signed by Tencent […]

Indian streaming service Saavn is having a busy month, thanks to a partnership with Amazon, a marketing campaign running on Snapchat, and a pair of new strategic investors for the company. Saavn has also seen its latest original track, ‘Bom Diggy’, become a hit not just on its own service in India, but also on […]

South Korean boy-band BTS made a splash at the American Music Awards last weekend, and now they’re breaking records on Twitter too. They’ve been included in this year’s Guinness Book of World Records for “having the world’s most Twitter engagements for a music group”. Dedication’s what they needed for that. The post K-Pop band BTS […]

London-based startup Kurv is working on what it claims is “the world’s first wearable guitar”. To which the logical response is ‘hang on, aren’t all guitars wearable?’ Well, all bar slide-guitars anyway. But get beyond the strap-snubbing slogan, and Kurv looks quite interesting. It looks a bit like a giant woodlouse, held in the palm […]

The idea of fans investing in music rights is enjoying a flurry of attention in 2017, and blockchain startups are all the rage. It was only a matter of time before startups started putting the two concepts together. One of them is Valyou X, based in Australia, which is pitching itself as “the world’s first […]

The executive director of US artist-rights body the Content Creators Coalition, Jeff Boxer, has resigned after three women published blog posts alleging sexual misconduct (links here, here and here). “The Executive Board of Content Creators Coalition is deeply troubled by reports of sexual misconduct by our executive director, Jeff Boxer. We convened an emergency board […]

Analyst firm Edison Investment Research has put out a note on Sonos’ prospects in the smart-speaker market, with its devices now supporting Alexa as well as Spotify Connect. It’s not optimistic. “By enabling both Spotify Connect and Amazon Echo, Sonos has removed the requirement for users to use its software which is a sign that […]

ATM Artists are an independent management company based in London and Los Angeles representing a diverse roster of talent. We pride ourselves on the ability to evolve and innovate. From career management to brand partnerships, event production to marketing campaigns. We believe an artist or brand campaign comes in many layers and we aim to […]

While we’re on the subject of different kinds of reality, Jaron Lanier is a useful man to listen to, having been one of the original pioneers of virtual reality technology. Wired has been talking to him about the difference between VR and ‘mixed reality’ (MR), and his thoughts may prove handy for any music companies […]

Sorry, the rumours about Apple making an AR headset and/or smart glasses are going to keep on coming until the company actually makes one. At least there’s some concrete fact to the latest story: Apple has acquired a startup called Vrvana that was making an AR headset called the Totem. TechCrunch claims that the acquisition […]

From taxis to restaurant menus in foreign climes, Google Translate has often been a useful travel tool for Music Ally. We’ve never thought of performing a song with it though. Leave that to Swedish indie-pop band Vita Bergen, who have teamed up with Google to put its translation tool to musical use. The band will […]

As we go into 2018, there are very real concerns about sustainable business models for music journalism, with magazines shutting or slimming down and websites scratching about for revenues. But there are some other models for music journalists emerging: from the original-content divisions of streaming services to commissions from labels. The post UMG’s Urban Legends […]

We’re big fans of the recent album by Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, and we’re also impressed by the inventive Spotify-fuelled marketing campaign around it. So is Spotify: the streaming service has featured the campaign as a case study on its Spotify for Artists blog. The post Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile launch ‘mixtape exchange’ […]

Swedish alternative-investments firm EQT has taken a 40% stake in production-music company Epidemic Sound, whose CEO Oscar Höglund we interviewed earlier this week about this summer’s ‘fake artists’ controversy. The investment also sees VC firm Creandum upping its stake in Epidemic Sound to 20%, although the actual investment amounts and valuation have not been announced. […]

Chinese music service NetEase Cloud Music says it now has 400 million users, having increased its monthly active users (MAUs) by 44% year-on-year. The company also says that its users are skewed towards the 15-35 year-old demographic in China’s tier one and tier two cities, with those listeners creating 620k playlists and posting 1.5m comments […]

Apple has just announced that its HomePod smart speaker won’t be on sale until early in 2018. Now Bloomberg has been shedding more details on the backstory of the product, which if the article is true, paints a picture very different from the finely-honed R&D machine that Apple is often seen as. Among its claims: […]

Facebook has taken its latest step forward in its path towards music-licensing. the social network has appointed Jeremy Sirota as its label music business development manager, operating out of New York. Sirota joined the company from Warner Music Group this month according to his LinkedIn profile. His last role at WMG was as SVP, head […]

There are some lobbying rows that pit the creative and technology industries against one another: the US Stop Online Piracy Act in 2012, for example, or the current debates in the US and Europe over safe harbour. But in other cases, the two industries stand together. Net neutrality – the principle that all traffic on […]

Join the best team in the independent music world! CD Baby is now searching for a Director of Market Development in the EU to manage business development and grow the visibility of CD Baby’s platform within European territories. In this position, a highly motivated music industry professional will oversee territory representatives and be responsible for […]

“We were on our summer break, because we’re Swedes and nobody works for two months in July and August. But that’s when the whole fake-artists thing hit, so we were surprised, but mostly offended. Granted, we hadn’t been telling the story that much, but there was nothing fake about this…” The summer of 2017 is […]

We write and think a lot about how music companies and artists could be interacting with their keenest ‘superfans’, including the fine line between offering them more ways to support an artist without seeming to be ‘milking’ them of their money. Other industries are thinking about this too, of course, and not always getting it […]

7digital’s Entertainment News division is making the most of the screen that comes with Amazon’s Echo Show smart speaker. Just launched in the UK after its US debut earlier in the year, the Show has a seven-inch screen that means companies developing Alexa skills can add video and images in to the mix. The post […]

The USC Annenberg university in California is launching a new thing: the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, with music-industry partners including Universal Music backing its efforts around diversity. “Our new name reflects our continued and unwavering commitment to championing inclusion in all forms – including but not limited to gender, race/ethnicity, LGBT, disability and now mental health […]

You’ve likely heard about Spotify’s swanky new US headquarters in New York, but the company is also doubling down on its presence in London. Spotify said yesterday that it will be making that office its latest ‘R&D hub’ to set it alongside the company’s Stockholm, Gothenburg, New York, San Francisco and Boston offices. The post […]

Chinese technology firm Baidu has unveiled a new smart speaker, which will make its debut in its homeland this December. It’s called Raven H, and is the first product to be launched under Baidu’s umbrella by Raven Tech, a smart-home hardware startup that the company bought in February this year. The equivalent of Alexa, Siri […]

Kickstarter is relaunching Drip, the platform for artist and label subscriptions that it bought in 2016, shortly after its previous owners warned they were having to shut it down. “Today we launch a new Drip for artists and creators across the full spectrum of disciplines we support on Kickstarter,” blogged Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen. As […]

This guest column comes from Pieter van Rijn, CEO of FUGA: “In a business as dynamic as music, it goes without saying that one of the few constants is change. It’s also no huge revelation to say that we weren’t always in a place where change was understood or appreciated. Parts of the record industry […]

Lead: With so much music now being ostensibly free at the point of consumption, advertising is expected to do a lot of the heavy lifting for the digital content industries. As such, the nature and forms of advertising have had to rapidly evolve and expand. Today, ad campaigns must adapt to the vagaries of the […]

Lead: Have you ever been hounded around the internet by an ad for a gas boiler or cheap flights? Of course you have. It’s 2017, after all. That is, as you’ll know, symptomatic of bad retargeting. But don’t mock too soon as the music industry is far from innocent here. We speak to marketing executives […]

Lead: D2C started to flex its muscles just as the decline in the traditional CD market began to really bite. Now it is more important that ever as both a revenue driver and a means of ensuring ongoing fan engagement. We look at five of the most interesting D2C offerings recently to understand what they […]

PRS for Music held an event at its London offices last week exploring the impact and potential of immersive technologies on music – including virtual, augmented and mixed reality (VR, AR and MR). There has been plenty of hype around these technologies, often fuelled by the companies making headsets and content, but from licensing and […]

YouTube has announced a partnership with Ticketmaster that will see tickets for artists’ US concerts promoted within their official videos. “Starting today, we will begin featuring hundreds of artist’s upcoming US tour dates on their YouTube videos,” explained a blog post from the YouTube Music team. “Fans enjoying an artist’s official music video on YouTube […]

“I really can’t open this awards ceremony without mentioning the ‘W’ word. That’s for Weinstein, or willy-wangling… I doubt that in this country there is a single office, bank, factory, pub or club that hasn’t seen some poor behaviour towards women.” WIN chief executive Alison Wenham addressed the elephant in the room at Music Week’s […]

A technical error has led to a sharp drop in the follower counts for a number of Spotify playlists, but the streaming service says it is working to correct the problem. Several labels have contacted Music Ally this week saying that follower counts on some of their playlists had dropped suddenly, in some cases by […]

30 years ago, Matt Black and Jon More met on the mixtape and rare-groove scenes in London and formed Coldcut as a rolling music, technology, art and politics project. They had enormous hits in 1988 with ‘Doctorin’ the House’ and ‘The Only Way Is Up (under the guise of the Plastic Population), both featuring Yazz, […]

Position:  Director, International Sales and Marketing Location: London, UK (other European locations would be considered) We’re looking for a smart, organized, motivated and forward-thinking music and video marketing, sales and distribution professional to drive and manage our retail marketing and sales function across all formats in the UK and Europe.  The ideal candidate will oversee […]

Given everything else that’s going on in the world, you’d hope people won’t get too carried away getting angry about Twitter doubling the character limit in its posts. Having tested a new 280-character limit earlier this year, the feature has now rolled out to everyone bar Japanese, Korean and Chinese users, for whom Twitter says […]

Are the wheels well and truly coming off the Snapchat bandwagon? Parent company Snap, Inc published its latest quarterly financial results last night, and while its revenues grew by 62% year-on-year to $207.9m, the company’s net loss ballooned to $443.2m compared to $124.2m this time last year. The post Snap stock drops after disappointing quarterly […]

In our recent report on augmented reality technology, we suggested that rather than launching standalone AR apps for artists, labels would do better exploring some of the AR features in the big social apps. Now Island Records has offered a new example with the biggest social app of all: Facebook. The label has launched a […]

The ability for fans to ‘pre-save’ an album on Spotify has become an increasingly-common marketing tactic since Kobalt pioneered the idea last year with Laura Marling. Now independent label Domino Records is trying something a bit different with the idea: its pre-save campaign for Franz Ferdinand’s new album is structured as a “fan club”. “Subscribe […]

South Korean startup MyMusicTaste has raised a Series C funding round of $11m for its service which enables fans to request gigs by their favourite artists. KTB Network led the round according to TechCrunch, with Softbank and Samsung’s investment arms also part of the funding. The post Crowdsourced-gigs service MyMusicTaste raises $11m appeared first on […]

Amazon is continuing its slow-but-steady global rollout of its Echo smart speakers and Alexa voice assistant. Having launched the devices in India in October, now they’re debuting in a major music market: Japan. The Echo, Echo Dot and Echo Plus speakers are available to pre-order today, and will ship to Japanese customers next week. Meanwhile, […]

It wouldn’t feel right to have a new Taylor Swift album without an almighty hoo-ha around streaming, despite the star’s rapprochement with Spotify in June. Multiple reports overnight explain that her new album ‘Reputation’ won’t be available to stream when it’s released this Friday. Bloomberg suggested the album will be withheld for a week, while […]

Music-streaming services Spotify, Deezer and SoundCloud are among the founder members of a new coalition that plans to represent the European digital music industry in Brussels. Streaming service Qobuz, B2B firm 7digital and music-analytics startup Soundcharts are the other three founding members of Digital Music Europe. Its president will be Deezer CEO Hans-Holger Albrecht, while […]

This is a small change to the way in-app subscriptions work on Apple’s iOS platform, but a potentially good one for third-party music-streaming services like Spotify, Deezer, Pandora and the rest. Apple’s next software update, iOS 11.2, will include a feature called ‘Introductory Pricing for Auto-Renewable Subscriptions’. The company explains the feature thus: “Soon, you’ll […]

Social app Musical.ly has been cautious about getting into advertising – and with good reason, given the strong regulations in the US around advertising to children. However, brands are starting to make use of the app for their own marketing by working with its popular ‘Musers’ on influencer-marketing campaigns. The post Musical.ly starts to attract […]

Last.fm’s days as a music-streaming powerhouse may be behind it, but its idea of ‘scrobbling’ music – keeping track on the songs and artists you listen to – remains useful. Now a new startup called Canary looks like it’s exploring the idea with more of a mobile focus. Its app is currently available in beta […]

We raise our eyebrows wearily whenever we see a new startup touting itself, as Nusic does, as an ‘Instagram for Music’. But the slogan for the Chinese firm’s profile on investment site AngelList actually sells it short: the company appears to be working on something much more interesting than just a ‘share photos with music […]

Google really does mean business in 2017 when it comes to parking its tanks on Shazam’s lawn. The company’s recently-unveiled Pixel 2 smartphones include a feature to automatically identify music that’s playing around their owner. Now the company’s voice-assistant Google Assistant can perform a similar trick, simply by being asked ‘What song is this?’ or […]

There’s a new video-streaming service in town, called Zeus, but its founders are social-media stars rather than tech entrepreneurs or media companies. Zeus is due to launch in early 2018, co-founded by Andrew ‘King Bach’ Bachelor, Amanda Cerny and DeStorm Power. According to Variety, the service will focus on categories including comedy, beauty, fashion and […]

Beats 1 tiene un nuevo programa de radio que es en español y se enfoca en la música latinoamericana. Or to switch back into English: Beats 1 has a new Spanish-language radio show, focusing on Latin American music. The post Beats 1 launches its first Spanish-language radio show appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music […]

Why don’t music-streaming services provide credits of the depth you used to get on vinyl and CD albums? It’s a question regularly asked on conference stages, with the simple answer that – accepting the fact that it would be a positive step for musicians, songwriters and producers – there hasn’t been an obvious business incentive […]

The first industry push in Russia was to clamp down on pirate and unlicensed music services, persuading some of the highest-profile examples to sign licensing deals. Now we appear to be entering a second phase: to shift those services’ emphasis a little more towards paid subscriptions rather than free streaming. The post Russian streaming services […]

Mobile gaming is a huge and growing industry, with spending up 18% to $40.6bn in 2016 according to research firm SuperData – a figure that matched global box-office revenues for films that year. Mobile games based on musicians, however, are… less lucrative. Publisher Glu Mobile had flops with its games based on Katy Perry, Nicki […]

We’ve reported on the growth of Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan initiative earlier in this bulletin, but in separate news yesterday, the company had some news on the artist front. U2 are going to use Verified Fan for all the tickets sold for their upcoming US tour, rather than just a portion of them like previous artists […]

Former Fifth Harmony star Camila Cabello is launching some new stuff on YouTube: a series of three ‘behind-the-scenes’ videos based on the actual music video for her single ‘Havana’. The interesting point here: the new videos have been co-produced by YouTube itself with Epic Records. The first episode went live yesterday, with the next two […]

Salute Music Makers is the latest attempt to adapt the idea of a musical talent contest to the digital world. Announced in March, it has attracted more than 2,000 entrants so far, with six chosen as finalists this past weekend. Now Salute is announcing a very-topical additional element to its contest: plans to distribute free […]

We’ve been wondering about the potential for single-genre streaming services for a while now, with classical (through companies like Primephonic and Grammofy – one of the first areas to explore the idea. Now it’s time for metal to have a go, with streaming service Gimme Radio launching its first mobile app this week. Pitched as […]

Spotify says it’s experiencing “an explosion in listening diversity” on its service, by which it means the number of artists the average listener streams in a week. “Since 2014, the average number of artists each listener streams per week has increased 37 percent, from just under 30 to about 41 artists per week so far […]

Job Description: A little bit about our Team: The Warner Music Group Business Development team is responsible for the company’s global strategic initiatives and business partnerships to drive the consumption of our music via digital platforms. Within Business Development, the Innovation team of four (or five, with you) is focused on emerging business models and […]

Facebook has announced another strong set of quarterly financials, with the company’s revenues growing by 47% year-on-year to $10.33bn in the third quarter of 2017. The social network reported a net profit of $4.71bn for the quarter, up 79% year-on-year. The latest user numbers: Facebook daily active users were up 16% to 1.37bn, while monthly […]

US firm Doppler Labs has raised more than $51m since 2013 to make its range of smart headphones, telling media in 2015 that “we want to put a computer, speaker, and mic in everyone’s ear: We have very lofty visions of the future, everything from real-time translation to personal assistants.” Yet those lofty visions are […]

Smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo and Google Home are a sensitive subject when it comes to children. While both those companies are encouraging developers to create child-friendly ‘skills’, there are concerns around privacy issues and data storage. Former 7digital CEO Ben Drury is hoping to avoid that with his new venture Yoto: a smart speaker […]

Yesterday, we reported on the claim by the US Content Creators Coalition (c3) that YouTube had removed one of its spoof ads protesting about the company’s music-licensing. The video was later returned to the service. Now YouTube has made a statement putting its side of the story. The post YouTube responds to Content Creators Coalition […]

Earlier today, Björk announced more details about her upcoming album ‘Utopia’, including plans to reward fans who pre-order the album with free AudioCoins cryptocurrency, through a partnership with British blockchain startup Blockpool. The company’s CEO Kevin Bacon has been talking about the project in an interview published this morning. We used selected quotes from it […]

Fans will be able to buy Björk’s new album ‘Utopia’ using cryptocurrencies, and pre-ordering it directly from the star or her label will earn them crypto rewards too. The musician has teamed up with British blockchain startup Blockpool, which is working with label One Little Indian on the online store to process ‘Utopia’ pre-orders using […]

Many people in the music industry have high hopes for virtual reality technology, and Universal Music’s announcement this week of a partnership with startup Within is an example of the partnerships being struck around VR. But here’s some news from the games industry that may spark caution: one of the key evangelists for VR in […]

A number of journalists are huffing and puffing this week, after it emerged that Apple cut back advance access to its new iPhone X for technology writers, while giving handsets to a handful of YouTube stars. “Apple provided the iPhone X to a small number of traditional testers for about a week, while limiting most […]

Bandcamp has launched a new Android and iOS app, but this one isn’t for its customers, it’s for the artists and labels using the platform to sell their music. “It gives you a real-time mobile view into your stats, helps you manage and fulfil your merch, and lets you directly message your fans, even targeting […]

Should music-streaming be more or less social? Spotify recently shut down its Inbox messaging feature, but Apple Music’s latest update bumped up its friends factor a bit. Now Deezer is making its own move, launching a feature called ‘Community’ that aims to get its listeners chatting to one another about music. The post Deezer gets […]

Several albums by Ducktails – the project for American independent musician Matt Mondanile, formerly of Real Estate – have been pulled from streaming services. Pitchfork claimed that distributor The Orchard was responsible for the takedowns on Spotify and Tidal, with three albums – two released through Domino and one through his own label – affected. […]

One of the strangest aspects of the vinyl revival in the UK has been the sighting of LPs and turntables on sale in the biggest supermarket chains – previously the bastion of narrow top-40 and compilation CD sales. Now one of those chains, Sainsbury’s, is launching its own vinyl label (called ‘Own Label’) as part […]

Last week, we reported on the launch by the US-based Content Creators Coalition (c3) of a pair of spoof video ads on YouTube, criticising the service’s approach to music licensing. A few days on, YouTube has landed itself in hot water by reportedly removing one of the ads, ‘Pennies vs. Dollars’, from its service due […]

Apple has pushed out its latest software update for its Watch smartwatch, and watchOS 4.1 has some notable features for music fans. Apple Music subscribers will now be able to browse and stream the entire catalogue from their watch, rather than having to download specific playlists to it for offline listening. The post Apple Watch […]

This is a familiar tale by now: a major label announces its latest quarterly results, with revenue increases that would have been pie in the sky during the music industry’s 15-year decline, and with streaming as the prominent driver of that growth. Sony Music’s figures for the third quarter of 2017 – its fiscal Q2 […]

We haven’t heard much (in a music-industry sense) from Edgar Bronfman Jr since he sold Warner Music Group to Access Industries in 2011, then stepped down as chairman a few months later. Some interesting news this morning though: Bronfman is starting a new venture-capital company called Waverley Capital, which Bloomberg reports will be raising a […]

At our recent Sandbox Summit conference, Kobalt Music Recordings’ David Emery outlined three lessons learned from running a Spotify pre-save campaign for Laura Marling. Now he’s turned the talk into a blog post, which makes good reading for any music marketer. We reported on his thoughts about getting away from your desk and inbox to […]

We’ve been writing about virtual reality startup Within since it was founded under the name of Vrse by Chris Milk, the filmmaker whose previous projects included the famous ‘Wilderness Downtown’ interactive video for Arcade Fire. Now Within has signed a high-profile music partnership with Universal Music Group, to make both virtual AND augmented reality experiences […]

We reported on the launch of Hookd in September: the British startup is launching a ‘pre-cleared, commercial music licensing solution for online video creators’. Basically a way for YouTubers to license labels’ tracks for use in their videos for as little as £6. In the weeks since, there’s been a change: Hookd is now known […]

Dutch startup Guts Tickets is one of the companies exploring blockchain technology’s potential for the music industry – but in its case, the focus is on selling tickets rather than recorded music. The company has just raised $2.5m through 2017’s buzziest funding mechanism: an initial coin offering (ICO). However, this is just from the pre-sale: […]

As a free radio-style streaming service, Pandora has always been focused on ‘stations’ rather than playlists. But now with its premium tiers, the company is starting to follow its rivals in that space by curating playlists too. “Today we launched Featured Playlists to help you find the perfect jam to set the mood for any […]

Business Insider has chosen its words carefully in an article about Apple’s new smart speaker: ‘Spotify won’t work with Siri on Apple’s HomePod’. It’s sparked by a message published by Apple for app developers about the SiriKit tools for HomePod: “With the intelligence of Siri, users control HomePod through natural voice interaction. And with SiriKit, […]

Mixcloud’s plans for premium subscriptions will include the ability for individual DJs, curators and podcasters on its platform to launch subscriptions for their mixes and shows. The streaming service’s ambitions to move beyond its traditional ad-supported model were revealed earlier this month, when it signed its first direct licensing deal, with Warner Music Group. Since […]

We’re looking for a VP Digital Marketing, UK & International to join the Kobalt Music Recordings team and work with our growing roster of emerging and established artists from all over the world. Based in our London office and reporting to the General Manager, you will lead on all areas of digital marketing strategy, working […]

American iPhone owners spent an average of $47 on apps in 2016 according to research firm SensorTower. But it expects that to grow to $63 this year, $77 in 2018 and $88 in 2019. That’s 86% growth from 2016 to 2019, although the app category hoovering up the lion’s share of this spending will come […]

China is the country with the highest smartphone shipments in the world, followed until now by the US in second place. Two different research companies reckon that India has just overtaken the latter country. Canalys claims that more than 40m smartphones shipped in India in the third quarter of this year, representing growth of 23% […]

Here’s more evidence of music as a guinea pig for cutting-edge artificial-intelligence technology. Just as Google is training some of its AI tech by getting it to create music, so Intel is testing some of its AI out on music videos. Specifically a video for Chinese pop star Chris Lee’s single ‘Rainy Day, But We […]

Songkick the company is shutting down, ending its ticketing operations after a punishing legal battle with Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Songkick the concert-recommendations app, however, is very much alive and kicking, having been sold to Warner Music Group earlier this year. To head off potential confusion for its users around the corporate-shutdown news, the app’s […]

Molly Neuman has been head of music at Kickstarter for two years. She used her presentation at the BIME Pro conference in Bilbao to explain how her original career in music as a member of Riot Grrrl band Bratmobile informs the importance she places on community at the crowdfunding platform. “My career began in community,” […]

Earlier this week, the RIAA revealed that US (recorded) revenues from Latin American music had grown by 44% in the first half of 2017, compared to overall industry growth of 8.1%. But as ‘Despacito’ has shown, the Latin boom extends way beyond the US. That was a topic explored during the Latin Music, Latin Market: […]

How to get songs onto popular Spotify playlists like New Music Friday and RapCaviar is a hot topic for labels in 2017. But it seems that they’re all being outperformed in terms of streams by a playlist that can’t be pitched to: the algorithmic Release Radar. That’s according to Bryan Johnson, director of artists and […]

More speakers have been confirmed for the NY:LON Connect conference that Music Ally and the Music Business Association are holding in New York early in 2018. Kobalt CEO Willard Ahdritz; Amazon Music director Ryan Redington; SOCAN CEO Eric Baptiste andASCAP CEO Beth Matthews will be joining (previously announced) Spotify chief content officer Stefan Blom at […]

Japanese metal band Crossfaith are encouraging fans to headbang in their own homes with a marketing campaign for their new EP ‘Freedom’. Launched by label Sony Music and agency Ogilvy & Mather, the campaign gets fans to visit the band’s website and then headbang in front of their webcam, which unlocks a stream of a […]

With every music-streaming service now keen on making original video projects with artists, should the latter pick one partner or find different creative treatments with several? Sam Smith is taking the latter path. Having worked with Spotify on a vertical video for his comeback single ‘Too Good at Goodbyes’ which was embedded in a swathe […]

With two Amsterdam conferences plus a London event under its belt, FastForward is starting to explore the potential for building a network of its young industry attendees. The company has announced a partnership with Ticketmaster to deliver mentoring for a small group of its attendees. Six Ticketmaster (and parent company Live Nation) execs will each […]

YouTube has revealed the launch date for its Best.Cover.Ever talent contest, which will challenge young wannabes to cover tracks by an array of popular artists. The competition will kick off on 20 November, and as previously announced is hosted by rapper Ludacris, with Demi Lovato, Katy Perry, Jason Derulo, Flo Rida, Nicky Jam, Charlie Puth […]

Swedish startup Auddly has been building what it describes as a “song data hub”, initially for songwriters to store details on their songs as they work on them – including co-writer and producer details, split agreements and credits. Now the company is widening the pool it’s using to source this data to managers, via a […]

Music virtual-reality startup MelodyVR is raising more money: £10m from a placing of new shares, and another £5m from the sale of shares by co-founders Anthony Matchett and Steven Hancock. The company, which is listed on UK stock exchange AIM, plans to use its latest cash injection to continue building its library of original music/VR […]

We’ll stress upfront that this isn’t an official announcement from Amazon: the company hasn’t abandoned its policy of keeping its key music stats to itself. Instead, this is an estimate from Midia Research, claiming that with 16 million subscribers across Prime Music and Music Unlimited, Amazon is now the third biggest music-subscription service in the […]

JOB SUMMARY As Project Manager, you will manage primary communication and lead marketing efforts for clients with a focus on developing and breaking artists. Reporting to the Senior Project Manager, you will guide artist development efforts, provide marketing strategy for AWAL + artists, labels and management clients. You will work closely with the global marketing […]

Lead: Take an in-depth look into the world of AR and ask if this is finally the time for a technology that has been knocking on the door for some time now to finally take off in a meaningful way. Beyond Music: Try these brilliant non-music apps to explore the current state of AR and […]

Netflix had already announced plans to spend between $7bn and $8bn on content in 2018, but there was a question about how the publicly-listed company planned to finance that investment in licensed shows and films, plus its own originals. Now that question has been partially answered: yesterday Netflix raised $1.6bn of debt funding through a […]

The latest report from research firm App Annie claims that combined app downloads on iOS’ App Store and Android’s Google Play were nearly 26bn in the third quarter of this year. That’s up 8% year-on-year, and as App Annie points out, the figure relates to new app installs, not reinstalls or app updates. The post […]

Research firm Forrester’s latest prediction for the smart-devices market focuses on the US alone, we should say. “Smart home devices are expected to grow tenfold between 2017 and 2022,” claimed the company in its latest blog post. “Forrester expects the adoption of smart home devices in the US to be 10 times higher by 2022, […]

Shock news! An investment firm thinks that one of the companies that it has a stake in will see its valuation increase fivefold in the coming years! GP Bullhound’s claim that Spotify’s valuation will shoot up from $20bn when it goes public to $100bn in the future should probably be filed alongside recent claims by […]

In recent years, we’ve regularly covered claims by digital marketers that posts from their pages are seeing their ‘organic’ (i.e. not paid for) reach decline. Less of their fans are seeing their posts unless they pay to boost their reach. But now imagine a world where page posts are scrubbed from Facebook’s main news feed […]

In its recent ‘Notorious Markets’ submission to the US Trade Representative, the RIAA took aim once again at stream-ripping websites, which enable people to rip YouTube videos into downloadable MP3 files. Now campaigning body the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has criticised the RIAA’s line of argument in its own submission to the Representative. After defending […]

In December 2016, Kobalt launched a campaign for Laura Marling that enabled fans to ‘pre-save’ her next album, automatically adding it (and its advance tracks) to their Spotify playlists as soon as they were available. Since then, other labels and distributors have developed similar tools, capitalising on a feature in Spotify’s API that hadn’t previously […]

Japanese messaging app Line has always made a big thing of its animated characters, which are used as ‘stickers’ in its users’ conversations, as well as appearing in mobile games, merchandise and cartoons. Now the company is working with one of the biggest K-Pop bands, BTS, on their own range of characters. BT21 are eight […]

DJ-tech firm Native Instruments has raised a €50m (around $58.8m) funding round from private-equity company EMH Partners. The firm says it plans to use the cash to fuel “rapid international growth” as well as developing new digital services for its users. Native Instruments says it’s also planning a recruitment drive in Berlin, Los Angeles and […]

A few years ago, Spotify had an initiative called ‘Spotlight’ which picked out its new acts to watch, promoting them in its local markets. Hozier, Tove Lo and Jack Garratt were among the beneficiaries. But Spotlight didn’t happen at the start of 2017: we were told at the time that the plan was to replace […]

This guest column comes from Chrysalis Records co-founder Chris Wright: “Last month, thousands of people crowded together in the Eventim Apollo theatre in Hammersmith to celebrate some of the best of British music at the Mercury Awards. The eventual winner, Sampha’s ‘Process’, was hailed as a challenging, individual kind of album and a fitting recipient […]

Demi Lovato’s exclusive documentary for YouTube has been watched 3.5m times in the first three days after it launched. The documentary, Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated, is a 78-minute long film about her current life, and is one of the first original-video music projects commissioned by YouTube to be made available for free supported by ads, […]

Dominique Delport is the chairman of Vivendi Content and MD of Havas Group, so he’s an interesting figure in terms of connecting the dots between Universal Music Group’s parent company and its advertising-giant arm. He gave a keynote at yesterday’s MIPCOM TV industry conference in Cannes and had plenty to say. Among the points he […]

Spotify has moved to formalise the process by which major and independent labels pitch for slots in the Browse section of its service, with a quota-based system applying to global and local playlists. The move comes after longtime discussion within the industry about the extent to which Spotify promotes its own in-house curated playlists over […]

Sources claim Spotify is on course for a $4bn year – but losses also grow The post Sources claim Spotify is on course for a $4bn year – but losses also grow appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Spotify has launched a new mobile app, but this one has a very specific group of users in mind: musicians. The Spotify for Artists app goes live today for iOS, with the music-streaming service promising that an Android version will follow “really soon”. The company is describing it as “a one-stop shop to track your […]

In May, music company Kobalt announced a $75m Series D funding round, led by media firm Hearst Entertainment. Now that round has increased to $89m. The $14m ‘second installment’ was led by former Google Ventures partner Bill Maris’ new Section 32 fund, with Maris joining Kobalt’s board of directors as part of the funding. Maris […]

This is a fantastic opportunity to be a key part of a successful and expanding marketing department within in a leading digital agency. You will work across a variety of campaigns from various sectors in the entertainment industry Company: Deviate Digital Role: Digital Marketing Manager Salary : Dependant on experience Apply via : jobs@deviate.digital YOU HAVE […]

Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit conference in London yesterday included three short’n’sharp sessions where digital marketers outlined the lessons they learned from recent campaigns. Warner Music Group’s senior VP of global marketing Beth Appleton talked about influencer marketing. “We know that they’re the new tastemakers. And ultimately we’ve got the potential to reach millions globally. And […]

“I am getting pretty fucking bored of the vilification of YouTube. It’s like moaning about the weather or moaning about Brexit… We are living in a time of abundant opportunity and tech companies are putting music front and centre.” Diluk Dias, founder of British music company AEI Group, had some firm views on the ‘value […]

Streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and their rivals have been working hard on back-end features for labels, managers and artists. But could they be doing more? The closing panel at Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit conference in London today invited the audience of music marketers to suggest a wishlist of new features. The session was […]

Every music company in 2017 is facing the challenge of making sense of a torrent of data from streaming services and social networks, among other sources. How to make the most of it? A panel at Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit conference in London today heard from some experts including Lucy Blair, director of international sales […]

From Facebook Live and Twitch to apps like YouNow and Live.ly, livestreaming video is a burgeoning medium for individual creators and media brands alike. And music? A panel at Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit conference in London today explored some of the potential that live video has for music marketing. The panel included Stef Pascual, head […]

The opening session at Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit conference in London today was a keynote by Dylan Collins, the CEO of children’s network SuperAwesome. His focus was on the new generation of consumers (mainly those under the age of 13) and why we need to scrap most – if not all – of our preconceptions […]

YouTubers, Instagrammers, Snapchat stars, Twitch streamers, Musers on Musical.ly… The emergence of new stars on online-video services and social networks has provided a new promotional channel: influencer marketing. Paying social stars to promote a product or brand has been a growing trend for some time, but what does it mean for music marketing in 2017? […]

In 2017, pitching tracks to the in-house playlisters at Spotify, Apple Music and other music-streaming services is an important cog in labels’ marketing campaigns. But it’s also a discipline with plenty of mystery around it. How do labels pitch these curators, and what kind of pitches are most likely to succeed? A panel at Music […]

What does it say about the culture we’re currently living in that several of the key people who created the ‘like’ button for Facebook are now disengaging from social media? The Guardian published a thought-provoking piece this weekend about how some people in Silicon Valley are rearing back from the culture they helped to create. […]

YouTube CEO Susan Wojkicki and content boss Susanne Daniels have been talking about the company’s plans to continue investing in original shows and events. Their interview with The Hollywood Reporter includes some bullish quotes on the prospects of competing with the likes of Netflix and Hulu. “I want our shows to resonate in a big […]

We wrote in September about the upcoming launch of live-video app Rize: it’s the work of popular app YouNow, and will blend livestreaming with blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. In fact, Rize will have its own cryptocurrency called ‘Props’, with its creators revealing more plans on how they plan to tempt social-media stars to use Rize […]

The emphasis around ‘hi-res’ music may be shifting to streaming, but there are still hi-res download services around trying to find an audience. One of them belongs to hi-fi firm Onkyo, which has just announced a revamp of its hi-res store, which uses MQA’s technology. The store’s interface has been spruced up, suggesting music as […]

A team funded by the Swedish Research Council are writing a book about Spotify’s history, but ‘Spotify Teardown: Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music’ is already creating controversy in the service’s homeland. The book is due to come out next year, the tenth anniversary of Spotify’s commercial launch. The controversy is less about the […]

There isn’t much excitement at all around apps for musicians in 2017: the heyday of artist-app platforms like Mobile Roadie is a rapidly-receding memory. But for social stars (or ‘influencers’) it’s a different story: they do still seem to see a value in bagging their own spot on fans’ homescreens. The latest example is Dani […]

Usher is the latest artist to moonlight as a c-level executive for a technology company. The R&B veteran is now ‘chief creative officer’ of startup Megastar, as well as an investor in the company. It’s the latest firm trying to launch an X Factor-style global talent contest via a smartphone app, also called Megastar. In […]

British music/VR startup MelodyVR has announced its latest licensing deals, with Roc Nation and Roc Nation Publishing. The global, multi-year deals will “license the creation and distribution of virtual reality content featuring Roc Nation artists, covering both record label and publishing rights” according to MelodyVR’s announcement for investors this morning. “As part of the relationship, […]

After Google’s press event last night, Spotify put out its own related announcement: an expansion of its partnership with Google around the latter’s Google Assistant voice-controlled helper. Owners of a Google Home smart-speaker have been able to control Spotify using voice commands since its launch, but now those commands will work with Google Assistant on […]

Traditionally, individual tracks have been the important unit on SoundCloud, with the streaming service’s discovery dynamic being mainly about following the right people to surface the best tracks into your feed. However, SoundCloud has been gradually putting more emphasis on playlists to match the strategies of its rivals: something that’s clear from the latest update […]

Fresh from pulling out of the music-streaming market via a partnership with Spotify, Microsoft has announced the next moves in its quest to be a big player in ‘mixed reality’ – devices that blend augmented and virtual reality technology. Microsoft is opening up pre-orders for the first batch of Windows Mixed Reality headsets, with five […]

Not content with running its own startups incubator, Abbey Road Studios is now getting into the mobile apps game. But its new app, Topline, is firmly focused on the London studios’ key customers: artists. The app is pitched as a way for musicians to quickly capture their song ideas. “You can share files easily, sing […]

The Techstars Music accelerator is on the hunt for its second cohort of music/tech startups, with applications closing on 15 October. The final decision on who makes it onto the program is set to be made by mid-December. The first cohort of startups earlier this year have gone on to raise more than $15m of […]

There were celebrations when recorded-music sales in Italy rose 25.5% in 2015, but since then the market has struggled to repeat the euphoria. That’s according to Music Ally’s latest country profile, which is available to download today for subscribers to our research service. In 2016, recorded-music income grew by just 0.4% to €149m ($178.5m) in […]

Warner Music Group’s new CEO of recorded music Max Lousada isn’t wasting any time making changes within the group. Cameron Strang is stepping down as chairman and CEO of WMG’s Warner Bros Records, to be replaced by current Interscope and RCA executives Aaron Bay-Schuck and Tom Corson. They’ll be co-chairman of Warner Bros, with Bay-Shuck […]

  Ninja Tune Los Angeles is seeking a Global Digital Sales Assistant to provide support for the Global Digital Sales Manager. The ideal candidate will have a deep understanding of the top digital storefronts and the digital sales process with a great eye for numbers, an analytical mind, and an excellent understanding of XLS. Previous […]

Finding success initially with Killing Joke in the 1970s, Youth (or, as per his passport, Martin Glover) has produced a dizzying array of acts over the years. Notable clients include The Verve and Take That, with his remix CV including The Sugarcubes, U2 and Siouxsie & The Banshees. He also formed The Fireman, an experimental […]

Snapchat launched a teaser website yesterday with a 24-hour countdown to… Well, people didn’t know what, until a Business Insider journalist tried setting their computer’s clock forward 24 hours, and discovered all the website’s secrets. And they are: a partnership with artist Jeff Koons that will scatter a number of his artworks and installations across […]

There are too many men and not enough women on-stage at music-industry conferences. That’s understood widely, but now US journalist Cherie Hu has dug into the actual numbers behind this concern. Her analysis of 1,644 speakers at 13 industry conferences in 2017 shows that 73% of them are male, while 81% of the ‘C-Suite’ level […]

There are high expectations for Facebook’s plans to license music and share advertising revenues from streams of videos including it. But it’s important not to forget the question about how lucrative those revenues will be. Or won’t be, if you read Digiday’s feature offering early feedback from video publishers who’ve been testing Facebook’s ‘mid-roll’ ads […]

The terrible events at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas have sparked plenty of responses from within the music industry. Country star Jason Aldean, who was on-stage as the mass-shooting began, posted on Instagram. “Tonight has been beyond horrific… It hurts my heart that this would happen to anyone who was just coming […]

The latest music brand looking to make use of video on Facebook is iHeartRadio. The US streaming service has launched a TV-style chat-show called ‘iHeartNow with Elvis Duran’, fronted by one of its most popular DJs. The show will see Duran interviewing musicians and celebrities, kicking off with former Fifth Harmony singer turned solo-star Camila […]

Satellite-radio firm Sirius XM’s investment in Pandora, and comments made by its executives since that deal was agreed, have raised concerns about whether Pandora will be putting less welly behind its subscription tiers. However, recently-appointed CEO Roger Lynch maintains that subscription remains important to Pandora. “All three tiers of the service are important. If you […]

Shazam narrowed its net losses from £16.7m in 2015 to £3.7m in 2016 (around $4.9m) in a year when it said its app had more than 300 million annual active users. These details come from the company’s financial results for last year, filed with Companies House in the UK. Shazam’s revenues increased by 14.5% to […]

British startup Dice launched its music-ticketing app in September 2014 focusing initially on London. Since then it’s expanded its net of concerts across the country. Now Dice is launching in the biggest (but also the toughest) ticketing market of all: the US. Its app will now offer tickets to concerts in Los Angeles and San […]

Nashville startup Remix Hits got some press this week, with Digital Music News claiming that the company has a deal with Sony Music to make licensed ‘stems’ of tracks available for DJs to remix and release legally. Yet when Remix Hits followed up with its own press release, there was no mention of Sony Music […]

What’s the most popular way to listen to music in Japan? Many people in the music industry’s first answer would be CD, given the market’s continued domination by physical sales. But no. According to research published earlier this year by industry body the RIAJ, the most popular way to listen to music in Japan is […]

YouTube music boss Lyor Cohen has been winding up rightsholders recently with his views on why the ‘value gap’ debate is overblown. But amidst this controversy, it’s easy to forget that some music executives see YouTube as the industry’s biggest opportunity rather than its greatest menace. Speaking at Paris Electronic Week, Luke Hood, founder and […]