Podcasts app Pocket Casts is launching an Amazon Alexa skill
For people who aren’t using iTunes or Spotify to get their podcasts, Pocket Casts is one of the better independent podcast apps. Now it’s making an interesting leap from smartphones to smart speakers, courtesy of its new Alexa skill. “You can play any of your podcasts by name, ‘Alexa, ask Pocket Casts to play the latest […]
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Source: Music ally
Midemlab startups contest opens call for entries in 2019
Music/tech startups are being invited to apply for this year’s Midemlab competition, which will see its final pitch sessions take place at the Midem conference in Cannes this June. Deezer and Japanese service Recochoku are the official partners for this year’s event, with jury members from companies including Google, Sony Music, The Orchard and Warner […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify cites Conner Youngblood as playlist-submission success
Spotify was recently under fire for the way playlist-pitching works for labels on its platform, but the company sees the playlists-submission tool it launched in July 2018 as a positive for artists. Its latest blog post outlines how the tool has worked for one artist, Nashville-based Conner Youngblood. After submitting his track ‘The Birds of Finland’ using Spotify’s tool, it […]
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Source: Music ally
Hungama ‘Sound of Fame’ report explores Indian listening trends
Indian digital-music service Hungama has published a report – Sound of Fame – which outlines some of the trends on its platform in 2018. The company said that its user base grew by 48% last year, with a 22% increase in average listening-time per user. The number of streams on Hungama Music tripled in 2018, but the […]
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Source: Music ally
Report 421 :: AI on the Prize
Artificial intelligence is a hot ticket in the music industry and is spinning off in a variety of exciting new directions. It is being used to create music but also to power recommendations, to better understand the contexts of listening and to patch the leaks in the hull of metadata. It is, therefore, the Swiss […]
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Source: Music ally
Lost Girls open by:Larm with ‘Chill List’ critique of music-streaming culture
Lost Girls is the musical duo formed by artists Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden. They opened the by:Larm conference in Oslo today with an original commission, ‘Chill List’, which zeroed in on the impact streaming-playlist culture is having on artists and their music.
The piece blended music with Hval’s (spoken) words, which were also shown on accompanying slides. After starting by listing some of Spotify’s big programmed playlists, and then a succession of ‘chill’ playlist titles, it segued into personal experience. I’ve kept the line-breaks from the slides.
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Source: Music ally
TikTok pays $5.7m in FTC settlement over children’s privacy
Early on in our coverage social-video app Musical.ly, we warned that its large audience of pre-teens represented a big risk for the company, in terms of staying on the right side of children’s privacy legislation like COPPA in the US. Yesterday, that particular hammer dropped – on TikTok, whose parent company Bytedance acquired Musical.ly before […]
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Source: Music ally
Terms revealed for Facebook’s fan-subscriptions feature
Facebook is launching a ‘Fan Subscription’ feature where creators (including, potentially, musicians) will be able to charge fans for access to some of their content. Now the terms of the deals that creators will be expected to sign have been revealed, in a document leaked to TechCrunch. It shows that Facebook will take up to 30% […]
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Source: Music ally
FTC to focus more attention on competition in tech industry
US regulator the Federal Trade Commission has created a new task force which it says will be “monitoring competition in US technology markets, investigating any potential anticompetitive conduct in those markets, and taking enforcement actions when warranted”. This, after a succession of news stories about how the biggest US technology companies are running their businesses […]
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Source: Music ally
Mahershala Ali launches Black History Month Apple Music playlist
Apple Music execs will have been cheering the Oscars ceremony on Sunday. Not because they all love Sophie from Peep Show (well, not just that) but because another winner on the night has just curated a playlist on the music-streaming service. Double Best-Supporting-Actor winner Mahershala Ali is behind the ‘Represent: Mahershala Ali’ playlist on Apple […]
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Source: Music ally
Giggs gets his own augmented-reality experience in London
British rapper Giggs is the latest artist to experiment with augmented-reality (AR) technology. In this case, Island Records has created an AR experience with a rooted physical location: a mural on a wall in Shoreditch, London. The idea is that fans download an app called AR E2 (QR codes will be provided on the wall […]
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Source: Music ally
WIN reveals its new leader is COO Charlie Phillips
In December, independent trade body WIN announced that its CEO Alison Wenham was stepping down, but no replacement was announced at the time. Now that gap has been filled, albeit without the same job title. WIN’s director of legal and business affairs Charlie Phillips is stepping up to a new role as chief operating officer, […]
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Source: Music ally
Startup AI Music has launched its first app: Ossia
British startup AI Music has been talking since last year about its plans for ‘shapeshifting’ music – using AI to shift recordings between different genres and moods. Recently, the company released its first demonstration app, showing how music listeners can interact with its technology. The app is called Ossia, and for now it’s available as […]
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Source: Music ally
UMG boss on smart speakers: ‘Have the title in the chorus’
We reported yesterday on UMG boss Sir Lucian Grainge’s keynote at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona. Now more details are emerging about what he talked about, including non-mobile devices like smart speakers. Grainge talked about the challenges for labels of a voice-driven world. “Our experience is people can’t ask for a song when […]
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Source: Music ally
iHeartMedia buys Radiojar to power ‘pop-up’ broadcasting
US radio group iHeartMedia has announced its latest acquisition: a Greek company called Radiojar, which offers “a centralised, cloud-based audio playout platform”. According to iHeartMedia, the deal gives it “a platform to easily combine or parse individual audio elements such as DJ voice tracks, music and broadcast spots to create, manage, distribute and monetise streams, […]
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Source: Music ally
Article 13’s final push will come at the end of March
Crunch time for Europe’s new copyright directive will come sometime between 25 March and 28 March, it was revealed yesterday. That’s because the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee has approved the final text of the directive, as agreed by the ‘trilogue’ between the three key European political institutions. That means the draft legislation will now be put […]
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Source: Music ally
Pandora launches ‘stories’ as a blend of podcasts and playlists
Pretty much every social-media service now has ‘stories’ as a format, so why shouldn’t music-streaming services? However, Pandora’s launch of a ‘stories’ feature isn’t what you might expect (i.e. short video clips that expire after 24 hours). Instead, it’s a format that blends podcasts with playlists. “Podcasts can tell stories about music, but generally don’t include full […]
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Source: Music ally
US could overhaul its music-licensing rules for publishing
Even as the row over Spotify’s publishing licensing in India rages, so attention is switching back to the US, where the Department of Justice is mulling a shakeup of the long-established ‘consent decrees’. “The Justice Department in the coming weeks is expected to call for public input on whether it should modify or terminate two […]
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Source: Music ally
Legal & Business Affairs Manager – Primephonic – Amsterdam
Job description Who are we? Primephonic is a digital music start-up that has been dubbed by the media as ‘the Spotify of classical music’. With the best 100% classical music streaming service we are reinventing the digital classical music experience and reigniting a global passion for the genre. Classical music lovers are currently heavily underserved […]
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Source: Music ally
Court ruling emerges as Warner Music calls Spotify’s comments ‘appalling’
An Indian court has made its ruling on Warner Music Group’s application for an injunction as part of its dispute with Spotify over publishing licensing in the country. Does the ruling settle the matter one way or the other? Unsurprisingly, it’s complicated.
Here’s Spotify’s statement, sent out to journalists this morning:
“We’re pleased with today’s outcome. It ensures songwriters, artists, labels and publishers will benefit from the financial opportunity of the Indian market and that consumers will enjoy an excellent Spotify experience. As we’ve said all along, we’re hopeful for a negotiated solution with Warner based on market rates.”
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Source: Music ally
Fortnite is holding its first World Cup – with $30m of prizes
Epic Games, the publisher of Fortnite, has announced plans of its first ‘World Cup’ esports event for the popular game. It’s due to take place in New York this July, with the top 100 solo players as well as 50 ‘duo’ teams competing for a prize pool of $30m over the three-day tournament. “Each one […]
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Source: Music ally
Around 91m Americans may be listening to podcasts every week
“We’re entering the Golden Age of Podcasts” claims a headline on a blog post by Chartable, a company that focuses on podcast analytics. This is based on an online survey conducted by the company recently, which aims to track some trends in the US podcasting market. Among them: 10.8% of respondents report listening to podcasts every […]
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Source: Music ally
Artist Nils Frahm explains why he’s closing his Facebook page
German artist Nils Frahm made his name exploring a blend of classical and electronic music, but now he’s making headlines for another reason: shutting down his Facebook page – “the first of many social media accounts I am going to close,” according to his farewell post. “Facebook et. al. have become unwanted companions in my life, […]
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Source: Music ally
Billie Eilish is first artist for YouTube mini-series format
The latest video on artist Billie Eilish’s YouTube channel sees her rifling through her notebook: “an audio visual journey into the thoughts of Billie Eilish, exploring the inspiration behind songs” from her new album, according to its blurb. This is actually the first of a new format on YouTube under the banner of ‘mini series’ – three-to-five […]
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Source: Music ally
MyMusicTokens keeps tabs on blockchain-music startups
AudioCoin, Musicoin, Opus, Aventus, Musiconomi and more… Music Ally has written about a variety of startups exploring the crossover between blockchain technology and the music industry, with several of these companies having launched their own ‘tokens’. Now there’s a site for keeping track of AND trading those tokens. It’s called (sensibly enough) MyMusicTokens, and is billing […]
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Source: Music ally
Report claims there are now 150m ‘audio OTT’ users in India
A figure that’s been bandied around about the Indian digital-music market is ‘100 million’ – that’s how many people were thought to be using music-streaming services in India last year. Now there’s an update in a report published by Deloitte and Indian music-industry body IMI about the ‘Audio OTT economy in India’ – Audio OTT being ‘over-the-top’ […]
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Source: Music ally
Global smartphone sales ‘stalled’ in final quarter of 2018
Research firm Gartner has published its latest figures for smartphone sales, suggesting that they ‘stalled’ in the final quarter of 2018. And note, this really is sales – “sales to end users” – rather than shipments to retailers, which is the stat more-often seen in these kinds of reports. Gartner estimates that 408.4m smartphones were sold […]
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Source: Music ally
K-Pop music sparked 5.3bn tweets on Twitter in 2018
Twitter is shouting proudly about the popularity of Korean pop music within its community: “With a new global record of 5.3 billion tweets last year” according to a blog post yesterday. Naturally, this is about K-Pop’s popularity outside South Korea continuing to grow, but Twitter is keen to stress the efforts it has been making […]
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Source: Music ally
10.7m people showed up for Marshmello Fortnite concert
We knew that more than 10 million people watched Marshmello’s recent concert within video-game Fortnite. Now we’ve got a specific figure from the game’s publisher Epic Games. “On February 2nd, Fortnite had its best event day ever with 10.7 million players showing up for the Marshmello concert,” it told The Verge. It’s interesting to note how […]
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Source: Music ally
Tidal launches $1m initiative aimed at emerging artists
Tidal’s latest initiative for emerging artists will see the streaming service distribute $1m in grants, supported by venture-capital veterans Mark Lampert and Robert Nelsen. Starting in Detroit, artists will apply for ‘Tidal Unplugged’ grants by submitting their music to the streaming service, then working with its team. “All local artists are welcome to submit an […]
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Source: Music ally
Soundcharts revamps its pricing to boost in-team data-sharing
Music-analytics platform Soundcharts is shaking up the way it charges for its service. Its subscription plans will now allow unlimited users, with the cost varying instead by how many artists are being tracked. “The music industry is a network of interconnected teams working on separate artist’s careers. Record labels, agents, promoters and managers constantly need to share […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify launches exclusive black-history merchandise line
Spotify is launching a line of merchandise around its Black History is Happening Now initiative. “Rooted in modern music merch culture, the line is made up of a hoodie, jogger, pin, messenger bag, and several t-shirts,” explained the announcement of the limited-edition collection. It’ll be shown off this weekend at a pop-up exhibition in New York, with […]
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Source: Music ally
Apple Music makes Tierra Whack its latest ‘Up Next’ artist
Interscope Records’ Tierra Whack is the latest artist to be given the ‘Up Next’ treatment by Apple Music. An interview with her aired on Apple’s Beats 1 radio station yesterday; she’ll perform on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show on 4 March as part of its partnership with Apple Music; and there’s an Up Next film […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify’s ‘Word’ category highlights spoken-word content
Spotify has made it clear that podcasts are just its first push into non-music content, so what’s next? A blog post by the company highlighting its ‘Word’ category offers some hints. “A category home to recordings of everything from poetry to guided meditation, audiobooks, and short stories,” as the post puts it. We floated the idea of […]
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Source: Music ally
Tencent Music invests in music-streaming service Douban FM
Tencent already owns three of the main music-streaming services in China. Now it has invested in a fourth: Douban FM. However, the deal is being described (by TechNode) as a strategic investment that will see Tencent providing support in the form of ‘product design and copyright authorisation’ rather than cash. The report notes that Douban FM […]
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Source: Music ally
Sandbox Issue 222: SYNC IN. Music Synchronisation Gets Smarter
Lead: as synchronisation grows in importance, a new wave of tools is emerging to make that whole process work seamlessly and smarter, covering both micro-licensing and pitch management. We look at the key players here, what they do and where they are taking synch – plus consider how AI is set to shake things up […]
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Source: Music ally
Regional Manager – Leading Global Distributor Platform – London
For a leading global digital music distribution platform we’re currently looking for a Regional Manager to build the presence and position in the UK and manage the office in London. Job description Your key responsibility is growing UK client-base and managing the operations in the UK. Main components of the day to day business […]
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Source: Music ally
YouTube simplifies its Community Guidelines strikes system
While the dust continues to settle from the Article 13 battle in Europe – at least temporarily – YouTube has announced a revamp of how its Community Guidelines strikes work. This is the system by which channels get three strikes before facing “more severe consequences” for breaking YouTube’s guidelines. In a blog post announcing the changes, YouTube […]
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Source: Music ally
Dubsmash has relaunched as an app focused on dance challenges
The last time Music Ally wrote about social-music app Dubsmash was in December 2016, when it had just raised a $9.6m funding round in order to fight back against fast-rising rival Musical.ly, which was gaining more traction with a similar app for shooting and sharing lip-sync videos. We know how that story ended: Musical.ly’s user-base continued to […]
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Source: Music ally
Classical-music accompaniment startup Antescofo raises $4.5m
Music Ally first encountered French startup Antescofo in 2016, when the company was a finalist in the Midemlab startups competition. It was touting technology that would let amateur musicians playing at home be accompanied by a full orchestra. The company went on to launch its app, called Metronaut, to do exactly that. Now Antescofo has announced a $4.5m […]
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Source: Music ally
Songtradr buys music-licensing agency Big Sync Music
There is more consolidation afoot in the music-licensing world, with Songtradr announcing yesterday that it has acquired British firm Big Sync Music. The latter company focuses on sourcing music for brand campaigns, and counts Dove, Samsung, Amazon, Johnnie Walker and Axe among its clients. Songtradr intends to combine the agency’s contacts and knowledge with its […]
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Source: Music ally
EMI.com: ‘It would have been the first real streaming platform…’
A new book by Music Ally’s Eamonn Forde digs deep into the demise of EMI as a standalone major-label, following its £4.2bn acquisition by private-equity company Terra Firma in 2007. This extract details the ambitious – but ultimately unfulfilled – plans to relaunch the EMI.com website as a digital-music service.
Going into its acquisition, Terra Firma knew that digital was the weakest part of the record business but also knew that digital was the only way to haul itself out of the hole it now found itself in. As such, the first major digital initiative for EMI under new ownership was going to make a statement.
It was going to be about the company regaining control of the means of distribution and retail that had been seized from it first by the arrival of online filesharing and then by the likes of iTunes.
This was very much Guy Hands’s pet project where he was going to show the other labels that EMI could rip up the rule book. He was also going to show the nascent legal digital services that he could play them at their own game and win.
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Source: Music ally
Gender gap in UK chart hits has grown over past decade
Ariana Grande may be setting the US charts alight, but there’s a less-positive story about how women are faring in the UK charts, published by BBC News. “Three times as many male as female pop stars appeared on last year’s biggest hit singles… Ninety-one men or all-male groups were credited on the Official Chart Company’s top […]
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Source: Music ally
SoundCloud will now distribute music to other streaming services
Musicians have always been able to upload their tracks directly to SoundCloud without needing a distributor or label. Now the company is adding a new feature: distribution of those tracks to rival music-streaming services.
This is part of the SoundCloud Premier program, which has so far focused mainly on getting artists paid for usage of their music on SoundCloud itself. Now the company is offering to distribute that music on to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Tencent and Instagram, among other services.
Caveats? It has to be original music (i.e. not covers or remixes) where the artist “owns or controls all applicable rights”. The artist also needs to be a SoundCloud Pro or Pro Unlimited subscriber; be of adult age in their country; have no copyright strikes at the time of signing up; and have at least 1,000 plays of their music in the last month in countries where SoundCloud has subscriptions and ads up and running.
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Source: Music ally
Analyst questions impact of Apple’s rumoured video service
Apple may be announcing its long-rumoured video-streaming service next month, and analysts are chewing over the implications. One, Tim O’Shea of Jefferies, has published a report with some big numbers – but also some questions about the impact such a service would really have on Apple’s wider business. O’Shea suggested that Apple will charge $15 a month […]
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Source: Music ally
Will the next big tech platform be a ’mirrorworld’ using AR?
Wired Magazine’s Kevin Kelly has form when it comes to big tech ideas: he came up with the ‘1,000 True Fans’ concept in 2008, for example, positing that for artists and creators to make a sustainable living online, the core fans who’d pay $100 a year to support them were the key. Anyway, now he’s […]
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Source: Music ally
Would you trust a bot to handle your Twitter feed?
We’ve written a fair bit about the use of bots to automatically respond to fans on Facebook Messenger. But what about turning your tweets and (if you’re a company) LinkedIn posts over to a bot? That’s the gist of Swiss startup Twinybots. “Our service will post content on socials networks without your intervention. But you can […]
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Source: Music ally
Little Simz to tease new tracks using Instagram music stickers
British artist Little Simz is preparing for the release of her third album ‘GREY Area’ through AWAL, and as part of its marketing campaign is using music stickers on Instagram. The album comes out on 1 March, but every day between now and its release, a new 10-second snippet of one of its tracks will […]
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Source: Music ally
Chatty Penguin’s Cally Hocknell talks marketing, stories and Insta-famous eggs
“What’s the point of marketers like me, why would you commission research, when an egg knocks Kylie Jenner off the top spot on Instagram?!”
There were jokes and sharp insight in equal measures in music marketer and Chatty Penguin founder Cally Hocknell’s presentation at the FastForward conference in Amsterdam on Friday.
She was referring to the recent campaign that saw a photo of a boiled egg become the most-followed Instagram account. After noting its canny use of hashtags in the comments rather than just in the description, Hocknell pointed to the egg’s emotional message.
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Source: Music ally
Rhapsody to pay up to $10m in songwriter-lawsuit settlement
It wasn’t just Spotify facing the prospect of class-action lawsuits from songwriters over streaming royalties in recent years. Rhapsody (now operating as Napster) was also on the wrong end of a case brought by David Lowery, Victor Krummenacher and David Faragher. Now the company has released details of a settlement that will see it paying […]
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Source: Music ally
Report claims indie US creators earned $6.8bn online in 2018
A year ago, Music Ally reported on a study calculating the value of the ‘independent creator economy’ in the US, from an organisation called the Re:Create Coalition. It claimed that musicians, filmmakers, artists and other creators earned nearly $6bn from online platforms including YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, eBay and Etsy in 2016. We also noted that the coalition […]
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Source: Music ally
Esports economy tipped to pass $1bn for first time in 2019
When we wrote about the competitive-gaming (esports) market last year, we noted that many of the reports about that market’s size quoted from a February 2018 study by research firm Newzoo. Now it’s back again with some new predictions for 2019. “Revenues will reach an impressive $1.1 billion in 2019, a year-on-year growth of +26.7%,” claimed the company. […]
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Source: Music ally
Apple Music lets subscribers give a free month to a friend
Here’s an interesting new tactic for music-streaming marketing: Apple Music is encouraging subscribers to get their mates onto the service too. “Give Apple Music to your friends,” explained a promotion that was push-notified to subscribers, according to news site AppleInsider. “Apple Music is better with friends. So give one of yours a free month.” The deal […]
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Source: Music ally
Mumford & Sons launch ‘reimagined’ songs for Amazon Music
British band Mumford & Sons have become the latest artist to produce some exclusive music for Amazon Music. Although in this case, the songs are already well-known: what’s exclusive are new ‘reimagined’ versions of ‘White Blank Page’ and ‘Forever’. Amazon is suggesting that fans say ‘Alexa, play the Amazon Original by Mumford and Sons’ to […]
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Source: Music ally
Classical streaming app Idagio has passed 1m downloads
Idagio is one of the companies (see also: Primephonic) trying to build a business out of a music-streaming service focused purely on classical music. It has a new milestone to report: more than 1m app downloads globally, with an admittedly-less-useful stat that it now has subscribers in 180 countries. It’s taken four years to reach the […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify paid €300m for Gimlet Media and Anchor acquisitions
When Spotify announced that it was buying podcast companies Gimlet Media and Anchor, it declined to say how much it was paying, other than that they were part of a wider $400m-$500m earmarked for podcast acquisitions. “We’re not commenting on that today, because we have other transactions in the works, and I don’t want transactions […]
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Source: Music ally
Vinyl in 2019: ‘We’re coming back to the joy, the addiction…’
The vinyl revival continues, and is still warmly welcomed by artists, labels and record stores alike. A panel at the FastForward conference in Amsterdam last week explored some of the trends around the format.
The panel included Giancarlo Sciama, former EMI/Universal exec turned catalogue marketing consultant; Karen Emanuel, founder and CEO at Key Production; Claire Pace, VP of people and culture at Discogs; and Vangel Vlaski, senior label manager at Proper Music Distribution. Megan Page, coordinator of Record Store Day UK, moderated.
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Source: Music ally
Interscope EVP: streaming spurs creative exploration in hip-hop / R&B signings
The current popularity of hip-hop and R&B on music-streaming services is enabling labels to sign more artists, and thus take more creative risks, according to Nicole Wyskoarko, EVP of urban operations at Interscope Geffen A&M.
“This is an amazing time to be in urban music. We’re able to really monetise urban music on a scale that we never have before: not that I’ve seen. And we also have the metrics to support it as well,” she said in a keynote at the FastForward conference in Amsterdam.
“In the past, it felt more niche, and now it feels like it truly is pop music, as far as popularity is concerned… It’s an exciting time, and it’s also exciting with the deals. We’re signing so many acts,” continued Wyskoarko.
“I feel like we get to really explore what urban music is, because there’s so many more artists we can work with now. Because financially it justifies it. We can sign an artist like Summer Walker, that’s R&B but maybe left-of-centre. Another artist called Ari Lennox. Or Juice Wrld.”
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Source: Music ally
AI fake-text generator may be ‘too dangerous’ to release
We’ve been writing and thinking about artificial intelligence (AI) creativity in the context of music for a while now. There’s a fascinating story at the moment about another facet though: AI’s ability to write news stories and fiction. Nonprofit research company OpenAI has created a new AI model called GPT2, which is (according to the […]
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Source: Music ally
Report: Snap will pay up to $50k per episode for Snapchat shows
Snap is one of the companies commissioning original short-form video ‘shows’ for its platform. News site Digiday has some good gossip about the numbers involved in Snapchat commissions. “Snap is offering to pay companies $40,000 to $50,000 per episode for original series to premiere on Snapchat, according to four entertainment execs with knowledge of the matter,” it […]
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Source: Music ally
Brit Awards reveal plans for digital activations next week
Next Wednesday is the Brit Awards, the flagship annual awards show for the British music industry. It’s fair to say the organisers are leaving no stops un-pulled out when it comes to the digital activity around the event. There’ll be a live stream on YouTube of the show to viewers outside the UK, fronted by […]
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Source: Music ally
Pitch imperfect: ‘This process of trying to get on playlists is becoming borderline farcical’
Playlists continue to grow in prominence (within the music-streaming world) and importance (for artists looking for their breakout moment). So what are the latest trends that artists, managers and labels should be thinking about and responding to? A panel at the FastForward conference in Amsterdam today explored them.
The panelists included Aditi Arora, director of product management at Gracenote; Catherine Lückhoff, CIO at Swipe iX; and Darren Hemmings, managing director at Motive Unknown. The moderator was Poppy Reid, managing editor at The Brag Media Group.
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Source: Music ally
Global Head of Digital Marketing & Promotions – FUGA – Amsterdam, London or New York
Job description FUGA Aggregation & Services is looking for an experienced, passionate and ambitious professional to head up our global digital marketing & promotions department. As a key part of our content exploitation team you will be instrumental in defining the FUGA brand and build on our strong position in independent digital music distribution. […]
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Source: Music ally
Kiss are launching their own brand of emoji
Never slow to spot a new branding opportunity, Kiss have teamed up with The Emoji Company to create their own line of emoji, which will be splashed across *consults press release* “Apparel, Accessories, Footwear, Electronics, Figures and Collectibles, Drinkware, Fan Merch, Home Goods, Stationery, and more”. The deal for ‘KISS x emoji®’ was brokered by […]
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Source: Music ally
Loop Media to launch short-form video-streaming service
A new US startup called Loop Media plans to launch a video-streaming service focusing on short-form content, including music videos. The company will also focus on film trailers, game trailers and TV clips, with plans to make all this content available in public spaces, as well as on people’s smartphones. “Loop plans to link in-home […]
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Source: Music ally
Former Echo Nest CEO Lucchese takes the reins at Sofar Sounds
Sofar Sounds is the startup that’s behind a global network of music concerts held in people’s homes and other interesting locations – according to Billboard it now has shows running in 428 cities around the world. It also has a new CEO: Jim Lucchese, the former CEO of The Echo Nest, and (after that company was […]
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Source: Music ally
Study: Spotify is now installed on 33% of Dutch smartphones
Mobile-industry research site Telecompaper has published some new figures on the popularity of music-streaming apps in the Netherlands. It pegs Spotify as the leader, with its app now installed on 33% of Dutch smartphones, according to the company’s latest Dutch Apps Market report. It suggests that Apple Music, on 5%, is some way behind. Telecompaper also […]
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Source: Music ally
Hi-res streaming service Qobuz launches in the US today
Music-streaming service Qobuz will go live in the US today: a launch that the company has been teasing for several months. The company will be offering its established blend of hi-res streams AND downloads to American users for the first time. “Nobody else is offering high-res music like this,” its US managing director Dan Mackta […]
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Source: Music ally
Director of Connected Fans Strategy – mtheory – Los Angeles or New York
Job Title: Director of Connected Fans Strategy Location: Los Angeles or New York Connected fan relationships are at the core of mtheory’s artist development strategy. We are seeking a highly curious individual to help lead us in identifying the core principles around the connected fan relationship – including knowing who the fans are, […]
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Source: Music ally
Supercell’s two ‘Clash’ mobile games have grossed $10bn so far
Supercell is the Finnish mobile-games publisher behind monster hits like Clash of Clans and Clash Royale – so popular that Tencent acquired an 84.3% stake in the company in 2016 for $8.6bn. The company’s CEO Ilkka Paananen has just published some figures for Supercell’s 2018, as well as milestones for its biggest games. The bad news: […]
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Source: Music ally
Apple’s news-subscription service nears – but publishers grumbling
Apple will reportedly hold its next big press event on 25 March at its Steve Jobs Theater venue. BuzzFeed described the event as “subscription-services focused”, which is thought to point towards the launch of a news-subscription service – although perhaps also an announcement about Apple’s video strategy. The news-subscription plans are making headlines though, and not entirely […]
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Source: Music ally
Deezer chooses Sam Fender and Lewis Capaldi for ‘Next’ promo
Deezer has announced the next swathe of artists who’ll benefit from its ‘Deezer Next’ promotion in 2019. British artists Sam Fender and Lewis Capaldi will be global priorities for the streaming service this year, with Capaldi having stepped up from being a Deezer Next artist in the UK last year. They follow Deezer’s global artists […]
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Source: Music ally
Former Sony exec Michael Lynton joins board of WMG
Warner Music Group is making some interesting appointments at the moment. We reported on its hiring of The Orchard co-founder Scott Cohen earlier this week. Now WMG has appointed former Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton as non-executive chairman of its board. He’ll combine the job with his current role as chairman of Snapchat’s parent company […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify Teardown authors call for Facebook-style scrutiny
The team of Swedish researchers behind new book ‘Spotify Teardown’ have already roused the ire of the streaming service, which criticised their methods of digging in to its system. But with the book on the verge of release, the authors have given an interview to Rolling Stone that puts forward their view. “The issue became: How does one […]
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Source: Music ally
Indian music industry keen for safe-harbour clampdown
The ‘value gap’ debate isn’t just a European or American thing. In India, too, there is a discussion going on (and, indeed, a fully-fledged political consultation exercise) on how safe harbours should operate. The Indian government is considering new legislation – the Information Technology [Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment) Rules – and Indian music-industry body IMI has published […]
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Source: Music ally
Pitchfork calls TikTok ‘the great music meme scam’
Pitchfork spares no punches in its profile of social-video app TikTok, drawing an unflattering comparison between the value of its parent company Bytedance, and the level of royalties being paid to musicians for use of their work. That said, a tale does emerge of viral TikTok videos sparking streams of music on YouTube and other platforms […]
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Source: Music ally
Country Profile – United Kingdom 2019
The post Country Profile – United Kingdom 2019 appeared first on Music Ally.
Source: Music ally
Steve Aoki joins Star Trek Fleet Command mobile game
Dance artist and DJ Steve Aoki was early in to esports, and now he’s become the first artist to nab a starring role in the latest mobile game based on Star Trek. Aoki is appearing in Star Trek Fleet Command as a character called Officer D’Jaoki, joining the game yesterday. This isn’t a brand new relationship with […]
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Source: Music ally
The Orchard co-founder Scott Cohen to join Warner Music
Earlier this month, distributor The Orchard’s co-founder Scott Cohen announced that he was ‘retiring’. It seems that this will involve very little golf, gardening and/or complaining about the buses though. He’s been hired for an as-yet undisclosed role at Warner Music Group, working on what MBW describes as ‘innovation’ (as opposed to working for WMG’s in-house equivalents […]
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Source: Music ally
Tracklib publishes its latest ‘State of Sampling’ report
A fifth of songs that made Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart in the US used samples, according to a report published by Tracklib – a company that focuses on sample-clearance. “It’s been fairly consistent the last few years: usually between 20-25%. Looking back 10 years, the number was 14%,” explains its ‘State of Sampling’ report. “The increasing […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify and Deezer attack ‘unfair practices’ of tech firms’
Much of the limelight in terms of European policy is being hogged by the new copyright directive and Article 13 this week. However, a group of European tech firms and industry bodies want to remind policymakers of another area for modernisation: that covering ‘platform-to-business’ – how large internet platform-owners like Google, Apple and Amazon treat European businesses […]
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Source: Music ally
Head of Partnership Development (Northern, Eastern & Central Europe) – PRS for Music – London
Full title: Head of Partnership Development (Northern, Eastern & Central Europe) Location: Kings Cross Salary: Circa £75,000 per annum Term: Permanent Closing date: Friday 15 February 2019 The Role We are looking for a Head of Partnership Development (Northern, Eastern & Central Europe) to manage the overall revenue and operational responsibility for the Northern, Eastern and Central Europe […]
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Source: Music ally
Digital Content Manager – Outhere Music – Brussels
The Outhere Music Group is one of the world’s leading independent producers of Classical and Contemporary music. It is home to the mythical Alpha Classics and Linn Records labels and to several more focused labels such as Aeon, Arcana, Fuga Libera, HatHut Records, Outnote, Phi, Ramée and Ricercar. Because Outhere has an unrelenting passion for […]
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Source: Music ally
Video-streaming service Vimeo now has 952k paying subscribers
It’s a long time since, scale-wise, Vimeo was in anywhere near the same league as YouTube in the video-streaming world. Still, the company – now owned by media group IAC – continues to grow its business. Vimeo’s revenues grew by 54% to $160m in 2018, according to IAC (as reported by Reuters) while the service’s […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify gets Chuck D for eight-part podcast about The Clash
It was clear last week just how much welly Spotify is willing to put behind podcasts in the year ahead, with up to $500m earmarked for acquisitions of tech and content – including its deals for Gimlet Media and Anchor. Now Spotify has announced details of its next original, exclusive podcast: an eight-part documentary called […]
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Source: Music ally
Childish Gambino dances his way onto Google Pixel smartphones
One of the points we’ve been making about augmented-reality (AR) technology over the past year is that the biggest impact for artists from it will come from campaigns using the big social/tech platforms with AR features: Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook etc. Now Childish Gambino is testing another angle: appearing as an animated character in the ‘Playground’ […]
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Source: Music ally
Marshmello YouTube channel got 164% boost from Fortnite concert
We wrote last week that we were waiting for the latest weekly YouTube Music charts to go live, so that we could gauge the bump that dance artist Marshmello got from his concert in YouTube. Not least because anecdotally, nearly every child aged 8-13 we know has been hammering his tracks on YouTube ever since […]
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Source: Music ally
Israel and Wales get new local-focused music-streaming services
Shiri? Isn’t that what you talk to on your iPhone when you’ve had a few-too-many gins? But no: Shiri is actually a new music app launched by the National Library of Israel, with a catalogue of more than 400k tracks by Israeli artists. It’s been launched to promote local musicians, as well as to make […]
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Source: Music ally
Vodafone Idea mulls new music-streaming strategy in India
We’ve written a lot about Indian streaming services Gaana, Saavn (now JioSaavn) and Wynk Music over the last couple of years. Their next source of competition may come from telco Vodafone, which recently merged with another Indian mobile operator, Idea Cellular. The latter company already has its Idea Music app, which combines streaming, downloading, playlists […]
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Source: Music ally
Apple Music used Shazam for extended-trial Grammys promotion
We’re getting a sense of how music-identification app Shazam, acquired by Apple in September 2018, will be used by the company to promote Apple Music. Last night, anyone tagging a track during the Grammys ceremony unlocked a ‘Grammy Awards experience’ listing the songs performed during the event. There was also a special offer: new subscribers (to Apple […]
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Source: Music ally
Music’s Article 13 meltdown: read the two industry-body letters in full
Two open letters published this week have laid bare new divisions within the music industry over the proposed new European copyright directive – and its Article 13 section dealing with user-uploaded content platforms like YouTube.
Yesterday, a letter whose signatories included the IFPI and Impala (representing labels) and ICMP (representing publishers) called for the directive to be scrapped. Today, a second letter signed by BASCA (representing songwriters); the FAC and MU (musicians); MMF (managers); and MPG (producers) criticised the first letter in the strongest of terms.
We’ve reported on the fallout here, but in the interests of fairness, the text of both letters is reproduced in full below.
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Source: Music ally
UK music-maker bodies slam labels and publishers over Article 13
Yesterday, music-industry bodies the IFPI, Impala and ICMP published a letter calling for the European copyright directive to be scrapped.
Now a group of bodies representing musicians, songwriters, managers and producers have criticised the intervention, and the gloves are truly off.
“It is hugely disappointing to see the music labels and publishers disregard the interests of their creators and artists in this way. They are trying to overturn years of collaborative work at the 11th hour by killing the Copyright Directive,” said the letter, signed by the UK Council of Music Makers (CMM) which includes BASCA, FAC, MMF, MPG and the MU.
“Like YouTube, they have lobbied negotiators hard without consulting or informing the creative community. Heavy-handed tactics of heavyweight businesses.”
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Source: Music ally
Marshmello Fortnite gig sent his YouTube views soaring
More than 10 million people watched Marshmello’s first concert in video-game Fortnite last weekend. Now Nielsen has put out some figures showing how the event caused a big spike in his on-demand video (i.e. YouTube) streams. Billboard reports that his track ‘Check This Out’ saw a nearly 24,000% increase in views on the day of the concert, […]
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Source: Music ally
Abbey Road Red seeks more diversity in startup founders
Abbey Road Studios wants to recruit more teams with women founders to its Abbey Road Red startup accelerator, according to the studios’ MD Isabel Garvey.
“We are acutely aware that we have no female founders, and very few women in our founder teams, and we are trying to be a little more diverse,” said Garvey, in her introduction at Abbey Road’s latest startup-demo event.
“If you know talented women running [music/tech] businesses, or looking to run businesses, send them our way.”
Abbey Road Red’s newest recruit, AI-music startup LifeScore, does have a female co-founder, COO, Chris Walch. In his presentation at the event last night, CEO Philip Sheppard also pointed out that three quarters of his company’s advisory board are women.
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Source: Music ally
Spotify to crack down on listeners using ad-blocking tools
Spotify’s latest update to its terms and conditions of use was published yesterday (7 February), and one of the new clauses is picking up some interest from tech-news sites. New to the list of forbidden activities for Spotify users: “circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service, or creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements in […]
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Source: Music ally
Siri co-founder Tom Gruber talks about his new AI-music startup LifeScore
“I think we’re looking at a new way of doing music, which is a collaboration between human expertise, human taste, and human raw talent in creating music and recording it, with the machine’s ability to combine those things and generate music all day long. And make it sound like a human made it.”
“Just imagine for a second… what you’re going to have is music that was created bespoke for you, on demand, as much as you wanted, and it sounded just as good as if a human created it. Because a human had a large amount to do with how it was created.”
Music Ally has heard plenty of ambitious pitches from AI-music startups, but this one carries some weight thanks to the pitcher: Tom Gruber. He was the co-founder of Siri, the startup that Apple acquired in 2010 to use its team and technology to launch its voice assistant (also called Siri) a year later.
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Source: Music ally
Sandbox Issue 221: Fake Views. Lies, damned lies and music statistics
Lead: Smoke and mirrors have always been part of music, but when it comes to data, truth is starting to play second fiddle to hype. The nefarious and ruthless are finding ways to “massage” social media and streaming numbers while offering the desperate and gullible a quick fix. But the platforms are getting wise to […]
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Source: Music ally
Podcasting startup Himalaya Media raises $100m funding round
It’s the week for big podcasting news. Spotify has made waves with its acquisitions of Gimlet Media and Anchor, but other podcasting firms are also capitalising on current interest in the medium. US startup Himalaya Media, for example, has raised $100m in funding to push its podcast-listening app and distribution platform. The app launched in […]
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Source: Music ally
Calm raises $88m: should meditation be on Spotify’s audio radar?
Spotify said yesterday that podcasts are just the ‘start’ of its ambitions to focus on all forms of audio. What next? We’d suggest that meditation / mindfulness will be high on the company’s radar – and not just because one of its first subscription-bundle partnerships was with meditation app Headspace back in 2016. Investor interest […]
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Source: Music ally
88% of British adults are still listening to radio stations
Taking a bite out of broadcast radio is at the heart of Spotify’s move into spoken-word content – and is high on the agenda for other streaming services too. The opportunity (but also the challenge) is illustrated by the latest figures from British radio-measurement body Rajar. It says that 88% of the UK population – […]
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Source: Music ally
Sonos share-price plunges after it reveals CFO to step down
It’s a compliment, of sorts, if your company’s share-price falls by 15% after you announce plans to step down. Although we doubt Mike Giannetto will be celebrating: he won’t quit as Sonos’ chief financial officer until later in 2019, so for now, that share-price remains his problem to worry about. In fairness, the plunge wasn’t […]
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Source: Music ally
Gimme Radio launches crowdfunding and plans country expansion
Metal-focused streaming-radio startup Gimme Radio is raising money, but through equity-crowdfunding rather than turning to VC firms. The company has launched a campaign on crowdfunding platform SeedInvest. It’s trying to raise $1.5m with a minimum amount of $500 per investor, and if it succeeds, Gimme Radio would be valued at $6m. The campaign also offers […]
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Source: Music ally
PledgeMusic suspends contributions to its active campaigns
Crowdfunding firm PledgeMusic’s efforts to dig itself out of its current financial troubles continues: this time with a suspension of all active campaigns running on its platform. Billboard reported that PledgeMusic announced the news in an email sent to artists. It follows the company’s public statement last week apologising for delays in paying artists. “The […]
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Source: Music ally
Music/tech startup Musiio raises $1m seed-funding round
Singapore-based music/tech startup Musiio has raised $1m in seed fundingfrom investors including Wavemaker Partners, Exponential Creativity Ventures and other angel investors. The startup uses artificial-intelligence technology to analyse catalogues of music for a range of clients. As its CEO Hazel Savage explained at the recent NY:LON Connect conference, the company can power automated search through […]
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Source: Music ally
Major label WMG now has… a president of independent music?
It may raise a few eyebrows to learn that major-label Warner Music Group now has an executive role whose title includes ‘president of independent music’. Actually, it’s not a surprise: the company’s new president of independent music and creator services is Eliah Seton, who’s been promoted from his previous position as president of ADA Worldwide, […]
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Source: Music ally
Study explores how smartphone ownership trends vary globally
“Today, it is estimated that more than 5 billion people have mobile devices, and over half of these connections are smartphones,” explains the latest study from the US-based Pew Research Center. It proceeds to explore some of the differences between countries: fertile material for anyone in the music industry thinking about smartphone habits around the […]
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Source: Music ally
Snapchat narrows losses but daily-user growth is still flat
Snapchat’s parent company Snap, Inc published its latest quarterly financial results yesterday, and while there are still headaches for the company, the actual business is growing well. Snap’s Q4 revenues were up by 36% to a record $390m, while its losses narrowed from $350m in Q4 2017 to $192m a year later. However, Snapchat’s daily […]
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Source: Music ally
Swizz Beatz on streaming: ‘The creatives should be 50/50’
Producer and artist Swizz Beatz has called for artists to get a bigger share of streaming royalties. “I’m friends with all the streaming companies, but what I will say on record to them is we’re not getting enough money for those services and those companies to be trading for billions of dollars,” he told MarketWatch. […]
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Source: Music ally
Deezer bags former Turner exec to be its MENA CEO
As music-streaming competition heats up in the Middle East, Deezer has announced a new boss for the region: Tarek Mounir. He will join the company on 1 April as CEO for MENA and Turkey, with a focus on ‘growing Deezer’s B2B and advertising business’ in the region, as well as working with its global team […]
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Source: Music ally
Former BMG exec Zach Katz launches music-tech investment fund
Until December 2018, Zach Katz was BMG’s president of US repertoire. Now he’s turning music/tech investor, in partnership with manager Scooter Braun, cryptocurrency firm Ripple, and Something Gold boss Shara Senderoff. They’ve co-founded an investment firm called Raised in Space Enterprises, which will focus on music/tech startups. Billboard reported that the company will look to […]
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Source: Music ally
There are 66m smart speakers in the US – and 70% are Echos
Research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) has issued its latest estimates on the smart-speaker market in the US. It claims the number of speakers in use grew from 37m at the end of 2017 to 66m at the end of 2018, including 13m bought in the fourth quarter of the year. The relative market-shares […]
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Source: Music ally
Universal Music and Sony Music face new artist lawsuits
Two of the three major labels are facing new class-action lawsuits filed in New York, which focus on the right of artists under the so-called ’35-year law’ there. That’s the legislation that in theory allows artists to file Notices of Termination to regain ownership and control of their copyrights 35 years after that music was […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify buys podcasting firms Gimlet Media and Anchor
Rumours that Spotify was about to shell out $200m-plus on podcast production company Gimlet Media were correct: the acquisition was announced today. But Spotify is also buying a second company, Anchor, which makes an app that people can use to create their own podcasts.
The value of the acquisitions has not yet been announced (Spotify may be pressed on that in its earnings call this afternoon, following the announcement of its Q4 financials.)
CEO Daniel Ek did publish a blog post outlining the grand strategy behind these acquisitions: Spotify’s push in to podcasting.
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Source: Music ally
Account Manager, Music Industry (EMEA) – Vistex – London
Job Title: Account Manager, Music Industry (EMEA) Department: Sales Location: Corporate Headquarters: London, NW1 Reports to: Head of Sales (Rights & Royalties – EMEA) Direct Reports: None Compensation: Competitive base salary + Uncapped Commission Pay Frequency: Last working day of every calendar month Position Status: ☒ Full-Time ◻ Part-Time ◻ Internship-Paid ☒ Regular ◻ […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify financial results: revenues up by 30% as premium subs reach 96m
Spotify has published its latest quarterly financial results, covering the final quarter of 2018.
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Source: Music ally
Amuse to pay artists up to six months of royalties in advance
Amuse is the Swedish music company that’s part distributor – a platform for artists to upload their music to streaming and download services – and part record label, working more closely with talent that’s emerged from its distribution arm.
Launched internationally in 2017, the model is similar to that of Kobalt’s AWAL with its combination of distribution and a higher tier of label/artist services. Amuse now has hundreds of thousands of artists on its distro platform, and raised a $15.5m funding round in May 2018.
Now it’s launching a way for those artists to get paid up to six months’ royalties in advance. The feature is called Fast Forward, and it’s launching in beta today with a group of musicians, before rolling out to more in the coming months.
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Source: Music ally
Warner Music Group revenues grew by 15.1% last quarter
Warner Music Group has published its latest quarterly financial results, which reveal that the company’s revenues grew by 15.1% year-on-year.
That was just over $1.2bn in the fourth quarter of 2018 (WMG’s fiscal Q1). Of that, digital revenues grew by 17.6% to $627m, with the company reporting an operating profit of $147m and a net profit of $86m for the quarter.
Within all this, WMG’s recorded-music revenues grew by 15.2% to $1.04bn, while publishing revenues grew by 15.4% to $165m. CFO Eric Levin said that the results were “evidence that our long-term strategy is paying off”.
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Source: Music ally
Two groups vying to oversee MMA’s blanket mechanical licence
One of the key parts of the Music Modernization Act (MMA) was the plan to create a new collective to license and administer mechanical rights in the US. Yesterday we got more details on the pitch from the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and Songwriters of North America (SONA) for their ‘Mechanical Licensing Collective’ (MLC), […]
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Source: Music ally
India draws up new rules for ‘intermediary’ apps like TikTok
Social apps from overseas, particularly China, have been dominating the upper reaches of app stores in India. Now the government is responding, with new regulations aimed at ‘intermediary’ apps that get their content from users. The Financial Times reported that any such apps with more than five million users in India ‘need to set up […]
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Source: Music ally
Emma McGann talks music, live video and finding fans on YouNow
Live video is an increasingly common way for musicians to interact with their fans, from album and tour launches on Facebook to fan Q&As on Instagram and even streaming gaming sessions on Twitch or YouTube.
One aspect of livestreaming that still flies under the western music industry’s radar, though, are standalone live-video apps like YouNow, LiveMe and (until it was shut down in June 2018) Live.ly. Yet these apps, with their native stars and tip-based economies, are well worth studying.
One example of a musician building her audience through this route is British artist Emma McGann. She has nearly 204,000 fans on YouNow, where her videos have generated nearly 11m views since she started broadcasting using the app four years ago.
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Source: Music ally
Study tips YouTube to decline in popularity with British kids
Will children ever tire of YouTube? Surely not! Yet that’s the suggestion being made in a new report published by research firm Kids Insights, which is out today. “According to our data across all ages 4-18 the number of children spending time each day watching YouTube has declined from 61% to 51% in a persistent […]
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Source: Music ally
Startup Steereo pays Uber / Lyft drivers to promote music
We know that in-car radio has historically been a key source of music discovery. And we also know that rideshare services (Uber and Lyft included) are very-popular ways to get around cities. Startup Steereo is bringing those two ideas together, with a music-promotion service based around paying drivers to play new music to their passengers. […]
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Source: Music ally
PledgeMusic asks for patience amid acquisition talks
After a troubling start to 2019 (and to be honest, a pretty worrying 2018 for artists whose payments were delayed) PledgeMusic is asking for patience as it sorts out its financial issues. “The situation that PledgeMusic has found itself in is unacceptable and to all of the artists, managers, labels and fans who have put […]
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Source: Music ally
Campaign for producer and engineering inclusion launches in US
This time last year, the US Recording Academy was facing strong (and deserved) criticism for poorly-worded comments by its boss Neil Portnow about how women needed to “step up” in the music industry. 12 months on, the Academy is offering something more constructive: a ‘Producer and Engineering Inclusion Initiative’ which aims to increase the opportunities […]
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Source: Music ally
Country Profile – China 2019
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Source: Music ally
Report 420: #2019Goals. The music industry’s key challenges this year… and how we can tackle them
Welcome to the first Music Ally Report of 2019. We’re taking a look at some of the key challenges that lie ahead for our industry this year – and how they might be tackled. From diversity to startups via fake music and taking a bite out of radio, we hope it’s a constructive take on […]
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Source: Music ally
Marshmello Fortnite concert thought to have attracted 10m fans
Those rumours that dance artist Marshmello was going to play a concert within video-game Fortnite were right: it happened on Saturday. In fact, he played two concerts, 12 hours apart, to ensure people could attend at a suitable moment for their timezone. What’s startling is how many people the first of those concerts attracted. Pollstar […]
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Source: Music ally
Manager, Digital Marketing – BMG – London
About us We are a growing international music company that offers a friendly and collaborative working environment with great benefits and a leadership team who values every employee. Our mission is to be a better kind of music business. That’s why we offer the best creative support, provide the best access to platforms and work […]
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Source: Music ally
What happens if you quit Facebook for a month?
Quitting specific social networks – temporarily or permanently – is an increasingly-common pastime. But does it improve your life? A study at Stanford University has been finding out, focusing on Facebook with a study of 2,844 of its users in the US. A subset of them deactivated their accounts for four weeks. And the main […]
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Source: Music ally
Artist-collab platform HitRecord raises $6.4m funding round
We wrote about startup HitRecord for the first time last October, when it launched a project with artist Logic. He was the highest-profile musician so far to take advantage of HitRecord’s platform for creative collaborations: posting the bones of a new track and inviting fans to flesh it out with their own contributions – with […]
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Source: Music ally
Research firm predicts Spotify added 2m US subscribers in Q4
Spotify announces its latest quarterly financial results on 6 February, but research firm CIRP has got in early with some predictions – based on (caveat alert!) a survey of 500 Spotify listeners in the US. It reckons that Spotify added two million paying premium subscribers in the US during the final quarter of 2018, while […]
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Source: Music ally