Copyright Assistant – Hospital Records – London
Hospital Records are hiring a full-time Copyright Assistant to assist in the day to day running of both the publishing, legal and finance departments. To apply please send your CV and cover letter to Jobs@HospitalRecords.com with the subject ‘Copyright Assistant Application’ by 11th September 2019
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Source: Music ally
Promotions Manager – Hospital Records – London
We’re looking for a Promotions Manager to manage all promotional activity for our label’s releases, event brands and festivals. You will be managing marketing campaigns and social media strategy as well as developing a strong network of contacts. You must have 2 years experience in a promotions or marketing role at a record label or PR […]
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Source: Music ally
Vroom! Rick Ross gets his own racing game on Facebook
Is Facebook gaming still a thing? After a decade of ignoring Music Ally’s FarmVille farm, we don’t dare log back in to find out what became of our crops and animals. But yes, Facebook gaming IS still a thing: the social network’s catalogue of ‘instant games’ now sits within a dedicated gaming tab on the […]
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Source: Music ally
Mabel and Marshmello flex their curation skills on Apple Music
Are streaming exclusives dead? Not quite, but they tend to veer towards the promotional side of things nowadays: an album will be available everywhere, but (for example) live EPs are fair game for single-service exclusives. Witness Mabel’s ‘Stripped Session’ acoustic EP, which is exclusive to Apple Music. She is also the latest artist to turn […]
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Source: Music ally
African music-streaming service Boomplay now has 53m users
Boomplay has become one of the most prominent music-streaming services to have launched in Africa, and now it has announced a new figure for its growth. It now claims to have more than 53 million users, up from 42 million in April this year, when the company raised a $20m funding round. Boomplay also says that […]
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Source: Music ally
Taylor Swift’s ‘Lover’ sets another new record… in China
It’s a week since the release of the new Taylor Swift album ‘Lover’, so we’ll be looking out for announcements about its sales and streams. The first official word today on the album’s performance has a very specific focus though: China. Universal Music has put out a press release celebrating the fact that ’Taylor Swift’s […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify and YouTube Music top latest music-apps downloads chart
App-analytics firm SensorTower has been casting its eye over the music world again: publishing its estimates for the most-downloaded music apps globally in July. Its stats come from analysis of Apple and Google’s app stores, although not other third-party Android app stores (notably in China, where those stores are extremely popular). Spotify tops the chart covering overall […]
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Source: Music ally
New music revenues in India, from sync to digital merch
On the first day of the All About Music conference in Mumbai, IMI boss Blaise Fernandes cited an “underexploited” public performance market as one of the drivers of growth that will help steer India in its quest to become one of the world’s top ten biggest music markets by 2022.
On the second day, at a panel on ‘Revenue Beyond Live’, Rajat Kakar, the managing director and CEO of PPL India, expanded on Fernandes’ statement on the untapped potential for increasing public performance revenue.
At about Rs100 crore in 2018, it was already “the second largest income stream for the recorded music industry” in India, said Kakar. That figure represented a 24 per cent year-on-year jump, “the highest in the world”, and it’s only set to grow.
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Source: Music ally
Vevo strikes a new distribution deal for smart TVs
Have you heard of Vewd? It’s a new name to Music Ally too, but that’s perhaps unsurprising: we haven’t had much reason in the past to write about “the world’s largest smart TV OTT software provider”. So, Vewd provides the ‘smarts’ for TVs and set-top devices made by Sony, Philips, TiVo and other manufacturers, to the […]
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Source: Music ally
Just like TikTok, Smule is bigger than you think in India
Yesterday was the second day of the All About Music conference in Mumbai, exploring various facets of the music industry’s development in India. Among the speakers was Jesse Gillette, SVP of business development at Smule, one of the longest-established social-music apps companies. The session yielded some interesting stats on its scale in India. Smule has 40 million users […]
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Source: Music ally
Jamiphy says it’ll be ‘TikTok for musicians’ – including AIs
Startup Jamiphy’s website is currently deliberately enigmatic: simply showing a logo and a screenshot of a mobile app with a musician playing guitar, and a string of emojis that look like feedback from people watching a video livestream. The company’s profile on investment site AngelList fleshes that out a bit though: Jamiphy is based in San Francisco, and […]
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Source: Music ally
Production-music startup Soundstripe raises $2m
It feels like a matter of months since we were writing about Nashville production-music startup Soundstripe raising a $4m funding round… mainly because it IS just a matter of months. That round in May 2019 is now being followed by another $2m of investment, from Craft Ventures. That’s a good score for Soundstripe: the VC firm is run […]
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Source: Music ally
Vampr shoots past $100k in its equity-crowdfunding campaign
Startup Vampr has been around since 2016, as one of the startups hoping to create a ‘LinkedIn for musicians’ industry-focused social network. It has since raised $900k of funding from angel investors and industry executives, but in 2019 the company is turning to the crowd for more money. Vampr has launched an equity-crowdfunding campaign this week using […]
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Source: Music ally
Report: TikTok is testing a native audience network for ads
If TikTok is going to pay sizeable royalties to music rightsholders at some point, it’s going to need sizeable revenues, with advertising likely to loom large. So, AdWeek’s report on the company’s plans should make interesting reading for the music industry. “A trove of newly discovered developer documents reveal the platform has rolled out a native audience […]
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Source: Music ally
Startup Kena·ai is creating an AI ‘personal music teacher’
Music Ally has written a fair bit about artificial intelligence (AI) technology being used to generate music. What about teaching humans to play music? That’s the goal of a new San Francisco startup called Kena·ai. The company is developing what it describes as “an Artificial-Intelligence personal music teacher” capable of “giving real-time feedback on practice sessions, […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify surveys artists on how to expand its provider directory
Spotify’s ‘Provider Directory’ is its list of “preferred” and “recommended” artist and label distribution services: something we’ve reported on in the past as new companies have been added. Spotify appears to be mulling an expansion of that section of its website to include other kinds of services, however. A survey linked to from the directory asks people […]
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Source: Music ally
Tencent Music under pressure over exclusive licensing deals
One of the quirks of China’s music-streaming market has been the system of exclusive licensing deals: where a label will license its catalogue exclusively to one streaming firm, which will then sub-license it to its rivals. There has been talk for several months of the system being done away with at the behest of regulators. […]
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Source: Music ally
No, ‘Old Town Road’ may not have been THE summer smash of 2019
It seems silly to raise the question of what was the biggest hit of summer 2019, given the chart dominance of ‘Old Town Road’ in various parts of the world in recent months. Yet here’s the thing: it wasn’t the most-streamed song of the summer on Spotify or on YouTube. Both services have put out their global charts […]
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Source: Music ally
Indian music industry debates potential for paid music subs
“I think we’re on course,” said Blaise Fernandes, the president and CEO of India’s official recorded music industry body the Indian Music Industry, when asked on a status update on the country’s plan to break into the top ten of the world’s biggest music markets by 2022, at this year’s edition of the annual All About Music conference on Tuesday.
“For us to get to the top ten, we’ve got to double our revenues, we’re at $150 million, we’ve got to get to $300 million,” Fernandes told moderator, Outdustry’s Ed Peto at a panel entitled ‘Musicnomics: Making Sense Of Money In The Music Business’.
Among the drivers that Fernandes said would help India in reaching its destination, is an “underexploited” public performance market; the estimated 830 million smartphone users the country is expected to have by 2020; and a “$2.5 billion digital advertising market” owing to which “you’re going to see a lot sync opportunities”.
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Source: Music ally
Amuse CEO talks growth, Old Town Road and artist-friendly deals
“What have you done for me lately?” Diego Farias, CEO of music distributor and label Amuse, is on the other end of a video call to Music Ally, singing the chorus of Janet Jackson’s classic track with a smile on his face, but thankfully no wardrobe malfunctions with his clothing.
It’s not (just) for the love of famous mid-80s hits. The phrase has just come up as Farias explains the impact he thinks Amuse and other distributors are having on the wider music industry, in terms of artists’ expectations when they’re talking to the labels that they’re already signed to.
“Someone at one major label here in Sweden was telling me that they find themselves in a really weird negotiation because of deals like the ones Amuse offers,” he says. “Artists really do come in and ask ‘What have you done for me lately?’ They’re asking what are they getting in return?”
“Increasingly, it’s difficult to answer that question. The true disruption is about the control the majors had on breaking stars in the past, versus the loosening grip that they have on that now.”
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Source: Music ally
Facebook reportedly working on new Instagram spin-off: Threads
It always sounds like big news when Facebook is ‘secretly’ working on a new standalone app, but experience has taught us that such apps often end up quietly shutting down – perhaps useful for experimental purposes, but not exactly making a dent in the mobile-social landscape. Slingshot, Riff, Rooms, Moments… Anyway, that’s useful context not […]
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Source: Music ally
Billie Eilish to play a virtual-reality gig in Oculus Venues
Billie Eilish is the latest artist playing a concert that will be streamed in virtual reality. The gig will take place on 3 September in Madrid, and then later that evening will be broadcast in Facebook’s ‘Oculus Venues’ app for its Oculus Go and Oculus Quest headsets. The concert is the result of a partnership with startup […]
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Source: Music ally
Major Lazer remix Fortnite music and launch in-game pack
After Marshmello and Weezer, the latest artist to launch a high-profile collaboration with video-game Fortnite is Major Lazer. The Diplo-led group have remixed two of the tracks that players hear in Fortnite’s ‘lobby’ – ‘Default Vibe’ and ‘Default Fire’. Meanwhile, the game’s publisher Epic Games has created a ‘Lazerism’ set of virtual items, including a […]
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Source: Music ally
Smart speaker market may have declined in the US last quarter
If you’ve been following the smart-speakers market with interest, you’ll have seen this coming a few months ago: Chinese tech firm Baidu is now selling more of these devices than Google is. Well, that’s what research firm Canalys claims, anyway. But its latest report also points to a potentially-worrying decline in shipments in the US. […]
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Source: Music ally
Taylor Swift drops ‘Lover’ video ahead of album release
What’s that? Taylor Swift has a new album out? You’d think someone in the media and/or streaming-service world would have told you, right? Just joking: ‘Lover’ is inescapable this week, with a full complement of DSP activations and media excitement for Swift’s first post-Big-Machine album. One of the key planks in the promotional strategy was […]
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Source: Music ally
Startup Audoo adds more industry veterans to its advisory board
Audoo is one of the startups trying to ensure musicians get paid the royalties due to them – in its case, by developing tech to monitor music usage with a device placed in gyms, cafes and other public venues that feeds information back to collecting societies on what tracks have been played. Now the company is […]
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Source: Music ally
Techstars Music 2020 kicks off: ‘We will look at everything!’
“We want to invest in a game where the playing of the game includes all the roles of the music business, and the output of the game is real music and real pop stars. I’ve been trying to make this investment for three years. I feel it’s inevitable…”
If that startup exists, Bob Moczydlowsky, MD of the Techstars Music accelerator, is determined to find it. In fact, he’s looked at around a dozen startups during that last three years who were close but not quite the “full musical Hunger Games” venture that he can see clearly in his head.
“All of the parts are out there, and all of the consumer viewing/entertainment habits too. We have television shows that do this, it’s been predicted in pop culture a lot… Maybe there’s some structural reason why it wouldn’t work, but I feel it’s time for that to exist!”
Perhaps it’ll be fourth year lucky for Moczydlowsky and Techstars Music. Today, the accelerator is announcing its plans for its fourth cohort of startups in 2020, with plans for a ‘recruiting tour’ that will visit New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Brisbane, Sydney, Nashville, Atlanta, London, Berlin, Helsinki, Paris and Stockholm in the next few months, scouting for startups.
By December, 10 startups will have been chosen to join the 2020 Techstars Music programme, which kicks off in early February, taking $120k of investment each in the process.
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Source: Music ally
Taylor Swift has pre-sold nearly 1m copies of ‘Lover’ album
Amid all the hubbub around the various streaming services’ activations around Taylor Swift’s new album ‘Lover’ it shouldn’t be forgotten that she’s one of the artists still capable of shifting a LOT of album sales. Variety has the scoop on how ‘Lover’ is doing, courtesy of a chat with Republic Records’ Monte Lipman. “The anticipation of […]
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Source: Music ally
Mark Ronson is releasing an interactive Instagram music video
As Facebook has continued to sign music-licensing deals that include Instagram, so artists and labels have been thinking about what more they can do with music and videos on the popular social app. Mark Ronson is the latest example of an artist to benefit: his ‘Pieces of Us’ track with King Princess is getting an […]
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Source: Music ally
Distributors on the move: The Orchard Japan plus Ditto X tour
Two prominent music distributors are announcing their latest globetrotting plans. For The Orchard, that means opening an office in Tokyo to fully establish The Orchard Japan. It’ll be led by former Amazon Music exec Yuuki Kaneko, who’s The Orchard’s VP, Japan. The new division will focus on offering its distribution and other services to Japanese […]
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Source: Music ally
SiriusXM debuts $4-a-month streaming subscription for students
SiriusXM is the latest company trying to tempt students into paid subscriptions. In its case, the satellite-radio company is offering a new $4-a-month streaming package for students, which will offer a bundle of its music and talk stations to stream on smartphones, other in-home devices, and the SiriusXM web player. The pitch is this: “Today’s […]
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Source: Music ally
BTS fuelled Big Hit Entertainment surge in first half of 2019
Korean music firm Big Hit Entertainment held its latest media briefing yesterday, and dropped some impressive numbers to show how its business is surging in 2019. The company’s revenues in the first half of 2019 were more than 200bn Won (around $166m) – already more than Big Hit’s revenues for the whole of 2018. And […]
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Source: Music ally
Super Hi-Fi wants to revamp music-streaming with AI… inspired by radio
Of all the startup demos I’ve been given over the last decade working for Music Ally, Super Hi-Fi’s is the first that involves listening to Seal’s 1990s hit ‘Crazy’ being mixed into classic jazz cut ‘Monk’s Dream’ by Thelonious Monk. Oh, and it’s an AI doing the mixing, not a human. Super Hi-Fi isn’t an […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify creates its own daily-news podcast in Colombia
We reported yesterday on the launch of a new, daily true-crime podcast by Spotify’s recently-acquired Parcast studio. Now Spotify is launching another daily podcast – in Colombia. It’s called ‘El Primer Café‘, and the show is a collaboration with Colombian newspaper El Tiempo. Co-hosted by broadcast journalist María Beatriz Echandía and DJ / podcaster Félix […]
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Source: Music ally
Korn will play a virtual concert in AdventureQuest games
When Marshmello played a concert in the game Fortnite earlier this year, he pulled a virtual crowd of 10.7 million people. Korn won’t have expected that scale of audience for their own virtual in-game shows yesterday, but the move shows that in the wake of the Marshmello success, other games and other artists are exploring the […]
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Source: Music ally
Taylor Swift to reveal new lyrics through her Spotify playlist
When we wrote last week about YouTube’s plans to host a live online event with Taylor Swift for the release of her new album ‘Lover’, we pointed out that other streaming services would be doing their own activations around the release. Spotify revealed its plans yesterday: a playlist called ‘Love, Taylor: The Lover Enhanced Album’. It’s starting […]
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Source: Music ally
Migos star Offset buys a stake in esports crew FaZe Clan
The list of musicians who’ve invested in esports teams is growing longer by the month. Drake, The Weeknd, Will Smith, Drake (again), Steve Aoki and Imagine Dragons are among those who’ve acquired stakes in the esports business so far. Now you can add Offset, of hip-hop trio Migos. He’s investing in one of the most famous esports franchises, FaZe Clan, taking an undisclosed stake […]
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Source: Music ally
Tidal adds social features (oh, and threatens to sue Norway)
Tidal is the latest music-streaming service to hop onto the ‘stories’ social-media bandwagon. Its mobile app can now share music (tracks, albums, artists and playlists) to Instagram and Facebook stories, while videos can also be shared to Instagram stories. The video aspect is what’s new, compared to similar integrations from rivals: Tidal users will be able to […]
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Source: Music ally
Apple Music’s Shazam Discovery Top 50 chart focuses on emerging artists
Apple Music is getting a new weekly chart, driven by data from Shazam, the music-identification app that Apple acquired in September 2018.
The chart is called Shazam Discovery Top 50, and is a global chart ranking 50 “up-and-coming songs from breaking artists”, based on what Shazam’s users have been tagging that week. The chart will be updated every Tuesday, with a playlist on Apple Music enabling people to stream it in full, or browse through the tracks.
Well, we say ‘global’ – for now the chart is based on data from 11 countries: the US, UK, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia. Apple says that it will be adding in more countries “soon”.
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Source: Music ally
Spotify Untold book may become a TV show after screen rights optioned
Swedish authors Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud have made a splash with their book ‘Spotify Inifrån’ (‘Spotify Untold’), which promised to tell the inside story of Spotify’s rise to power. Now that book could be heading to the small screen.
TV firm Yellow Bird UK, which is part of production giant Banijay Group, has optioned the screen rights to the book, and is developing it into a ‘limited series’. We’re enjoying reading out the press release to ourselves using a suitably booming, gravelly film-trailer voice:
“Based on tell-all-book, Spotify Untold, the drama will examine how a secretive start-up wooed record companies, shook the music industry to its core, and conquered Wall Street. A tale of tech entrepreneurship, this is a journey beset with egos, obstacles, and betrayal.”
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Source: Music ally
Spotify appears to be testing ‘stories’ for its playlists
Independent researcher Jane Manchun Wong has an excellent job: digging around in the code of smartphone apps to root out as-yet-unannounced new features. Her latest blog post is the result of a furtle within Spotify’s Android app. “Spotify is working on bringing Stories to Playlists, providing artists a way to connect with listeners through storytelling,” wrote Wong. […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify’s Parcast launches a daily true-crime podcast
Spotify paid around $56m to acquire podcast production firm Parcast earlier this year, so what is the streaming service getting for its money? This week, it’s getting a brand new podcast called ‘Today In True Crime’, which as the name implies, will be a daily show. “Crime never takes a day off, and neither do we,” as […]
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Source: Music ally
Apple reportedly spending $6bn on content for Apple TV+
The Financial Times and Bloomberg have come out with a pair of well-briefed scoops on Apple’s plans for its video-streaming service Apple TV+. The FT reported that Apple has committed $6bn to make original TV shows and films for the service, which will launch later this year – still a long way behind Netflix’s estimated $15bn content […]
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Source: Music ally
Billie Eilish’s ‘Bad Guy’ finally hits number one in the US
After nine weeks hovering impatiently at number two in the US singles chart, Billie Eilish’s ‘Bad Guy’ has finally toppled Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ from the summit, securing her a first number one in her home country. Billboard reported that 39.1m US streams and 20k download sales – up 10% and 11% week-on-week respectively – […]
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Source: Music ally
Country Profile – Chile 2019
Chile is South America’s leader in digital and telecommunications infrastructure and as such the country is blazing a trail for streaming in the region’s music industry with revenues up by 38%
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Source: Music ally
Chance the Rapper reaches 1bn-streams milestone on SoundCloud
Eight years after uploading his first track to SoundCloud, Chance the Rapper has passed the milestone of 1bn streams on the service. It’s no surprise that SoundCloud is shouting about it: Chance is ‘the first independent SoundCloud Premier creator’ to reach that total on its platform. It’s a reminder of an artist that SoundCloud considers […]
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Source: Music ally
The mysterious tale of disappearing viral hit ‘Omae Wa Mou’
It’s not entirely accurate to describe deadman死人’s track ‘Omae Wa Mou’ as having disappeared: you can still easily find it on YouTube. But Rolling Stone has published an excellent analysis of the track’s TikTok-fuelled surge to top spot on Spotify’s Viral 50 chart, before being abruptly removed from the streaming service after a copyright-infringement claim. It’s a […]
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Source: Music ally
Google tests Fundo, a new take on fan-funding for YouTube stars
Fundo is a new project in beta from Google’s experimental division Area 120, although its bare-bones website doesn’t divulge much information about it. “If you’re a creator on YouTube or other platforms and you’re interested in new ways to engage your audience, please request an invitation,” it explains, with a link to a form that reveals […]
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Source: Music ally
Telco Verizon creates a New York pop-up for Shawn Mendes
We’re used to companies like Spotify building pop-up installations for artists: Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and Aya Nakamura have all got the pop-up treatment from the streaming service. Now US telco Verizon is getting in on the act. This weekend it will host ‘This is Shawn’ in New York, as part of its partnership with […]
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Source: Music ally
African telco MTN has high hopes for MusicTime music service
MTN in Africa has been one of the telcos most engaged with music in recent times. It started offering Tidal to its customers in Uganda through a bundle partnership announced in August 2018, then in November it acquired streaming service Simfy, which although defunct in Europe since 2015 had continued to exist in Africa. In December, MTN used […]
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Source: Music ally
eMarketer says voice-assistant use is reaching ‘critical mass’
Hey Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, DuerOS and other voice assistants: how popular ARE you in 2019? Research firm eMarketer has published some new numbers for use of this technology in the US. “We estimate that 111.8 million people in the US will use a voice assistant at least monthly this year, up 9.5% from 102.0 million in […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify upgrades family plan with new features (but same price… for now)
Last week, it was reported that Spotify will test a price increase for its family-plan subscription in Scandinavia. This morning, the company is announcing that it is launching an “upgraded” version of the plan globally, although the press release sent out by Spotify made it clear in the very first paragraph that this is “for the same price of $/£14.99”.
What’s the upgrade? The plan still offers six individual accounts: the subscriber plus five members of their family, as long as they’re sharing a household. There’s also a new ‘Family Hub’ where the main subscriber can manage their settings, including new parental controls to turn on or off the ‘Explicit Content’ filter for younger family members.
There’s also a new algo-personalised playlist called ‘Family Mix’, offering “songs the whole family enjoys” with the option to set who’s listening to tune the selection (or to tune out ‘Baby Shark’ / ‘Let It Go’ / all 164 ‘Old Town Road’ remixes more specifically, depending on your family’s musical dynamics). Spotify has been quietly testing ‘Family Mix’ since earlier this year judging by a couple of online-forum posts (here and here), but this morning is its official announcement.
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Source: Music ally
YouTube to host ‘Lover’s Lounge’ live event for Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift’s new album ‘Lover’ drops on 23 August, and she has teamed up with YouTube for a live-streamed event the day before called ‘Lover’s Lounge (Live)’. It’ll see Swift performing a new track from the album, taking part in a Q&A, and plugging her collaboration with Stella McCartney on a new clothing range. At […]
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Source: Music ally
TikTok users try to figure out its recommendation algorithm
Since the earliest days of people becoming famous on YouTube, there’s been intent debate about how the platform’s recommendation algorithm works and, as a follow-on, how to game that algorithm to get more views. It’s the same for any big digital service, of course. And now TikTok is no different. Vice has a good feature […]
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Source: Music ally
YouTube manual-claiming copyright tool gets more changes
The news that YouTube is making changes to the way its copyright-claims process works for music used in videos sounds like big news, but the caveat in this case is that the changes apply to ‘manual’ claims. That’s as opposed to automated claims using its Content ID system, which account for the “vast majority” of […]
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Source: Music ally
DSPs and NMPA filings are in over new CRB royalty rates
Breaking news: there isn’t just one appeal against the new songwriter-royalty rates proposed by the Copyright Royalty Board in the US. The one from Spotify, Pandora, Google and Amazon we all know about – it was officially filed yesterday in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and if you’re keen you can read […]
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Source: Music ally
Report: Spotify to test 13% rise in family-plan subscription
Spotify will launch another test of a subscription price-increase in Scandinavia, according to a Bloomberg report published yesterday. While the company hasn’t itself announced the plans, Bloomberg cited several ‘people familiar with the matter’ as suggesting that the test will see the cost of a family plan rising by around 13% – so from €14.99 a month […]
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Source: Music ally
Report claims that adult-dating scammers are targeting TikTok
TikTok’s latest headache? It’s the latest platform to be targeted by scammers, attracted by its sharp growth in users. Cybersecurity firm Tenable has published a blog post outlining a scam involving ‘adult-dating’ services. “These profiles feature stolen videos from sources like Instagram and Snapchat, featuring women dancing, posing in bikinis, working out or just going about their […]
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Source: Music ally
Hi-res streaming service Qobuz says it has 25k US listeners
Despite all the industry-conference panels predicting that high-resolution music is the next big leap for our industry, the idea has yet to really catch fire with mainstream listeners. For sure, artists and labels like the idea of music sounding like it did in the recording studio; companies like MQA have been working hard to put […]
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Source: Music ally
eMarketer says teens are ditching Facebook in France and Germany
It feels like people have been predicting a ‘teen flight’ from Facebook for years now – probably because they have. eMarketer is the latest research firm trying to back up the theory with some actual data, this time based on France and Germany. It claims that this year, the total number of Facebook users in France […]
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Source: Music ally
UK’s ‘Get It Right’ piracy campaign enlists influencers
In the recent lobbying around the European Union’s new copyright directive and its Article 13, the music industry and YouTubers were usually on opposite sides of the argument. YouTube actively encouraged its creators to protest against some of the planned changes, and a number took up cudgels in its defence. So here’s an interesting thing […]
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Source: Music ally
Pandora boosts podcasts catalogue with open submission tool
Spotify just brought its podcast analytics out of beta, but now Pandora is making its latest move in spoken-word content: by inviting podcasters to submit their shows to its platform. The tool is available within Pandora’s Artist Marketing Platform (AMP) website, with podcasters able to submit their shows’ RSS-feed URLs, answer “a few easy questions” about their […]
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Source: Music ally
Snap to launch its third-generation Spectacles this autumn
Snapchat parent company Snap launched its first set of ‘Spectacles’ in late 2016, with a second generation of the product debuting in April 2018. Now Snap has shown off version three, which will go on sale this autumn. The big news is that the specs now have two HD cameras, capable of shooting snaps in 3D […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify brings its podcast analytics out of beta
In early October 2018, Spotify launched a version of its analytics for podcasters, offering data on their listeners, ‘starts’ and streams – in beta. Now the tool is coming out of beta, and is thus available to anyone distributing their podcast through Spotify. More than 100k podcasts are already accessing the data through its beta, Spotify […]
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Source: Music ally
SoundCloud launches new video series for artists and creators
SoundCloud is the latest music-streaming service using videos to teach artists how to use its platform. The company has launched a nine-part video series called SC101, which will also spawn some live events. It’s describing the series as “an easy, frictionless entry point into SoundCloud’s creator education ecosystem, the SoundCloud Creator Guide, through more accessible video and live […]
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Source: Music ally
IFPI responds to Plácido Domingo sexual-harassment allegations
Opera star and IFPI chairman Plácido Domingo has been accused of sexual harassment by nine women, with dozens of others telling Associated Press that they witnessed such behaviour from him. Its report was published yesterday, with immediate results: the Philadelphia Orchestra has cancelled an invitation to Domingo to perform, while the LA Opera is launching an investigation. As […]
The post IFPI responds to Plácido Domingo sexual-harassment allegations appeared first on Music Ally.
Source: Music ally
Spotify reportedly in talks with Apple over Siri support
The Siri voice assistant is one of the points of contention in Spotify’s anticompetition complaint against Apple: “‘Siri, can you play that awesome Spotify playlist?’ Siri says no,” as Spotify’s ‘Time to Play Fair’ website put it. Yet Apple’s soon-to-launch iOS 13 software *will* allow non-Apple music-streaming services to properly work with Siri, and thus […]
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Source: Music ally
Tencent Music now has 31m paying online-music users
Tencent Music published its latest financial results yesterday, and they revealed sluggish growth for active users of the company’s three online-music services in China, but a much more-sprightly rise in the number of paid subscribers for those services. The company ended Q2 with 652 million mobile monthly active users across QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music, […]
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Source: Music ally
Reports claim Verizon is selling Tumblr for ‘well below $10m’
In May 2013, tech firm Yahoo agreed to buy blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1bn, with the former company’s then-CEO Marissa Meyer promising “not to screw it up”. How did that go? Well, in 2017 Yahoo was bought by US telco Verizon, and now in 2019 Verizon is selling Tumblr again… for reportedly less than $10m. […]
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Source: Music ally
BBC pulls its live-radio stations from TuneIn in the UK
British broadcaster the BBC is removing its live stations from radio-streaming service TuneIn. Well, on most of its platforms, anyway. “This change is driven primarily by the BBC’s efforts to standardise how listeners in the UK access BBC stations, which unfortunately, is something we are unable to accommodate at this time,” is how TuneIn explained the […]
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Source: Music ally
Troy Carter adds more senior hires to team at Q&A
We’ve written several times this year about Troy Carter’s new firm Q&A, a hybrid company offering a blend of management, artist services and distribution to its roster of artists. Now the scale of Carter’s ambition is becoming clear. MBW reports that he has hired Clarissa Reformina (formerly of talent agencies CAA and Paradigm) as Q&A’s VP of […]
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Source: Music ally
Swedish startup Corite launches fan-funding platform for artists
PledgeMusic may have collapsed, but there are other fan-funding startups emerging in its wake. The latest is from Sweden and is called Corite, and it’s one of the growing number of platforms that aim to get fans to invest in songs, and get a share of royalties back in return. “A record label ruled by fans,” […]
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Source: Music ally
DiMA and RLMC warn DoJ off hasty removal of US consent decrees
Just the latest potential shakeup to the US system of music-licensing is the Department of Justice’s antitrust division’s review of the ‘consent decrees’ which govern collecting societies ASCAP and BMI. Now the body that represents streaming services, the Digital Media Association (DiMA) has teamed up with radio-industry body the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC) to […]
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Source: Music ally
Feed.fm talks music in fitness apps: ‘It’s about ROI’
Music is proving its value to fitness apps and other health-focused startups, according to Lauren Pufpaf, co-founder and COO of B2B music firm Feed·fm.
Health and fitness is a key vertical for her company, which handles licensing and playlist curation through to the APIs / SDKs and analytics required to offer music within such apps.
ClassPass, Tonal and MoveWith are among the apps featured in the case studies section of its website, along with non-fitness clients like retailer American Eagle Outfitters and basketball team the Golden State Warriors.
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Source: Music ally
Podcasting app Himalaya spins off HiStudios production firm
Himalaya is one of the independent podcast apps battling to sign up listeners, and like rival Luminary it launched earlier this year with a very-big funding number: $100m of backing, with its lead investor being Chinese podcasts giant Ximalaya. Now the company is ramping up its original production, spinning out an entity called HiStudios that will focus […]
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Source: Music ally
Music Business Association appoints Dr Portia Sabin as new boss
US music-industry trade body the Music Business Association (or Music Biz, as it is often known) will have a new leader from early next month. Dr Portia Sabin will be the organisation’s president from 3 September, taking over from current president James Donio, who will remain in an advisory role after she takes over. Dr Sabin […]
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Source: Music ally
African streaming service Playfre wants to raise $500k-$1m
Nigerian music-streaming service Playfre launched earlier this year, although rather than licensing music directly, it was more of a curatorial/social layer on top of YouTube, from which its music is sourced. CEO Chika Nwaogu has been talking to VentureBurn about the startup’s plans, which include the goal of raising between $500k and $1m of funding. “It will be mainly […]
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Source: Music ally
YouTube and Amazon push for US students’ music subscriptions
The summer holidays are just a couple of weeks in here in the UK where Music Ally is written from, so seeing ‘back to school’ headlines from the US already is a strange experience. Part of that, though, is the upcoming start of another academic year for older students, and music-streaming services are joining the […]
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Source: Music ally
Deezer expands its podcasts pipeline with Blubrry / Libsyn deals
Spotify may suck up much of the media attention around music streaming’s intersection with podcasts, but the company’s rivals are all making their own moves too. Witness two deals announced last week that involve Deezer, which will significantly beef up that service’s catalogue of spoken-word shows. The first is with Libsyn, a company that distributes […]
The post Deezer expands its podcasts pipeline with Blubrry / Libsyn deals appeared first on Music Ally.
Source: Music ally
Apple Music brings its artist analytics out of beta
We’ve heard regular praise for Apple Music’s analytics tools since they launched in 2018 as a beta version. Now the dashboard is coming out of beta and is open to all artists. Also new: there’s an iPhone app for the service alongside its website, matching the strategy adopted by Spotify for its own analytics. That rivalry […]
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Source: Music ally
Earbuds is a startup for sharing celebrities’ music playlists
Once upon a time, there were some interesting startups whose business was based mainly on curated playlists. One of them, Tunigo, was bought by Spotify, and was an important driver for that company’s move into playlisting. Another of them, Songza, was bought by Google, and had an impact within that company’s music services too. But […]
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Source: Music ally
LiveXLive revenues grew in Q2 but its losses widened slightly
US digital music company LiveXLive has published its latest financial results, which show that its revenues grew by 25.1% year-on-year to $9.5m in the second quarter of 2019. However, the company’s net losses also widened slightly, from $10.8m a year ago to just under $11m last quarter. LiveXLive’s cost of sales, at $9m, accounts for nearly […]
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Source: Music ally
9128 is a streaming service focused on ambient/electronic music
One of the interesting industry questions in 2019 concerns the outlook for niche music-streaming services: for example those focused on specific categories like classical, jazz or metal, which are often seen as being under-served by the big global streaming services. Now add ambient/electronic music to the list. There’s a new service called 9128, which is the […]
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Source: Music ally
Sonos revenues grew by 25% last quarter as losses narrowed
Sonos is feeling chipper about its latest financial results: the speaker-maker’s revenues grew by 25% year-on-year to $260m in the second quarter of 2019, including a 61% bump for sales (in dollar terms) of its Sonos One speaker. Sonos sold just under 1.1m products in the last quarter (its fiscal Q3) across its wireless speakers, home […]
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Source: Music ally
Digital Channel Manager – Warp Records – New York
About Warp Warp Records is a leading fully independent label with offices in New York, Los Angeles, London and Sheffield. We release music by groundbreaking and influential Artists across genres with global audiences – Aphex Twin, Flying Lotus, Danny Brown, Brian Eno, Kelela, Yves Tumor, Boards of Canada, Oneohtrix Point Never and many more. Warp […]
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Source: Music ally
Sandbox Issue 234: The New Era Of Music Videos
Lead: In the 1970s, “pop promos” (as they were called) were the preserve of the mega-star act, but after the launch of MTV in 1981 they became standard practice across the industry. The arrival of YouTube in 2005 may have blown apart MTV’s dominance but the format of music videos did not change much; it […]
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Source: Music ally
M2V: music video finds its new future
Debate surrounds what the first music video actually was, but by the 1970s these “pop promos” had become the playthings of the biggest acts in the world while by the 1980s, after the arrival of MTV, they were the biggest weapons in the promotional arms race for everyone. All the arrival of YouTube in 2005 […]
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Source: Music ally
While She Sleeps launch t-shirt based on Spotify royalties
British rock band While She Sleeps aren’t just a dab hand at this metalcore business: they also have a new sideline as open-source merchandise activists. The band have created a new t-shirt design displaying this message: “One t-shirt is the equivalent to 5000 streams on Spotify. 76% of all music in 2019 is streamed and […]
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Source: Music ally
MelodyVR signs licensing deals with Beggars Group and Domino
Virtual-reality music startup MelodyVR has added another two labels to its roster of licensing partners: independents Beggars Group and Domino. The deals were announced this morning by MelodyVR’s parent company EVR Holdings, which is a public company in the UK. MelodyVR has also renewed its licensing deal with Aresa, a company representing catalogues from music companies including […]
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Source: Music ally
Indian singer Guru Randhawa teams up with Pitbull… in Spanish
One of the trends Music Ally is keeping an eye on in the streaming era is collaborations that don’t involve Anglo-American artists. Latin America (or at least Spanish-language music, if made in the US) could be the hub for this: think K-Pop or African artists collaborating with Latin stars. Or, indeed, Indian artists. Punjabi singer […]
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Source: Music ally
Executive moves: Adam Block and Per Sundin take new roles
The revolving door between major labels and streaming services continues to spin – and it IS a revolving door: UMG’s recent hiring of Spotify’s Mike Biggane as its EVP of music strategies and tactics shows the flow isn’t one-way. Amazon Music announced yesterday that Adam Block is its new global head of music catalogue. It’s […]
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Source: Music ally
The ‘unintended consequences’ of user-centric streaming payouts
Here’s the thing about the ‘user-centric’ model of music-streaming payouts: it’s nowhere near as simple as a lot of people think it is, on several levels. The idea of each streaming subscriber’s monthly payment (well, the portion of it that is paid out in royalties) being divided only between the artists they have listened to […]
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Source: Music ally
SM Entertainment and Capitol to launch ‘the Avengers of K-Pop’
Well, it’s actually SM Entertainment, Capitol Records AND Caroline who are working together on a new K-Pop supergroup. It’s called SuperM, and will feature members drawn from existing Korean bands SHINee, EXO and NCT 127, as well as Chinese band WayV. And, following the recent Stateside success of BTS and Blackpink, SuperM is very much aimed […]
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Source: Music ally
Gismart tackles drums and DJing in latest ‘music edutainment’ apps
Gismart is one of the companies exploring the potential of music-creation apps, claiming more than 400m downloads so far for apps like Beat Maker Go, Hello Piano and Guitar Play. Its latest two apps launched this week. Go Drums promises to teach people the rudiments of drumming through a collection of mini-games and educational lessons, while DJ […]
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Source: Music ally
Deezer adds more Spanish ‘Deezer Originals’ to its Latin channel
Spotify and YouTube have both staked their claims to be driving the boom in global listening to Latin American music, but other music-streaming services are making plenty of efforts to promote Latin artists too. Deezer’s latest move is the launch of a ‘Deezer Originals’ channel in Spanish, offering exclusive content and artist commentaries. For example, […]
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Source: Music ally
Ticketing service TickPick raises $40m funding round
TickPick started life in 2011 as a secondary ticketing website, but has since expanded into primary ticketing too, working directly with festivals, sporting bodies and other entertainment events in the US. Now the company has raised its first ever round of institutional funding, and it’s a biggish one: $40m from investment firm PWP Growth Equity. […]
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Source: Music ally
WMG boss: streaming isn’t the only reason for industry growth
Warner Music Group published its latest quarterly financials yesterday, with its revenues up 10.4% year-on-year to $1.06bn, including 12.5% growth in its digital revenue to $648m – 61.2% of the total. Within that, WMG’s recorded-music revenue grew by 13.8% to $913m, but its publishing revenue actually fell by 7.5% to $147m – “lower market share and loss […]
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Source: Music ally
Bandzoogle launches fan-subscriptions feature for artists
Artists using the Bandzoogle platform to create their own websites can now offer premium subscriptions to their fans. The new feature launched this week, and enables artists to put content including blog posts, music, videos, photos and merchandise behind their new paywall, with tools to email subscribers included. Bandzoogle also says it will provide analytics on each […]
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Source: Music ally
BBC’s Instagramification is a ‘personalised, data-driven documentary’
Unfortunately only people within the UK can watch Instagramification, a new pilot documentary by British public-service broadcaster the BBC about “the good, the bad and the ugly of the world’s fastest growing social network” (yep, Instagram). But even if you can’t watch it, the concept is interesting: the Beeb is pitching this as a ‘personalised, data-driven […]
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Source: Music ally
Sony CSL is using AI to generate kick-drum tracks
Sony’s Computer Science Laboratories (Sony CSL) in Paris was responsible for one of the first high-profile projects in the modern wave of AI-generated music – Flow Machines, which in 2016 was responsible for the Beatles-esque ‘Daddy’s Car’ and the Great American Songbook-influenced ‘Mr Shadow’. The following year, Spotify hired the leader of the Flow Machines team, François […]
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Source: Music ally
Slipknot’s Corey Taylor criticises music-streaming payouts
Slipknot are back with a new album, a big tour and some nifty Facebook camera effects (as we reported yesterday). But the band’s Corey Taylor has also been having his say on the topic of music-streaming royalties, in a series of tweets. He was responding to a tweet from fellow musician Nils Lofgren criticising Spotify over […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify’s latest telco-bundle partnership is with AT&T
Spotify has announced its latest partnership with a telco, and it’s a big one: AT&T in the US. Subscribers to the network’s ‘AT&T Unlimited & More Premium’ contract can choose to include Spotify Premium in their bundle for no extra cost. Spotify is one of seven ‘premium entertainment’ options in the bundle alongside Pandora, HBO, […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify filing reveals it paid €49m for podcasting firm Parcast
Music Ally reported on Spotify’s latest financial results last week, but the official filing has revealed a bit more information on the company’s recent acquisition of podcasts producer Parcast. Spotify paid €36m in cash and €13m ‘related to the estimated fair value of contingent consideration’ – €49m (around $55m) in total. However, Spotify also said that “the […]
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Source: Music ally
Primephonic-commissioned study explores streaming attitudes
Classical music-streaming service Primephonic has commissioned a survey of nearly 1,300 American adults to find out what they think about streaming. No surprises for guessing that some of the results back up the company’s own business model: for example, 9% of respondents “would pay for a streaming service specifically dedicated to their favourite genre, suggesting […]
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Source: Music ally
Popular-with-kids game Roblox now has 100m players
Readers with children of a certain age will know all about Roblox: it’s a giant online sandbox where kids can play games and hang out together, but also create their own games if they want to. Along with Fortnite, it’s been attracting millions of children away from their former gaming haunt Minecraft. The company behind […]
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Source: Music ally
Slipknot fans can wear the band’s masks (virtually on Facebook)
Given the sweat Slipknot must work up during a performance, you wouldn’t catch us putting our nose anywhere near one of the band’s famous masks. Virtually, however… The latter is what fans can do now, courtesy of a set of Facebook Camera effects. There are 10 masks to try: nine based on the latest ones […]
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Source: Music ally
New podcasts on the way for Gregory Porter and Dolly Parton
In Spotify’s earnings call with analysts last week, CEO Daniel Ek said that listening to music-focused podcasts has been growing fast on the platform: “If you look historically at podcasting that’s not been a big category, but it’s becoming a bigger one,” he said. It’s no surprise, then, to see the steady flow of new music-podcast announcements […]
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Source: Music ally
Flagship country streaming playlists outdo radio for diversity
Does country radio in the US have a diversity problem? The debate has already been rumbling for a while, but a new research study puts some numbers to the lack of women on mainstream country radio – as reflected by Billboard’s official Country Airplay Chart between January 2018 and July 2019. “This study’s findings are not surprising: […]
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Source: Music ally
Stats revealed for the TikTok campaign for UMG’s ‘Money Dance’
There’s a healthy debate about the extent to which labels can make a track ‘go viral’ on TikTok, versus simply piling in to capitalise on the effect when this happens organically. Agency The Influencer Marketing Factory has published an interesting case study that falls in to the former category, however. It was hired by Universal […]
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Source: Music ally
Gaming star Ninja ditches Twitch for exclusive Mixer deal
By now, Music Ally readers should know Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins well: he’s the gaming star who broke Twitch viewing records when playing Fortnite with Drake and Marshmello, and who subsequently signed a deal with UMG to curate a compilation album. Yesterday, he had some big news for fans: he’s leaving Twitch, the platform he’s most associated […]
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Source: Music ally
MediaNet catalogue now has more than 80m music tracks
Music-distribution platform MediaNet, which these days is owned by collecting society SOCAN (via its Dataclef services arm), has announced a new milestone. MediaNet now has more than 80m tracks in its catalogue from more than 400k labels and distributors. General manager Jeff Wallace described the figure as “a huge landmark for our company”, adding that […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify beefs up its advertising-targeting features
Spotify’s advertising revenues grew by 34% to €165m in the second quarter of this year, and while that’s less than 10% of the company’s overall turnover, ads and the free tier ‘funnel’ continue to be of high strategic importance for Spotify. Hence its continued investment in new features, including the launch yesterday of ‘Interest Targeting […]
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Source: Music ally
UnitedMasters CEO: ‘Artists have been getting robbed…’
As a company trying to persuade emerging artists that they don’t need a label, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see UnitedMasters’ execs taking potshots at the traditional label system. The latest, from CEO Steve Stoute, focuses on the issue of artists owning their masters. “I know we’re doing something right. I know we’re […]
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Source: Music ally
Sony Music makes India non-film music push with Big Bang Music JV
One of the most interesting things about music-streaming’s impact in India is whether it will fuel an even-bigger surge in the popularity of non-film music – with tracks from movies having dominated India’s music scene to this point. Sony Music has been exploring the potential for non-film music already, but now it’s making a new […]
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Source: Music ally
Apple Music’s A-List rebranding continues with ALT CTRL
Apple Music appears to be moving through its flagship ‘A-List’ genre playlists one by one, rebranding them Spotify-style with their own identities. The company recently revamped its ‘The A-List: Hip Hop’ playlist as ‘Rap Life’, and now it’s the turn of its indie-focused sister playlist ‘The A-List: Alternative’. It’s now called ‘ALT CTRL’, according to Billboard, […]
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Source: Music ally
BPI Insight Session. What’s next for music and podcasts?
It’s notable how little research is publicly available on the size of the podcast audience globally. Ovum is the one research firm to have published estimates. Having previously claimed that there were 484 million [monthly] podcast listeners at the end of 2017, it now expects this to grow to more than one billion listeners in […]
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Source: Music ally
Social Media Editor – XL Recordings – London
WHO WE ARE XL Recordings is an independent record label. We work with incredible artists. XL helps these artists to take their vision to the world, and to create a captivating context for their work. WHAT IS THE JOB? We’re looking for a social media editor to oversee social strategy for our label accounts and […]
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Source: Music ally
Country Profile – Philippines 2019
The Philippines, like many individual markets in Southeast Asia, is something of an enigma as far as the Western music industry is concerned. However, a promising digital market is being fueled by a young population
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Source: Music ally
Aussie fans can create videos with Ed Sheeran’s official app
The launch of a smartphone app for fans to create and share their own videos with Ed Sheeran’s music (legally!) forming the soundtrack should be big news. But it seems that the Ed No. 6 app is only available in Australia for now. It’s been launched by Warner Music Australia for Android and iOS smartphones, with […]
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Source: Music ally
Podcasts set to overtake music-downloads listening in UK
It won’t be long before more Brits are listening to podcasts than are listening to music downloads, judging by the latest figures published by UK radio-industry body Rajar. Its latest survey suggests that 16% of Brits aged 15+ now listen to podcasts, compared to 18% who listen to digital music tracks. The tipping point has already been […]
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Source: Music ally
UK Music wants government to step in over PledgeMusic collapse
Yesterday saw PledgeMusic’s winding-up hearing in London, which had only been reported on (and thus made known to artists owed money by the stricken crowdfunding company) the day before. No surprise, then, that industry body UK Music is unhappy with the turn of events. Its deputy CEO Tom Kiehl wants the British government to step […]
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Source: Music ally
Podcasting app Castbox adds live-streaming feature with tips
Castbox is one of the independent podcasting apps that people can use to find, follow and listen to shows on their smartphones and smart speakers. Now it’s launching an interesting new feature for podcasters: the ability to stream live, and solicit donations from their listeners. The feature is called Livecast, and will help podcasters to […]
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Source: Music ally
Amid TikTok dispute, Bytedance hired ICE’s head of rights & repertoire
TikTok has referred licensing hub ICE and its three founders – PRS for Music, GEMA and STIM – to the UK’s Copyright Tribunal, in a dispute over licensing terms. The social app will have some expert help in its corner, it turns out. “Exciting times ahead in a truly inspiring company! Thank you TikTok / […]
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Source: Music ally
Badshah far from the only artist buying YouTube views with ads
There is still no official word from YouTube on whether Indian artist Badshah has set a new record for first-day views of a music video, beating BTS’ previous milestone. If YouTube is hoping its silence will make the controversy around Sony Music’s claims of 75m 24-hour views for Badshah’s video ‘Paagal’ go away, however, it […]
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Source: Music ally
Sony/ATV promises ‘major’ upgrades to royalty-processing system
Faster payments and more-transparent reporting has been the clarion call for a number of companies hoping to disrupt the world of publishing. The implicit (and sometimes explicit) criticism contained within their promises is that traditional music publishers are slow to pay and somewhat opaque in some aspects of royalty reporting. However, the picture isn’t as […]
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Source: Music ally