Serving the Superfans: takeaways from today’s BPI / ERA / Music Ally online insight session
Today was going to be the day for an insight session put on in London by British industry bodies the BPI and ERA in partnership with Music Ally about ‘Serving the Superfans’. Covid-19 put paid to the in-person plans, so the event was taken online via Zoom. Here’s our report of some of the key takeaways.
Music Ally’s Eamonn Forde introduced the event by talking about some of the findings from his ‘Serving the Superfans’ report which will be published next week, to follow on from today’s event.
He talked about the long history of the superfan, which stretches back to a performance in Paris by Franz Lizt in 1844, which was notorious for provoking fan hysteria.
“That essence of fandom hasn’t really changed that much. It’s about an overwhelming love for an artist and their music, and complete identification with that. The artists and fans are the two constants here, it’s just how they are connected and reach each other that has changed,” said Forde.
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Source: Music ally
Spotify’s mantra for radio vs on-demand streaming: ‘Everything linear dies’
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and CFO Paul Vogel have been fielding questions from analysts following the company’s publication of its Q1 2020 financial results earlier today, and their interview with Music Ally shortly afterwards.
There were not many surprises, but Ek’s desire to (as he described it several times) “uplevel” the conversation around Spotify and what its competition is was the major standout.
“Both short and long term, we are always thinking about Spotify’s role within the larger ecosystem. While most [external] focus is on competition between streaming services, we continue to be focused on the billions of users who are listening to linear radio,” said Ek.
Multiple times during the call he came back to the notion that the big audio trend of the next 20 years is a move from “linear to on-demand” – which in the music world, is mainly about radio to streaming. At one point he even said “everything linear dies”.
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Source: Music ally
Two new reports on smart speakers and voice assistants
More research firms have been putting out numbers on the market for smart speakers and voice assistants. Juniper Research claims that by 2024 the number of devices with voice assistants in use will “overtake the world’s population” with more than 8.4bn devices – up from a predicted 4.2bn at the end of 2020. It sees big growth […]
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Source: Music ally
Red Light Management’s Hot Command signs esports partnership
Red Light Management – through its Hot Command gaming subsidiary – is partnering with esports company HyperX for a series of online streaming events. It will match Red Light’s artist roster with major esports names on HyperX’s books. The companies have not yet announced specifics of any of these pairings, but it’s another sign of […]
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Source: Music ally
Instagram Live is getting a donations feature – for charities
Instagram is opening up its Live feature to allow users to create a fundraiser initiative where 100% of the money raised will go to a nominated cause. There are a number of caveats – notably that fundraisers can only be undertaken for nonprofits and Instagram has its own list of approved nonprofits that any money raised can […]
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Source: Music ally
Ampled fan-funding platform waives artist fees for 2020
Earlier this month, we profiled Ampled, a new platform for artists to raise money directly from fans. At the time we noted that Ampled’s original business plan initially involved taking 15% of each transaction on its platform, with the aim of lowering that cut in the future. Now there’s been a change. “As a response to […]
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Source: Music ally
Children’s music booms on platforms from YouTube to JioSaavn
One of the factors in YouTube’s viewing increase (see story higher up this bulletin) is the fact that schools are closed in many countries, and children are getting (even) more time on screens. At the younger end of the age range, that’s having a notable impact on the figures for children’s music channels. Witness the latest […]
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Source: Music ally
Report: TikTok app added 5.6m US users in March alone
It won’t come as a big surprise to learn that TikTok is one of the digital services benefitting from the Covid-19 lockdown – in usage, if not necessarily in revenues. According to eMarketer, in March TikTok added more than 12 million unique visitors in the US alone. Wait: ‘visitors’? These are based on figures from comScore, […]
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Source: Music ally
Impala publishes 10-step ‘recovery roadmap’ for music in Europe
European indie body Impala has published its latest thoughts on the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the music industry. It’s a ten-step ‘recovery roadmap’ that sets out what it would like to see governments across the European Union doing in the coming months. Immediate steps that Impala would like to see include EU states recognising music and culture […]
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Source: Music ally
Alphabet’s Q1 included ‘significant slowdown in ad revenues’
It should come as no surprise that Covid-19 is figuring prominently in the Q1 financial results of every public company. Alphabet announced its figures yesterday, and warned that although its revenues were up 13% to $41.2bn in the first quarter of 2020, in March it saw a “significant slowdown in ad revenues”. YouTube is part of […]
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Source: Music ally
Pandora ad revenues up but monthly listeners are still falling
US satellite radio firm SiriusXM published its Q1 financial results yesterday, including updated figures for its Pandora subsidiary. The good news for Pandora: its ad revenues were up 4% year-on-year to $241m. The not-so-good news: its monthly active users are still falling: down from just over 66 million a year ago to 60.9 million now. Ad-supported […]
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Source: Music ally
Spotify’s Daniel Ek talks churn, fan funding and why Covid-19 ‘might be a much better time to release music’
The Covid-19 pandemic is leading some labels to postpone big album releases, especially those for which tours were a big part of the marketing plans. Some big artists, like Dua Lipa and The Weeknd, have put out their albums as planned. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek thinks they may offer encouragement to other artists and labels […]
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Source: Music ally
Despite Covid-19 Spotify grew its subscribers to 130m in Q1 2020
With recent reports that audio music streams had fallen during the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve been waiting for Spotify’s Q1 2020 financial results with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. Would they reveal a decline in listening, but more importantly, about an impact on paid subscriptions?
The figures are out, and it’s good news – for now at least. Spotify ended Q1 with 130 million subscribers, up by 31% year-on-year, having added six million during the first quarter of this year.
Spotify ended the quarter with 286 million monthly active users, also up by 31% year-on-year, having added 15 million during Q1.
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Source: Music ally