There are now one billion mobile games downloads every week
The mobile games industry is one of the sectors benefitting from the Covid-19 pandemic, at least in terms of people’s engagement with its products.
According to analytics firm App Annie, there were an average of 1bn mobile game downloads a week during the second quarter of this year, up by 20% year-on-year.
“Quarantined consumers also set new quarterly records for consumer spend in mobile games, with over $19 billion spent on purchases through the app stores in Q2 2020 — the largest quarter ever,” it explained, adding that by the end of this year, mobile games will be generating more than three times the revenues of console games.
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Source: Music ally
Penguin Random House reveals its ‘accelerated inclusion plan’
As the guests on the recent #TheShowMustBePaused edition of the Music Ally TV Show made clear, music companies promising to address a lack of diversity in their businesses is good, but the proof will be in what they actually do to make that happen.
With that in mind, see what book-publishing giant Penguin Random House UK is doing: it announced an “accelerated inclusion plan” yesterday, with some clear targets.
Those include making sure that new hires and acquisitions (the latter meaning book deals – the publishing industry’s equivalent of labels’ signings) must be at a minimum ‘reflective of the UK’s different ethnicities’ by 2023; that the company will publish ethnicity pay gap reports; will hold mandatory exclusivity training for all staff; and will review the advances it pays to authors and its marketing spend to ensure there aren’t disparities based on ethnicity.
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Source: Music ally
Sony Corporation invests $250m in Fortnite maker Epic Games
Sony Music’s parent company is investing $250m in Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite.
Sony Corporation announced the deal yesterday, and said it “allows Sony and Epic to aim to broaden their collaboration across Sony’s leading portfolio of entertainment assets and technology, and Epic’s social entertainment platform and digital ecosystem”.
That could spell more opportunities for Sony Music artists, following Travis Scott’s recent Fortnite event. Bear in mind, though, that the partnership will surely be centred on the PlayStation side of Sony’s business.
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Source: Music ally
Ashnikko’s new track has a Beats by Dre and TikTok partnership
Artist Ashnikko’s breakthrough last year was fuelled by TikTok, when her track ‘Stupid’ went viral. Now, for her new track ‘Daisy’ she is prioritising the platform – this time with Apple’s music hardware brand Beats by Dre on board as a marketing partner.
That means a music video with prominent placement for the new PowerbeatsPro headphones, themed around their four colours.
TikTok comes in with a four-week #BeatsDaisyChallenge that starts on Saturday (11 July). In fact, it’s four challenges, one each week based on the four colours, with Ashnikko and Beats to choose the best entries to feature in the final version of the ‘Daisy’ music video.
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Source: Music ally
‘Contextual intelligence’ startup NumberEight raises $2.3m
We’ve written about UK-based startup NumberEight a few times in the past: for example its Midemlab contest pitch in 2018, and its first funding round later that year.
The company has been working on “contextual intelligence” technology, using various sensors on smartphones to understand what their owners are doing, and then (after anonymising them) to help digital services serve those people accordingly.
“For music-streaming services, this technology could be used, for example, to understand whether someone is at the gym or travelling on a bus, and adapt accordingly – from music recommendations to targeted advertising,” is how we described it in 2018.
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Source: Music ally
BoxVR developer FitXR raises $7.5m of Series A funding
If Music Ally’s news has packed a little more… punch recently, it might be because our editor’s lockdown-fitness activity is jabbing, hooking and upper-cutting thin air in virtual reality game BoxVR.
Now the game’s developer, British startup FitXR, has raised $7.5m of Series A funding – specifically $6.3m from VC firms and a $1.2m innovation loan from Innovate UK.
The company says it plans to expand its operations in Europe and North America and launch “several exciting new products and services for people to keep fit in virtual reality” with the funding.
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Source: Music ally
Recording Academy stresses diversity of its new members
US industry body the Recording Academy has faced a lot of criticism about the diversity of its membership in recent years. It’s hoping to win some praise for its 2020 intake though.
More than 2,300 new people have been invited to join, and while the big names include John Legend, Ozuna and Yolanda Adams, it’s the demographics of the whole group that the organisation is keen to shout about.
“The 2020 class of invitees is 48 percent female, 21 percent African American African descent, eight percent Hispanic, and three percent Asian American and Pacific Islander,” explained its announcement. “The representation of this class also spans ages, genre and region.”
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Source: Music ally
UnitedMasters Select gives artists 100% of their royalties
Music distributor UnitedMasters has launched a new tier for the artists who use its service. it’s called UnitedMasters Select, and it’ll cost them $5 a month – but will enable artists to keep 100% of the royalties for their music.
The alternative is a free tier where the royalty split between artists and UnitedMasters is 90/10. The company is promising that Select artists will also see their releases go live on the major streaming platforms in 10 days or less, while also getting access to its growing stable of partnerships with brands.
Talking of which, a new partnership was also announced yesterday, with broadcaster ESPN. It’ll be picking music from artists on the ‘Select’ tier to use within its sports shows and promo content.
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Source: Music ally
Spotify’s Discover Weekly has driven 2.3bn hours of listening
Spotify’s algorithm tried to make us stream R3HAB and we said… yes, yes, yes!
The streaming service is celebrating the fifth birthday of its algo-personalised ‘Discover Weekly’ playlist by revealing that Moroccan-Dutch DJ R3HAB is the ‘most discovered’ artist from the playlist in the most countries – 16 – since its launch in 2015.
There’s also a big number: Spotify listeners streamed more than 2.3bn hours from their ‘Discover Weekly’ playlists between July 2015 and June 2020.
As an artist, R3HAB predates the playlist by some time, since he’s been releasing tracks since 2008. However, his two studio albums came out in 2017 and 2018, so ‘Discover Weekly’ has clearly played a role in his rise.
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Source: Music ally
Court grants motion to dismiss Wixen / Pandora complaint
In June 2019, Wixen Music Publishing sued streaming service Pandora, alleging ‘unauthorized commercial exploitation’ of lyrics from songs in its catalogue. The case focused on Pandora’s feature showing lyrics from partners including LyricFind, which was mentioned in the lawsuit.
How’s the case going? Well, there’s been a development this week. The latest filing reveals that Pandora moved to dismiss the case in January, but before that could be ruled on, Pandora and Wixen entered settlement talks.
Now the court’s patience appears to have run out with those.
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Source: Music ally