Taylor Swift Folklore made $1.2m in three days… from one Chinese DSP
Taylor Swift’s new album ‘Folklore’ may have been a surprise release, but its popularity is entirely unsurprising. According to Republic Records, the album sold more than 1.3m copies in its first 24 hours, and was streamed 80.6m times on Spotify and 35.5m times on Apple Music.
Critical acclaim has been flooding in for the album, while the D2C strategy is already into its next phase: a phone stand, hair ties and bandana are the latest items up for grabs on her store.
Global sales are good, but we think there’s an even more interesting story in how ‘Folklore’ is being sold in China, on streaming service NetEase Cloud Music.
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Source: Music ally
Wiley’s antisemitic tweets spark 48-hour Twitter walkout
British artist Wiley had something of a meltdown on social media on Friday and Saturday, posting a series of antisemitic tweets and Instagram videos over a period of several hours.
Eventually his account on Twitter was temporarily suspended and many of the tweets removed, although a number of his posts are still live on Instagram at the time of writing.
Wiley has also been dropped by his long-term manager John Woolf of A-List Management, and also by his label’s distributor ADA.
“While Wiley controls and releases his music through his own label, he has a digital distribution agreement with ADA and we are terminating that agreement,” said the latter in a statement.
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Source: Music ally
Snoop Dogg / DMX Verzuz battle broke viewing records
Fresh from striking an exclusive deal with Apple Music, the Verzuz battles series garnered its highest viewing figures yet from its latest episode.
That’s the one where Snoop Dogg and DMX went head to head in a ‘battle of the dogs’ last Wednesday (22 July). Verzuz posted the stats itself, noting that the battle had more than 525,000 concurrent (simultaneous) viewers on Instagram at its peak, and more than two million viewers overall.
The broadcast generated 1.75bn impressions; sparked 168% more tweets than the previous record battle; and was a pretty big hit on Apple Music too.
On that platform, it had more than 600,000 concurrent viewers at its peak, and more than 1.4 million overall. According to Verzuz, that’s broken the “all-time Apple Music livestream record” – not bad for your first post-deal broadcast with the new partner.
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Source: Music ally
Influencers firm TalentX gets into the record label business
Will Josh Richards be the next new music star to emerge on TikTok? TalentX certainly hopes so. It’s the digital talent management company behind influencer collective Sway LA, of which Richards is a member, and he’s the first signing to the company’s new label TalentX Records.
It’s a partnership with Warner Records, which it claims is a first, and follows partnerships with Sony/ATV and management firm Ozone Entertainment, along with the appointment of a full-time head of music, Gavin Rudolph.
Keen followers of the TikToker penis-disparaging diss-tracks scene will already have a sense of Richards’ artistic merits: his ‘Still Softish’ song from earlier in 2020 has done 27.7m YouTube views and 11.7m Spotify streams.
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Source: Music ally
Former Echo Nest / Spotify exec invests in startup MyPart
MyPart is the Israeli startup that’s been working on technology for deep analysis of music, for A&R and other purposes. Part of the Abbey Road Red incubator, we profiled the startup earlier this year, and reported on its pitch at the NY:LON Connect conference in January.
Anyway, you know another company that famously built tech for deep analysis of music? The Echo Nest, which was ultimately acquired by Spotify to power its personalisation wizardry.
Now there’s a link across the startup generations, with The Echo Nest’s co-founder and chief scientific officer Tristan Jehan – later director of research at Spotify – joining MyPart’s advisory board and investing in the company.
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Source: Music ally
Beats marketplace BeatStars expands into distribution
BeatStars is the online music marketplace that famously sold Lil Nas X the $30 trap beat that he’d use for ‘Old Town Road’.
By June 2019, the company had paid out more than $50m to its community of producers supplying beats for sale, and that had grown to $70m by April 2020, when BeatStars signed a deal with Sony/ATV for the latter to provide its community with publishing and administration services.
Now there’s a new figure for payouts – $85m – and the announcement of a move into traditional distribution.
BeatStars Distribution will offer services for its 2m+ musicians to put their music on more than 30 download stores and streaming services, according to MBW, charging a flat monthly fee of $1.99 with musicians keeping 100% of their royalties.
The company says it signed up more than 4,000 artists for the new tool in its first week after launching.
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Source: Music ally
India’s new livestreaming tariff plans are already changing
We reported earlier this month on plans by Indian collecting society IPRS to start charging licensing fees for music livestreams – and initial criticism that the plans could leave artists out of pocket.
Now the plans are changing. Medianama reported that the introduction of the new tariffs appears to have been delayed until September, amid more protests from Indian musicians.
Then journalist (and Music Ally contributor) Amit Gurbaxani talked to IPRS for Firstpost about its plans. What’s happening now is that the collecting society is “working towards fixing revised licence fee rates” in response to the criticism, with CEO Rakesh Nigam promising that they will be “not a burden on anyone but that the IPRS members’ interests are protected”.
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Source: Music ally
Tencent Music reveals figures for indie artists initiative
‘Tencent Musician’ is Tencent Music’s program for independent artists in China, offering them distribution and promotion across its three streaming services. To celebrate the initiative’s third birthday, Tencent Music (TME) has published some figures.
“The program has generated 590 million yuan in revenue for original music content creators since its inception,” it announced. That’s around $84.3m. The initiative has seen artists release 850k tracks on TME’s services, generating more than 400bn streams.
The company also said that the first ‘One Hundred Million Yuan Incentive Project’ run by Tencent Musician helped more than 40% of its artists double their incomes, adding that since the Covid-19 pandemic began, it has organised 50 livestreamed concerts with artists that have reached an audience of nearly eight million people.
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Source: Music ally
TV Girl shine spotlight on Spotify fake music problem
‘Fake music’ on streaming services is an ongoing challenge for labels and artist teams to tackle.
That’s the case whether the music is really by a star but uploaded without their permission under a different artist name, or the flipside of that: music by an unknown artist uploaded in a way that makes it appear to be by an establish act – including appearing on their profile and in personalised recommendations for their fans.
The latest example is outlined by Input, with a rogue track on Spotify that appeared to be by the band TV Girls, but wasn’t. “They hadn’t greenlit a new single, and the cover art, a hi-res stock photo of two hands clasping, was a far cry from their usual two-tone, film-grain aesthetic… Instead of the hypnotic bedroom pop the band built its following on, this was generic, sanitised EDM,” it explained.
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Source: Music ally