TikTok’s sister app Douyin limits children’s usage in China
Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok, and like other apps that are popular with young people in China, it’s facing pressure to limit the time they spend on its service.
Cue what Douyin described in a blog post as “the most stringent youth protection measures in the history of the platform” – a ‘youth mode’ for people under the age of 14 that will limit their daily usage to 40 minutes.
Douyin is also going to be upping the educational content for anyone in youth mode: “novel and interesting popular science experiments, exhibitions in museums and galleries, beautiful scenery across the country, explanations of historical knowledge, and so on”.
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Source: Music ally
Audio analysis startup Musicube plans US expansion after funding
German startup Musicube is the latest company touting AI-powered technology to analyse and tag catalogues of music.
The company has just raised $560k of funding to continue developing its audio analysis product, which is already being used by clients including Sony Music and Budde Music Publishing.
Musicube has been developing its technology for use by labels, publishers and streaming service, while also showcasing it in a free-to-use playlist generator tool on its website. Based on the disco playlist we had it whip up to accompany our news writing this morning, it has potential.
“Our research shows that a healthy percentage – that is, 40 percent – of younger listeners would install a playlist generator app, and that is one reason why Musicube now eyes the U.S. market,” said CEO David Hoga.
Musicube joins an increasingly crowded audio analysis and tagging sector, alongside the likes of Musiio, Cyanite, MyPart and Aims API.
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Source: Music ally
Stageverse raises $7.5m and launches Muse virtual concert
In August 2020, we reported on Muse’s plans to launch a ‘Simulation Theory: Virtual Experience’ with virtual reality startup Stageverse. It was originally due to launch that autumn, but just over a year later, the full show is now ready for its debut. Now called ‘Muse: Enter The Simulation’, it will be available through Stageverse’s iOS, Android and […]
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Source: Music ally
Gaana narrows losses, but its revenue growth has slowed down
As one of the biggest streaming services in India, Gaana is a useful bellwether for the market as a whole.
New figures show that in its last financial year, which ended in March 2021, the company’s operating revenue grew by just 2.6% to 1.23bn rupees (around $16.7m) while its losses fell by 7% – but were still 3.27bn rupees ($44.4m).
The figures come from Billboard’s profile of the Indian market, honing in on its continued struggle to persuade people to pay for music subscriptions.
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Source: Music ally
Universal Music goes public and soars beyond initial valuation of $39bn
The question of how much Universal Music Group is worth has been a hot topic in recent years. Escalating estimates from Goldman Sachs, for example, which valued UMG at $23.3bn in 2017, rising to $53bn in April 2021.
Or, more conservatively, with the €30bn (around $36.4bn at the time) valuation of UMG when a consortium led by Tencent upped its stake in the major label to 20% early this year.
From today, we’ll have an official – if changeable according to the whims of the market – valuation of the company, as it goes public on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. The spin-off from parent company Vivendi has been a long time coming – not to mention buffeted by a global pandemic, and a late attempt at a SPAC-based investment that fell foul of regulators.
Still, it’s public listing day for UMG, and the reference price is €18.50 per share, which means an initial valuation of €33.5bn (just over $39bn) for the company. First day trading being what it is, we could see a few lumps and bumps for the share price before it settles down.
At the time of writing, the price has soared to €25.25, and thus a valuation of €46.3bn (around $54.3bn, which makes that latest Goldman Sachs figure look on the money for now).
The bigger picture here is partly one of investors’ bullishness about the music industry and music rights – a trend that extends past trading in public companies to include the continued frenzy of catalogue buyouts.
Also, with a growing number of the industry’s biggest players now public, and thus sharing more detailed figures on their businesses every quarter, we’ll have more insight into the mechanics of the streaming-era industry. Something that will influence the ups and downs of these companies’ share prices, but also the ongoing debate about how the streaming pie is shared out.
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Source: Music ally