We’ve been paying close attention to the UK parliamentary inquiry into the economics of music streaming, as our past coverage shows. The post DCMS Committee publishes UK streaming inquiry follow-up report appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Today’s topic is music and the metaverse. online games and virtual worlds, virtual reality, augmented reality, avatar artists and more. The post 19 moments from music’s exploration of the metaverse in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Music Ally is continuing our series of articles looking back at the music industry’s 2022. Today the focus is our own podcast. The post 10 of the best Music Ally Focus podcast episodes of 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Today, what we’re looking back on is the music industry’s efforts to tackle the climate emergency by reducing its emissions. The post 12 ways the music industry leaned in to climate action in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Today, we’re talking web3, a space that generated buzz and backlash in pretty much equal measures this year. The post 14 thoughts about music, NFTs and web3 technologies in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Facts and figures about India’s music industry are hard to come by, and when they are shared, the numbers are most often self-proclaimed. The post 22 stats to help you understand India’s music industry in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Artificial intelligence (AI) has made great strides in recent years, and one area where it is beginning to have an impact is music. The post 7 reasons why AI music was a fascinating space in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok was never far from the music industry headlines in 2022, for better or worse. We’re looking at the biggest talking points. The post 12 big talking points around TikTok and music in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Today’s 2022 roundup article focuses on funding rounds for startups (and bigger companies) in and around music/tech. The post 38 key music/tech funding rounds in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Today’s roundup of articles from Music Ally in 2022 focuses on diversity, equity and inclusion within the music industry. The post 14 music diversity, equity and inclusion must-reads from 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Today our focus is on K-Pop: the music and artists of South Korea whose horizons were truly global in the music industry of 2022. The post 9 notable moments for K-Pop music in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We’re publishing a daily roundup in December. Today’s focuses on the fights for artists’ rights (and higher royalties) in the streaming era. The post 15 key moments from the fights for musicians’ rights in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The IFPI’s Global Music Report makes plenty of springtime headlines with its figures for the recorded music industry. The post IFPI explores 2022’s music-listening trends in its new report appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Yesterday, the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee held a pair of follow-up sessions for its inquiry into the economics of music streaming. The post UK streaming inquiry: ‘The elephant in the room is fair remuneration’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Thought you’d heard the last of the UK’s parliamentary inquiry into the economics of music streaming. Soz, but no. The post UK music streaming inquiry returns with follow-up evidence sessions appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

As part of Music Ally’s coverage of the climate emergency and the music industry, we’ve written several times about Julie’s Bicycle. The post Climate emergency: notes from Julie’s Bicycle’s We Make Tomorrow 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

YouTube paid out $6bn to the music industry in the 12-month period between July 2021 and June 2022, the company has announced. The post YouTube’s annual music industry payouts grow to $6bn appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

SoundCloud revealed its ‘fan-powered royalties’ plans in March 2021, applying them to its community of independent artists. The post How do SoundCloud’s ‘fan-powered royalties’ work for artists? appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

“This format is about creation. Okay, I’ve done the Stones and I’ve done INXS and The Beatles in spatial audio… but they’re legacy acts. What’s much more interesting is what’s about to happen!” Giles Martin is the son of Sir George Martin, the original producer of The Beatles, but he’s an acclaimed producer in his […]

We are now more than 13 years into the music streaming era, but its workings continue to evolve. The post Music, socials and burnout: ‘We’re asking artists to do a lot’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

SoundCloud has been reinventing itself over the last few years. You could say it’s going back to its roots. The post SoundCloud and music: ‘It’s about watching artists and fans connect’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The UK is one step closer to a full-blown competition investigation into the three major labels. The British government has accepted one of the recommendations of the recent UK parliamentary inquiry into music-streaming economics: to make a referral to regulator the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). We say ‘one step closer’ because the CMA is […]

Freeme – pronounced “free me” – is an independent distributor & label services company based in Lagos. Founder and CEO Michael Ugwu has international industry experience: he was previously general manager at Sony Music West Africa, and is the first Black person to be appointed to the Merlin Board. As a business, Freeme has twin […]

Global recorded music revenues grew by 7.4% to $21.6bn in 2020, according to industry body the IFPI, which has published its annual Global Music Report today. That’s a deceleration compared to 2019, when the market grew by 8.2%, but with 2020 being the year of Covid-19, labels will see the latest figures as a success […]

Yesterday saw the final hearing in the UK’s parliamentary inquiry into the economics of music streaming, but rather than music industry or tech executives being questioned, it was ministers and civil servants. Caroline Dineage MP, minister for digital and culture at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Amanda Solloway MP, minister […]

Throughout the current UK parliamentary inquiry into the economics of music streaming, and indeed, throughout the history of streaming itself, Music Ally has worked hard to report fairly the full range of views in the debates about how streaming pays off for musicians. That’s why we’ve reported at length on the key sessions at the […]

This guest column is by David Martin, CEO at the Featured Artists Coalition, and Annabella Coldrick, CEO at the Music Managers Forum: Whether it’s COVID 19, Brexit, the yearning for live shows and international touring, the economics of streaming, or the constant battle against inequalities, there’s a lot going on in the music industry right […]

The music industry has got quite… well, let’s say “excited” about Non-Fungible-Tokens (NFTs) in the last couple of months. The headlines have been breathless and the figures eye-popping. Grimes sold $5.8m of NFTs in 20 minutes! 3lau sold 33 NFTs for $11.6m! The former boss of T-Mobile US paid Steve Aoki $888,888.88 for an NFT […]

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek recently told Music Ally that he believes “100% that we’re going to see a rise of Bollywood and new types of Indian music making it into the global scene in the very near future”. As an Indian journalist who’s been covering Bollywood and other types of Indian music for two over decades, I […]

User-centric payouts has been bubbling on the fringes of the music industry for years as an issue. The first time I took it seriously was at an industry board meeting last year – no names! – where we got two presentations on the topic. The big question everyone in the room wanted answered, including me, was: would […]

Reporting on a two-and-a-half hour parliamentary inquiry session the day after liveblogging a two-hour Spotify event plus associated interviews? That’s living alright! It’s a busy week for anyone involved with the music streaming world. Today’s hearing in the UK’s streaming economics inquiry was the long-awaited appearance of Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music to field questions […]

“I believe 100% that we’re going to see a rise of Bollywood and new types of Indian music making it into the global scene in the very near future.” Not the first prediction of this kind, but it carries extra weight given that the person making it was Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. He was talking […]

The latest episode of our Music Ally TV Show focused on sustainability and the music industry: the case for companies in our sector upping their efforts even more to help tackle the climate emergency. The first section of the show was a discussion between Dr Allen Hershkowitz, one of the world’s leading experts on the […]

“We’re treating the atmosphere like a sewer! Every day we dump a hundred million tonnes more of global warming pollution into the atmosphere… We are literally on a path, this might sound extreme, but frankly the new concept that people are talking about is ‘human extinction event’.” As one of the world’s leading environmental scientists, […]

A lot has been said about the strengths and failings of music streaming services during the UK parliamentary inquiry into the economics of this market. Yesterday, three DSPs got the chance to have their say. Well, two of them, as things turned out. In one of the most curious episodes in the inquiry so far, […]

Yesterday’s second session at the UK’s parliamentary inquiry into the economics of music streaming was another double-header, featuring representatives of musicians. Graham Davies is chief executive of songwriters body the Ivors Academy, while Horace Trubridge is general secretary of the Musicians’ Union (and a founder member of 1970s band Darts). The panel of MPs questioning […]

The latest day of hearings for the UK’s parliamentary inquiry into the economics of music streaming was the busiest yet, with three sessions – including the first to involve streaming services. As before, there was a mixture of tough questions, grandstanding and moments of farce. And plenty to think about as the digital, culture, media and […]

Having recently grilled the bosses of the three major labels’ UK subsidiaries, today it was time for the MPs on the UK’s inquiry into the economics of music streaming to hear from the independent sector. Jazz Re:freshed co-CEO and executive director Yvette Griffith; Aim CEO Paul Pacifico; and Beggars Group general counsel Rupert Skellett were […]

If you had the metaphorical (or, indeed, literal) popcorn out on Tuesday for the latest sessions in the UK parliamentary inquiry into the economics of music streaming… well, perhaps grab a few more bags now and settle in for the day. The committee behind the inquiry has just published all the written evidence submitted by […]

It’s actually pretty rare to get genuine smoking-gun ‘gotchas’ from political inquiries in the moment. When they work well, it’s more about patient, forensic questioning that elicits genuinely enlightening answers – and sometimes quotes that later come back to haunt the speaker. Did we get that from this morning’s sessions at the UK parliamentary inquiry into […]

Music Ally’s Global Experts panel is an international group of industry leaders, and each month we put a single, vital question to them about the state of the music industry, and what we should be doing to change it. We hope that these Experts panels can help zero-in on the really meaningful issues, and describe […]

Music Ally first came across Roli in 2013, when it was named as a finalist in the SXSW Music Accelerator startups contest, before we reported on its $12.8m funding round the following year from investors including Universal Music Group. The company was focused on music instruments, with its first being the Seaboard Grand, a keyboard […]

Just over a year ago, music streaming service Deezer announced its desire to launch a pilot of a ‘user-centric payment system’ (UCPS) by early 2020. You can read our primer on the user-centric model here, but in a nutshell, it ensures that the money from your streaming subscription only goes to the music you listen […]

This is the first in a new series of guest columns for Music Ally from Big Bang Music in India, on the latest trends there. On July 15, singer Armaan Malik became part of a new initiative by chart-maker Billboard and social video platform Triller called the Top Triller US and Top Triller Global charts. […]

Primephonic is one of the streaming services focusing on classical music, with a comprehensive collection of albums and playlists. However, neither of those are its most popular format with listeners. It’s podcasts. The company has been producing its own shows blending interviews with classical music artists, composers and conductors with their music. “These podcasts are […]

In China, the music industry works differently. Music fans quickly – and in the tens of millions – adopt new technologies, new methods of supporting artists or ways of consuming music. The audience seeks a different experience from artists, who are often hybrid stars – equally at home as actors, TV personalities or models. What […]

Collective artist ownership is the only way to fix Spotify. If artists can collectively own platforms like Spotify, we can address the underlying problem that drives their incentives and decision making. As a for-profit, publicly traded corporation, Spotify has no responsibility to artists. Their only binding fiduciary responsibility is to seek profit and to increase […]

Last month, Music Ally took part in the BPI and ERA’s New Kids on the Block online event, looking at children’s digital habits and what they mean for music. Research company Kids Insights produced a report for the event too, which has been published today. We contributed a section on some of the interesting stories […]

“Who in the room knows Roblox?” asked WMG’s chief innovation officer for recorded music Scott Cohen at the NY:LON Connect conference in January. Only a few people put their hands up in response. “It’s a gaming platform for kids, and they not only play games, they create their own games and play those games with […]

Besides being musicians, Zoë Keating and David Lowery have been two of the most prominent voices for artists’ rights in the streaming era. Solo artist Keating has regularly published her streaming income data to further transparency around payouts for artists. She was an early adopter of Bandcamp, went public with her concerns about YouTube’s artist […]

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have been hit by a ban in India as part of a wider crackdown on apps of Chinese origin. But there may be trouble brewing for the companies in the US, too, due both to the political jockeying around hardball trade negotiations between the US and China, and specific […]

British charity Youth Music is launching a £2m ‘Incubator Fund’ that aims to help 18-25 year-olds – particularly those from under-represented groups – get into the music business. The fund itself is for music companies, offering grants of between £5k and £30k to spend on wages and support for these young people. Youth Music is especially […]

More Japanese people are willing to engage with music via streaming during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, according to a survey of Japan’s music industry conducted by Music Ally. Music Ally Japan surveyed labels, managers, producers and other industry figures in the months of April and May, asking them about the impact that Covid-19 has had […]

Deezer is doubling down on Latin America courtesy of a partnership with Mexican broadcaster TV Azteca that it says values the music streaming service at €1.3bn ($1.4bn). That’s based on a $40m investment in Deezer by TV Azteca over “a multi-year period”, and would mean that Deezer has not just maintained its ‘unicorn’ status – the […]

Kirt Debique met his SyncFloor co-founder Cestjon McFarland during a 20-year stint at Microsoft. Immersed in the Seattle music scene, he left the tech giant to start a label (Brick Lane records, named after his favourite part of London) when the music industry was struggling. “I spotted the bottom of the trough of the last […]

Friday’s Music Ally TV Show focused on the #TheShowMustBePaused campaign, and the next steps that the music industry needs to take as a result. Our panelists were Mulika Sannie, Keith Harris and Estée Blu. Sannie is VP of business affairs at Kobalt, and also founded the UK Black Music Lawyers Network in 2018. Harris is […]

This story begins with an article by author and activist Cory Doctorow on the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation: ‘A Plan to Pay Artists, Encourage Competition, and Promote Free Speech’. It proposed extending the kind of blanket licensing that allow clubs, restaurants and radio stations to play music to the internet as a whole, […]

Nicole Wyskoarko is EVP of urban operations at Interscope Records, and Amber Grimes is SVP of global creative at Capitol Music Group. Their joint keynote for the Midem conference, a video interview conducted by Billboard’s Gail Mitchell, was published this morning. It addresses topics including the current Black Lives Matters protests following the killing of […]

CISAC is the global body representing collecting societies. Its last president was Jean-Michel Jarre, and before him it was Robin Gibb from the Bee Gees. Big shoes to fill for its next president, right? Step forward… Björn Ulvaeus. The co-founder of ABBA will serve a three-year term as president of CISAC, having been elected by […]

Warner Music Group’s initial public offering launches today, with the music group offering 70m shares in a public offering whose price is expected to be between $23 and $26 per share. “The offering consists entirely of secondary shares to be sold by Access Industries, LLC and certain related selling stockholders,” explained WMG in its announcement. […]

Warner Music Group’s initial public offering launches today, with the music group offering 70m shares in a public offering whose price is expected to be between $23 and $26 per share. “The offering consists entirely of secondary shares to be sold by Access Industries, LLC and certain related selling stockholders,” explained WMG in its announcement. […]

We’ve been thinking a lot about Fortnite and music recently. Travis Scott attracted 27.7 million people to his recent ‘Astronomical’ concerts within the popular game, while its new Party Royale mode has already hosted DJ sets from Diplo, Steve Aoki and Deadmau5. There are quite a few unanswered (as yet) questions around this: for example, […]

Just finished a book and looking for a new, gripping read for the weekend ahead? Here’s a recommendation for you: ‘Section 512 of Title 17’. Admittedly, it’s got no wizards, romance, clutter-clearing tips or Henry VIII lopping people’s heads off. But in terms of music industry politics, it’s got the makings of a thriller. The […]

People often ask how the economics of podcasting work. Well, here’s how they worked for Spotify yesterday. The streaming service announced an exclusive licensing deal with one of the biggest podcasts, The Joe Rogan Experience. The Wall Street Journal claimed the deal was worth “more than $100 million”, but the ensuing spike in Spotify’s share price added […]

Squeezing new uses from existing technology sparks creative revolutions. Dancing to recorded music was weird until someone who understood the crowd started to link the right songs together in the right place, and created the nightclub. (It’s probably best not to dwell on one of the main claimants of that innovation, mind…) Fast forward to […]

The #BrokenRecord campaign started by musician Tom Gray in the UK is gathering steam. Next Sunday (24 May) will see an online Tim’s Twitter Listening Party Festival allied to the campaign, which is calling for changes to the music streaming ecosystem that will benefit artists and songwriters. Last Friday (15 May) Gray was one of […]

The Chinese music industry saw 16% growth in its recorded music revenues in 2019 according to the IFPI, but it was also the first country to be affected by the Covid-19 outbreak. Does that make it a canary in the coalmine for the global music industry, in terms of learning lessons from the coronavirus impact, […]

This is an edited version of an article that appeared in Music Ally’s Q1 2020 report. In the light of the current #BrokenRecord campaign around music industry economics – see our piece last week for more on that – we wanted to also share it in front of our paywall. The topic of user-centric music […]

The demo days of music/tech accelerator Techstars Music are usually a big draw in the physical world, with music industry execs and tech investors convening in Los Angeles to watch its startups pitch. By necessity, its 2020 demo day was different: streamed online with pre-recorded pitches. It was an impressive and varied selection of companies […]

Earlier this week, we covered the IFPI’s latest figures for global recorded music revenues, which grew by 8.2% in 2019. Artist rights group the Future of Music Coalition made an important point when it shared our story on Twitter. It’s true. In 2019 the recorded music industry enjoyed its fifth consecutive year of growth, taking […]

In November 2019, WMG’s head of innovation, recorded music, Scott Cohen told Music Ally that he was interested in the ways that blockchain technology could create new value for the industry. One example: digitally-scarce collectibles that fans would buy and show off. Fast-forward six months, and one of the startups in the latest cohort for […]

Music industry body the IFPI was due to publish its annual Global Music Report in March, with data on worldwide recorded music revenues in 2019. The launch was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the report has now been published today. The headline figure: global recorded music revenues grew by 8.2% to $20.2bn in […]

OpenAI is the non-profit artificial intelligence company backed by (among others) tech mogul Elon Musk. Just under a year ago it showed off Musenet: “a deep neural network that can generate 4-minute musical compositions with 10 different instruments, and can combine styles from country to Mozart to the Beatles”. Now it’s following up with a new system […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

A flurry of recent reports have noted that in the initial weeks of the Covid-19 coronavirus lockdown, music streams declined. Should the industry be worried? Universal Music Group’s EVP of digital strategy Michael Nash has dampened down those fears. “The subscription business, which is the big driver for revenue, is relatively stable based on its […]

Friday saw the first ever Music Ally TV weekly show, broadcast using video-conferencing platform Zoom. Our guests included Rosie Lopez, president of Tommy Boy, and the topic at hand was YouTube. “We’re feeling very optimistic about YouTube. We’re projecting that YouTube could potentially become our number one DSP in the future,” said Lopez. “It’s a […]

Over a series of articles for US journal The Baffler, journalist and critic Liz Pelly has examined the culture and dynamics of music streaming in general and Spotify in particular. In Discover Weakly, Unfree Agents, Streambait Pop and Big Mood Machine, she offered some of the sharpest criticism of Spotify’s business, its impact on musicians […]

Israeli startup MyPart aims to use AI to turn the long tail of music catalogues into revenue streams that humans may have overlooked. In fact, the company wants to do more than analyse music and pull the needle from the haystack: it wants to pair the songs no human would consider with artists who never […]

David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers Association in the US, has never been a man to pull his verbal punches when taking digital services to task. “Songwriters: This week, Spotify and Amazon are quite literally taking you to court,” is how his latest guest column for Billboard begins, and it doesn’t get any less […]

“I was having panic attacks. I was completely anxious and stuck, because I wasn’t doing the thing I wanted to do. I struggled to write songs: I judged every idea as boring and not good enough, and that stopped me writing altogether. Four songs a year was all I could manage at one point…” Australian […]

Atlanta rapper K Camp began releasing mixtapes in 2011, before signing to Interscope in 2014, building up a loyal following. However, the release of his track ‘Lottery’ in early 2019 changed everything. The track initially had a slow build through platforms including Instagram, YouTube and Triller, but then a few months later users of TikTok […]

Indian startup Flutin has a bold, dual-pronged mission: to round up millions of music fans and serve them – for free – new music that they’ll love; and to provide artists with an easy-to-reach fanbase that’s eager to engage and even purchase. Dig a little deeper into the company, and there are some interesting lessons on how […]

Spotify is launching a new feature aimed at songwriters, giving them their own profile pages on the streaming service, complete with playlists of recordings of their songs. ‘Songwriter Pages’ launches in beta today, accompanied by a tweak to Spotify’s existing track credits feature to make the names of songwriters taking part in the beta clickable, […]

Music is different to other creative acts: there’s a palpable barrier to entry compared to, say, photography. Jambl aims to change that by making music-creation fun, simple and entertaining, but with a full industry vertical behind it. Can hits be made, remixed, identified, and fully exploited, all in one platform? Jambl, which recently received half […]

Peter Quicke isn’t just the managing director of independent label Ninja Tune and chair of British indies body AIM. He’s also a co-founder of Music Declares Emergency, the working group set up last year to drive the music industry’s response to the climate emergency. At AIM’s London conference this week, AIM Connected, Quicke addressed what […]

Spotify published its latest quarterly financial results earlier today, followed by an earnings call with analysts in which CEO Daniel Ek talked about its just-announced acquisition of media and podcasts firm The Ringer. “If you up-level this conversation and think 10 years out, the trend we’re investing in is that radio is moving online, because […]

If co-founder Olly Barnes’ infectious optimism is correct, Voisey is a phenomenon-in-waiting. It’s an app that has the potential to shake up how songs are made; tap into hitherto locked-away artistic talent; develop a new breed of pop star and pop songs; and maybe even bypass the traditional label system. Sounds too good to be […]

The second morning at this year’s NY:LON Connect conference focused on ‘emerging international and influential markets’. Three territories in particular: South Korea, China, and Russia / Eastern Europe. The track began with a keynote from Sun Lee, YouTube’s head of music content partnerships and subscriptions for Korea and Greater China. Lee was interviewed by Billboard […]

“VR is shit! It’s shit but it doesn’t have to be. Certainly the hardware’s not all the way there yet, it’s quite bulky and if you put it on for an hour or so you’re going to get a pretty raging headache and neck ache. But the real problem is the content is shit. The […]

Troy Carter was the closing keynote at Music Ally and Music Biz’s NY:LON Connect conference in New York on Friday. The former Atom Factory boss (where he managed Lady Gaga during her rise to fame) and Spotify exec is now running Q&A, a company blending artist development, distribution and technology. I interviewed Troy on-stage at […]

“You can choose to grow one copyright at a time. That’s going to take a really, really long time. We went to look for solutions that would help us scale more quickly. And what drove that was really find likeminded people, find people with whom you have shared values… with whom you have a vision […]

“I think it’s good that we have a lot of players in the market, because it means we all get better… The streaming landscape, and particularly for us the audio landscape, will continue to grow. We are just on the tip of the iceberg of what this will become.” Cecilia Qvist is global head of […]

“Labels who call themselves labels? That’s like dinosaur shit to me! It’s what’s your value proposition? What’s my value proposition? Can one plus one equal 10? As long as I can say to somebody that you and I together will be better… 300 is not a label, we’re a platform. We’re an opportunity for people […]

Barring a major surprise, 2019 will have been the fifth straight year of growth for the global recorded music industry. Over those five years, its annual revenues have grown from $14.2bn to $19.1bn, taking it almost back to its 2004 level. If 2019 matched 2018’s 9.7% growth, we could be talking about $21bn last year. […]

Consumer spending on music streaming in the UK passed the symbolic £1bn mark for the first time last year, according to figures published by the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) today. Brits spent just over £1bn on streaming subscriptions in 2019, up by 23.5% from the £812m spent in 2018 – and 31 times the spend […]

Earlier this month, we reported on Resso, the new music-streaming app that TikTok’s parent company Bytedance is testing in India and Indonesia. We asked journalist Amit Gurbaxani, who has written regularly for Music Ally about the music industry in India, to try the app and offer his first impressions. “The most distinct thing about Resso, […]

Gamer music fans want music that fits the exact gaming moment they’re experiencing, and they want to show off their fandom. Five Vectors’ tech scans and funnels music programmatically to those audiences, and helps fans pay for it in ways that make interaction meaningful and status-based, like being skins in Fortnite. The post Music Ally’s […]

“What’s the end-game for this? There isn’t this place in the world where teenagers come together to make music for each other. That place does not exist, and that’s nuts! That thing needs to exist, and it will exist. And getting the AI working is the price of admission to build that thing…” Stephen Phillips, […]

What we need, said almost nobody in the music industry, are a few more awards ceremonies. But now we have two, from the world’s biggest subscription music-streaming services. Spotify’s first awards will take place in Mexico City next March, driven entirely by its data, but Apple Music’s first event took place overnight, chosen purely by the company’s […]

In September, Music Ally spoke to three of Warner Music Group’s senior innovation and business-development execs, about how they work with startups and innovative technologies. That month, we also interviewed some music/tech startups, who gave some blunt, honest feedback on the challenges they have faced working with major labels in general. It’s a conversation that’s […]

When most people think about the potential legal issues around AI-created music, they tend to think about the output – the music itself, and questions like whether an AI-generated track can attract copyright protection. Sophie Goossens, counsel at law firm Reed Smith, thinks that just as much attention should be paid to the input. “AI is […]

On Saturday and Sunday (November 16-17), Capitol Music Group held its 2nd annual music and tech festival, Capitol Royale, at its Los Angeles headquarters. The theme for this year was ‘Music on the Move’, with workshops, hackathons, panels, and social events revolving around the ever-changing landscape of music and innovation. Kicking off on Friday was […]

This article is an excerpt from Ari Herstand’s second edition of How to Make It in the New Music Business: In 2009, I was co-managing one of my favorite Minneapolis bands with my girlfriend. I was actively touring, playing 100+ dates a year myself, so the day-to-day duties were mostly handled by her. The band […]

In Berlin, talk around music usually takes two paths: techno or the blockchain, and both involve a lot of earnest nodding. At the Most Wanted: Music 2019 conference, conversation was nudged towards the creation of new value streams, pushing for meaningful diversity, and embracing change in an age that demands it. The post Most Wanted: […]

CISAC, the global collecting-societies body, has published its annual ‘Global Collections Report’ setting out the collections of its 239 members in more than 120 countries. As ever, it’s a useful counterpart to the IFPI’s annual Global Music Report: while that publication focuses on recorded-music royalties, the music section of CISAC’s report quantifies collections for songwriters […]

It’s a debatable opinion but one that warrants consideration in the Indian music industry in 2019: is Bollywood slowly but surely losing its dominance? Major Indian labels such as international heavyweights Sony and Universal and local biggie T-Series are increasingly releasing what they term “non-film music”, a loose if somewhat nebulous term used to classify […]

Algorithmic A&R continues to be a touchy subject in some quarters of the music industry, where there is distrust (and/or existential fears) of the prospect of big data encroaching onto the traditional territory of humans’ ears and guts. That’s even more the case when the algorithms are tracking not the momentum of an artist in […]

In a keynote interview at the Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) conference in Amsterdam, Tencent Music’s Andy Ng outlined his role in combatting piracy in China, building a legal streaming market there and why he and his employers are betting heavy on the EDM boom. Ng stepped back from his role as group VP at Tencent […]

There’s plenty of new music out today: Camila Cabello, Dan + Shay with Justin Bieber, Halsey, Travis Scott, K-Pop supergroup SuperM, Juice Wrld and Skygge are among the artists dropping new tracks. Wait, Skygge? Who’s that? An avatar blending AI-powered music with a cappella recordings by legendary US folk singers like Pete Seeger, Peggy Seeger […]

On paper, 2004 was one of the worst years in living memory to set up a record label. The decade-and-a-half decline in recorded-music revenues was well underway, with CD sales falling off a cliff. And the main lifeline in sight, Apple’s iTunes Store, was unbundling the traditional album. Optimism was in short supply. And yet: […]

Founded in 2011, Dead End Hip Hop (DEHH) has built a strong community around its discussions of hip-hop’s music and culture, with more than 233,000 subscribers on YouTube, and nearly 3,300 fans funding the company’s work through Patreon. In an email interview with Music Ally, DEHH’s six-strong team – Kennith B. Inge, Roderic Wright (aka […]

Global music-industry body the IFPI has published its latest ‘Music Listening’ report, for 2019, based on a survey of 34,000 people in 21 countries. Whereas the body’s annual Global Music Report focuses on revenues, this study is all about people’s music habits: how much they’re streaming and buying music; what devices they’re doing it on; […]

Angel Gambino has been in the digital trenches since the late 1990s. Her career has seen her work in early social gaming (for Gameplay·com); test the digital waters for TV (at the BBC and Viacom); and forge content strategies for social networking (Bebo). In 2019, she’s putting the lessons learned to work in her current […]

Deezer is hoping to launch a pilot of a user-centric payment system (UCPS) by early 2020 in France, if it can persuade labels to back the idea. As part of its preparations, it has launched a website this morning explaining UCPS to music fans. As a quick reminder: user-centric payments divide the streaming royalties from […]

In Music Ally’s latest analysis report, we take a look at the three major labels’ strategies around music/tech startups and investment. The full report is for Music Ally subscribers only, but you can sign up for a free trial, which includes access to the latest report. An extract from it follows, focusing on Warner Music […]

The intersection of mobile gaming and music education is a category Music Ally has been tracking since 2011, when a Finnish startup called Ovelin started to get attention for a music-learning game called WildChords. It later rebranded as Yousician, and as of summer 2019 has generated more than 100m downloads of its apps. Now history might […]

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 […]

“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 […]

“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 […]

Spotify has published its financial results for the second quarter of 2019, revealing that the streaming service added 15 million new listeners including eight million paid subscribers during Q2. Spotify ended June 2019 with 232 million listeners, up 29% year-on-year from the 180 million it had a year ago, and up 7% quarter-on-quarter from the […]

There has been some debate over the title of India’s top music audio-streaming service, with multiple companies staking their claim. Most recently, in December 2018, Gaana said that it now had 80 million monthly active users (MAUs), which would make it the country’s top service “with a fair margin” according to CEO Prashan Agarwal. So […]