This is a guest column from Virginie Berger (below), a music and tech industry executive with over 20 years experience in rights management and digital transformation, and currently an international […] The post Dispelling the utopian dream: the complex reality of music royalties (Guest column) appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Chinese music-streaming giant Tencent Music showed decent growth in its financial results for the first quarter of 2023. The post 94.4m people are now paid customers of Tencent Music in China appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

SM Entertainment has published its latest financial results. They’re the first since it fended off an attempt by rival HYBE to take control. The post SM Entertainment revenues grew 20.3% in first quarter of 2023 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ is the most-streamed track of all-time on Apple Music, with more than 930m streams. The post Ed Sheeran may soon have first 1bn-stream track on Apple Music appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

PPL has broken its own records this morning with its financial results for 2022, which saw revenues grow by 7.8%. The post PPL posts record financial results with revenues up 7.8% appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s quarterly financials time for games platform Roblox, and its latest figures are very good. In the first quarter of 2023, Roblox averaged 66.1 million daily active users, and those people spent 14.5bn hours on its service. The post Roblox financials reveal it now has 66.1m daily active users appeared first on Music Ally. Source: […]

Which Swedish artist has generated the highest payouts from Spotify since the streaming service launched in 2008?No surprise: it’s Avicii. The post New streaming study focuses on Swedish artists’ Spotify payouts appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

This post – by Edward Ginis, co-founder and Chief Client Officer of OpenPlay – is Partner Content. Twenty years ago, when iTunes was first launched, the music industry needed a new digital distribution system, and they built one based on what they knew: the physical distribution “pick, pack, and ship” model. That approach has largely persisted […]

Music industry body the BPI has been drip-announcing stats from its latest annual yearbook, and the latest drop focuses on ‘new music’. The post BPI: ‘As an industry we need to revisit how we define catalogue’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Woah! We’re going to Ibiza for this news story. Woah! Back to the island – and its annual IMS conference and accompanying report. The post Report: Electronic music sector grew by 34% in 2022 to $11.3bn appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

To adapt a phrase from… somewhere in Meta’s corporate history: a billion users isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Three billion users. The post Meta now has more than 3bn daily active people using its apps appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Deezer’s latest financial results are a familiar tale: its revenues are growing, but it has yet to turn around its decline in subscribers. The post Deezer revenues grew 6.5% in Q1 but subscribers fell by 2.1% appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Independent music publishers accounted for 27.1% of the global publishing market in 2021 according to the latest report from the IMPF. The post Independent music publishers had a 27.1% market share in 2021 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The latest report from DiMA explores some of the data and trends around country music and streaming – in the US and globally. The post DiMA’s latest report explores country music’s streaming audience appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The toy-like look and feel of the game is changing too, with more human-like avatars and more detailed world-like environments. The post Roblox users aged 17-to-24 is the fastest growing group appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The two most popular YouTube channels by monthly views are music channels – but not from major western artists. The post Nursery rhymes and Indian film-music top YouTube monthly view charts appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Do major and independent labels get their fair share of streams on the big music services? Music Tomorrow has published its latest analysis. The post Study explores majors’ share of key (and niche) Spotify genres appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The body representing music streaming services, DiMA, has published a report estimating ‘The Impact of Digital Music Streaming’ in the US. The post DiMA says music streaming contributed $14.32bn to US GDP in 2021 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The latest report analysing diversity in the music industry trains its sights on audio production and engineering. The post How is diversity in audio production and engineering? Not great… appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

British music body the BPI has published its latest report: ‘The New Music Democracy: How More Artists Are Benefitting From Streaming’. The post BPI’s new report explores more streaming stats for UK artists appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Spotify has tripled its number of users in India in the past two years, and is now reportedly generating 10bn monthly streams there. The post Spotify says it has tripled its Indian users in last two years appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

German collecting society GEMA has published its financial results for 2022, and they show strong growth in its collections and distributions. The post 2022 was a billion-Euro year for GEMA as revenues rose 13.4% appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Kids and teens love YouTube, but in the UK do they love Spotify more as a source for music? Ofcom’s latest report hints that they might. The post Spotify tops the music services list for UK kids and teenagers appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

British labels body the BPI has published new stats supporting its argument that streaming is helping more artists to find success. The post BPI publishes its latest data hailing streaming’s diversity appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The global music industry made $26.2bn from recorded music in 2022, according to the IFPI. That’s up 9% year-on-year. The post Global recorded music revenues grew 9% in 2022 to $26.2bn says IFPI appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Consultancy firm Midia Research estimates that global recorded music revenues grew by 6.7% to $31.2bn in 2022. The post Report: global recorded music revenues grew 6.7% to $31.2bn in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Spanish music industry body Promusicae has published its annual figures for the country’s recorded music market. The post Spain’s recorded music revenues grew by 12.4% in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s five years since Spotify went live in South Africa, with the March 2018 launch representing the streaming service’s debut in Africa. The post South Africans have streamed 1.2bn hours of Spotify since 2018 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Industry body the RIAA has published its annual figures today, showing that the value of recorded music grew by 6.1% in 2022 to $15.87bn. The post US recorded music revenues grew 6.1% to $15.87bn in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

As publication day nears for the IFPI’s Global Music Report, another of the world’s biggest recorded music markets has published 2022 figures. The post UK music revenues grow but industry wants more government support appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Japan may have been late to the music-streaming party, but it’s been making up for lost time judging by the latest figures from the RIAJ. The post Japan’s music streaming revenues grew by 25% in 2022 to $674m appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Middle Eastern and North African streaming service Anghami has published preliminary financial results for 2022. The post Anghami revenues up 35.6% in 2022 as it passed 1.5m subscribers appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Economic crisis? What economic crisis? Certainly when it comes to Universal Music Group’s financials, the numbers continue to be buoyant. The post UMG sees strong growth in recordings and publishing alike appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Germany, for example, saw its recorded music revenues grow by 6.1% in 2022 to €2.07bn ($2.2bn at current exchange rates). The post BVMI reveals Germany’s recorded music market grew 6.1% in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The biggest music track globally in 2022 was Harry Styles’ ‘As It Was’ with 2.28bn ‘global subscription stream equivalents’. The post Harry Styles ‘As It Was’ was the biggest global music track in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Last week we reported on TikTok’s announcement that it now has 150 million monthly active users (MAUs) in Europe. The post YouTube, Meta, Twitter and Spotify (sort of) reveal their EU user figures appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Snap announces the latest figures for its Snapchat app on a quarterly basis. For example, it ended 2022 with 375 million daily active users. The post Snapchat reveals that it now has 750m monthly active users appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

DiMA, the US-based trade body representing music streaming services, has published a new report on streaming’s impact on listeners. The post DiMA reveals new streaming stats in Fan Engagement Report appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Piracy isn’t as big a headline issue for the music industry nowadays as it was in the early 2000s. Which doesn’t mean it has gone away. The post UK study finds a sharp increase in online music infringers appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

SiriusXM has published its year-end financial results for 2022. Overall, its business held up to the year’s economic headwinds well. The post SiriusXM hits self-pay record but Pandora is still declining appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Music licensed to Spotify by the three major labels and indie licensing agency Merlin accounted for around 75% of Spotify streams in 2022. The post DIY artists now account for a quarter of Spotify’s music streams appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The music industry has been thinking a lot about how South Korean artists like BTS and Blackpink are growing their audiences. The post Gap widens between YouTube and Melon services in South Korea appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Indian news site Mint has been celebrating the fact that Bollywood playback star Alka Yagnik is the top artist on YouTube’s global chart. The post Indian artists are still dominating YouTube’s global music chart appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Spanish industry body Promusicae has published some figures for 2022, including the news that the number of music streams grew by 16%. The post Subscriptions now account for 55% of audio streaming in Spain appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In advance of NY:LON CONNECT 2023, we asked Amuse – which is co-sponsor of the event’s Artist Manager track – to share with us the exciting opportunities they see ahead in 2023. Aimed at indie artists, this “pep talk” takes stock of the music business landscape as seen from Amuse’s perspective, and offers some advice, perspective, and positive encouragement in the face […]

In advance of NY:LON CONNECT 2023, we asked Vasja Veber, co-founder of music data analytics platform Viberate – and one of the co-headline sponsors of the event – to share some key insights for readers to take into the new year. Veber looks into the underlying data, and explains how building immersive artist strategies that cultivate fandom […]

The below post – by Kyran de Keijzer, Co-founder and CPO of Muso.AI – is Partner Content. At Muso.AI, we’re delivering lifetime, greatest-of-all-time, big data energy type of analytics that get creatives motivated to engage with their data again. Total streams, Shazams, charts, playlists, collaborations and more; we’re giving the power of data back to […]

This article from Last.fm is Partner Content. Christmas, the cliché runs, starts earlier every year. Shops, apparently, push out their Christmas stock earlier and earlier and everyone is giddy with festive delight even before Halloween is over.  Except no one seems to have told music streamers this because the musical lift-off for Christmas holds to […]

This article from Last.fm is Partner Content. How much of a classic album do you actually listen to? It turns out that even the most loftily-held LPs have a surprising number of tracks that modern listeners tend to skip en masse. In the physical age, albums were often designed as – or, at least, presented […]

Here is Music Ally’s handy primer on the best sources of data on the music market: industry stats, surveys, forecasts and more. The post 22 best data sources to understand the music industry in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

This article from Last.fm is Partner Content. The Music Ally Focus Podcast recently welcomed Michael Horan, VP of Product at Last.fm, which is just about to hit a remarkable milestone: 20 years as a music tech company. In that time, Last.fm has gathered an enormous amount of data on how people listen to music – and […]

Research firm Omdia has been gazing into its crystal ball – or should that be crystal headset? – for the virtual reality market. The post Report predicts 12.5m sales of consumer VR headsets in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We don’t have the latest financial results from NetEase Cloud Music yet, but we do have some numbers from Cloud Village’s majority shareholder NetEase. The post NetEase Cloud Music revenues grew by 22.5% in Q3 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

Chinese music-streaming giant Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) has published its financial results for the third quarter of 2022. The post Tencent Music revenues fall, but its online music business is still growing appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Music rights firm Reservoir Media has published its latest financial results, revealing that its revenues grew by 10% year-on-year. The post Reservoir financials reveal 10% growth in Q3 revenues appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Every year, author and former Spotify chief economist Will Page publishes his analysis of the ‘global value of music copyright’. The post Report: global music copyright value grew 18% to $39.6bn in 2021 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s a good year for big fish and cardboard boxes in the UK. The post BPI hails UK chart surge for dance-music releases in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

“Who killed the social media ad boom?” asked the Financial Times on Friday, in a piece sparked by the estimates from research firm eMarketer. The post eMarketer predicts tenfold slowdown of social-media ad growth appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Forget that oft-quoted ’60k new tracks are added to music streaming services every day’ stat. Two major labels have upped the figure to 100k. The post Report claims 100k tracks are now added to DSPs every day appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Latin music’s growth continues to outstrip the overall market: revenues were up by 23% year-on-year, over double the overall market growth. The post Latin music now generates 6.6% of US recorded music revenues appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

ERA’s longstanding consumer-tracker research interviews 2,000 Brits every quarter about a range of topics. The post ERA claims musicians AND DSPs are more popular than labels appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Collecting society GEMA has commissioned a report from consultancy firm Goldmedia on music streaming in Germany. The post GEMA-commissioned study explores Germany’s music-streaming economy appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

How many people work in India’s music industry? Whatever you guessed, it’s probably well short. The answer is 14 million. The post India’s ‘informal’ music industry: DJs, indie artists, brass bands… appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Italy was the tenth biggest recorded music market in the world last year according to the IFPI, buoyed by a 27.8% increase in revenues. The post Italy’s recorded music revenues up 18.3% in first half of 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Remember the speculation – very much encouraged by Spotify – that it was overtaking Apple for podcast listening? The post Report claims YouTube is bigger than Spotify for podcasts appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We know the key stats around YouTube’s music business. It paid out $4bn to the music industry in the year to June 2021. The post YouTube trumpets ‘momentum’ stats at its Brandcast event appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Advertising industry body the IAB has published its latest forecasts for podcast ad revenues in the US. The post IAB predicts US podcast revenues will reach $2bn in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The live industry’s efforts to bounce back from Covid-19 continue, with Live Nation hailing Q1 2022 as its “best first quarter ever”. The post Live Nation’s Q1 2022: ‘Fan demand has never been stronger’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Crowdfunding firm Patreon has published its first ‘Creator Census’, based on a survey of more than 13,000 people. The post Patreon survey offers more data on the creator economy appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Midia Research has published a second ‘Be The Change’ report exploring the challenges faced by women in the music industry. The post ‘Be The Change’ report reiterates challenges for women in the music industry appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

SiriusXM’s latest financial results reveal that Pandora still hasn’t managed to reverse its long-term decline in listeners. The post Pandora listener decline continues with SiriusXM financials appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

No surprise that Apple continues to be in rude health as a business, posting revenues of $92.28bn in the first quarter of 2022. The post Apple’s services are now bigger than Mac and iPad combined appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The IFPI is launching its annual Global Music Report (GMR) on 22 March, which is when we’ll get to see what kind of growth the recorded music industry saw in 2021. The post UK and France saw double-digit recorded music growth in 2021 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The music industry knows all about YouTube’s role in bringing K-Pop music to the world, from Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ to the success of BTS and Blackpink. The post Data suggests YouTube Music is rising fast in South Korea appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Earlier this week, the British government said that the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) would soon be publishing its report on music creator’s earnings in the digital era. How soon? It’s out this morning! To be clear: this is very much an exercise in gathering and presenting data, rather than coming down on one side […]

Recently, artist Gary Numan gave an interview to Sky News during which he talked about streaming royalties, and specifically about a small cheque he’d received. “I had a statement a while back and one of my songs had had over a million plays, million streams, and it was £37. I got £37 from a million […]

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 […]

Spotify’s latest financial results are out, covering the fourth quarter of 2020, and thus the full calendar year. The streaming service ended the year with 345 million monthly active users, including 155 million premium subscribers. That was year-on-year growth of 27% and 24% respectively, with ad-supported (free) users up 30% to 199 million. Spotify’s quarterly […]

In mid-2018, YouTube said that more than one billion people visited it every month to consume music. Two and a half years later, that total has doubled to more than two billion. The new milestone has been announced this afternoon in a blog post by YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen, as YouTube launched […]

As the music business scraps it out with every other industry for Covid-19 relief, a key part of its argument has been the economic value created by the industry. An aspect that’s at least well-rehearsed, since it is also deployed whenever the music industry is lobbying for changes to copyright legislation. The latest report commissioned […]

Mobile analytics firm App Annie is predicting that TikTok will have more than 1.2 billion monthly active users by the end of 2021, after crossing the one billion mark this year. That would be some growth: figures published recently as part of TikTok’s legal battle in the US showed that it had 689.2 million monthly active users worldwide in […]

We’ve been writing a fair amount about music’s intersection with the ‘wellness’ industry, from mindfulness apps like Calm and Headspace to fitness startups like Peloton. Now there’s a new report that’s trying to quantify the global ‘mental wellness’ market. The topline: it could be worth $120.8bn, which breaks down into four categories: senses, spaces and […]

Chinese streaming service NetEase Cloud Music has published a report hailing the fact that the number of Chinese independent musicians on its platform has doubled in the last year. There are now more than 200,000 of them, up from 100,000 in 2019, and just 20 million back in 2016. “Compared with 2017, over 40% of […]

There are few surprises in the latest quarterly financial results for Live Nation. Revenues were down 95% year-on-year – slashed from $3.77bn in Q3 2019 to just $184m a year later. The live giant reported an operating loss of $504.4m, compared to an operating profit of 260m a year ago. For the first nine months of 2020, […]

With so much analytic data for artists and their teams to chew over, their challenge is digesting this data in a way that delivers insight and helps grow an artist’s career. Viberate provides a comprehensive and versatile ecosystem of analytics for artists, labels and promoters alike, with a blend of features similar to those offered […]

Music streaming service Spotify has announced its latest quarterly financial results. The company ended Q3 with 320 million monthly active users, having added 21 million during the quarter. Meanwhile, Spotify’s subscriber total is now 144 million, up from 113 million a year ago, and 138 million at the end of Q2. Spotify’s Q3 revenues grew […]

Our main feature focuses on TikTok’s eventful 2020 so far, from the deepening of its relationship with artists and the music industry to its tangles with the Trump administration, along with the rise of the short video apps category more generally. Our Second Look section analyses recent stories and data around Hipgnosis Songs Fund; Tencent […]

US satellite-radio firm SiriusXM published its latest financials yesterday, revealing that it now has nearly 30.5 million ‘self-pay’ subscribers to its service, having added 169,000 in the third quarter of this year. Its revenue grew by 1% year-on-year to $1.6bn. Its music streaming subsidiary Pandora is still battling to turn around its listener decline though. Pandora […]

Independent publishers body IMPF has published a new ‘Global Market View 2020′ report offering figures for its members’ share of the global publishing sector. The key stats: an estimate that the global publishing market was worth €5bn (around $5.9bn) in 2019 – up from €4.63bn in 2018 – and that independent publishers accounted for 27% of […]

It’s been a while since we’ve had some big-figure predictions for the smart speakers market, but here’s research firm Canalys hoving into view with its latest forecasts. It reckons that 163m smart speakers will be shipped in 2021, which would be year-on-year growth (from its estimates for 2020) of 21%.  Speakers using Amazon’s Alexa and Google […]

In our latest Music Ally report, we examined how Snapchat had bounced back from a worrying-looking flattening of its user growth in 2018. That bounceback is continuing, judging by parent company Snap’s financial results for Q3 2020. Snap said that Snapchat ended the quarter with 249 million daily active users (DAUs), up by 18% year-on-year. It also […]

Netflix warned investors that its subscriber growth was going to slow in the second half of this year, and it has. The video streaming service added 2.2 million net new paid subscribers in the third quarter, taking it to just under 195.2 million overall. Netflix also said that it expects to pass 200 million subscribers (201.2 […]

It was a busy day for Warner Music Group yesterday, with several interrelated announcements. First, there was news of the company raising $250m of new funding through a ‘senior secured notes offering’ to be spend to “fund a portion of the aggregate cash consideration for certain acquisitions”. Later that day, a US regulatory filing offered more information on those […]

Is the biggest recorded-music market in the world nearing ‘peak streaming subscriptions’ for music? In an article for Billboard, former Spotify chief economist Will Page offers some reasons for optimism, even though there are now 110 million music subscribers in a country with 110m households. For example, he notes that there were worries that Sweden and […]

US trade body the RIAA has published its mid-year figures for Latin music in the US, and once again it has outperformed the overall market. The body recently reported that the US recorded music market grew by 5.6% year-on-year in the first half of 2020, but revenues from Latin music grew by 18.6%. At $296.1m, it accounted for […]

Short video app Triller has found itself at the centre of another controversy around its public user numbers. A report by Business Insider citing ‘six former Triller employees’ claimed that when Triller said in October 2019 that it had 13 million monthly active users, the true figure was “closer to two million”. The details are important here: […]

Distributor Amuse and consultancy Midia Research have teamed up for their second report on the independent music community. One of the headline figures from Independent Artists: Pathfinding Through a Pandemic – that the ‘artists direct’ sector grew by 32% to $873m in 2019 – isn’t a new stat, having originally been published by Midia in March this […]

Twitch has been doing more with music and musicians, and analytics firm Chartmetric has been tracking that. The result is four new charts for music on Amazon’s live-video platform, presenting the top users by viewer hours both weekly and monthly, as well as the top users by followers both weekly and all-time. Chartmetric says it’s […]

US music industry body the RIAA has published its annual mid-year stats for the recorded music market there. They show that revenues grew by 5.6% year-on-year to $5.7bn in the first half of 2020. The story here, as in other countries, is that Covid-19 had a significant impact in the second quarter of this year, […]

Facebook Watch is the dedicated video hub on Facebook, and it’s one of the main places that official music videos live on the social network, since that content was added in late July in the US. Now Facebook has provided an update on how popular Facebook Watch is. “Today, more than 1.25 billion people visit […]

Investment firm Loup Ventures keeps a close eye on Apple’s business, including its music activity. Now it has put out some estimates for Apple Music’s progress. “Apple Music has room to grow with 82m subs out of 980m active iPhone users (8%) paying for the service,” wrote managing partner Gene Munster in a blog post. […]

Bandsintown has been one of the companies around live music that has pivoted during Covid-19 – in its case, turning its site and app into places for fans to discover livestreams by artists, as well as launching its own live channel on Twitch. Now the company has published a report based on a survey of […]

TikTok has followed through on its promise to sue President Trump’s administration over its recent executive order setting a deadline for the app’s US operations to be sold or shut down. The lawsuit includes some important new figures on TikTok’s business globally, as well as in the US.  Globally, TikTok grew from 54.8 million monthly active […]

In India, Spotify is in the atypical position of being the non-dominant player in a fairly over-crowded audio-streaming market. The service has yet to update its figure of over two million MAUs for the country, announced shortly after its launch in February 2019. Since then, local leaders Gaana and JioSaavn have both claimed listenership of […]

Chinese technology firm NetEase published its latest financial results last week, with no new figures for its NetEase Cloud Music streaming service. However, the service was mentioned in the subsequent earnings call with analysts. “For NetEase Cloud Music, we continued to see triple-digit revenue growth in the second quarter year over year, with both membership and […]

Independent label Beggars Group has filed its latest annual financial results with Companies House in the UK. The company’s revenues fell from £74.2m in 2018 to £63.1m in 2019. The report notes that the 2018 figure was skewed by Beggars’ revenues from the sale of Spotify shares after the streaming service went public. “Like for like we […]

‘How Britain entertained itself during lockdown’ is the title of the latest press release from UK body the Entertainment Retailers Association (Era). Surprisingly, the answer isn’t ‘doomscrolling Twitter in tears and making forts from panic-bought toilet rolls and flour’. Era is understandably more focused on music, TV and gaming habits, and a “boom in sales […]

Music Ally has just published our latest country profile, of China, and it includes some new figures on the growth of the recorded music industry there. We already knew from the IFPI that in 2019 China’s market grew by 16% to $590.9m, becoming the seventh biggest recorded music market in the world. For the profile, […]

We haven’t written about DouYu before, because the Chinese livestreaming video platform is focused on games rather than music. The numbers are startling though: according to its latest financial results, DouYu averaged 165.3 million monthly active users in the second quarter of this year, including 58.4 million people on mobile devices. Meanwhile, DouYu generated RMB 2.51bn […]

The amount of money sloshing around in the mobile games industry continues to startle. According to analytics firm Sensor Tower, the top mobile game in July 2020 was PubG Mobile, published by Tencent. It generated $208.8m in user spending via in-app purchases on Google and Apple’s app stores that month. Comparison time: Tencent Music generated less […]

China has become an important market for Japanese artists and labels in recent years. Now streaming service NetEase Cloud Music is staking its claim to be the “platform of choice for fans of Japanese music” in China. It’s wielding a report published by research firm Small Antlers Think Tank as its proof: a survey of […]

US music-streaming and livestreaming company LiveXLive has published its latest financial results, including a new record for quarterly revenues: $10.5m. That’s in the second quarter of 2020 (its fiscal Q1), with those revenues having grown by 11% year-on-year. The company reported a net loss of $7.5m though, although at least that was down from $11m this […]

Warner Music Group has published its latest quarterly financial results, for its fiscal third quarter (calendar Q2). They reveal the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic continues to have on its business. WMG generated revenues of $1.01bn last quarter, down by 4.5% year-on-year. However, its digital revenues grew by 11% to $720m as part of that, […]

The early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic’s global spread didn’t hamper Spotify’s growth in the first quarter of this year. But how about Q2, the first full quarter (near enough) of lockdowns, furloughs and financial uncertainties across much of the world? Today we have our answer, with Spotify’s latest quarterly financial results. The post Spotify […]

Another Covid-19 lockdown trend is the sharp growth of viewing hours for livestreaming video services, particularly Twitch. Industry firms StreamElements and Arsenal·gg have published their latest ‘State of the Stream’ report quantifying this growth. “Twitch’s 2nd quarter chart bars look like skyscrapers compared to Q1’s single floor dwellings,” it claimed, with a chart showing monthly viewing hours […]

Research news of the day! “Millennials know ‘No Diggity.’ But Gen Z? Maybe half of them, at best.” This is one of the findings from an interesting study published by The Pudding on how well (or not) hit songs from the 1990s are being remembered. It’s based on more than 3m datapoints collected via a music quiz […]

Advertising industry body the IAB has published its latest figures on the podcast ads market in the US. “With an expected growth rate of 14.7%, US podcast advertising revenues are nearing the $1bn mark,” it claimed. Are they really, though? The report doesn’t actually give a figure for its 2020 revenue prediction, but it does […]

British collecting society PRS for Music has offered another warning that the Covid-19 pandemic will be delivering its biggest hit to songwriter royalties later this year. PRS has just paid out its July 2020 distribution, £132.4m, which was up by 3% year-on-year. However, CEO Andrea Martin warned the society’s members that there are tough times […]

Midia Research’s latest blog post digs in to how the structure of music hits has changed over the past 20 years, albeit with a limited dataset: the Billboard top 10 in July 2000 and July 2020. It offers four main conclusions. First, songs are shorter overall: a 16% decrease from an average length of four minutes […]

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 […]

Research firm Counterpoint Research has published its latest estimates for the size of the music streaming market globally. It claims that by the end of March there were 394m music subscriptions globally, representing year-on-year growth of 35%. Counterpoint also offered its estimates for some of the biggest players, suggesting that Spotify accounted for 33% of […]

People in the music business (us included) bang on about Fortnite a lot, but we think Roblox is another gaming platform that should be less under the radar for our industry. A new report by children’s media research firm Dubit offers some stats that might help. “Half of all children aged 9-12 in the USA […]

Analytics firm Sensor Tower has published its latest rankings for mobile apps, reporting that TikTok was the most downloaded non-gaming app globally in June 2020, ahead of Zoom and Facebook. The company claims that TikTok was downloaded more than 87m times across Apple and Google’s app stores, up 52.7% year-on-year. However, its top two markets […]

A report published by the research division of the South China Morning Post puts some new figures on the growth of internet access in China – a key driver for the streaming music market there. The report claims that there are now 904 million internet users in China – 63% of the population – with […]

Research firm Nielsen Music/MRC Data has published the ‘fifth wave’ of its ongoing study of Covid-19’s impact on the music and entertainment industries, based on surveys in the US up to the week of 10-14 June. Among the findings: audio and video music streams have recovered from their initial decline in the early weeks of […]

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 […]

Virtual reality music startup MelodyVR has published its financial results for 2019. The company’s revenues were £195k ($242k) last year, down from £1.2m in 2018. MelodyVR’s content sales – people paying to watch VR music performances in its catalogue – nearly doubled from £19k to £36.7k, but its revenue from content licensing dropped from just under £1.2m […]

In June, we reported on a claim by French industry body SNEP that the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic could deliver a €235m blow to recorded music revenues in France this year. But that’s just a fraction of the anticipated losses, it turns out. Another industry body, TPLM (Tous Pour La Musique) which represents all aspects of the French […]

Could a global pandemic take the shine off the growth in the amount of money people spend on and within mobile apps? It could not. “Consumers spent a combined total of $50.1 billion worldwide on the App Store and Google Play in the first half of 2020,” claimed app analytics firm Sensor Tower. “This was 23.4 […]

Last December, Music Ally wrote about a report from startup Rostr analysing its database of music management companies and their artists. Now it has repeated the trick for 2020. Its report, which is free, is based on more than 3,000 management firms’ data, and ranks them by roster size, Spotify audience and YouTube subscribers. It also looks at […]

There were 341 million people using paid music subscriptions at the end of 2019, according to global music industry body the IFPI. Now we’ve got an update on that figure, albeit from a different source. Consultancy firm Midia Research has published its music subscriber market share figures for Q1 2020, claiming that by the end of March […]

Music analytics firm Chartmetric has published the third and final part of its analysis on Covid-19’s impact on music consumption. The study focuses on livestreams, and the extent to which they boosted artists’ social media followings. The conclusion: yes they did. Chartmetric says that “live streams scheduled by artists from their own channels generated significant […]

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. […]

In 2011, the US accounted for 26% of global recorded music revenues. In 2019, that share had grown to 36% according to industry body the IFPI’s figures, despite that period covering considerable global expansion for music streaming services. Why is the world’s biggest music market taking an even bigger share of the revenue? Former Spotify […]

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 […]

Marketing used to be based around demographic categories or social archetypes, but the more marketers and digital platforms know about you, the more personalised they can become in terms of both messaging and products. There are enormous opportunities here but also a growing need to tread carefully around just how deep and tailored marketing can […]

In the 1980s and 1990s, Bullseye was a popular darts-based British TV game show, complete with a ‘look at what you could have won’ element where losing contestants were shown the grand prize they’d just failed to win. It’s hard not to be reminded of that by Pollstar’s announcement on Friday of its estimate for what global live-music […]

The IFPI has delayed the publication of its Global Music Report, with no new date yet set for its analysis of recorded music figures for 2019. A new report from Counterpoint Research is plugging one of the knowledge gaps: the number of people subscribing to music services globally. It claims this figure grew by 32% in 2019 […]

Audience Republic was established in 2016, three years after founder and CEO Jared Kristensen had lost $20k at a low-selling event he had put on. After three more years of organising various events, he realised that he was missing an effective solution that would help sell tickets.  The company now has offices in London, Los […]

Investment firm Raine Group has a keen interest in the independent music and DIY artists sectors, having put funding into SoundCloud and Amuse, while advising Downtown on its acquisitions of CD Baby and Fuga. Now the company has produced a report claiming that the artists using these and other companies will see strong growth in their recorded […]

UK music industry body the BPI has published its annual figures for British labels’ trade income – the money that labels actually earn, rather than the ‘retail value’ of consumer spending on music that was reported by fellow body ERA earlier this year. The unsurprising headline: more growth for labels. Their trade income grew by […]

Billie Eilish is going to need to build a new awards cabinet soon: her latest trophy is the IFPI’s award for the biggest global single of 2019, awarded to ‘Bad Guy’. The track notched up 19.5m ‘global converted track equivalents’ last year – a metric that includes audio and video streams as well as download […]

Every year, artist-rights blog The Trichordist publishes an updated ‘streaming price bible’ comparing the per-stream payouts of the major music streaming services. The latest version, for 2019, was published overnight, and as ever is based on “a mid-sized indie label with an approximately 350+ album catalog now generating over 1.5b streams annually”. Among its findings: Spotify’s […]

Music industry body the IFPI will publish its latest Global Music Report on 24 March, revealing the size and growth of the recorded music market in 2019. However, in recent years consultancy firm Midia Research has made a habit of getting in first with its own estimates. This year is no different: Midia has just published […]

Lead: Triller is not a TikTok killer – but it is certainly proving to be a hearty contender. At the moment, it is strongest in the US and it skews heavily towards hip-hop as its in-built soundtrack. Its ambitions are, however, more global and the genres it covers will naturally expand as it grows internationally. […]

It appears to be the day for new figures on the US music market. Industry body the RIAA published its year-end numbers for 2019 last night, revealing that recorded music’s retail value grew by 13% to $11.1bn last year. Meanwhile its wholesale value – the earnings for labels – grew by 11% to $7.3bn. Within the […]

Sometimes the statistics around how many people are streaming music – and how many are paying for it – can lead to confusion and misinterpretation. Recently, for example, we’ve seen one story suggesting that Amazon was “on course to overtake Apple Music” based on comparing an Amazon figure from January 2020 with one from Apple […]

We’ve written about Google’s experimental division Area 120 before: for example when it launched a project called Fundo to explore crowdfunding for social stars, or when it made a co-viewing app for YouTube called Uptime. But Area 120’s latest project is of direct relevance to the music industry. It’s called ‘Demand’, and it’s a partnership with live-music brand […]

Amazon has announced a big milestone for its music-streaming business: more than 55 million users. “The streaming service has reached more than 55 million customers globally, with subscriptions to Amazon Music Unlimited growing by more than 50% last year alone,” claimed Amazon in its announcement. In an accompanying interview with the Financial Times, music boss […]

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 […]

As Spotify launched the artist-focused element of its Wrapped 2019 promotion yesterday, the streaming service also offered some new statistics. More than 1.2 million artists were listened to for more than 100 hours on Spotify this year during the period covered by Wrapped (January to the end of October, which isn’t a widely-known fact – Mariah Carey must […]

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 […]

YouTube Music boss Lyor Cohen sat down with colleague Tuma Basa, director of urban music, for a hip-hop focused event earlier this week – and delivered a warning to labels about their A&R strategies. “I think the industry is so focused on the data that it’s a problem. You guys are very lucky that you […]

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 […]

Lead: The old rules of advertising are long gone – as is a lot of the inherent guesswork around advertising’s effectiveness. In its place has come greater tracking of ad spend and ad impact, but the entire process itself has become much more convoluted. We speak to those working in this rapidly changing world to […]

Spotify has announced its latest financial results, for the third quarter of 2019. The streaming service now has 248 million monthly active users (MAUs), up 30% year-on-year, having added 16 million in Q3. 113 million of those users are premium subscribers: 31% growth in the last year, with five million having been added during last quarter. […]

Lead: Lil Nas X might have broken on TikTok but it was his deft use of multiple remixes (and collaborations) that kept ‘Old Town Road’ in the air throughout most of 2019. He claims he has 25 remixes of follow-up track ‘Panini’ ready to go, although this might prove to be the most high-profile case […]

Audio-streaming service Mixcloud has published its financial results for 2018 through Companies House in the UK: and unlike in previous years, the accounts have been published without a small-company exemption, thus giving us an insight into the firm’s growth and profitability. The key figures: Mixcloud’s revenues in 2018 were £2.44m (around $3.1m), which was growth […]

Shazam reached 478 million annual active users in 2018, which is 78 million more than in the previous year. The company’s revenues fell by 23% to £31.4m last year, but it swung from a loss of £17.7m in 2017 to a profit of just under £124m in 2018.  That’s the benefit of being bought by […]

Music-metadata standards organisation DDEX is launching its latest standard: Media Enrichment and Description (or MEAD for short). It’s a significant expansion of the metadata that labels and distributors provide to digital services with their music, based on brainstorming sessions back in 2017 with the likes of Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, major labels, collecting societies and other interested […]

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; […]

Research firm KPMG’s India division has published its annual Media and Entertainment Report for 2019, which describes India’s digital future as a “mass of niches”. It’s very good for rooting what’s happening around music-streaming in the context of the wider digital-media ecosystem, as well as the Indian economy. There are some good music specifics though. “The […]

Pop the champagne corks! Well, if you’re one of Music Ally’s American readers reading this story at the start of your working day, perhaps leave that until… whatever time won’t get you sacked for too-early-in-the-day boozing. But yes: celebrations, because the latest mid-year figures for the US recorded-music market are out from the RIAA, and they look […]

Well, it’s not so much ‘blocking’ as it is an option for Gmail’s iPhone app not to automatically display external images when people are reading emails. But that in turn will have an impact on some of the technologies used by marketers to track (for example) emails being opened. Not that this is the main reason Google […]

British broadcaster the BBC is removing its live stations from radio-streaming service TuneIn. Well, on most of its platforms, anyway. “This change is driven primarily by the BBC’s efforts to standardise how listeners in the UK access BBC stations, which unfortunately, is something we are unable to accommodate at this time,” is how TuneIn explained 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 […]

In an exchange with US senator Chris Coons, Amazon has been explaining more about how it stores data on people’s interactions with its Alexa voice assistant. Coons had written to the company asking how long it stores recordings and transcripts, and got an answer from Amazon’s VP of public policy Brian Huseman. And the answer? […]

Job title: Product Owner Responsible to: Head of Technology Location of work: Kings Cross, London   Main purpose of role Spinnup is a forward-looking, disruptive part of Universal Music, the world’s biggest group of record labels. As a digital distribution platform, unsigned artists use Spinnup to distribute their music to music services like Spotify and […]

There are big opportunities for the music industry in podcasts, but one of the big barriers is licensing: the cost and complexity for podcasters of securing the rights to actually play music in their shows. This was one of the clearest points made last night at the BPI and Music Ally’s ‘Pod Only Knows’ event […]

Streaming was the big driver behind the recorded-music industry’s 9.7% growth in 2018, according to the IFPI. In fact, streaming revenues grew by 34% to $8.9bn, accounting for 47% of the global total. At the end of 2018, there were 255 million users of paid streaming subscriptions, up from 176 million at the end of 2017. […]

We’re not sure how intentional the nod towards the ’50 Shades’ books is in the title of new website 50 States of Music. Perhaps it’s better not to ask. But the site is a good thing: launched by US music-industry bodies A2IM, ASCAP, BMI, the RIAA and SoundExchange to pull data together showing music’s economic value […]

Spotify has published its financial results for the first quarter of 2019, including a significant milestone: 100 million premium subscribers. That’s up from 96 million at the end of 2018. and 75 million a year ago. Spotify now has 217 million monthly active users overall, so its ‘conversion rate’ is now just over 46%, up […]

mtheory is seeking a motivated, curious, team-oriented and organized individual to work closely with managers, artists and mtheory teammates to facilitate client success in today’s music market. The Marketing Director will work as a key project manager across all aspects of global marketing campaigns, at the direction of mtheory senior management to execute and implement […]

Instrumental – which describes itself as a “data science-driven talent discovery business” – has partnered with live agency Coda to offer data on and insights into the fastest-growing acts that are self-releasing as well those on major or indie labels. Instrumental will create bespoke tools for Coda that will track acts across a variety of […]

Global recorded-music revenues grew by 9.7% in 2018, according to industry body the IFPI. Its annual Global Music Report, which is published today, reveals that strong growth in streaming revenues more than made up for the continued decline in sales of CDs and music downloads. The headline figure is $19.1bn: that’s the total revenue for […]

In today’s data-rich (some would say data-overloaded) music industry, the role of chief information officer – CIO – is increasingly important for large music companies. So Universal Music Group’s appointment of Dan Morales as its CIO is notable news. He joins from a similar role at eBay. “With Dan as CIO, we are adding an […]

In lots of countries around the world, the recorded-music industry has bounced back to growth. Last week, for example, the RIAA announced that US revenues grew by 12% in 2018. In the UK, the growth last year was 8.9% according to the BPI and ERA. The story in these countries is that the growth in […]

Spotify launched in India last week, amid a controversy surrounding its licensing – and a legal injunction filed by Warner Music Group. That row continues, but how is the Indian launch going otherwise? Spotify has confirmed to Music Ally that a week after launch, it now has more than one million users in India. That’s […]

“We’re entering the Golden Age of Podcasts” claims a headline on a blog post by Chartable, a company that focuses on podcast analytics. This is based on an online survey conducted by the company recently, which aims to track some trends in the US podcasting market. Among them: 10.8% of respondents report listening to podcasts every […]

Music-analytics platform Soundcharts is shaking up the way it charges for its service. Its subscription plans will now allow unlimited users, with the cost varying instead by how many artists are being tracked. “The music industry is a network of interconnected teams working on separate artist’s careers. Record labels, agents, promoters and managers constantly need to share […]

Lead: as synchronisation grows in importance, a new wave of tools is emerging to make that whole process work seamlessly and smarter, covering both micro-licensing and pitch management. We look at the key players here, what they do and where they are taking synch – plus consider how AI is set to shake things up […]

The team of Swedish researchers behind new book ‘Spotify Teardown’ have already roused the ire of the streaming service, which criticised their methods of digging in to its system. But with the book on the verge of release, the authors have given an interview to Rolling Stone that puts forward their view. “The issue became: How does one […]

Lead: Smoke and mirrors have always been part of music, but when it comes to data, truth is starting to play second fiddle to hype. The nefarious and ruthless are finding ways to “massage” social media and streaming numbers while offering the desperate and gullible a quick fix. But the platforms are getting wise to […]

Spotify has published its latest quarterly financial results, covering the final quarter of 2018. The post Spotify financial results: revenues up by 30% as premium subs reach 96m appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Facebook published its latest financial results yesterday, with quarterly revenues up 30% year-on-year to $16.91bn, leading to a net profit of $6.88bn in the fourth quarter of 2018. Mobile advertisements accounted for around 93.5% of Facebook’s overall revenues last quarter. For the year as a whole, Facebook generated just over $55.8bn in revenues, up 37% […]