The USA’s digital music market is one of the most vibrant globally and shows little sign of slowing down, even if the price paid for subscriptions is slowing The post Country Profile – USA 2021 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

After coming late to streaming, Canada is now experiencing a boom in subscriber numbers and overall music consumption. The post Country Profile – Canada 2021 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

South Korea’s music business remains buoyant in 2021, with digital music in particular on the rise – despite K-Pop fans’ enduring love of physical goods The post Country Profile – South Korea 2021 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Hungary came late to digital music but is rapidly making up for lost time, transforming it into one of Europe’s fastest-growing music markets The post Country Profile – Hungary 2021 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Belgium may not be a digital music powerhouse but music streaming is in the ascendance there, after DSPs improved their service in the country. The post Country Profile – Belgium 2021 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

After a standout performance in 2019, the Russian recorded music industry looks set to continue its path towards being a global top 10 market. The post Country Profile – Russia 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

A tech-savvy population that has wholeheartedly embraced streaming has insulated the Dutch music industry from the worst effects of Covid The post Country Profile – Netherlands 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Brazil’s digital music industry has made up for a slow start with years of growth, a trend that should continue into 2021 and beyond The post Country Profile – Brazil 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Digital business has held up well and international revenue reached an all-time high in Australia despite inevitable levelling off as a result of Covid-19 The post Country Profile – Australia 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Digital music revenue in Poland was higher than physical for the first time ever in the first half of 2020 and streaming has helped local talent – already big in Poland – to explode The post Country Profile – Poland 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Japan’s recorded music market lost 19% of value in the first half of 2020, despite an increase in digital revenue of 11% – but it was a drop that was expected, given the impact of COVID-19. The post Country Profile – Japan 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Is everyone an influencer in 2020? Well, not everyone, but according to investment firm SignalFire “more than 50 million people around the world consider themselves creators, despite the creator economy only being born a decade ago”. That’s the introduction for its new report, ‘Creator Economy Market Map‘, which catalogues more than 100 of the startups […]

A lack of reliable figures makes China a difficult music market to understand. Even so, its digital potential is vast. The post Country Profile – China 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Singapore’s digital music business is small but – relatively – thriving, with a large number of streaming services, a strong tech scene and a high conversion rate from free to premium streaming. The post Country Profile – Singapore 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In a fast-growing region for recorded music income, Mexico has continued to shine, its impressive annual results showing continued growth and impressive numbers. The post Country Profile – Mexico 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Israel offers unique challenges and unique opportunities to the global music business – a relatively small country with a strong tech culture, where music streaming has, perhaps, yet to really catch on The post Country Profile – Israel 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The global music industry may be watching Sweden closely to see when the streaming pioneer will plateau, but the signs, pre-COVID anyway, indicates that Spotify’s home country still has potential for further growth. The post Country Profile – Sweden 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Last month, we reported on research published by Goldman Sachs predicting that global music industry revenues would drop by 25% this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Those figures included a 75% plummet for live music revenues, and a slowdown in growth for recorded music (to 3%) and music publishing (3.5%). Yesterday, we reported on Kobalt CEO […]

Colombia’s music industry has gone from strength to digital strength, giving some hope that it may come out of the global pandemic in relatively healthy shape. The post Country Profile – Colombia 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Nobody can know exactly what the overall financial impact of Covid-19 will be on the music industry in 2020, but that isn’t stopping analysts from guessing. Goldman Sachs made its prediction last week, and it’s a sobering one. “Global music revenue will drop by 25% in 2020 on our estimates, largely due to the widespread […]

Nigeria is bursting with musical talent. But should it also be considered a potential source of revenue for labels? The post Country Profile – Nigeria 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

US radio group NPR and research firm Edison Research have published their latest Smart Audio Report, which usually has plenty of interesting data on digital listening habits in the US. The new edition, for spring 2020, has added interest because it’s been asking people how Covid-19 and its accompanying lockdown has changed those habits. 26% of […]

Spain was once seen as one of the toughest markets for recorded music thanks to the popularity of piracy. The country’s turnaround, fuelled by streaming, has been a big positive story for the music industry in the past decade. Recent figures published by industry body Promusicae revealed that the Spanish market grew by 22.5% in […]

The Spanish music industry was showing signs of real progress in 2019. And then COVID-19 struck The post Country Profile – Spain 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The BPI and ERA remain positive about the outlook for the UK’s recorded music industry, despite COVID-19 and Brexit representing extremely tough challenges for the business The post Country Profile – United Kingdom 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

This is one of those things that may seem obvious, but it’s useful to have some hard data for. The Pew Research Center in the US has been surveying Americans about whether privacy concerns would stop them from using a product or service. 52% of respondents said that they had recently decided not to use something […]

Midia Research has published a report on the entertainment categories benefiting from what it is terming ‘The Self-Isolation Entertainment Boom’. Traditional media, notably TV and especially radio, is growing, with the report noting that in Italy 72% of respondents say they are currently watching more TV. Given radio has been slipping in importance in recent years, Midia […]

Germany looks to be finally throwing off its reputation as a digital slowcoach with streaming numbers sending overall music revenue into the black, despite the physical market still playing an important role. The post Country Profile – Germany 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Music streaming is surging in the US, bringing with it strong growth in recorded music income. But questions remain about how long this can last The post Country Profile – USA 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Canada may have been initially slow to embrace streaming, but recent years have seen the market make steady gains, even if YouTube remains a constant source of irritation The post Country Profile – Canada 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Country radio stations in the US have been criticised strongly in recent times for their male-dominated playlists. A study published earlier this month by SongData’s Jada Watson showed why: women accounted for just 10% of daily spins and slots in Billboard’s year-end country airplay chart. But now a separate study commissioned by country media brand CMT suggests […]

Turkey may have one of the lowest per-capita spends on music globally, but recent years have seen recorded music income grow significantly while new digital players have helped streaming numbers to boom. The post Country Profile – Turkey 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Standing astride a hugely successful domestic output, the South Korean music industry is thriving across the genres and 2019 figures are expected to show another strong period of growth The post Country Profile – South Korea 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Consultancy firm Midia Research has published an interesting blog post triggered by the curious (and highly lucrative) afterlife of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ through TV shows and now streaming playlists. Toto’s ‘Africa’ and Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ are also under the microscope. “The three songs illustrate the development of the song economy,” […]

Thailand’s digital infrastructure has spearheaded growth in social media and internet usage that has had a positive effect on streaming revenues, with the market picking up in 2018 for the first time in five years The post Country Profile – Thailand 2020 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Based on a survey of 2,500 people in the US and China listening to a variety of musical genres, research scientists at Berkeley have identified at least 13 emotions triggered by music across cultures. They are: amusing; annoying; anxious/tense; beautiful; calm/relaxing/serene; dreamy; energising/pumped up; erotic/desirous; indignant/defiant; joyful/cheerful; sad/depressing; scary/fearful; and triumphant/heroic. “We have rigorously documented the largest […]

Italy’s digital music take-up lags behind most of its EU neighbours with only 1.5 million premium streaming subscribers. Nonetheless, that’s still a jump of 0.5m in less than a year and streaming is enjoying growth The post Country Profile – Italy 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Journalists, analysts and research companies have been warning about a ‘Facebook flight’ – people migrating away from the social network – for years now, yet overall, the company’s user base has continued to grow. eMarketer has some new predictions out this morning though, focused on two markets – France and Germany – where it says the migration is real, and “even […]

Research firm Edison Research has won plenty of friends with the reports that it publishes with NPR: ‘Smart Audio Report’ tracking US usage of smart speakers, and more recently the ‘Spoken Word Audio Report’ exploring consumption of podcasts and other non-music content. Now it’s launching something new: a ‘Podcast Consumer Quarterly Tracker’ that will survey […]

As the business hub of the Middle East and North Africa, the UAE belies its geographical size. In the case of the music industry, global streaming services have joined record companies in mining its significant potential The post Country Profile – UAE 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

UK radio-measurement body Rajar has just published its data for the third quarter of 2019, and also its ‘Midas’ audio survey of British consumers. There are some useful stats on the music-streaming world. According to the latest Midas research, 17 million Brits now use ‘a premium on-demand music service’. However, according to Rajar, on-demand music still only […]

A significant 8m jump in users of streaming services in Russia in a single year illustrates how those platforms are engaging music consumers, while on social media, vKontakte’s vast popularity is helping to fuel the growth The post Country Profile – Russia 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Homegrown acts and local hip-hop artists have driven a surge in streaming in the Netherlands over the past four years. There are signs this trend is slowing but industry figures are positive there’s room for more growth The post Country Profile – Netherlands 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

After a blockbuster first half of the year, the Spanish music industry saw an unlikely spike in CD sales. While that might be a temporary blip, overall growth was at 27% and the news from Spain is hugely positive The post Country Profile – Spain 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Four years of growth, combined with a strong established industry with room for further expansion has put the Australian recorded music business into a new optimistic mindset The post Country Profile – Australia 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Chile is South America’s leader in digital and telecommunications infrastructure and as such the country is blazing a trail for streaming in the region’s music industry with revenues up by 38% The post Country Profile – Chile 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The Philippines, like many individual markets in Southeast Asia, is something of an enigma as far as the Western music industry is concerned. However, a promising digital market is being fueled by a young population The post Country Profile – Philippines 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

If you’re looking for some new reading material around smart speakers and voice interfaces, try investment firm Mangrove Capital Partners’ new report ‘Voice: Welcoming the Next Generation of Disruptors’. “Importantly, this shift will go far beyond checking the weather forecast, requesting music or setting a timer,” is how the report summarises the impact of voice […]

Mexico has turned its world upside down in an unlikely situation where music is driving smartphone adoption rather than the other way around. And it’s all helping to send recorded music revenue to new heights. The post Country Profile – Mexico 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

YouTube boasts immense strength in Canada but it is partly responsible for the slow adoption of subscription streaming as the country’s music industry aims to improve the revenue disparity for Canadian creators The post Country Profile – Canada 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Ian Hogarth was the co-founder and CEO of concert-discovery app Songkick, before stepping down in early 2016. Nowadays, he’s a prominent figure in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) startups, including as an angel investor. His ‘AI Nationalism’ article from last year is well worth a read, on that front. But so is the latest version […]

A report claiming that classical music could be ‘streaming’s next genre’ comes with an important caveat – to its credit, one that’s openly stated – that it was commissioned by a classical-music streaming service. Idagio enlisted research company Midia Research to survey 8,000 adult music consumers across eight countries, including the US, UK and Germany. […]

Almost 20m people in Japan subscribed to a music streaming service at the end of 2018 – with both free and paid subscriber numbers set to rise further over the next few years as streaming revenues remain healthy The post Country Profile – Japan 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

What do “elite upcoming lawyers from around the world” really think about file-sharing and copyright? A new study based on a survey of international LL.M. (Masters of Law) students at Harvard University has been trying to find out. “We expected lawyers to take highly conservative ethical positions on the issue of online copyright infringement,” wrote the […]

The Norwegian recorded music industry has settled into the contented groove of a mature digital market with price rises for some streaming services having little impact on revenue or subscriber numbers The post Country Profile – Norway 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

When the music industry criticises YouTube for the royalties generated by music videos, it’s driven by the assumption that music drives a LOT of YouTube viewing. But that’s often just what it is: an assumption, without much hard data to back it up. With that in mind, a new study by video and music analytics firm […]

Much as in the rest of the world streaming income has been on the rise in Poland. But this has not – for the moment – come at the expense of physical sales with Poland 32% up on physical product in Q1 2019 The post Country Profile – Poland 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. […]

The impact of streaming in what is now the tenth largest recorded music market in the world could lead to “three to five years of significant growth” – and “the sky’s the limit” says Sony Brasil’s president The post Country Profile – Brazil 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Every generation has its folk devil – the one thing that is apparently going to corrupt and destroy “the young people”. The hula hoop, radio, Hollywood, TV, rock ’n’ roll, Cabbage Patch Kids (maybe), acid house, computer games. On and on the list will roll. The current one (apart from Fortnite) is social media. But a […]

A few years ago, Spotify UK was urging labels to adopt an ‘on air, on stream’ policy with new tracks – meaning that as soon as they were played on the radio, they should be available on streaming services too. In 2019, the notion that this was ever even a debate may seem bizarre, but […]

The idea of ‘top-up’ crowdfunding-style payments within music-streaming subscription services is something Music Ally has floated in the past: the idea that (for example) Spotify’s billing relationship with its subscribers could be used to help them spend a dollar or two a month more on individual musicians, likely in exchange for exclusive content and other […]

Streaming revenue in Sweden increased another 8% in 2018 to make up 90% of total music sales. The inevitable question is how long can the Swedish market – long an aspirational model to the global music industry – continue to grow? The post Country Profile – Sweden 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music […]

There is plenty of optimism surrounding the South African music industry as revenue growth returned in 2018 and numerous streaming services launched in a country just setting out on its digital music journey The post Country Profile – South Africa 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Research firm IDC has published its latest predictions for shipments of ‘smart home devices’ – a category that includes smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home, but also home-security, lighting, smart thermostats and video-streaming gadgets. Music Ally is most interested in smart speakers, obviously: IDC reckons that 144.3m of them will ship globally this year, and […]

The “gilets jaunes” movement in France has had a significant negative impact on physical music sales, with protests peaking at the end of the year when those sales are typically at their strongest. This followed a 12-month period when France added 1m streaming subscribers The post Country Profile – France 2019 appeared first on Music […]

The post Country Profile – Germany 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Former BPI and Spotify research exec Keith Jopling is now working with Midia Research among other music companies, thinking about big-picture strategy. His latest blog post, published for Midia, explores what the next evolution might be for music-streaming playlists. “There is plenty of scope for further creative development of the format. We are far from ‘peak […]

The post Country Profile – South Korea 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The post Country Profile – United Kingdom 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

“Today, it is estimated that more than 5 billion people have mobile devices, and over half of these connections are smartphones,” explains the latest study from the US-based Pew Research Center. It proceeds to explore some of the differences between countries: fertile material for anyone in the music industry thinking about smartphone habits around the […]

The post Country Profile – China 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The post Country Profile – Turkey 2019 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

If you’re following the mobile apps and gaming markets, a couple of reports published yesterday will make interesting reading. App Annie has put out its annual ‘The State of Mobile’ report, which claims that across Apple’s App Store, Android’s Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China, there were 194bn worldwide downloads in 2018. […]