Web3 imprint Probably A Label is exploring the intersection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and near field communications (NFC) technology. The post Probably A Label’s latest NFT project is a $60 NFC t-shirt appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

This afternoon sees the publication of the IFPI’s Global Music Report: the annual assessment of how the recorded music industry is growing. The post Talking recorded music’s growth in 2022: ‘Emerging markets led the way’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The post Campaigns :: 8 March 2023 – U2, 50 years of hip-hop, Nina Simone, Yoko Ono appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

If you need another nudge on music streaming’s boom times facing their biggest challenge yet, yesterday’s WMG financials may provide it. The post WMG revenues fall but new CEO says ‘music is still undervalued’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Theoz, a popular influencer and musician in Sweden, is launching the ‘Theoz Vinterland’ experience on Roblox on14 February. The post Swedish artist Theoz set for three-month concert on Roblox appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Interesting and inventive new campaigns from Rihanna & Apple Music, Warner & Roblox, Spinnin’ Records, and Dr Dre. The post Campaigns :: 8 February 2023 – Rihanna & Apple Music, Warner & Roblox, Spinnin’ Records, Dr Dre appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Warner Music Group’s expansion in India is continuing this morning with its latest investment: in digital media firm Divo. The post Warner Music buys majority stake in Indian music firm Divo appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We’ve said this before, but on platforms like Roblox, music activations have tended to be one-offs, rather than persistent worlds. The post Warner Music Group gets persistent on Roblox with Rhythm City appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Warner Music Group published its latest Environmental Social Governance (ESG) report yesterday, including new figures. The post WMG reveals first numbers from its legacy unrecouped program appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Warner Music Group became one of the landowners on web3 virtual world The Sandbox in January 2022. Now it’s holding a party there. The post WMG reveals plans for Spinnin’ Records party in The Sandbox appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Shinedown released Planet Zero, their seventh studio album, in June 2022. To build their profile in the UK, Blackstar Agency were brought in to explore ways to connect them with new audiences. The post Behind The Campaign :: Shinedown appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Oana Ruxandra has been a prime mover in a host of new partnerships and tech experimentation for Warner Music Group. The post WMG’s Oana Ruxandra on music’s evolution: ‘Conservatism is out the door!’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Another web3/metaverse partnership for Warner Music Group: the partner is DressX, which has been building a business in digital fashion. The post WMG takes a stake in augmented-reality fashion startup DressX appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Time for a few more music NFT announcements before Christmas, including the latest partnership for Warner Music Group. The post Music NFTs roundup: WMG x LGND Music, Punx, Winamp… appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The television industry loves its acronyms, and FAST (free, ad-supported, streaming TV) is the latest buzzy one. The post Warner Music’s WMX launches three FAST music channels with Roku appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

These are testing times for the crypto world, but there is still plenty of activity going on around NFTs, music and web3 technologies. The post NFTs roundup: OpenSea, Warner Chappell, Probably a Label… appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

WMG had another strong quarter in Q3 2022, with its financial results revealing a 9% year-on-year growth in the major’s revenues. The post Warner Music Group revenues grew 9% to $1.5bn in Q3 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

WMG’s latest label has a wide-ranging geographic focus: Africa, India, the Middle East, Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. The post WMG launches ‘Out of Order’ label for emerging-markets music appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Startup Anything World has big ambitions to make it easier for people to create 3D worlds. Now it has a big new round of funding. The post Anything World raises $7.5m from investors including WMG appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The lines between labels, music publishers and management companies get ever blurrier, as shown by Moon Projects’ new publishing arm. The post Moon Projects adds publishing division via Warner Chappell partnership appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

There has been a growing wave of concern and anger within the music industry about how Black artists’ lyrics have been used as evidence against them in US courtrooms. The post Labels, artists and DSPs join campaign to protect Black art appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

UK charity the Music Venue Trust launched its ‘Own Our Venues’ campaign earlier this year with the aim of raising enough money to buy the freeholds of independent music venues, and thus safeguard their futures. The post Sony Music, WMG and Ticketmaster back ‘Own Our Venues’ campaign appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Of all the social media platforms, Pinterest might be the one most under the radar for the music industry. The post Pinterest ups music activities with WMG, Merlin and BMG appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s a partnership with “former celebrity restaurateur turned web3 creator” Jeremy Fall, riffing off his existing Probably Nothing brand. The post Warner Records debuts own web3 imprint Probably A Label appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

A new legal rumble afoot in the digital music world involves a company called Blue Spike and its patents for digital watermarking technology. The post WMG and UMG sued for patent infringement by Blue Spike appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Warner Music Group has become the first major to sign up for SoundCloud’s user-centric ‘fan-powered royalties’ system. The post WMG signs up for SoundCloud’s ‘fan-powered royalties’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

As music streaming services get deeper into podcasts, so the major labels’ in-house capabilities to produce these shows is evolving. The post Warner Music Group now has an in-house podcast network appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It has become the second major label to announce its plans for helping musicians who are still unrecouped from deals signed decades ago. The post WMG follows Sony Music in tackling unrecouped artists problem appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Warner Music Group has revealed its latest strategic move in Africa: a majority stake in distributor Africori. The post WMG buys majority stake in African distributor Africori appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The Music Fund is one of a cluster of startups promising to pay artists advances based on predicted streaming royalties, while leaving them full ownership of their rights. The post More fintech/music crossover as Hifi buys The Music Fund appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

One of the things we’ve been banging on about in our coverage of games platform Roblox is its open nature, and its community of developers. The post WMG invests in Roblox developer Supersocial’s $5.2m round appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

UK firm Lickd is one of the startups trying to make it easier for YouTubers and other online creators to license commercial music to use in their videos. Now it has raised £5.1m of funding from some very interesting investors: Warner Music Group, Fortnite publisher (and Apple nemesis) Epic Games, and the investment firm of […]

Warner Music Group’s latest splashing of its cash is focused on the Middle East, and independent label Rotana Music. The undisclosed investment includes a deal for WMG’s Ada Worldwide label services division to distribute Rotana’s releases “globally outside of MENA and via YouTube for the entire world”. “We’re especially excited about the opportunity to both […]

Warner Music Group has teamed up with Feed Media Group – the company behind B2B music firm Feed.fm – to launch an initiative that aims to make it easier for startups to license music. It’s called Adaptr, and its core is a pre-licensed library of music for developers to use in their apps, for which they’ll pay […]

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 […]

As India’s music streaming market grows, so the western major labels continue to seek out partners to grow their foothold there. The latest example is Warner Music Group’s new distribution agreement with Sky Digital India, an aggregator of Punjabi music from more than 42 Indian labels, as well as running a collection of Punjabi music […]

Gaming platform Roblox was all set to go public in late 2020, before putting off its IPO until this year to give more time to decide how to price it. Now the company has sprung a surprise with a new funding round of $520m – its Series H round – valuing Roblox at $29.5bn. The round was led by VC […]

Tidal is swelling its catalogue of hi-res music, announcing yesterday that “millions” of Warner Music tracks in the MQA format have been added to its HiFi tier. Tidal also announced that “since 2019, MQA users have doubled on Tidal, and Tidal HiFi users now stream 40% more tracks in Master Quality than last year” – […]

Streaming service Audiomack has a new deal with Warner Music Group, which for the first time includes Africa, Canada and Jamaica. It’s the first of those that’s most interesting, coming just a week after Audiomack announced a partnership with smartphone maker Transsion Holdings in that region. “Under the new deal, not only will our teams benefit from […]

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 […]

B2B streaming service Soundtrack Your Brand has renewed its licensing deal with Warner Music Group, a couple of months after striking an agreement with Universal Music Group. In WMG’s case, it’s a renewal of the deal signed two years ago with Soundtrack Your Brand, which provides music to businesses including retailers, restaurants and hotels. The news […]

We should clarify this headline quickly: Amazon Music HD already has many more tracks from Universal Music and Warner Music. The news is that Amazon is working with the two labels to remaster thousands of tracks in ‘Ultra High Definition’ for its hi-res streaming service. Amazon’s definition of Ultra HD is tracks with a bit […]

Post-IPO, there’s a flurry of dealmaking and senior appointments happening at Warner Music Group, as the company gears up for its next stage of growth. Today alone it has announced new partnerships with Indian company Tips Music and investment firm SOSV. The former deal will see Warner Music India distributing the film-music label’s music in […]

Warner Music Group’s Arts Music division has been steadily growing its catalogue of kids and family music, with partners including Sesame Workshop, Mattel and Build-a-Bear Workshop. Its latest deal is with a popular YouTube children’s music brand, Super Simple Songs. Well, with its parent company Skyship Entertainment anyway, which will be making the Super Simple Songs […]

Warner Music Group’s distribution arm ADA Worldwide is on an expansion drive. In July, it launched ADA Latin to oversee Latin America and Latin music in the US as well as Spain and Portugal. Now it’s turning its attention to Asia. ADA Asia will be headquartered in Singapore, with a remit to sign up artists and independent […]

Kidd Keo is a Spanish hip-hop artist signed to Warner Music Latina, and now the label has launched an official mobile game for his new album ‘Back To Rockport’. Released for iOS and Android, Back To Rockport – The Game is an endless-runner game in the same vein as app hits Temple Run and Subway Surfers. […]

Dua Lipa is the latest major artist to launch a TikTok challenge, but in her case, she’s looking for fans to appear in her next proper music video. The challenge is #DuaVideo and runs for a week, having been launched yesterday with a video by Dua herself. Fans are being challenged to submit clips showing their creative skills […]

Warner Music Group’s latest acquisition is an intriguing one: of Israeli company Imgn Media, which creates videos and memes designed to go viral on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. TechCrunch reported that WMG paid “just under $100m” for the company, which claims that its content generates more than 3bn views a month, with more than 40 million subscribers […]

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, […]

Having published its latest financial results this morning, Warner Music Group held its quarterly earnings call this afternoon, with CEO Steve Cooper and CFO Eric Levin fielding questions from analysis. One of those questions focused on Spotify’s podcasts expansion, and whether it’s causing tensions around the potential impact on royalties paid out to companies like […]

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, […]

Warner Music Group’s push for diversity and inclusion across its company has a new boss. Dr Maurice Stinnett will be WMG’s new head of global equity, diversity and inclusion, having joined from a similar role at BSE Global, owner of NBA team the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center venue. Stinnett certainly has seniority: he’ll […]

British artist Lianne La Havas has just released her latest, self-titled album, and one of the marketing elements for it wants to encourage fans to get planting… virtually. The ‘Flowerbed’ website is exactly that: a digital flowerbed where fans can plant a new flower every day. They make those flowers bloom by signing in to Spotify […]

Warner Music Central Europe has created a stream-to-unlock initiative to push ‘100Tausend’ (‘100 Thousand’), the new single from German artist Mike Singer which is released on 17 July. Users going to a page on his website pick their streaming service of choice and then they have to play ‘Paranoid’ (the first single from the new […]

Imagine if 2D was four times better, or if 3D was, ahem, 2.67 times better. That’ll be 8D! And it’s 8D that Finnish artist Artem, who’s signed to Warner Music, is exploring with his new music video. We should stress, 8D isn’t about extra dimensions, but rather about a recently-developed way of recording and editing […]

On Friday it emerged that Chinese tech giant Tencent had bought a chunk of shares in Warner Music Group… but confusion reigned over exactly how much it had invested. The Wall Street Journal claimed it was $200m, while MBW said it was around $100m. As it turned out, both were right. Tencent Music Entertainment, the music streaming […]

Warner Music Group had a good first day of trading following its IPO this week. The company priced its shares at $25, valuing the major label group at $12.75bn. By the end of the day, WMG’s share price had risen to $30.86, sending its valuation to around $15.36bn. The IPO is being watched closely by […]

Last week, Warner Music Group filed to go public in its IPO: you can read our analysis of the filing’s juicier bits here. According to the Financial Times, WMG was planning to announce the pricing for its shares in the IPO yesterday – which would in turn reveal the valuation of the company – but decided to […]

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. […]

Warner Music Group announced its latest quarterly financial results yesterday, but in the earnings call, CEO Steve Cooper kept his cards close to his chest regarding the label’s upcoming IPO. “The current market conditions are obvious, so our board and management will continue to monitor the situation,” Cooper told analysts. However, there was some news later: “We have […]

This weekend (24-26 April), Warner Music Group is hosting the virtual PlayOn Fest where listeners can “relive epic performances one time only”. Over the three days, past shows from a huge range of acts, among them Coldplay, Green Day and Janelle Monáe (we only picked these three as they rhyme, but there are MANY more) will be […]

Warner Music Group is increasing its footprint in Africa with an investment in Africori, a distribution, rights management and artist development company. The deal will give Warner’s ADA distribution division access to a range of African artists through Africori’s roster of 6,500 artists and 700 labels, taking on their distribution and marketing globally. Warner will […]

The coronavirus pandemic appeared to have put the long-running soap opera of Spotify’s licensing renewals with major labels on hiatus. Now it’s returning: with concrete progress. “Warner Music Group and Spotify are pleased to announce a renewed global licensing partnership. This expanded deal covers countries where Spotify is available today, as well as additional markets,” […]

Warner Music Group’s Big Beat Records label is preparing to release a new album called ‘Big Beat Ignition: Space’ on 3 April. The 10-track compilation has an intergalactic theme – “anyone else down for a space rave right now?” – and a creative marketing campaign drawing on data from NASA and the European Space Agency, as […]

Warner Music Group may be delaying the plans to go public that it announced earlier this year. The label group has not made an official announcement, and indeed hadn’t yet confirmed specific timescale for its IPO anyway. CNBC’s report claimed that WMG and another about-to-IPO company, shoemaker Cole Haan, “had hoped to communicate to the market […]

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, so if you have a partner (or an object of your affections) how are you planning to celebrate? Chocolates and flowers? Furry handcuffs and a glint in the eye? A brisk lecture about Valentine’s Day being a cynical creation of the greetings-card industry? Pfft. All of these things (especially the last […]

“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 […]

Here’s an interesting job title for a major label: senior privacy counsel. Warner Music Group has just created the role, and appointed Clare McConnell to it, reporting in to WMG’s general counsel, international, Kate Logan. “Clare is an online privacy expert and specialist in compliance with data privacy legislation in the US, Europe and beyond,” […]

A T-shirt or a flimsy tour programme was the bulk of merchandise in the “old days” – mass-produced items to shift quickly when an act was on tour. Fortunately, things have changed dramatically in recent years – with a clear drive to be as environmentally aware as possible. Print-on-demand technology is also allowing acts to […]

Ever since co-founding distributor The Orchard in 1997, Scott Cohen has been known as one of the music-industry executives with an intense curiosity about new technologies and their potential applications for musicians and rightsholders – even when (or perhaps, especially when) they are disruptive to current business models and ways of thinking.

 The post WMG’s Scott […]

You’ve likely read the news earlier this week that Atlantic Records UK president Ben Cook was stepping down, as the result of an incident seven years ago when he went to a party dressed as a member of Run DMC. Cook was disciplined for the incident last year, but has only now stepped down, which […]

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 […]

Our focus is on music/tech startups, and their interaction with the music industry. Screenwriter William Goldman’s famous line about Hollywood – ”Nobody knows anything” – applies just as well to the task of spotting successful music/tech startups. But what Music Ally does know is that whenever we’ve been curious about startups in the present, it’s given us […]

Warner Music Group published its latest quarterly financials yesterday, with its revenues up 10.4% year-on-year to $1.06bn, including 12.5% growth in its digital revenue to $648m – 61.2% of the total. Within that, WMG’s recorded-music revenue grew by 13.8% to $913m, but its publishing revenue actually fell by 7.5% to $147m – “lower market share and loss […]

The launch of a smartphone app for fans to create and share their own videos with Ed Sheeran’s music (legally!) forming the soundtrack should be big news. But it seems that the Ed No. 6 app is only available in Australia for now. It’s been launched by Warner Music Australia for Android and iOS smartphones, with […]

Behind the music industry’s fiercely competitive public face hides a wider spirit of digital collaboration, according to Tuhin Roy, the executive who leads Universal Music’s efforts to support early-stage digital music companies. Roy was speaking at the Sónar+D conference in Barcelona alongside Warner Music’s Tiago Teixeira Correia, on a panel that gave a rare glimpse into the […]

Warner Music Group has a revamped website for its Warner Classics & Erato arm, which it hopes will capitalise on the potential of streaming for the classical-music audience. So much so, that Warner has built streaming directly in to the new website. Visitors will be able to stream 30-second clips from the Warner Classics & Erato […]

We don’t get to report on stuffed-animal announcements very often in Music Ally’s bulletin, but today we bring you news that retailer Build-A-Bear Workshop is launching its own record label. Build-A-Bear Records is the result of a partnership with Warner Music Group’s Arts Music division and its Warner Chappell publishing arm. The plan is to […]

Earlier this year, AI-music startup Endel revealed plans to release AI-generated albums through a distribution deal with Warner Music Group. And it definitely *is* a distribution deal: headlines about Endel becoming the first AI to ‘sign to a label’ were wide of the mark. Five albums came out earlier this year: ‘Clear Night’, ‘Rainy Night’, ‘Cloudy Afternoon’, […]

Oana Ruxandra will be Warner Music Group’s new lead of business development for recorded music, reporting directly in to CEO Steve Cooper. “A talented negotiator and collaborative leader, Oana has a first-class strategic brain and keen sense of how to get deals done swiftly and effectively,” wrote Cooper in an email to colleagues. “Oana, along […]

The music industry made around $7.1bn from streaming subscriptions in 2018, according to industry body the IFPI. That was 32.9% year-on-year growth, with subscriptions generating 37% of global recorded-music revenues. How can the music industry (and the streaming services) build on that growth in the coming years? What will drive the next spikes in paid […]

Spotify is signing direct licensing deals with some artists and testing the ability to allow others to upload directly to its platform. YouTube and Apple Music are creating content and putting marketing budget behind artists. And Apple Music has also acquired Platoon, the British startup which helped a number of emerging artists to develop, including […]

French-Israeli singer Amir is the latest artist exploring augmented-reality (AR) technology, with the help of his label Warner Music France and startup HoloMe. The latter company has created a smartphone app, called Amir & Moi, which is available as a free download for Android and for iOS. The app features a video for Amir’s single ‘5 Minutes Avec […]

Warner Music Group has published its numbers for the fiscal second quarter (ending 31st March 2019) and the headlines are that total revenue across all parts of the business was up 13.2% and that it saw net income of $67m compared to a net loss of $1m in the same period last year. Digital was, […]

Lead: TikTok is far more than a novelty app for people to whip up memes that have a shorter shelf life than a carton of milk. It is now breaking acts and songs in a way that other platforms cannot. We look at what the music industry is doing to capitalise on its phenomenal growth […]

Lead: Tighter regulations around retargeting have made the job of digital marketing much trickier to navigate. What this has meant is that marketers have to get smarter. We speak to those working around these rules about why – if they put the work in – this can be more blessing than curse. Campaigns: Billie Eilish […]

Four consistent years of global growth is something to swell the record industry’s heart, and the 9.7% rise in 2018 means it is approaching double-digit growth – a big change from the double-digit decline that defined the first decade of this millennium. There’s an increasing focus on the role that emerging markets – or ‘high-potential […]

Artiphon is one of the startups exploring the potential to create new musical instruments with a digital twist. It raised $1.3m in a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in 2015 to make its first device, the Instrument 1.The $399 device is a MIDI controller designed to work like a guitar, piano and/or drum machine. A few years on, […]

We reported last week on startup Endel’s announcement that its music-creating AI had signed a major-label deal with WMG. As the news spread, some artists have been having their day, including electronica artist Holly Herndon. “Well that escalated quickly, although it seems like this is simply a repackaging of procedural generation composition systems that have […]

Music Ally has for some time been covering the emerging wave of startups exploring AI music: algorithms trained on catalogues of existing music, with the aim of then being able to create their own new melodies – and even entire tracks. Thus far, the most prominent commercial model for all this has been that espoused […]

Warner Music Group has become the second major label to sign a direct licensing deal with African digital-music service Boomplay, following Universal Music’s deal in November 2018. WMG’s deal covers a catalogue of 1m songs for 10 countries: Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Boomplay will make the music […]

The news had already leaked that The Orchard co-founder Scott Cohen had been poached by Warner Music Group, but there has been speculation about what, exactly, his role would entail. Yesterday, WMG dished the details: Cohen will be its new chief innovation officer, recorded music, reporting directly to the label group’s recorded-music boss Max Lousada. […]

Spotify is live in India, but its dispute with Warner Music Group continues, over the way it sought a statutory licence for works owned (partially or wholly) by publisher Warner/Chappell. Now the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) has weighed in to the row, firmly on the side of Warner/Chappell. “Music publishers worldwide work in […]

An Indian court has made its ruling on Warner Music Group’s application for an injunction as part of its dispute with Spotify over publishing licensing in the country. Does the ruling settle the matter one way or the other? Unsurprisingly, it’s complicated. Here’s Spotify’s statement, sent out to journalists this morning: “We’re pleased with today’s […]

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 […]

Warner Music Group is making some interesting appointments at the moment. We reported on its hiring of The Orchard co-founder Scott Cohen earlier this week. Now WMG has appointed former Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton as non-executive chairman of its board. He’ll combine the job with his current role as chairman of Snapchat’s parent company […]

Earlier this month, distributor The Orchard’s co-founder Scott Cohen announced that he was ‘retiring’. It seems that this will involve very little golf, gardening and/or complaining about the buses though. He’s been hired for an as-yet undisclosed role at Warner Music Group, working on what MBW describes as ‘innovation’ (as opposed to working for WMG’s in-house equivalents […]

It may raise a few eyebrows to learn that major-label Warner Music Group now has an executive role whose title includes ‘president of independent music’. Actually, it’s not a surprise: the company’s new president of independent music and creator services is Eliah Seton, who’s been promoted from his previous position as president of ADA Worldwide, […]

Warner Music Group has published its latest quarterly financial results, which reveal that the company’s revenues grew by 15.1% year-on-year. That was just over $1.2bn in the fourth quarter of 2018 (WMG’s fiscal Q1). Of that, digital revenues grew by 17.6% to $627m, with the company reporting an operating profit of $147m and a net […]

Warner Music Group’s latest partnership is with Doğan Group in Turkey: owner of the country’s biggest independent label, and also of online-video channel NetD. The deal will see Doğan Music Company (the label) distribute WMG’s physical catalogue in Turkey, as well as “represent its repertoire to Turkish-owned digital music platforms”. That will also see the […]

Spotify and Deezer’s recent launches in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have highlighted the region’s status as a strategic priority for the music industry – although these companies (and Apple Music) are facing strong competition from local streaming service Anghami. Trends in the MENA region were the focus for a panel session at Music […]