The telegraph- Music streaming just became a billion-dollar industry
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/11881158/Music-streaming-just-became-a-billion-dollar-industry.htmlRevenues from streaming music online have surpassed $1bn for the first time. Digital downloads of songs continued to fall out of favour in the first half of the year, while free and paid music-streaming revenue kept growing, even without much of a bump from the launch of Apple Music. Streaming revenue as a whole surpassed $1bn in the first half of the year for the first time. While streaming music revenues continued to grow healthily, the rates being paid to labels and artists for streaming music do not always equal fair market rates. But the level is far below the industry peak in 1999 of $14.6bn, when compact discs were dominant.
- Overall music industry revenue fell a half percentage point to $3.2bn
- Revenue from paid subscriptions to services like Spotify and Rhapsody grew 25pc to $478m, while revenue from free services like Pandora grew 22pc to $550m
- Download sales revenue fell 4pc to $1.3bn, while physical disc sales dropped 17pc to $748m
- The rise of digital streaming has helped the industry maintain annual revenues of around $7bn since 2010, offsetting the decline in revenue from digital downloads of single tracks that began in 2013
The Guardian- Imogen Heap: saviour of the music industry?
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/06/imogen-heap-saviour-of-music-industryWhen was the last time you bought a CD or a record? Chances are, you’re listening to more music than ever, but buying less of it. In 2012, for the first time, digital sales of songs – such as iTunes – surpassed physical sales. More likely still is that you were on YouTube or Spotify, which host hundreds of thousands of songs, played billions of times. It’s a golden age for music.
Music is in many ways a bellwether for the digital revolution. The products of many creative industries – art, music, books, papers, films – which were once solely physical objects, shipped, bought and carried home, are now digital files available on demand at next to no cost. Because digital files can be reproduced and shared infinitely and easily, the result in almost every industry has been more consumption and lower average returns, fuelling fears about how the people who make this stuff – the writers, artists and musicians – will get paid for it.
The modern music industry was created at a time when it made economic sense to produce a million copies of one vinyl record, and copyright could be successfully enforced. But as the industry went digital, the whole way music was made and sold changed. In the early 00s, many feared the music industry would soon wither away as free streaming services and pirated content made music, de facto, free.
- Spotify has paid $300m (£196m) in royalties in the first three months of 2015. YouTube has paid out more than $1bn (£654m) since Content ID started seven years ago.
- David Byrne, of Talking Heads, estimates that only 15-20% of Spotify’s payments make it through to the artists.
The Guardian- Free streaming is 'killing music industry': Ministry boss
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/11/ministry-of-sound-streaming-switch-off-freeThe reality of some of the bigger streaming services is that 75% of their user base are free, which has a horrific impact on the music industry and its ability to invest in talent going forward.” Presencer also attacked streaming services for being beholden to their investors rather than musicians and rights holders. Unrest over free streaming was at the heart of Spotify’s dispute with Taylor Swift in 2014, when she pulled her music off the service in protest at the company’s refusal to allow her to make it available only to paying subscribers. The reality is that on-demand music is a consumption medium, and giving it away for free just kills the industry.
The Guardian- Why the music industry is fighting the wrong copyright battle
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/19/why-music-industry-fighting-wrong-copyright-battleIt took until 2014 for the UK to have a private copying exception, legalising what everyone assumed to be possible: making copies of content you have legally bought for purposes such as backups, cloud storage and format-shifting. To fairly compensate rights holders for the dubious “harm”, other European countries have extracted a private copying levy for things like blank CDs, MP3s, printers and smartphones. The amounts vary from a few cents to several euros. It is clearly unsatisfactory that our freedoms over the use, sharing and transfer of digital media should be narrower than with physical media. By chasing levies on legal content, the real issues about copyright in the digital age are being overlooked.
The Guardian- Daniel Ek: Spotify and free music will save the industry, not kill it
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/07/daniel-ek-spotify-free-music-save-industry-not-kill-itThe chief executive of Spotify, Daniel Ek, has predicted that the free online music service will help the industry grow to as much as 10 times its current size, in a future where old distinctions between providers break down. Spotify will have to win over its doubters first, including convincing them that it can turn more of its 45 million free users into paying subscribers – it has 15 million of the latter – and thus increase the money earned by artists and songwriters, via its payouts to the labels and publishers that represent them. Some artists, most famously Taylor Swift, have been criticising Spotify’s “freemium” approach, which allows people to listen for free to its basic, advertising-supported service.The boss of the world’s largest music label, Universal Music, called free streaming “not something that is particularly sustainable in the long term”. With industry rumours of Apple egging major labels on to restrict Spotify’s free service, Spotify is feeling the heat.“The entire recorded music industry has somewhere between $14bn and $15bn in trade-sales value. Now look at the radio industry, which in the US alone is around $16bn in revenue and globally is about $80bn – four times the size of the music industry,” said Ek. “If we’re able to transition the traditional radio behaviour online, you’re looking at a music industry that’s much larger than it’s ever been. If you do that, and also add subscription to the mix, especially at Spotify’s conversion rate, you’d be looking at a music industry that would be $100bn to $160bn in size. That’s the key argument that I think gets lost here.” The downside to this is resources: Spotify reported revenues of €1bn in 2014, compared with Apple’s $199.7bn and Google’s $66bn. The costs of running a streaming music service – Spotify reported a loss of €165m in 2014 – are a drop in the ocean for hardware and search-engine businesses.
The Guardian- No such thing as bad PR: Is social media saving or damaging the music industry?
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/feb/19/social-media-damaging-music-industry-pr-twitter-kanye-westThe impact of social media has had a profound effect on how the job is done; the way a news story is spread or a song is shared is now defined by social media, with the tradition of securing editorial coverage no longer being the end of the process but the beginning. Now that many of the industry’s biggest stars decline interviews their creative output and their social media accounts are the only ways in which fans can learn about an artist’s every move, every new tattoo. Cultivating an audience on social media does, of course, have its benefits. Artists can hotwire ideas and newly recorded material to fans who give real-time feedback, and others can gradually expose a curated version of themselves that quashes any tabloid rumours.
The Guardian- Taylor Swift takes a stand over Spotify music royalties
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/04/taylor-swift-spotify-streaming-album-sales-snubYet this week was also marked by Swift’s decision to remove her entire back catalogue from music streaming site Spotify, arguably the biggest growing source of music consumption in the world. It boasts more than 10 million paying subscribers, across 58 countries, on top of the 30 million who access the streaming service for free. The move has been condemned by some as shortsighted and applauded by others as a savvy way to drive up her album sales. The singer was one of Spotify’s most popular artists, with 25% of listeners having streamed her songs. Her songs were on 19m playlists and the lead single from 1989, Shake It Off, went straight to number one on Spotify. But the singer’s relationship with the site has always been rocky – Swift initially refused to release her 2012 album Red on Spotify, critising the fact that artists receive between just $0.006 and $0.0084 per song play. Swift is not the first artist to withdraw music from spotify. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke called for a boycott of the service over unfair payment practices, removing all his solo projects from the site and describing it as “the last desperate fart of a dying corpse”. The Beatles, AC/DC and The Black Keys are also not available to stream on Spotify. Taylor has probably sold over 1.3m copies of her album in the first week and nobody has done that since Eminem in 2002. She is one of the few artists today who can really drive sales and not just streams, so I don’t think this is a move that will hurt her at all. I think you could count on one hand the number of artists that could pull this off and remain popular – as digital download sales are in freefall. I do think eventually every artist is going to have to be on a streaming service … Over time, if artists want their music to be heard in any meaningful way, they need to be on a streaming service.Spotify is growing in importance for all artists as it represents a cultural change in the way people consume music. We don’t see it as a negative platform – obviously like anyone we’d prefer to see the monetisation of streaming be higher.
The Guardian- Taylor Swift criticises 'shocking, disappointing' Apple Music
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/21/taylor-swift-criticises-shocking-disappointing-apple-musicSwift has joined independent labels in attacking Apple’s plans not to pay royalties during the three-month free trial of its new Apple Music streaming service.
“I’m sure you are aware that Apple Music will be offering a free 3 month trial to anyone who signs up for the service. I’m not sure you know that Apple Music will not be paying writers, producers, or artists for those three months. I find it to be shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company.”
Swift praised Apple for moving the music industry towards a “goal of paid streaming” and urged the company to change its Apple Music policy before the service launches on 30 June.
The Guardian- Tidal: 10 things you need to know
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/apr/05/tidal-10-things-you-need-to-know-jay-z-madonna-music-streamingTidal is a music streaming service that originally started in Scandinavia in 2009. It was called WiMP then, launched by technology firm Aspiro and retailer Platekompaniet – Norway’s equivalent of HMV. In October 2014 Aspiro rebranded WiMP as Tidal for its UK and US launch, with its main selling-point being its “lossless” (higher-quality) streams. It also added music videos and deeper editorial, albeit for double the price – £19.99 a month – of rivals such as Spotify, although it has now launched a non-lossless £9.99 version too. Aspiro had 500,000 paying subscribers at the end of 2014, and was bought for $56m last month by a company controlled by Jay Z.
Tidal is under new ownership, and those owners are musicians. Not just Jay Z, but Arcade Fire, Beyoncé, Calvin Harris, Coldplay, Daft Punk, Deadmau5, Jack White, Jason Aldean, J Cole, Kanye West, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Usher.
The big message from Tidal’s launch was its new owners’ determination to restore the value of music in the eyes (or ears) of listeners, which means making them pay for it, rather than listening for free, as they can on the advertising-supported tiers of rivals Spotify and Deezer. “People are not respecting the music, and [are] devaluing it and devaluing what it really means. People really feel like music is free, but will pay $6 for water,” said Jay Z in an interview with trade magazine Billboard.
Tidal is claiming it will pay more, but that may not be as easy as it hopes. One of Tidal’s key tactics for standing out from the streaming crowd will be exclusives: the promise that you will be able to hear some music on Tidal before it is available anywhere else. This is a game being played by Spotify too, though, as well as Apple, which is preparing to relaunch its US-only Beats Music streaming service globally later this year.
YouTube is the world’s most popular music streaming service, with a large chunk of its 1 billion monthly viewers watching music videos – especially younger users. It is trying to get people to pay for music too: it’s launching its own Spotify rival, YouTube Music Key, with a similar model of a free, ad-supported tier then a £9.99 monthly subscription with more features. But YouTube is already a free way to listen to almost any song ever recorded. Some in the music industry fear that if Spotify’s free tier is restricted or even shut down, listeners will drift away to YouTube – which pays much less per stream – rather than subscription services.
Google v Apple v Spotify v Tidal v Deezer… but there’s another trend worth watching, which is the growth of fan-funding and direct sales sites, such as Bandcamp and Patreon, for independent musicians. Bandcamp helps artists sell their own music and pays out $3.5m a month to its network of musicians. With Patreon, fans commit to paying a small amount whenever an artist releases something new: it pays out $2m a month. If Tidal represents big artists seeking more control of digital music, these sites fulfil a similar role for independent musicians. Better partnerships with them may even be the way for Tidal, Spotify and other streaming services to show themselves as truly artist-friendly.
The Guardian- Jay Z’s music-streaming service Tidal struggles despite celebrity fanfare
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/22/music-streaming-service-tidal-struggles-despite-celebrity-fanfareThe app has dropped out of the iPhone top 700 downloads chart. Talking about his vision for the service , the Jay-Z said he and his roster of celebrity supporters wanted Tidal to be the first artist-owned music streaming platform that would pay 75% of its revenues back to the music industry (compared with the 50% paid by Spotify and Pandora). To begin with, Tidal comes with a higher price tag than its rivals, costing $20 a month, and does not have the free, ad-supported option offered by services such as Spotify. For this higher subscription fee, Tidal users have access to 25m tracks, about the same number as Spotify, but it also offers a lossless high-fidelity sound quality that its competitors don’t have, as well as HD music videos and music playlists curated by musicians such as Jay Z and Beyoncé. The main issue, he added, was that not even Jay Z’s name and hip-hop credentials were enough to make people pay more money to stream music.Lily Allen has also expressed concerns that the high price of Tidal will only encourage people to pirate more music. Writing on Twitter, the singer said: “Tidal is so expensive compared to other perfectly good streaming services. He’s taking the biggest artists, made them exclusive to Tidal … People are going to swarm back to pirate sites in droves. Up and coming (not yet millionaires) artists are going to suffer as a result.”
The Guardian- Adele's new album 25 will not be streamed on Spotify
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/nov/19/adele-new-album-25-not-stream-spotify-apple-musicAdele, who is poised to have the bestselling album of the year when her third record, 25, is released worldwide on Friday, will not make it available on streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. Hello, the lead single off of 25, debuted at No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Over the course of a week, the song was downloaded 1.1m times.
BGR- SNL sketch roasts Tidal as Ariana Grande impersonates Rihanna, Britney Spears and more
http://bgr.com/2016/03/14/ariana-grande-saturday-night-live-tidal/To be honest, I was a little bit surprised that Tidal – the music streaming service backed by Jay-Z – would even be considered popular enough to warrant being mocked by Saturday Night Live. But who knows, perhaps Kanye West’s recent Twitter tirades and sporadic references to his new album being exclusively available on Tidal gave the service a temporary publicity boost. Whatever the reason, Ariana Grande over the weekend, along with the rest of the SNL cast, mocked Tidal in a sketch. As for how Tidal continues to perform as a business, the service did see a discernible uptick in popularity when Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo album was released, but the company still managed to mismanage the album launch amid reports that many users who paid for the album were unable to access it. Not only that, but some users even reported that they were being charged multiple times.
The Guardian- Will Tidal be the next music streaming service to drown?
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/mar/03/tidal-next-music-streaming-service-drownAnother music streaming service that has been generating the most negative headlines over the past year: Tidal. The star power of its co-owners – Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Madonna and more – hasn’t spared it from criticism and derision. Yet this is a streaming service that managed to bag those exclusives on the two hottest albums of 2016 so far. It also claims to have grown from 500,000 paying customers in March 2015, to one million by October, and now reportedly 2.5 million in February 2016 after a Kanye-fuelled surge – even if it is unclear how many of those new subscribers are on a free trial.
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