Data

Charts aren’t democratic; these days they are influenced by heavy listeners to on-demand streaming services. Not surprisingly, heavy listeners who spend 10 or more hours streaming each week are more likely to cite Rap/HipHop as their favorite genre. Light streamers prefer ’80s-’90s Hits and Classic Rock.

Source: The music industry is still obsessed with charts – but is it always looking at the right data?

Spotify announced in a blog post Friday (May 15) that it will be combining its separate data and analytics dashboards, one of which was for artists and managers, the other of which was for labels and distributors, into one place: a revamped Spotify For Artists. The change is expected to roll out in the coming weeks and months, and Spotify said new products will arrive combined in one place going forward.

Source: Spotify Combines Artist, Label Analytics In One Place

While there were gains across the board, they weren’t distributed evenly. Twitch — the biggest live-streaming platform — saw the most growth in terms of sheer hours, with its hours watched jumping 50 percent between March and April and a full 101 percent year over year. It’s now up to 1.645 billion hours watched per month.

Source: The lockdown live-streaming numbers are out, and they’re huge

A new survey suggests consumers are divided as to the ongoing feud between theater owners and Hollywood studios — specifically Universal Pictures — over releasing new movies simultaneously on the big screen and in the home. Slightly more than half of consumers, or 53 percent, agree that “digital premieres” are a good thing during the COVID-19 crisis, but that they want things to go back to normal when the pandemic ends.

Source: Moviegoers Split Over Theater Owners Feud With Universal

So much for the Golden Age of media content. The latest installment of a weekly COVID-19 tracking study from Mindshare finds that nearly half (46%) of American consumers say they’ve already run out of media content to watch, read or listen to. That’s up from 33% a couple of weeks ago, and 30% at the end of March.

Source: MediaDailyNews: Mindshare Finds Nearly Half Of Americans Have ‘Run Out’ Of Things To Watch, Read, Listen To

With millions stuck at home due to coronavirus shelter-in-place orders and searching for entertainment, data suggest that new releases by major pop artists are drawing fewer listeners than normal.  Instead, streaming metrics show, listeners are tuning in to old favorites from the likes of Bob Marley, Dixie Chicks and Bill Withers—the singer of “Lean On Me,” who died last month.

Source: Classic Rock Gives Comfort to Music Fans During Coronavirus Lockdown

Lockdown and stay-at-home orders due to the novel coronavirus have been a big boost for online pirates, with a new study showing double-digit growth in digital piracy across major territories in Europe and North America. The data, published Monday by London-based piracy analysts Muso, shows visits to illegal film streaming and download sites shot up by 41.4 percent in the United States and by 42.5 percent in the U.K. in the last seven days of March.

Source: Online Piracy Spikes Amid Coronavirus Lockdown: Study

Universal is reporting that Trolls: World Tour scored the biggest opening day and opening weekend for a digital title, with a figure 10x larger than Universal’s next-biggest traditional digital release (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom). It is top on every relevant digital platform, including Amazon, Comcast, Apple, Vudu, Google/YouTube, DirectTV, Verizon Fios and FandangoNow.

Source: ‘Trolls: World Tour’ Breaks Records And Nabs Biggest Digital Debut Ever

Spend on music streaming subscriptions is also up significantly year-on-year. From what we can tell from the data published over the weekend by the New York Times, consumer spending on the likes of Apple Music and Spotify Premium rose by just over 20% YoY in the week when compared to the same seven days in 2019. That’s a bigger spending rise than that seen on News Media and eBooks, according to the NYT article, but a smaller jump than that seen by video streaming (Netflix et al) and video games.

Source: Positive signs: Music streaming spend is rising in the US, even amid Coronavirus lockdown