About two weeks back, multiple musicians staged protests outside of Spotify offices in the U.S. and abroad, demanding a higher per-stream royalty rate. Now, the campaign’s organizers have revealed that the Stockholm-based streaming platform has refused to pay one penny per play.
Source: Spotify Refuses to Offer Penny-a-Stream Royalty Payments to Artists
New York-based music and entertainment investment firm Influence Media Partners has launched a new fund to invest in what it describes as “award-winning catalogs of some of music’s most influential female music creators”. The new fund carries an initial value of up to $100 million and has been established in partnership with independent professional retirement services company Municipal Employment Retirement System (MERS of Michigan).
Source: Influence Media Partners launches $100m fund to invest in catalogs of female music creators
UnitedMasters says that the investment will fuel its “mission to enable artists to maintain full ownership over their work while expanding their economic opportunity and introducing them to millions of new fans.” The move also marks another step from Apple into the independent artist space, following its acquisition of prominent artist services, A&R and distribution company Platoon in 2018.
Today, Spotify has announced its entrance into the social audio business in a big way, via the acquisition of Betty Labs, the creators of Locker Room, a sports-focused, live talk app. Spotify says that this acquisition “builds on its work to create the ‘future formats of audio’ and will accelerate Spotify’s entry into the live audio space”.
Source: Spotify acquires talk app Locker Room to take on Clubhouse
VC funding for music startups fell by 67% from over $1 billion in 2019 to $328.9m last year. That’s according to new figures published by researchers at BusinessFinancing.co.uk in a report revealing how start-up funding changed from 2019 to 2020 and the difference in spending by country and industry. The report also shows that the number of startup music companies receiving VC funding fell from 87 in 2019 to 68 last year.
Source: Music startups saw funding levels sink by 67% in 2020 (report)
According to Round Hill CEO Josh Gruss, the driving force behind Round Hill’s ability to snaffle market share for contemporary US radio hits lies in investing in new music. “We’re grabbing a lot of market share on radio, really punching above our weight. That’s what a real publisher does; if you’re just a check-book publisher, you’re just buying catalogs – you’re not relevant in the current radio charts.”
IMPALA, which represents many of the world’s biggest independent record labels in Europe, has published a must-read new report containing a number of suggestions the industry should consider for overhauling the way streaming works. One of the most contentious parts of the manifesto centers on streaming services that offer rights-holders reduced royalties for guaranteed plays or “privileged treatment in algorithms or other features”.
Source: Indie labels call for end to streaming ‘payola’ – as IMPALA unveils 10-point plan to reform sector
China’s largest music-streaming company also relayed in its fourth-quarter earnings analysis that revenue grew by 14.3 percent, compared to the same three-month stretch in 2019, to nearly $1.28 billion. A 29 percent year-over-year hike (to $423 million) in income from online music services – including a 41.9 percent uptick in subscription earnings.
Source: Tencent Music Topped 56 Million Paid Users in 2020’s Fourth Quarter
The jungle of music rights acquisitions has become a crowded and expensive place. But the game just changed again – as an 800-pound gorilla enters the fray. BMG and investment giant KKR have announced an alliance that will see them team up to acquire and manage music copyrights.
When the major music companies publish their quarterly figures, analysts all too often take a blinkered view – exclusively assessing the impact of streaming and duly limiting their focus to revenue from recorded music. This is plain wrong: streaming services pay record labels, but they also pay CMOs who in turn also pay other licensors.