The internet’s impact on traditional entertainment companies is starting to look a little like what happened in music and print. The web made more work available at a lower cost, compressing profit margins and prompting consolidation. Net income at the largest U.S. entertainment companies has dropped by more than 60% since 2013.
Source: Film and TV Profits Have Collapsed Over the Last Decade
TUNE, a music-focused ETF, debuted on New York Stock Exchange containing stocks of Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Spotify and others. Launched by Chicago-based startup Clouty, TUNE taps into proven investor interest in music companies at a time ETFs are an increasingly common way for retail and institutional investors to tap into the stock market.
Source: TUNE, a Music-Focused ETF, Debuts on the New York Stock Exchange
BMG has acquired Simon’s artist royalty income stream – in addition to his neighboring rights income stream – from Simon & Garfunkel recordings (not including Simon’s solo work). In other words: BMG will be paid Simon’s artist royalty share whenever Simon & Garfunkel’s classic recordings – which continue to be owned by Columbia/Sony Music – are streamed or purchased.
While it is unclear exactly which assets are on the table, one source says that the rights to “slightly less than half” of the catalog, with a price of around $500 million, are likely to go to a major label, with Sony said to be in the lead. The catalog is believed to include music from such films as “Purple Rain,” “Evita,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Rent” several “Batman” films and many more titles, as well as songs included in iconic films such as “As Time Goes By” from “Casablanca”
Source: Warner Bros. Discovery Negotiating $500 Million Deal to Sell Film and TV Music Publishing Assets
Described in a press release as an “AI music streaming platform”, WAVs AI also features tracks by the likes of “Ariana Granday”, “Freddie-mercurai”, “Eminaim” and many more AI versions of popular artists. It claims on its website to be “the world’s leading AI music provider”, and that it “work[s] with clients like Instagram, Apple Music, Google, Shazam, Amazon Music, and many more”.
Source: AI music platform that streams fake Drake tracks raises $20m
ESH said in the filing that it, “may pursue an acquisition opportunity in any industry or sector,” but said it intends to capitalize on the experience of its board members in the fields of sports, hospitality or music and entertainment, “including destination and regional theme parks, water parks, concert venues, theaters, cinemas, record labels, music and television streaming services, production companies and publishing houses.”
Source: Return of the SPAC? Entertainment and sports-focused ESH Acquisition Corp prices $100m IPO
Stockholm-based Soundtrack Your Brand, which Spotify co-founded with former Beats by Dre exec Ola Sars a decade ago, revealed the multimillion-dollar raise this morning. Touted by higher-ups as the “world’s fastest-growing B2B music streaming service,” Soundtrack Your Brand’s said to offer commercial establishments access to around 100 million fully licensed tracks.
Source: Matt Pincus’ Music Leads $15MM Soundtrack Your Brand Raise
The renewed desire to bundle is something of a race against the clock. Zaslav and some other media moguls (perhaps most notably Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch) have long touted their plans to use the cash generated from their cable TV channels to help fund streaming efforts. But it has become increasingly clear that cord-cutting continues to accelerate, and there are inflection points on the horizon that would only speed up cable’s demise.
Source: The Great Rebundling: Who Will Figure Out How to Rebuild Pay TV First?
AI-powered music collaboration platform boombox.io has closed a seed funding round, securing $7 million in investments from Forerunner, super{set} startup studio and Ulu Ventures. According to Boombox, using its so-called ‘Boombot’ AI tool, it leverages Generative AI to “enrich and extend a musician’s creative process.” The San Francisco-based platform claims that this tool “generates new ideas and fleshes out partial ones to make music creation more dynamic, faster and smarter.”
Source: Generative AI-powered music startup boombox.io raises $7m
One of the US’s most prominent brokerages has quietly become a major shareholder in two of the big three global music recording companies over the past few years. Boston-headquartered Fidelity Investments, the second-largest brokerage in the US, has snapped up around $1.125 billion worth of shares inUniversal Music Group, the world’s largest music rights holder, and about $450 million–worth of shares in Warner Music Group, the third-largest rights holder.