The Bristol, UK-headquartered firm offers unlimited digital distribution for independent artists to multiple streaming platforms for a single annual fee – making it a rival to the likes of TuneCore and DistroKid. In addition (for higher-priced annual fees), 3tone offers artists premium services such as marketing, promotion, sync and playlist pitching.
Source: UK-based 3tone Music Group raises $50m from Carlton James Group
The pre-seed was led by Binance Labs and Moment Ventures. Reveel was part of Season 4 of Binance Labs’ Incubation Program, the company’s investment arm. The company aims to make collaboration easier by providing transparency and equity for creators through the development of tools that makes the administrative side of revenue sharing and royalty accounting as easy as possible.
BPI says that this A&R spend, which includes artist advances, creating new recordings, video costs and tour support, was 106.6% more in 2021 than the £173.3 million ($225m) spent in 2016. The trade body also noted in its press release that, “A&R, however, is a highly risky and speculative business and only a minority of artists signed to labels become commercially successful”.
Source: UK record labels spent $41m on A&R every month in 2021
CT Investments, which arrived on the scene earlier this year, debuted the KPOP and Korean Entertainment ETF on the NYSE Arca today. Moreover, CT is a wholly owned asset-management subsidiary of two-year-old Contents Technologies, which bills itself as a “next-generation content company that builds and invests in IPs as well as technology/finance/service-oriented businesses within the content value chain.”
Source: ‘KPOP and Korean Entertainment ETF’ Debuts Amid K-Pop Growth
BMG saw its half-year revenues grow 25% YoY to €371 million in the six months to end of June. The company says that this first half organic growth of 25% was the highest in BMG’s 14-year history. BMG reports that 60% of its revenues in the first half of 2022 were from publishing, with 40% from recordings.
Source: BMG revenues increased 25% to €371m in first half of 2022
The latest funding round was announced just a day after Soundstripe, which helps creators dodge copyright claims with royalty-free music, unveiled its first mobile app for creators to access royalty-free music on the go. The Series B fundraising announced today comes two years after the startup raised $2 million from Craft Ventures, a company led by David Sacks, founding COO of PayPal and co-founder/former CEO of Yammer.
Source: Music startup Soundstripe attracts $9m in fresh funding shortly after launching mobile app
How will streaming services consistently identify, acquire and develop projects that resonate? Unfortunately for creators, Moneyball is definitely the future for streaming services, as CEOs, investors and others start looking at those new stats to see how well money is being spent in the Streaming Wars. Average revenue per user is starting to matter, but so too is a useful questioning of one of the internet’s long-held beliefs, in the Long Tail.
This week, Opulous has launched a new business venture, one it says that will see it “take on companies like Hipgnosis” by buying full catalogs from artists and songwriters. It’s planning to bankroll these acquisitions via a new music acquisition project accessible to the masses. The project – or ‘Opulous Royalty Vault’ – operates via a new set of tokens called OVAULT.
Source: Blockchain music platform Opulous launches fund to buy copyrights
Blackstone-powered Hipgnosis Song Management (HSM) is reportedly vying to strike a roughly $500 million deal for the catalog of Pink Floyd. Neither Hipgnosis nor Blackstone has commented publicly on the curiously timed reports of their pursuing the Pink Floyd catalog, but a Reuters account cautioned that the entities are “not close to striking a deal” for the song rights.
Source: Pink Floyd Catalog Draws Hipgnosis Bid, Price Tag Still At $500MM
Senior MBW sources tell us that US-headquartered Francisco Partners is currently in advanced talks to acquire a majority stake in Kobalt Music Group, with the possibility of a deal being signed over the next week or two. Francisco Partners is no stranger to the music business. The San Francisco-based, tech-focused investment firm acquired a majority stake in music creation platform Native Instruments earlier this year, for an undisclosed fee.
Source: Kobalt Music Group in talks to sell majority stake to Francisco Partners, say MBW sources