Finance

Pond5’s customers include the likes of Netflix, Disney, NBC, BBC, Discovery Channel and The Wall Street Journal and its collection includes 30 million licensable video clips. The company also runs a royalty-free stock music service, with a library of 1.6 million music tracks and 1.7 million sound effects assets, which Shutterstock now owns, following a $210 million cash deal to acquire Pond5.

Source: Shutterstock acquires stock video marketplace Pond5 for $210m, including a library of 1.6m royalty-free music tracks

Warner Music Group posted a modest 10% revenue boost in Q1 ’22 due in part to a slowdown in digital, which saw its share decline from Q1 ’21. WMG’s digital income grew by just eight percent on the quarter, to $931 million, and accounted for 67.7 percent of total revenue – down from 68.8 percent in Q1 2021.

Source: Warner Music Group Posts 10% Income Jump, Digital-Share Dip In Q1 ’22

Spotify‘s share price on the New York Stock Exchange closed down 9.78% today (May 9), hitting an all-time low at USD $94.44. That share price was down by 61.3% versus the price that Spotify closed on the first trading day of 2022 ($244.16), and was close to a quarter of the size that Spotify hit at its peak ($364.59) in February last year.

Source: Last week, Daniel Ek bought $50m in Spotify stock. Today, Spotify’s share price sunk to an all-time low.

Spotify boss Daniel Ek says that he is buying $50 million of shares in the music streaming company that he founded. The announcement came at a time when tech companies are falling out of favor with Wall Street. Ek has sought to distance Spotify from comparisons with video streamer Netflix, which recently revealed that subscriber growth had plateaued.

Source: Daniel Ek to Buy $50 Million of Spotify Shares, Predicts Streaming Growth Ahead

UMG says it expects a continuation of the boom in music streaming, led by its strength across artists, geographical regions, and formats. “Top sellers for the quarter included releases from Disney’s ‘Encanto’ soundtrack, King & Prince, The Weeknd, Fujii Kaze and Ado,” UMG says in its press release. The result bucks industry anxiety over a pending plateau in music streaming, particularly in cash-rich nations like the US.

Source: Universal Music Group Earnings Jump 22% Year Over Year

The prospect that the streaming pioneer has now hit a ceiling didn’t sit well with investors who had been valuing media companies purely on the basis of subscriber growth. Netflix has shed more than 40% of its market value since, while Walt Disney, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, the new owner of HBO Max, have seen their shares fall by an average of 17% over the same period.

Source: Netflix-Peak Fears Cast Shade on Paramount

The sale of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, fell to a daily average of about 19,000 this week, a 92% decline from a peak of about 225,000 in September, according to the data website NonFungible. The number of active wallets in the NFT market fell 88% to about 14,000 last week from a high of 119,000 in November. Rising interest rates have crushed risky bets across the financial markets—and NFTs are among the most speculative.

Source: NFT Sales Are Flatlining

In its 10-Q filing with the SEC, Amazon detailed the components of the MGM deal, which closed March 17. The assets “primarily consist of $3.4 billion of video content,” with the acquisition price including $4.9 billion of goodwill, which is defined as “the established reputation of a business regarded as a quantifiable asset.”

Source: Amazon Values MGM’s Content Library at $3.4 Billion

Apple’s services – including Apple Music, Apple TV+, and Apple Fitness+ – generated a record high of $19.82 billion on the quarter. The sum signifies a roughly 17.28 percent increase from the same three-month stretch in 2021 and an approximately 1.56 percent increase from Q1 FY 2022. While the iPhone designer doesn’t break down its subscribers by service, paid subscriptions jumped past 825 million, as highlighted – an improvement of 40 million against the prior quarter.

Source: Apple Music and Other Apple Services Now Have Over 825 Million Subs

Today (April 29), Our Happy Company has revealed that it’s raised $7.5 million in a seed round led by Infinity Ventures Crypto and Animoca Brands,  the parent of gaming platform The Sandbox (which recently partnered with Warner Music Group to create a music-themed world in the metaverse). Our Happy Company says that the new funding will be used to grow and develop its OurSong NFT platform.

Source: John Legend’s NFT platform just raised $7.5m, led by The Sandbox parent Animoca Brands