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: 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.”
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
Twitch is considering upping its own cut to 50%, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. That would bring Partner streamers down to the 50/50 split Twitch currently has with Affiliate streamers. But that change isn’t set in stone. Twitch is also considering another option: a tier-based system, where some Partners would continue making 70% from channel subs while some would make the new, lower 50%.
A bevy of legacy acts, including Shakira, Neil Young, and Barry Manilow, all covered the same hot new investor song — “Music Is A Dependable Asset Class” — and traded catalogs for cash from funds, investors, and other financial outfits. Now, an intriguing question — and its potentially lucrative answer — has me and many others up late: Can smaller artists cash out, too? Can investors apply the same equation, and capture equally dependable returns, from the little guys?
Source: Could the Music Catalog Rights Boom Generate Windfalls for Non-Superstars?
Spotify added just 2 million premium subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 and wrapped up March with a total of 182 million paid users and 252 million ad-supported listeners. While that paid subscriber tally was a million under guidance, the company was quick to note that its wind-down in Russia, following its invasion of Ukraine, resulted in an “involuntary churn” of roughly 1.5 million subscribers there.
Source: Spotify Subscribers Crawl to 182M as Quarterly Revenue Grows 24%