Finance

Olivier Chastan knows this world well: He was previously CEO at Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group, which last year acquired catalogs from the likes of the Beach Boys, David Crosby, and Linda Ronstadt. Today (February 4), Chastan has taken the wraps off his own acquisitive vehicle – Los Angeles-based Iconoclast – with a headline-grabbing rights deal already signed and sealed.

Source: There’s a serious new player in music catalog acquisitions – and it’s just bought Robbie Robertson’s rights

As part of its fourth-quarter earnings report, Amazon announced that it would raise the price of Amazon Prime memberships for the first time in 4 years, citing investment in the company’s entertainment offerings, and its exclusive deal with the NFL to stream Thursday Night Football beginning next season, as among the reasons for the price hike.

Source: Amazon to Raise Price of Prime Membership, Citing Expanded Entertainment Offerings

As expected, one of the main topics on the minds of analysts tuning into Spotify’s Q4 earnings call was the firm’s ongoing Joe Rogan debacle. Daniel Ek was asked about the situation right out of the gate on the earnings call, and specifically whether Spotify’s response so far is a “slippery slope in censoring content on the platform”.

Source: Spotify added 3m new creators to its platform last year… and 4 other things we learned from the firm’s Q4 earnings call.

Last summer, Sony Music Group shocked the global music industry by doing something historic: announcing it was disregarding unrecouped balances for thousands of heritage artists and songwriters who had signed to the company in previous decades. This week, in another milestone moment for the music business, one of Sony‘s biggest rivals has stepped up to do the same: Warner Music Group.

Source: Now Warner scraps unrecouped balances for heritage artists. Will Universal be next?

Sony’s global music operations — Sony Music Group and Sony Music Japan — grew 26% to 235.7 billion yen ($2.07 billion) from the prior year’s total of 187.11 billion yen ($1.79 billion), as streaming and other music income streams posted big gains for its fiscal third quarter, according to the company’s earnings report released Wednesday (Feb. 2).

Source: Sony Music Posts $1.6B in Quarterly Revenue as Streaming Jumps 35%

App Annie reports that global consumer spending in the top 25 live streaming apps grew 57% YoY in 2021. Global time spent using live streaming apps grew 40% during the same period. It shows just how important live streaming has become to the creator economy as a whole. The top markets leading lifetime spending on Twitch include the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, France, Australia, South Korea, Italy, Mexico, and Spain.

Source: Twitch Surpasses $1 Billion In Global Consumer Spend on Creators

AT&T announced that its board has decided to spin off the telco’s interest in WarnerMedia — rather than structure the media conglom’s divestiture as a split-off. The transaction will spin off 100% of AT&T’s interest in WarnerMedia to AT&T’s existing shareholders in a pro-rata distribution, followed by the merger of WarnerMedia with Discovery to form a new company, “Warner Bros. Discovery.”

Source: AT&T Sets Plan to Spin Off WarnerMedia in $43 Billion Deal

As Penguin Random House and the Department of Justice continue to prepare for an August trial in which PRH hopes to block the government’s effort to kill its acquisition of Simon & Schuster, professionals throughout the industry are finding themselves pulled into the legal fray.

Source: Publishers, Agencies Start Receiving Subpoenas as DoJ-PRH Case Ramps

Superficially, it seems odd that one low Netflix quarterly forecast would scare investors from the entire segment. But if Netflix growth is slowing, that may mean the world’s total addressable streaming market is significantly lower than previously expected. LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield told CNBC he still believes that number is “six, seven, or eight hundred million subscribers.” But it’s possible the number is actually far less.

Source: Streaming video no longer impresses investors, so media companies need a next act

There can be no doubt that Neil Young has yanked his music from Spotify on a point of principle. Nor that he’s fully prepared to sacrifice his earnings as a result. Yet he’s also just laid the groundwork to shatter erroneous music biz dogma that’s lain unquestioned for too many years. In fact, I suspect that Neil Young is about to prove that a swathe of established artists – namely prestige catalog artists – really don’t need Spotify to survive anymore.

Source: Neil Young’s Spotify exodus is a test case for artists who dare question music industry dogma.