Marketplace

On Deezer’s latest earnings call Thursday (August 3), CEO Jeronimo Folgueira told analysts that the streaming service’s own price hike in early 2022 didn’t have a negative impact on its subscription numbers – a fact that opens the door to further increases in subscription prices. “Deezer was the first player to raise prices in early 2022, with pretty much no impact on churn, which has clearly demonstrated that music is highly undervalued and that platforms like us have more pricing power than initially anticipated,” Folgueira said.

Source: Deezer drops heavy hint that music streaming price hikes could be a recurring phenomenon

Beginning this week, Vault’s “Cassette Culture 3.0” initiative is offering weekly drops of live recordings from underground and independent bands via its Solana-based NFT music platform. It’s designed to recall the approach by bands to create and distribute amateur recordings via cassette tapes to help build a following.

Source: Can Live Music NFTs Revive ‘Cassette Culture’ and Boost Indie Bands? – Decrypt

The growth is driven by a combination of price rises – notably by Netflix in March 2022 and Amazon in September 2022 – and overall growth in subscriptions, which increased from 39.7 million in Q4 2021 to 42.2 million in Q4 2022, the Media Nations U.K. 2023 study says. Netflix accounted for half of all SVOD revenue in 2022, with the four largest services, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Sky’s Now, taking a 93% market share.

Source: U.K. Streaming Revenues Soar 21% to $4.1 Billion in Flat Market, Media Regulator Study Reveals

Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, has started blocking news articles on its social networking services in Canada. The change, in response to a new law in Canada that requires tech companies to pay news outlets for using their content, will roll out “over the course of the next few weeks,” Meta said in a blog post on Tuesday

Source: Meta Begins Blocking News in Canada

The WGA informed its members of the outreach from AMPTP to Ellen Stutzman, the WGA’s chief negotiator, on Tuesday evening. Earlier in the day, industry insiders were buzzing about the possiblity of progress in the long-stalled WGA talks as word spread that the WGA’s contract negotiating committee called members to a meeting on short notice Tuesday afternoon.

Source: Writers Strike: AMPTP, WGA Set Meeting to Discuss Resuming Long-Stalled Contract Talks

To survey the film and television industry today is to witness multiple existential crises. Many of them point to a larger trend: of Hollywood divesting from its own future, making dodgy decisions in the short term that whittle down its chances of long-term survival. Corporations are no strangers to fiscal myopia, but the ways in which the studios are currently squeezing out profits indicate a shocking new carelessness.

Source: Hollywood’s Slo-Mo Self-Sabotage

According to Spotify’s new study, averaged across all artist sizes, ‘super listeners’ on the platform make up 2% of an artist’s monthly listeners, but account for over 18% of monthly streams. Spotify also indicates that so-called super listeners make “an XL number” of merch purchases. According to the study, on average, 2% of an artist’s monthly listeners account for more than half of their merch purchases.

Source: ‘Super listeners’ make up 2% of artists’ monthly listeners on Spotify, but account for over 18% of monthly streams

The company’s long reluctance to raise prices presumably reflected a deep reluctance to lose any market share or ARPU, even as its competitors raised their prices and the industry increased pressure on the company to do so. Surveys have long shown that consumers are willing to accept a price hike for streaming, given the low streaming royalties that musicians and especially songwriters receive for the use of their work.

Source: Spotify CFO Hints at More Layoffs in Earnings Call

BeatStars revealed today (July 25) that it has entered into a strategic alliance with an AI music startup called Lemonaide, which has developed an AI-powered plug-in that generates ideas for beats. Lemonaide says that its AI is trained “exclusively on voluntarily contributed data from producers” and as explained by founder Jacob in the video below, the tool can generate millions of different combinations:

Source: Having paid out over $250m to its members to date, BeatStars strikes strategic partnership with AI Music startup Lemonaide

After months of pressure, Spotify has finally raised its monthly U.S. subscription prices. In wording that seems oddly apologetic and reflects CEO Daniel Ek’s long resistance to raising prices, the company made the announcement in a blog post Monday morning. “The market landscape has continued to evolve since we launched,” it reads. “So that we can keep innovating, we are changing our Premium prices across a number of markets* around the world.

Source: Spotify Finally Raises U.S. Premium Subscription Prices