Marketplace

AI will no doubt speed the creation of music, but that acceleration comes at a time when music streaming services are already inundated with content. There are now more than 100 million songs on Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Spotify. AI tools democratize music making. But there’s potential for a flood of AI-generated content to be unleashed onto streaming platforms, competing with real people and their compositions for the attention of your ears.

Source: AI-Generated Music Is About to Flood Streaming Platforms

Like other platforms, it will allow artists to supply fans with exclusive content or experiences in exchange for subscriptions and payments from fans – the twist being that LimeWire has web3-ified its platform and thus fans will “take ownership of each individual content piece, as every subscriber will automatically receive a digital collectible of each post shared by the artist.”

Source: LimeWire offers new subscription-based platform for artists – Music Ally

Guy Bisson of Ampere Analysis updates at MipTV on streamers’ move to unscripted, franchises and other trends. As revealed by Ampere research, global streaming commissions have hit their lowest point in two years, shedding light on the changing dynamics within the industry. Fourth quarter 2022 saw streamer commissions of unscripted content pass 50% for the first time, up to 50.27% from 30.35% in Q4 2019.

Source: Embracing Unscripted, Licensing Agreements, More Bang For Their Buck, Streaming Giants Go Back To The Future

As part of its on-going podcast push, Spotify has launched a new tool to let radio broadcasters turn their audio content into on-demand podcast content. Broadcast-to-Podcast (B2P) is now available for any publisher with an account on Megaphone. Spotify’s Global Head of Advertising Business Development & Partnerships, Emma Vaughn, said Spotify ventured into B2P as radio listening has gradually shifted from over-the-air to streaming.

Source: Spotify develops new tool for turning radio broadcasts into podcasts

Rather than existing in silos, streaming video, social media, music, and gaming are weaving together into a more interconnected and interdependent tapestry. What stands out most is that younger generations may give their digital entertainment time more evenly to TV and movies, video games, music, and UGC. How can media and entertainment companies better understand these changes?

Source: Deloitte’s 2023 digital media trends: Immersed and connected

Many aspects of the TV business have been turned inside-out by the subscription video-on-demand revolution. But now, as entertainment’s largest conglomerates face a perfect storm of financial pressures and macroeconomic uncertainty, there’s been a clear shift again to embrace the fundamentals and focus on profits, not market share, for new services.

Source: Hollywood Shifts Back to Basics: Profits, Selling to the Highest Bidder

With the focus shifting from the acquisition to retention of subscribers, a focus on sweating its most prolific IP makes sense if the end goal is demonstrating value by increasing engagement among viewers. In a similar way to Netflix’s approach with the Stranger Things video game, the hope will be that audiences coming to Stranger Things through the theatre and animated formats will then be inspired to check out the original series.

Source: Netflix’s risk averse strategy is right for the retention age

The iconic music player Winamp is launching a new player that comes with new functionality aimed at unlocking the relationship between artists and fans. Winamp seems like a dusty relic of the past, though the company says it has community of more than 83 million users around the globe. Now, it wants to empower music artists to become their own merchants.

Source: 90s Darling Winamp Relaunches—Can it Reach 250M Users?

No one outside of the inner corporate circles really knows how the economics of the streaming world works. It pays, but what does it pay, and to whom? Reasonably high-profile artists in many genres have not been shy about posting their meager Spotify royalty checks to social media. Many of those artists then encourage listeners to buy their music on Bandcamp as a moral choice. That’s when you know the old model is truly dead: “Buy my music as a moral choice.”

Source: The End of the Music Business

For two straight quarters, cancellations have outpaced new subscriptions for digital memberships, food-of-the-month clubs and a host of other purchases, according to personal finance app Rocket Money. Streaming services have been particularly impacted, with cancellations for Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max and others up 49% in 2022 from the previous year, according to subscriber-measurement firm Antenna.

Source: People Are Sick and Tired of All Their Subscriptions