Blog: Music - Page 20

Read our latest daily deep dives, hot takes, and exciting updates about the entertainment world. Check out the latest insight from your favourite analyst, or search by coverage areas - music, entertainment and fandom, creator economy and social.

Roblox, piracy and the future of music in UGC 2.0

Kriss Thakrar

19 Mar 2021

user-generated content music piracy Roblox

A community of Roblox users are losing a battle against moderation as the platform cracks down on music piracy, due to the platform’s newly public status bringing with it a new level of responsibility.

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Recorded music revenues hit $23.1 billion in 2020, with artists direct the winners – again

Mark Mulligan

15 Mar 2021

Recorded music revenue 2020 musc revenues 2020 label market shares 2020

The global pandemic caused widespread disruption to the music business, in particular decimating the live business and impacting publisher public performance royalties. Although the recorded music business experienced a dip in the earlier months of the pandemic, the remainder of the year saw industr...

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Native Instruments and iZotope: creator tools major in the making

Mark Mulligan

11 Mar 2021

Music Business Strategy

At the start of the year private equity firm Francisco Partners acquired a majority stake in creator tools stalwart Native Instruments. It always looked like it was going to be the start of something big and today we saw the next step on Native’s new journey, with leading audio plugin company iZot...

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Women making music: The COVID impact

Hanna Kahlert

8 Mar 2021

Music women in music international womens day

The last 12 months have been marked mostly by the coronavirus pandemic, which has pushed much of life to the digital world. 70% of independent artists overall spent much of the time over lockdowns creating more music, many taking more autonomy over their own marketing and production.

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The music business in 2021: Joining the dots

Mark Mulligan

4 Mar 2021

Music Cultural trends

It has been one of those weeks, with impactful music business announcements coming thick and fast. As is often the case, a succession of apparently unrelated events actually have a connecting thread. In this instance there are three: 1.

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Smaller independents and artists direct grew fastest in 2020

Mark Mulligan

1 Mar 2021

Spotify Streaming Music Independent labels

Last year we identified a small but crucial metric from Spotify’s annual report: the share of all streams accounted for by majors and independent licensing body Merlin. It was crucial because it enabled us to segment the streaming market in detail, when combined with market data from majors and in...

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Clubhouse and the next evolution of audio

Hanna Kahlert

23 Feb 2021

Music Media and Marketing

Audio has seen an overall boom during the last year , with audiobooks alone significantly gaining consumer attention time and attracting audience over from radio. Podcasts have also grown in the lockdown periods, as background audio surges into the space left behind by contextual ambiance.

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Last call for the global independent label survey

Mark Mulligan

18 Feb 2021

Independent label survey label survey Independent labels

With 2020 now comfortably behind us and public companies in their earnings cycle, a clear picture is starting to emerge of how the global recorded music market performed. MIDiA is midway through fielding the global independent label survey that will help create the definitive view of how the indepen...

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Taylor Swift and the changing tide of artist power

Hanna Kahlert

16 Feb 2021

Music Media and Marketing Cultural trends

In the latest episode of a long-running feud between Taylor Swift and Big Machine Records, the western princess turned pop icon is releasing the first of her original re-recorded albums under her own ownership.

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New artists, does it pay to be streaming first?

Keith Jopling

10 Feb 2021

Strategy Marketing Streaming Music

This is part 2 of my "marketing long read" posts, part 1 focused on Catalogue . In a recent interview with Steve Lamacq, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters told him “We don’t have anyone else making decisions for us, we do that ourselves”, something a globally successful 10-album rock behemoth can...

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Sony just became (even more of) an independent powerhouse

Mark Mulligan

1 Feb 2021

AWAL Kobalt Sony Music

Sony Music has bought AWAL (and Kobalt Neighbouring Rights) from Kobalt for $430 million . By adding AWAL to its already-booming Orchard division (as well as other distribution companies), it now has leading brands for independent artists as well as independent labels.

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Equitable remuneration, artist income and unintended consequences

Mark Mulligan

29 Jan 2021

Streaming economy streaming inquiry equitable remuneration

The UK Parliament’s inquiry on the economics of streaming appears to be building a case for equitable remuneration (ER). There are many iterations of what ER can mean, but a simplified description of what is in play here is: a share of streaming revenue being paid directly by the DSPs to an entity...

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Women making music

Hanna Kahlert

28 Jan 2021

Music Women diversity

Even taking into account the impact of the pandemic, it has never been a better time for independent creators in the music business. The various 2020 lockdowns may have prevented artists from earning vital touring income and disrupted release and promotion cycles, but for many it also pushed new cre...

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Songs are the golden eggs in music catalogues, but who is looking after the goose?

Keith Jopling

20 Jan 2021

Strategy music catalogue Marketing

Marketing Long Read Part 1: Catalogue & Song Management It will not have escaped your attention that music catalogues are changing hands for serious sums of money. The race to acquire the songwriters’ share is on, and it is speeding up.

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Music has developed an attention dependency

Mark Mulligan

15 Jan 2021

Music

The attention economy defines and shapes today’s digital world. However, we have long since reached peak in the attention economy with all available free time now addressed. What this means is that previously, when digital entertainment propositions grew, they were often using up users’ free tim...

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What measures an artist's success in today's music industry?

Keith Jopling

23 Dec 2020

Strategy Media Streaming Music

It’s that time of year again for lists. Endless top albums and song rankings that can be a bonus for a music artist to be included on. A placement on an influential list (which ones those are is more of a debate these days, but let’s say Pitchfork for example, or Rolling Stone, or perhaps Fader ...

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Global independent label survey

Mark Mulligan

14 Dec 2020

Music

MIDiA Research is conducting a major study of independent label revenue in order to create a definitive review of the independent sector’s contribution to the global music market. MIDiA conducted this work for a number of years on behalf of the Worldwide Independent Network and is now independentl...

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Pandemic boom fuels creator tools growth

Dara Jegede

30 Nov 2020

Music

- A new generation of artists is engendering a new creative paradigm, where production is far more central to the creative process and artists are able to make and release high-quality music more quickly than ever - SAAS-based creator tools are becoming the new ‘top of funnel’ for the music indu...

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Time to move beyond the song economy

Mark Mulligan

27 Nov 2020

Music

The UK parliament is currently running an inquiry into the streaming music economy, having called for evidence from across the music business. Earlier this week were the first verbal submissions, from a number of UK artists including Tom Gray (Gomez), Guy Garvey (Elbow), Ed O’Brien (Radiohead) and...

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YouTube at two billion: Still much more music opportunity to be had

Mark Mulligan

17 Nov 2020

Music

YouTube just announced its milestone of reaching two billion music users on the platform . YouTube has long been the largest music service on the planet, and it has just extended that lead. In 2019, its official total user number was two billion.

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