Blog: Streaming Music - Page 4

Amazon announced the anticipated launch of Amazon Music Unlimited in the UK today. For my full take on Amazon Music Unlimited see my previous post here. Make no mistake, Amazon are taking this launch seriously, with a coordinated PR campaign and press release quotes not only from Amazon’s head of streaming music Steve Boom but also from Jeff Bezos himself.

Facebook beat estimates with its latest earnings but announced that ad revenues would likely slow in 2017 as the digital ad market feels the pinch of advertiser budgets lagging the shift in user behaviour.

Spotify’s 2015 UK accounts painted a vibrant picture with both profits and above average Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). However, a little caution is required before assuming all the answers to the streaming market’s woes can be found here.

Back in 2009, when I was at Forrester Research, I laid out the vision for the future of the album , an interactive artist subscription app that contained audio, video, exclusive content, social, lyrics, live streaming and more.

The UK’s vote to leave the European Union sent shockwaves that will continue to reverberate across the globe for years to come. While the potential geopolitical permutations may prove to be era defining, the implications for media and tech companies could also be dramatic.

The music industry remains in a fix over free. The freemium wars in late 2014 almost saw the freemium tier of Spotify turned off in the face of pressure from Apple’s Jimmy Iovine. The majors eventually decided to stick with freemium but the free music wound continues to fester, with YouTube the new public enemy number one.

On Fridayat Midem we launched our new report ‘Cross Border Listening: Borderless Hits And Curated Playlists’. MIDiA produced this report in conjunction with Midem for the 50th anniversary event and it includes exclusive data from Spotify and brand new MIDiA consumer data.

Australian streaming music service Guvera has announced its long-anticipated IPO on Australia’s ASX exchange in July. Guvera has always been an intriguing component of the digital music landscape. On the surface it has been pioneering music streaming in emerging markets where the big western services have failed to make inroads.

Pandora has made the news again with founder Tim Westergren stepping up to the role of CEO, replacing Brain McAndrews. These are certainly uncertain times for Pandora, once the stand out success story of digital music, at least from commercial terms if not always from a songwriter’s perspective.

The album has been under assault ever since Napster first gave consumers the ability cherry pick their favourite tracks and leave the filler behind. Apple formalised the process with the iTunes Store and in recent years streaming has hammered the nail in the coffin by supercharging the consumption shift towards playlists.

The BBC has launched a music app called, well, BBC Music . Available only in the UK, this native music app is one step on a well considered path for the BBC as it tries to carve out a role for itself in streaming era.

2015 was a big year for streaming music but it was a bigger deal for streaming video, generating $16 billion in revenue compared to $4.5 billion for streaming music. (Both figures are retail values). The contrast between the two streaming markets is pronounced: Streaming Video: Exclusives are a standard part of video services Streaming Music: Virtually all of the same 30 million songs are available everywhere Streaming Video: Rights are fragmented across a host of TV networks and studios Streaming Music: 3 labels account for the majority of rights Streaming Video: Subscribers are just as likely to be male or female and have relatively even age distribution Streaming Music: Subscribers are predominately male and under 45 Streaming Video: Services compete on price, content proposition and functionality Streaming Music: Services largely operate within the same price point and content Streaming Video: Video services are profitable (Netflix has a 32.

Vevo has long been in search of an identity. In fact you could make an argument that it has had an identity crisis since its inception as a music industry appendage/Trojan Horse superimposed on YouTube (with the latter having little say in the matter unless it was willing to kiss label relationships goodbye).

Or rather the music industry just broke the chart’s back with YouTube, although it doesn’t realise it yet. And here’s why… It is normal when switching between old and new worlds to use equivalents, deutschmarks to euros, inches to centimetres, circulation numbers to unique visitors etc.

Yonder’s partnershipwith Celcom Axciata in Malayisa is a deal that you might have missed . But you should pay attention because it points to the huge emerging market opportunity for music that is largely going unmet.

As long anticipated Apple has launched the Android edition of Apple Music. I t is a non-typical move for Apple but not one without precedent, not least of which the Windows edition of iTunes which was crucial to iPod uptake.

Pandora this week announced that it signed a deal to become the exclusive streaming partner for hugely successful podcast Serial. The move is interesting on many fronts, not least what impact having near-on-demand content within the otherwise only semi-interactive environment will have on users.

Although the relatively early stage of development of the streaming market means that most listening habits are not yet being changed, there are fundamental shifts emerging among streamers and subscribers that point to the future of music consumption: Subscribers are fickle listeners: 58% of subscribers report listening to individual albums and tracks just a few times while 60% are doing this more than they used to because they are discovering so much new music.