Blog: Streaming - Page 9

[If this was Medium, it would say ‘long read’ – you’ve been warned] I do not normally add disclaimers or qualifiers at the start of blog posts, but given how divisive the whole Article 13 debate has become, there is a big risk that some readers will make incorrect assumptions about my position on Article 13.

Music subscribers grew by 16% in the first half of 2018 to reach 229.5 million, up from 198.6 million at the end of 2017. Year-on-year the global subscriber base increased by 38%, adding 62.8 million subscribers.

Monday’s news that Netflix’s long-serving CFO David Wells was stepping down from his position, has once again made the company’s financial operations the centre of attention. Wells's tenure oversaw an unprecedented level of debt issuance by the company with $8.

A succession of conversations with record labels over the last couple of months has made me start to ponder whether we are approaching a tipping point in streaming era A&R. At the heart of the conversations is whether the growing role of playlists and the increased use of streaming analytics is making label A&R strategy proactive or reactive? Is what people are listening to shaped by the labels or the streaming service? To subvert Paul Weller’s 1980s Jam lyrics: Does the public get what the public wants or does the public want what the public gets? An old dynamic reinvented Radio used to be the main way in which audiences were essentially told what to listen to.

On Monday (July 16 th ) Netflix announced its 2018 Q2 earnings and came head to head with the inflated expectations raised through six months of sustained growth. Netflix’s stock price has increased everyday this year at an average of 1.

Last Wednesday we held the third MIDiA Quarterly forum, exploring the shift from ownership to access across different media industries. In addition to MIDiA analyst presentations we had panellists from Sky, The Economist, Beggars Group, Reed Smith and Readly.

Three weeks after his death and XXXTentacion remains a strong presence within the higher echelonsof the Billboard chart in the US. The late Florida rapper is far from the first artist to enjoy posthumous success and, although his death plays into the well-trodden narrative of the talented artists gone before they had the chance to release greater work, the velocity of his music’s commercial ascent is part of a wider trend.

Friday’s news that catalogue acquisition business Hipgnosis Songs Fund is set to float on the London Stock Exchange, having already raised around $260 million, reflects a booming market for music catalogues.

The football World Cup – historically the world’s biggest international sporting event by viewership, kicked off last Thursday (14 June) in Moscow, with host nation Russia dispatching Saudi Arabia 5-0.

Following the landmark rights deal that saw the English Premier League (EPL) sell domestic rights to the tech major Amazon, the sports landscape has fundamentally changed. For the first time the EPL has sold domestic digital rights, allowing for matches to be live streamed on Amazon Prime.

It is easy to feel that the pervasive obsession with Spotify overplays its importance to the recorded music industry. On the one hand it may only represent 27% of global recorded music revenues, but this compares to a peak of around 10% that Apple enjoyed at the peak of the iTunes Music Store.

Today is a historic day for the English Premier League, the most followed and the most valuable football league internationally. Back in February, when the 2019–2022 EPL domestic rights were auctioned off for a combined £4.

Traditional linear TV broadcasters are feeling the strain from the reduction in loyal customers, as sports consumption continues to transition from TV to online and mobile. SVOD’s streaming content land grab, which drew scripted drama fans from traditional pay-TV, is now moving into the sports arena.

Last week, Disney-owned ESPN acquired the exclusive rights to show the UFC tournament in the US for $1.5 billion over five years. The deal will see the UFC earn $184 million more each year than the previous deal with Fox, which begs the question; is the UFC mimicking Fox’s strategy and cashing in on its content? While Endeavor (formerly WME-IMG), which purchased the UFC for $4 billion in 2016, was seeking in the region of $450 million per year, UFC president Dana White is ecstatic with the new deal, telling MMAJunkie: “Our last deal was $116 million a year.

When it comes to the music industry’s transition towards streaming, how the model has worked in the past requires a reconsideration of perspective. This is because throughout the business’s entire history, catalogue and copyright accounted for the majority of revenue, as breaking new artists was, and remains, an expensive endeavour very much in the VC model of investment, with a few large payoffs accounting for the overall cost.

In 2014 YouTube launched its inaugural music subscription service YouTube Music Key in beta. The following year YouTube announced it was closing it ahead of the launch of YouTube Red , a multi-format subscription video on demand (SVOD) offering, of which music was going to be sub-component.

With Tencent making headlines for its recent round of high-profile media investments in Spotify and Skydance Media, alongside recent concerns stemming from the Q4 2017 earnings released in March, investors are waiting with baited breath for the Q1 2018 earnings due on May 16.

Yesterday’s Q2 Earning Results from the Walt Disney Company pleased Wall Street by beating earnings estimates. However, a closer look at the financials reveals why Disney’s much heralded pivot to subscription video on demand (SVOD) is a strategic imperative for the longevity of the media conglomerate.