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Business Strategy

Amazon launches HD streaming: Is quality still enough to escape commodification?

Zach Fuller

23 Sep 2019

Streaming Music

This week, Amazon will launch Amazon Music HD in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan, offering 50 million lossless HD songs with a sample rate of 44.1kHz described by Amazon as ‘CD quality’. It is an interesting move for the company and arguably the first to meaningfully push HD music streaming back ...

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How Fender riffed on trends to drive its future forward

Keith Jopling

23 Sep 2019

Business Strategy

By now everyone connected with business, music or both, knows the cautionary tale of Gibson Guitars. Rescued from insolvency in 2018, Gibson had been taken to the brink by a series of calamitous decisions, from transforming into a music lifestyle business loosely modelled on ‘what Nike is to sport...

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The future of music: A vision of post-format

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Mark Mulligan

18 Sep 2019

Formats have shaped and dictated the evolution of recorded music. The constraints that formats set have, in turn, become the creative frameworks within which music has operated. Now, in the internet era, formats are becoming a thing of the past – and yet the way in which music is made and distribu...

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Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) – September 16th 2019

Mark Mulligan

16 Sep 2019

Business Strategy

Spotify – small step, big step: Spotify has announced that it is acquiring musician marketplace company Soundbetter.Back in July, Spotify halted its artist direct offering. Some quarters viewed that as the end of Spotify’s disruptive label-competitor strategy.

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Arcade plays to Apple’s strengths and everyone else’s weaknesses

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Karol Severin

11 Sep 2019

games subscriptions

Apple has revealed more detail about its upcoming Arcade. For $4.99 per month, users will have the ability to download and play 100+ exclusive games across Apple devices. While Apple is positioned as a ‘download and play’ proposition, the reality is it will compete against games streaming as wel...

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The rationale behind Apple TV+’s debut pricing

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Tim Mulligan

11 Sep 2019

Yesterday, (September 10th 2019), Apple announced both a launch date and new pricing for its video subscription service Apple TV+. This follows on from the March Showtime event where Apple rolled out the Apple TV+ brand and the big names it has engaged to build out a premium video content offering.

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Songwriters aren’t getting paid enough – here’s why

Mark Mulligan

10 Sep 2019

Streaming Royalties

Music streaming

Editors note: Since this blog was first published, MIDiA has expanded its research into the challenges facing songwriters in the current music industry landscape. Find out more here . Music Business Worldwide recentlyran a storyon how Apple has proposed a standard streaming rate for songwriters, wit...

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Streaming in Southeast Asia: Challenges and opportunities for international competitors

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Amanda Stears

10 Sep 2019

streaming services

With a combined population of 371.7 million and a combined GDP of $2.9 trillion, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia represent sizeable and fast-growing markets for streaming services. The largest players by subscriptions are Netflix, iflix and Viu, with each competing and differentiating through their...

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Netflix’s binge-watching problem

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Tim Mulligan

9 Sep 2019

Netflix has announced that it is going to start releasing new episodes of The Great British Bake Off and reality series Rhythm + Flow on aweekly basis (via Polygon ). For a company which de-facto created the phenomenon of binge-viewing, this decision brings it more into line with current market tren...

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Does Disney+ make Disney recession-proof?

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Tim Mulligan

5 Sep 2019

Business Strategy

The storm clouds of recession continue to spread across the world. In the US, the inversion of the treasury bond yield which occurred in March of this year has meant that financial asset allocators are now prepared to pay more for less as they bid up the price of long-term government debt issuance.

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Quick take: Spotify expands premium duo into Latin America

Zach Fuller

5 Sep 2019

Music streaming

Critical Developments

Spotify has announced that its Premium Duo plan will be expanding to another 17 countries, 14 of which are in Latin America. The plan, which is effectively a mini version of its popular family offering, has been created with the express intention of servicing couples who reside at the same home addr...

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Starz to increase brand presence with AT&T carriage deal

Amanda Stears

3 Sep 2019

Media and Marketing

On August 30, AT&T announced a multi-year content carriage deal with Starz, allowing AT&T to offer STARZ content to its customers. This content deal includes STARZ and STARZ ENCORE premium linear and HD channels, On-Demand, HD On-Demand and online services.

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YouTube returns to its roots by making originals free

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Amanda Stears

30 Aug 2019

Video subscriptions

YouTube is shifting its original programming strategy by lifting the paywall for all of its original content. Since the rebranding of YouTube Premium in 2018, viewers can opt to pay for a monthly subscription fee of $11.

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Yao Ming 2.0: NBA and House of Mouse – Who needs who more?

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Alistair Taylor

30 Aug 2019

Media and Marketing

Disney’s Q2 quarterly results illustrate the growing importance of its direct to consumer (D2C) streaming offering. With the launch of Disney+ coming up on November 12, Disney looks set to take on streaming incumbent Netflix both domestically and internationally by presenting a unique opportunity ...

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Hasbro and the lure of Peppa Pig

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Tim Mulligan

29 Aug 2019

The decision by US toy company Hasbro’s decision to acquire UK-listed Entertainment One shines a light on the content land grab currently underway in the wake of thedirect-to-consumer big bang moment of 2019.

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Spotify Q2 2019 Earnings
Mature Markets Still the Engine Room of Growth

Cover image for Spotify Q2 2019 Earnings

Mark Mulligan

August 2019

Subscriptions

Streaming

Streaming Music

Q2 2019 was another solid quarter for Spotify, adding the same number of subscribers it typically does in promotional quarters. Core metrics such as churn and average revenue per user (ARPU) all moved in the right direction, but Spotify remains out of contract with two major label partners and needs emerging markets’ subscriber growth to start pi...

Streaming needs to worry about a global recession – but perhaps not as much as cable

Hanna Kahlert

27 Aug 2019

cultural insight

Last week MIDiA’s Mark Mulligan overviewed how, in a recession, discretionary expenditures are the first to be cut. Given the non-obligatory nature of subscriptions and the contractual shackles of cable, services like Netflix and Spotify would likely lose out quickly as consumers rush to minimise ...

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Anyone order latency? Mediaset falls at the first hurdle

Alistair Taylor

23 Aug 2019

Media and Marketing

Mediaset’s newly launched Spanish subscription video on demand (SVOD) service, MiTele Plus, has suffered a succession of technical issues during the debut stream of its domestic La Liga coverage. Latency issues and Smart TV distribution plagued the streaming services broadcast, with complaints gal...

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Why Spotify and Netflix need to worry about a global recession

Mark Mulligan

23 Aug 2019

economic downturn

global recession

A growing body of economists is becoming increasingly convinced thata global recession is edging closer (per CNN ).The last time we experienced a global economic downturn was the 2008 credit crunch. Although the coming recession will likely be a bigger shock to the global economy, it nonetheless giv...

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What happens when Tencent owns 10% of UMG?

Zach Fuller

22 Aug 2019

To sound like a broken record, things are about to get difficult for Spotify. To the company’s credit, since its launch a decade ago rumours of its demise have always been greatly exaggerated, with the company regularly proving sceptics wrong through its ability to consistently retain the largest ...

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