Streaming
Lizzo Is Getting Her Own HBO Max Documentary
A documentary about Lizzo is officially in the works, and honestly, it’s “About Damn Time.” The singer announced the news on Wednesday (May 18) at the Warner Bros. Discovery Upfront presentation at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, and revealed that HBO Max will be taking on the yet-to-be titled project, which is set to arrive this fall. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news An official press release about the forthcoming documentary says the film will explore “the journey of a trailblazing superstar who has become the movement the world desperately needed just by being herself. The HBO Max documentary shares the inspirational story behind her humble beginnings to her meteoric rise with an intimate look into the moments that shaped her h...
Tencent Music Revenues Fall 15%, Subscriptions Grow Amid Regulatory ‘Headwinds’
The effects of government intervention on Tencent Music Entertainment, the leading music streaming platform in China, were visible in the first quarter as the company’s revenues dropped 15.1% to RMB 6.64 billion ($1.05 billion) from the prior-year period. Shenzhen-based TME operates QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music and WeSing. In a statement, executive chairman Cussion Pang attributed the decline to “headwinds in an evolving market landscape,” a reference to the difficulties created by increased Chinese regulations and increased competition from Cloud Village, the music streaming platform spun off by Netease in Dec. 2021, and Quishiu Yinyue, a new music service by Douyin, the Chinese version of short-form video platform TikTok. The quarterly report’s bright spot was music subscripti...
The Ledger: How the Industry Went From Discussing Fairness to Accuracy – And Why it Matters
The Ledger is a weekly newsletter about the economics of the music business sent to Billboard Pro subscribers. An abbreviated version of the newsletter is published online. What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, most music industry conferences played like long, geeky arguments between technology companies that said they represented the future of the business and labels and publishers that wanted that future to involve getting paid. At one memorable SXSW panel, independent artists and small label owners seethed over their inability to get YouTube to permanently remove their music from user-generated videos. At MIDEM in 2010, a year before Spotify launched in the U.S., Americans heard horror stories from European executives about the platform’s minuscule royalty rates for ad-suppor...
Disney+ Hits 137.7M Subscribers, Beats Wall Street Expectations
Disney once again beat Wall Street expectations last quarter in streaming, adding 7.9 million Disney+ subscribers, and suggesting that the company may be positioned to take a lead in what has become a cutthroat race to the top in streaming. While Wall Street expectations for Disney+ were varied, a midpoint expectation was 4.5 million to 5 million adds. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Disney reported revenue of $19.2 billion and income of $3.7 billion, with earnings per share of $1.08. Wall Street expectations were for revenue of $20.1 billion, operating income of $3.3 billion, and EPS of $1.17. The EPS miss could be due to a change in tax regulations, which saw the company’s effective tax rate balloon from 8.8 percent a year a...
Netflix’s Clark: Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt Composes Soundtrack, Ghost’s Tobias Forge Makes Cameo
Clark is a new Netflix Swedish-language series based on infamous Swedish criminal Clark Olofsson. Directed by ex-Bathory drummer and Lords of Chaos director Jonas Åkerlund, the six-part series boasts a serious metal pedigree. To start, Åkerlund tapped Opeth mastermind Mikael Åkerfeldt to compose the score for the series. Åkerfeldt recently announced a physical release of the 34-track soundtrack, which spans genres and features four vocal performances from the Opeth frontman. The soundtrack drops on July 22nd, 2022 via InsideOutMusic. On writing the soundtrack to Clark, Åkerfeldt commented in a press release: “Writing the music for Clark is probably one of the most rewarding things I’ve done musically. It was so fun. Challenging, but fun. I wanted to do a good job of course, and provide mus...
Spotify to Host First-Ever Investor Day on June 8
Spotify will host an investor day at the company’s New York City office on June 8 at 10 a.m. EST, the company announced Monday (May 9). This will be streamers’ first investor day since going public in 2018. The event will feature a series of presentations from Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, CFO Paul Vogel and other members of the leadership team, followed by a live Q&A focused on the progress Spotify has made since its direct listing in April 2018 along with its current roadmap and future growth opportunities. A live webcast of the investor day will be available at investors.spotify.com, while in-person attendance is by invitation only due to limited capacity. Additional details will be sent out in advance of the event. The investor day was announced as Spotify stock reached an all-time low of...
Bad Bunny Tops Spotify Records for Most-Streamed Album in 2022, Most-Streamed Artist Globally in a Day
Bad Bunny‘s new album Un Verano Sin Ti is already making a splash on streaming services. In its first day of release, Friday (May 6), the Puerto Rican star broke two records, Spotify announced. Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti became the most-streamed album in 2022 so far. The artist also reached the milestone of becoming the most-streamed artist globally in one day, with 183 million streams. Drake previously held this record, with 176.8 million streams. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news On Friday, all 23 songs on Bad Bunny’s new album ranked in the top 30 of Spotify’s Daily Top Songs Global chart, with nine of those tracks finding their way to the top 10. Bad Bunny, who was Spotify’s most-streamed artist worldwide in both 2020 and 2021,...
The Ledger: How Much Will Music Subscriptions Grow in 2022?
The Ledger is a weekly newsletter about the economics of the music business sent to Billboard Pro subscribers. An abbreviated version of the newsletter is published online. Earnings season is a great time to read the tea leaves about the future of the streaming and subscription businesses. How much growth is ahead? Where will that growth come from? Is pricing headed up or down? The answers are vital for investors but are also important to labels, publishers and creators. In the last two weeks, three companies — Spotify, Universal Music Group and Believe — provided some outlook on the streaming market during their earnings calls with analysts. Their earnings reports appeared in the wake of Netflix’s warning of subscription growth slowdown and the abrupt demise of CNN’s subscription platform...
Anchor Co-Founder Michael Mignano Resigns From Spotify
Michael Mignano, co-founder of the popular podcast creation platform Anchor, which was acquired by Spotify in 2019, submitted his resignation last week, a company spokesperson confirmed with Billboard. Mignano’s departure was first reported by The Verge. It is the latest shake-up on the podcasting side of Spotify. In April, a pair of top executives — Courtney Holt, head of talk partnerships, editorial and global markets, and Lydia Polgreen, managing director of Gimlet, which Spotify also acquired in 2019 — both announced plans to leave the company. Mignano founded Anchor with Nir Zicherman eight years ago. “We tried to start podcasts of our own… only to become discouraged by the complicated process and expensive hardware we found ourselves endlessly researching,” the two wrote in 2019...
Electronic Music Industry Tops $6 Billion In 2021, Makes Key Strides In Web3: IMS Business Report
According to the newly published annual IMS Business Report 2022, electronic music continues to have an optimistic growth trajectory in a variety of key areas. As a sector, electronic music was valued at $6 billion in 2021, which is up 71% from 2020, but down 20% from 2019. Throughout the report, encouraging signs of the industry bouncing back in the aftermath of the pandemic continue to be apparent. Metrics including the number of festivals that book electronic artists and the quantity of search results for flights to Ibiza are up significantly year-over-year, but there’s still ground to cover when it comes to achieving the pre-pandemic levels of 2019. While the world was in a variable state of lockdown over the last two years, dance music made key strides in the digital arena. In 1...
The Ledger: Tencent Music Highlights Risks of Doing Business in China
Doing business in China got tougher in 2021 after government agencies handed down new rules and levied fines against some well-known companies. For evidence this has made investing in Chinese companies more complicated, look no further than Tencent Music Entertainment’s annual report released Tuesday. All publicly traded companies’ financial statements include risk factors mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission to help investors understand companies’ unique challenges and possible negative outcomes if things go south. TME’s previous annual reports have listed numerous risk factors, ranging from licensing third-party content to its corporate structure. It’s a long list that just got longer. The new risk factors in TME’s 2022 annual report are further evidence of the challenges f...
Joe Rogan Claims Massive Subscriber Boost Due to Recent Controversies
Joe Rogan says his recent controversy has given his Spotify podcast even more horsepower. The podcaster claims the media frenzy over anti-vax conspiracy theorist guests and his past use of the N-word has netted him two million additional subscribers. In Friday’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comic and UFC commentator was asked by his guest, British political commentator Douglas Murray, about the uproar. “You have been put through the wringer since we last met,” Murray says. “They did a number on you. Wow.” Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “It’s interesting, my subscriptions went up massively — that’s what’s crazy,” Rogan replies. “During the height of it all, I gained two million subscribers … Yeah, [the media] went for it. It...
