Streaming
CNN+ Announces It’s Shutting Down Three Weeks After Launch
CNN+, the billion-dollar bet that CNN’s future depended on digital streaming, will be shutting down at the end of the month, The New York Times and CNN report. The news comes scarcely three weeks after CNN+ launched on March 29th. The streaming offshoot of the cable news titan was championed by former CEO Jeff Zucker, who had planned to spend $1 billion on CNN+ over four years. But Zucker departed in February after failing to disclose a relationship with CNN’s marketing chief, and the future of the platform fell further into doubt last month, when CNN’s parent company WarnerMedia finalized a merger with Discovery to become Warner Bros. Discovery. Its fate may have been sealed when Warner Bros. Discovery announced that HBO Max and Discovery+ would be combined into one streaming platfor...
Which Cities Listen to Bob Marley the Most?
I was almost not going to write this, because it felt a little too much like trying to force the cliché, but then I got an email from the Bob Marley online shop promoting its exclusive 4/20 merch with the subject line, “When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself,” so I decided we weren’t forcing anything after all. But I digress. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news It is 4/20 after all, the universally agreed-upon day where a bunch of people make jokes about stoners and stoners just continue going about their lives as normal. But where are those stoners — and, more specifically, where are those stoners in the U.S. who are listening to Bob Marley? In 2022 so far, Luminate, formerly MRC Data, has logged more than 308 billion on-deman...
Spotify Scraps Greenroom Creator Fund Amid Live Audio Rebrand
Spotify has shuttered its fund for live audio creators less than a year after the funding program was first unveiled, a company spokesperson confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. Originally, live audio creators using Spotify Greenroom — which has since been renamed Spotify Live — would have been able to participate in the fund to receive payouts for their work. Spotify never disclosed how exactly the funding would be determined, but the company said in its initial announcement last June that a creator’s audience size and how their content was consumed would factor into the payments. But the creator fund never ultimately launched last summer, as Spotify said it would at the time, and a Spotify spokesperson said on Tuesday that the funding will be shifted to...
Netflix Loses 200,000 Subscribers, First Loss in Over Ten Years
Netflix has reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers so far this year — the first time the customer base has declined in 11 years. As Bloomberg reports, the bleeding may have only begun. In an earnings report, Netflix said it expects to lose an additional two million subscribers in the second quarter of 2022. This is despite the fact that Netflix signed up an additional one million new users in Africa during the first quarter. Those gains were offset by losses across the rest of the globe, especially in the US and Canada, where 600,000 people cut their service after a price hike, and in Russia, where the company lost another 700,000 subscribers after ceasing operations in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Advertisement Related Video The Big Red N boasts a total of abou...
Snoop Dogg Says Death Row Records Classics Will Live Exclusively On New App
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Kevin Winter / Getty Snoop Dogg made quite the big score after buying back Death Row Records and relaunching the legendary label, but some fans noticed some of the classic records from that time were missing from streaming services. The Doggfather explained in a recent interview that he intends to launch an app where those classics will live exclusively. Uncle Snoop was a recent guest on the Drink Champs podcast with N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN, naturally running through the Long Beach, Calif. native’s lengthy and still-ongoing career. As has been noted in earlier reports, Snoop elected to remove Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, his debut album Doggystyle, and Tha Dogg Pound’s Dog Food from Spotify, Apple, and Amazon Music for streaming. Snoop explained, “First thing I did...
Here’s Why Snoop Dogg Says He Pulled Death Row’s Catalog From Streaming
Snoop Dogg’s first course of action after purchasing the Death Row Records brand and catalog in February was seemingly pulling the whole catalog off streaming services — now he’s explained why. In a new interview with REVOLT’s Drink Champs on Friday, Snoop said he removed Death Row’s music — including his 1993 debut Doggystyle and Dr. Dre’s seminal The Chronic — from traditional streaming services “because those platforms don’t pay.” Instead, the rapper claimed he’s planning to launch a standalone “Death Row app” that will host the label’s music. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “Those platforms get millions and millions and millions of streams and nobody gets paid other than the record labels,” said Snoop. “So what I wanted to do is snatch...
Swedish House Mafia Make History With First-Ever Spotify Livestream at Coachella Afterparty
The dance music mega-group Swedish House Mafia made history early Saturday (April 16) when the trio became the first artists to be livestreamed by Spotify as part of the streaming platform’s new Spotify Live offering. Axwell highlighted the news while the Swedes performed at a private Coachella afterparty hosted by Spotify to celebrate the release of Swedish House Mafia’s first studio album, Paradise Again. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The group performed for over two hours at a highly curated event at a private mansion near the Coachella festival grounds with a faux lake and beach, where a bevy of VIP influencers, the DJ Alesso, the pop star Anitta and Euphoria actress Chloe Cherry also made appearances. They played many of the...
Drake Outstreams All Pre-1980 Music: The 2021 Streaming Market, by Decade
The most popular oldies are getting younger. Since at least 2014, the market share of catalog has been rising – from just over 65.1% in 2020 to 69.8% of album consumption units last year, according to Luminate (formerly known as MRC Data). At the same time, though, the music that dominates the catalog category – defined by Billboard as albums released more than 18 months ago, as long as they’re not being actively promoted by labels or in the top half of the Billboard 200 – is more recent than ever. In a trend apparently driven by streaming, growth is now being driven mostly by older albums from newer artists – sometimes referred to as “shallow catalog” – rather than the “deep catalog” of the ’60s and ’70s rock acts that used to dominate the category. To get a sense of how profound this shi...
(This Is) Not Your Father’s Catalog Music
Streaming has made catalog music more important than ever – it jumped from about 65% of the market in 2020 to about 70% last year. But the catalog that’s growing isn’t necessarily what you’d expect. Icons like The Beatles are thriving, but the category is now dominated by Drake, Taylor Swift and other modern acts. Billboard explains where the growth is – and how it could continue. Plus: Why Drake streams as much as all music before 1980 combined, how TikTok turns yesterday’s tracks into today’s hits, how classic rock acts are holding up and why the only thing that hasn’t changed is the industry’s ability to hype up trends. Related Related Deep Dive: A Musician’s Guide to Web3 04/15/2022 Read the full Deep Dive here. More Swift Than Dylan: How Newer Hits Overtook Classic Rock to Rule ...
More Swift Than Dylan: How Newer Hits Overtook Classic Rock to Rule the Catalog Market
At the beginning of the year, Luminate (formerly MRC Data) issued its 2021 annual report, which showed that catalog music — which Billboard defines as a track that is older than 18 months — increased its share of overall U.S. music consumption from 65.1% in 2020 to 69.8% last year, as measured by album consumption units. The initial interpretation of that data was that, more than a year into the pandemic, listeners were soothing themselves with nostalgia — relaxing with Fleetwood Mac, rather than blasting Doja Cat. The market share of catalog has actually been rising since 2014, back when sales still dominated the industry, when it accounted for just 35.8% of the business. Since then, the popularity of catalog has climbed steadily, until its big jump last year – when consumption in the cat...
After Deezer Failed to Go Public Years Ago, Now Timing Is Everything
Since 2020, nine music-related companies — including the first- and third-largest record labels — have gone public to take advantage of renewed investor interest in a once-struggling industry. Add French music streaming service Deezer to the list. According to a report on Wednesday at The Wall Street Journal, Deezer, which first attempted an initial public offering in late 2015, is planning to go public with a European special purpose acquisition corporation, I2PO, backed by Groupe Artémis, a holding company behind fashion brand Puma and French investment banker Matthieu Pigasse, a partner at Paris-based Centerview Partners. Deezer had no comment to Billboard on the news. Representatives for I2PO did not respond to a request for comment. Deezer — led since last year by CEO Jeronimo Folguei...
Spotify Podcast and Editorial Exec Courtney Holt Exits
Courtney Holt, Spotify’s head of talk partnerships, editorial and global markets, will transition to an advisory role next month as the audio giant prepares to divide his responsibilities across multiple executives, a person familiar with the matter told The Hollywood Reporter. Holt is expected to stay on as advisor for a year. In the meantime, his duties will be taken over by a team primarily led by Julie McNamara, Spotify’s head of U.S. studios and video, and Max Cutler, the head of new content initiatives and the founder of Parcast Studios. The transition has been underway for a few weeks, according to the person, and Spotify is not hiring a replacement for Holt’s position. “I want to give thanks to the incredible teams at @Spotify I was [lucky] enough to lead and interact with,” Holt t...
