Streaming
Warner Music Makes a Play for India’s Regional Music Market
The partnership with Sky Digital is part of Warner Music’s mandate of “taking the Indian sound global,” Jay Mehta, Warner Music India managing director, tells Billboard. The tie-up follows a similar distribution deal with Bollywood label Tips Music and a licensing agreement with Punjabi music aggregator Ziiki Media, which were announced in May and October 2020, respectively. In addition to running an in-house label whose roster includes such Punjabi singing stars as Sunanda Sharma, Sky Digital currently serves as the aggregator for over 40 Punjabi music labels as well as several Hindi, Haryanvi and Bhojpuri ones. Sky Digital also manages a suite of regional music YouTube channels in those languages that collectively have over 15 million subscribers. Among the recent big Punjabi hits distri...
Spotify Stock Downgraded by Citi, as Podcast Competition Heats Up
Spotify’s share price was already in retreat, dropping 12.5% from an all-time high of $370.95 reached on Wednesday (Jan. 13), however. Some experts would argue it’s still too high. The 25 analysts covering Spotify have a median price target of $298.53 with a high of $425.90 and a low of $141.30, according to Refinitiv. Key Takeaways: 1) The three leading audio streaming companies — Spotify, Apple and Amazon — are pushing hard into podcasts. If turning a music service into an all-around audio service attracts subscribers and reduces churn, record labels and publishers will benefit.2) Regardless of how its podcasts perform in the next year or two, Spotify has the resources to see its strategy through. It had €1.18 billion ($1.43 billion) on its balance sheet on Sept. 30, 2020, en...
Apple Music’s Africa Strategy Is Starting to Pay Off
“Africa has birthed a lot of special talents that have been creating amazing music for a long time and we’re happy to finally have the platforms and the means to share our music across the continent and to the rest of the world,” Tems tells Billboard. “[The Africa Rising program] allowed my music to reach new listeners and [has] also given my supporters and myself something to be excited about in these tough times.” ALL EYES ON AFRICA Over the past several years, labels, distributors and industry trade groups have turned their focus towards the African music market, and Apple Music is not the only streaming service making inroads on the continent, or supporting its local artists. (Tems, for example, was also included as part of the latest class of YouTube’s Foundry program, whi...
Madeon & Moore Kismet Lead Lineup For Videogame-Centric Festival Fusing Virtual & IRL Worlds
As the worlds of dance music, gaming and streaming continue to coalesce, a crew of scene stars are gearing up for a new event merging all three elements. 2021 Grammy nominee Madeon, Billboard 21 under 21 producer Moore Kismet, along with Ookay, Whipped Cream and Armnhmr will play the inaugural Valorant wwFest, happening this Friday, January 15 at 4 p.m. ET. Additional artists will be added to the lineup ahead of the event. Watch a trailer for wwFest below. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.
Netflix Flexes Its Muscle With New Teaser Video Previewing 2021 Film Slate
Source: Courtesy Netflix / Malcolm & Marie Netflix is making a strong case as to why it remains the premier destination to stream movies and original shows. 2021 is poised to be a stellar year for the popular movie streaming service. Today (Jan.12), the company which normally keeps details about its movies and projects close to the vest dropped off a teaser trailer giving subscribers a sneak peek at what their now $17.99 premium subscription will get them in the form of movies and original shows while not revealing any release dates. The nearly three-minute teaser opens with Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds who star in Netflix’s $160 million PG-13 blockbuster Red Notice kicking things off before giving glimpses of the 2021 film slate that features 70 movies ranging...
Spotify Stock Price Hits New All-Time High
What recession? The leader in the fast-growing music streaming market, Spotify reached an all-time high of $354.60 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, and closed at $353.48, up 7% from Thursday’s closing price and up 12.2% for the week. At Friday’s high, Spotify’s enterprise value rose to roughly $66.1 billion. Why the investor enthusiasm? An obvious factor is Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich’s price target hike from $357 to $428 on Wednesday. But a number of factors have had investors excited about the stock over the past year: It is the leader in music streaming and is aggressively expanding its podcast business, most notably with the strong — although controversial — launch for the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Plus, limited pricing experiment...
Hip-Hop, Latin & Vinyl’s Popularity Grew in 2020 (Rock, Pop & CDs’ Did Not)
Roddy Ricch’s “The Box” (via Atlantic) was the top streaming song in 2020 with 1.3 billion on-demand streams, beating out Future’s “Life Is Good” featuring Drake (via Epic), which had 1 billion on-demand streams. Lil Baby’s My Turn (via Quality Control) was the No. 1 album for the year, generating 2.6 million consumption units, with Taylor Swift’s folklore (via Republic) coming in second at 2.2 million album consumption units — of which 1.3 million were from sales (including 796,000 from downloads), making it the year’s best-selling album. In fact, Swift placed four albums in the year’s top 200 albums, as her Lover album ranked No. 33 with 878,000 album consumption units; evermore was No. 70 with 569,000 units and 1989 was No. 116 with 428,000 units. For the 21st year in a...
Roku Purchases Quibi’s Library
It’s about nine months too late, but you’ll soon finally be able to watch Quibi shows on your television. Via Deadline, Roku has acquired 75 titles from the Quibi library that will stream for free with commercials on the Roku Channel. Quibi launched last April with a billion dollars in funding and a dream: to reinvent streaming with “quick bites” of content beamed straight to your mobile phone. The platform’s hopes of gripping an on-the-go populace with ten-minute stories quickly came up against the pandemic; suddenly with too much time on their hands, the target audience was craving binge-watching marathons, not short chapters. Worse, Quibi wasn’t compatible with streaming hardware like Rokus or Amazon Fire TV, which meant people trapped on the couch couldn’t watch it on their TVs. Quibi ...
Recoup, There It Is: An Artist’s Guide to Royalty Hunting (Guest Column)
The good news is that, thanks in large part to a growing coalition of artist advocates, led by SoundExchange, many countries are beginning to pay American performers. In the coming years, we expect most countries to accept the notion of “National Treatment,” which means that if you pay your citizens, you pay American citizens, too. So, now’s the time to register with a collection agent for your works. If you are a producer or musician, make sure you are properly credited for all the parts you play. That helps significantly in some countries, like Germany. This revenue can range from a few bucks to a few hundred thousand dollars. It matters, so get it straight. 2. The Desk Audit: If you are signed to a record label or music publisher, it’s a good idea to investigate ...
Alibaba Group To Shutter China’s Xiami Music Service
Xiami is one of the smaller digital music services in China. While user numbers are not publicly available, Xiami’s music penetration was less than 2% in 2019, with about five million Monthly Active Users in mainland China, according to local Chinese reports. The country’s biggest streaming platforms are QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music and WeSing, all owned by tech giant Tencent Music Entertainment Group. Collectively those four services have more than 800 million users, says Tencent. Tencent’s biggest competitor is NetEase Cloud Music, operated by Chinese internet company NetEase, which claims to have more than 600 million registered users. Xiami and NetEase Cloud Music cut a deal in 2018 for the streaming services to share libraries and grow their respective repertoires — a move seen a...
David Guetta Previews New Year’s Eve Virtual Concert from Paris’ Legendary Louvre Museum
When it comes to the best DJ performances of 2020, electronic music artists have been quite creative in their choice of locations throughout the COVID-19 age. Charlotte de Witte DJed at a medieval Belgian castle. RÜFÜS DU SOL performed live at the fabled Joshua Tree National Park. Kaskade spun at the Grand Canyon. However, David Guetta just dunked on them all. The Grammy Award-winning dance music producer recently announced the third edition of his “United At Home” concert series, a string of virtual shows that raise funds for COVID-10 relief. However, when he shared the news of the momentous New Year’s Eve show in Paris, he refrained from revealing its location until now. Many of Guetta’s fans speculated that an Eiffel Tower performanc...
Steve Aoki, Halsey, and Lauv to Join BTS for New Year’s Eve Streaming Event
South Korean entertainment juggernaut Big Hit Entertainment is gearing up for a New Year’s Eve livestream celebration. Powered by their Weverse platform, the ticketed event will feature performances and virtual meet-and-greets from some of the biggest stars in the world. BTS, Lee Hyun, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, and more are slated to send off 2020 with the app’s multi-camera technology, which will allow fans to watch each set from a variety of immersive angles. Over the weekend, it was announced that a trio of American performers would be taking the digital stage for the end-of-the-year party. Joining the Big Hit Entertainment mainstays are Steve Aoki, Halsey, and Lauv. As you may know, each of the three artists have collaborated with BTS in the past. In the...
