Welcome to Music Enterprise Worldwide’s weekly round-up – the place we be sure that you caught the 5 greatest tales to hit our headlines over the previous seven days. MBW’s round-up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their earnings and scale back their touring prices.
One of many bigger music biz tales this week was a brand new world deal between Common Music Group and Meta, guardian firm of Fb and Instagram. Notably, for the primary time, the UMG-Meta contract contains Meta’s immediate messaging service, WhatsApp.
One other notable deal revealed this week was one between gaming large Roblox and music distributor DistroKid. This deal, nevertheless, has a catch: Although indie artists can consent to their music being out there to Roblox’s 80 million day by day lively customers, they gained’t be paid for using their work on the platform.
In the meantime, Ross Liang, CEO of Tencent Music Leisure, made some feedback on the corporate’s newest earnings name that caught our consideration: Apparently TME’s Tremendous VIP music streaming subscription tier prices 5 occasions as a lot as a typical paid streaming subscription. As we propose in our evaluation under, Spotify may be taught rather a lot from it.
Talking of China-based music streaming firms, Kunlun Tech, proprietor of the Opera net browser and former proprietor of Grindr, has unveiled a brand new music streaming service pushed fully by AI. Melodio options “customized, AI-generated music streams tailor-made to [users’] moods and situations.”
Lastly, file producer and longtime Bruce Springsteen supervisor Jon Landau has offered the producer and neighboring rights royalties from his 55-year profession to Main Wave Music. Apart from Springsteen, Landau has labored with Jackson Browne, Shania Twain and others.
Right here’s what occurred this week…
1) UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP AND META INK NEW GLOBAL DEAL, COVERING FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM… AND WHATSAPP
Fb guardian firm Meta and Common Music Group have signed an expanded world, multi-year deal.
UMG stated in a press launch on Monday (August 12) that the brand new deal will “additional evolve the inventive and industrial alternatives” for UMG artists and Common Music Publishing Group songwriters throughout Meta’s world community of platforms, together with Fb, Instagram, Messenger, Horizon, Threads and, for the primary time, WhatsApp.
The inclusion of Meta’s immediate messaging service, WhatsApp, implies that its customers can now share licensed music from UMG inside the app.
UMG stated on Monday that its partnership with Meta to license music for WhatsApp unlocks “new worth for UMG artists and songwriters sooner or later”…
2) ROBLOX STRIKES DEAL WITH DISTROKID – BUT INDIE ARTISTS WON’T BE PAID ANY MONEY FROM IT
Revenues at gaming large Roblox are hovering – forecast to hit $3.5 billion throughout the course of this yr.
However indie artists hoping to earn any of that cash for using their music on the platform may wish to look away now.
Roblox has struck a brand new partnership with DistroKid, MBW has found. The pact permits DK’s artists to make their music out there to Roblox’s 80 million day by day lively customers.
Solely there’s a catch. When stated artists’ music is performed on Roblox… they are going to be paid ZERO for the privilege…
3) TENCENT MUSIC’S ‘SUPER VIP’ TIER COSTS 5 TIMES AS MUCH AS A REGULAR SUBSCRIPTION. SPOTIFY COULD LEARN A LOT FROM IT.
Streaming large Spotify is readying to roll out a brand new “Tremendous-Premium” subscription tier designed to raised monetize music superfans – a improvement eagerly awaited by the music trade.
We don’t know but for certain what will probably be a part of this new “deluxe” tier (as Spotify CEO Daniel Ek described it in a latest earnings name), although there’s an excellent likelihood it’ll embody high-fidelity audio (a characteristic that has been conspicuously lacking from Spotify’s service to this point), and probably “superfan golf equipment” in addition to new playlisting and music administration instruments.
All Ek is keen to inform us up to now is that it is going to be for “enormous music lovers who’re primarily in search of much more flexibility in how they use Spotify and the music capabilities that exist on Spotify.”
But if Spotify continues to be working to determine precisely what so as to add to its “deluxe” tier, and simply the way it needs to be priced, it might need to try Tencent Music Leisure (TME), China’s largest operator of music streaming platforms…
4) BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN MANAGER JON LANDAU SELLS MUSIC INTERESTS TO PRIMARY WAVE
Main Wave Music has struck its newest take care of Jon Landau, the file producer and long-time supervisor of Bruce Springsteen.
In line with Main Wave, the phrases of the deal will see the corporate purchase Landau’s producer royalties and neighboring rights royalties throughout his 55 years in music.
As a producer, Landau has labored with artists together with Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne.
Landau’s work as a music critic led him to his long-time relationship with Springsteen…
5) THIS CHINESE TECH GIANT, WORTH $4.8BN, JUST LAUNCHED A FULLY AI MUSIC STREAMING SERVICE
There’s a severe new participant within the world AI music tech area.
Chinese language know-how large Kunlun Tech, which has a market cap worth of 34.49 billion Chinese language Yuan ($4.8 billion), has launched what it claims to be “the world’s first AI-powered music streaming platform”.
The corporate says that its new Melodio service options “customized, AI-generated music streams tailor-made to [users’] moods and situations”.
Kunlun is the guardian firm of net browser Opera and the previous proprietor of Grindr. It claims to have a mean month-to-month lively consumer base of practically 400 million throughout the “AGI, AIGC, content material distribution, metaverse, social leisure, and gaming sectors”…
MBW’s Weekly Spherical-Up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximise their earnings and scale back their touring prices.Music Enterprise Worldwide