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Amazon Music is updating its “Unlimited” subscription tier to give subscribers in the U.S., UK and Canada access to audiobooks from Audible’s library of one million-plus titles, the company announced on Tuesday (Nov. 19).
With the new perk, Amazon Music Unlimited follows in the footsteps of Spotify, which revamped its subscription offerings earlier this year to include a bundle of songs and audiobooks together. Though Spotify angered songwriters and publishers by arguing it didn’t need to pay the full mechanical royalty rate since it offered multiple royalty-earning services in one, it appears that Amazon Music will work with publishers to determine new rates privately. According to a statement by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the trade organization is “optimistic” about Amazon’s new offering and is “engaged” with the company in a “respectful and productive way” to find a compensation model for publishers that “will not decrease revenue for songwriters.”
Subscribers to AMU’s individual plan and primary holders of family plans are entitled to one audiobook of any length per month, a perk that continues even after each billing cycle. For those whose appetite for audiobooks exceeds the one-per-month offer, additional titles can be acquired through Audible via monthly subscriptions or a la carte purchases.
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The additional perk comes without an increase in price — for the time being. Steve Boom, vp of audio, Twitch and games, said Amazon’s strategy is be “to add new things to the product” that add value and later “figure out what the right pricing strategy is in the long term.” In the U.S., AMU costs $9.99 for Prime members and $10.99 for non-Prime subscribers, both less than Spotify’s $11.99 monthly fee and, for non-Prime subscribers, equal to to Apple Music’s $10.99 price.
Spoken-word content has already proven a valuable complement to music. After AMU added podcasts in 2020, subscribers embraced having both music and spoken-word content in the same app, noted Boom. “The convenience of having both music and spoken word in the same app has proven really effective. It makes logical sense to bring audio books into it as well.”
Audiobooks will not be made available to Amazon Music Prime, the tier included with a basic Prime subscription, or Amazon Music Free, a free option with playlists, radio stations and podcasts.
The concept of “bundling” multiple services together has become a hot-button issue for songwriters and publishers. At the start of March, Spotify Premium subscriptions, including family and duo tiers, were quietly reclassified as bundled offerings, with both music and audiobooks included in the plans.
According to the stipulations of Phonorecords IV — the government-regulated guidelines that dictate the mechanical royalty rates for streaming from 2023-2027 — bundled services can qualify to pay out a lower royalty rate for publishing given that subscription dollars must be split between multiple services (in this case, books and songs). As a consequence, Billboard calculated that publishers and songwriters will earn an estimated $150 million less in U.S. mechanical royalties than previously expected in the 12 months following the change.
At the time, NMPA’s CEO/president David Israelite said he would “declare war” on Spotify — and he subsequently launched a multi-pronged effort to stop the streamer. This included sending Spotify a cease and desist for unlicensed lyrics, video and podcast content; filing a legislative proposal with both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committees; and filing a Federal Trade Commission complaint. Around the same time, the Mechanical Licensing Collective (the MLC) sued Spotify for “improperly” classifying these tiers as bundles.
“We are optimistic about the new Amazon bundle,” Israelite told Billboard in a statement. “Amazon has engaged with the music publishing and songwriting industry in a respectful and productive way, unlike Spotify. We expect this new Amazon bundle will not decrease revenue for songwriters. Unlike Spotify, Amazon is looking at music creators as business partners and seeking to have a deal in place before the first round of royalty payments. This is in stark contrast to Spotify who is trying to pervert the compulsory license and slash what they pay songwriters.”
The NMPA and Amazon Music have not yet reached a final agreement.
Spotify is on such a hot streak that the streaming company nearly reached a $100 billion market capitalization this week. After the company’s third-quarter earnings showed cost-cutting has led to record profitability, shares peaked at a new all-time high of $489.69 on Thursday (Nov. 14), briefly putting its market capitalization above $98 billion. However, the stock fell on Friday (Nov. 15) to a final closing price of $458.32, valuing the company at $92.04 billion. While the stock was still up 14.5%, that marked a bit of a letdown from its previous high.
During the height of the pandemic, Spotify benefitted from a rush into streaming stocks as consumers spent more time with audio and visual media. Investors were also attracted to its push into podcasts, which provided an opportunity to improve upon the margins of its core music service. But investors eventually grew tired of Spotify’s growth-over-profitability mantra, sending the company’s share price from $387 in February 2021 to under $70 in November 2021. But a focus on cost-cutting and expansion into audiobooks helped bring investors back; Spotify shares gained 138% in 2023 and have already increased 144% in 2024.
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After delivering solid results and showing investors a pathway to greater profitability, Guggenheim increased its price target for Spotify to $500 from $420 and raised its estimate for 2025 operating profit to 2.5 billion euros ($2.63 billion) from 2.1 billion euros ($2.21 billion). Analysts cited management’s confidence in usage growth and ability to raise prices and further improve margins. Morgan Stanley raised Spotify to $460 from $430, also citing the company’s ability to further raise prices and management’s “commitment to financial discipline and driving profitability.” At JPMorgan, analysts upped Spotify to $530 from $425 for the aforementioned reasons, in addition to the stock’s coming inclusion in the MSCI World Index on Nov. 25.
A bevy of analysts also increased their price targets for Live Nation following the company’s earnings report on Monday (Nov. 11), which showed that the promoter achieved a record adjusted operating income in the third quarter. Among them: Rosenblatt Securities ($146 from $123), Goldman Sachs ($148 from $132), Benchmark ($145 from $108), Evercore ISI ($150 from $110), Oppenheimer ($155 from $120) and Wolfe Research ($152 from $125). Live Nation shares finished the week at $129.00, up 4.9%, and reached a new intraday high of $130.83 on Friday.
Spotify’s big gain was the primary reason the Billboard Global Music Index grew 5.8% to 2,162.50 despite just six of its 20 stocks finishing the week in positive territory. The float-adjusted, unweighted index measures the aggregate market values of the 20 member companies; Spotify is the most valuable company on the index and is more than twice as valuable as the next company, Universal Music Group (UMG). The week’s other five gainers are among the index’s largest companies: Live Nation, CTS Eventim, JYP Entertainment, HYBE and SM Entertainment all have market capitalizations exceeding $1 billion.
Stock markets hit a post-election hangover this week that stalled the gains seen after Donald Trump won the presidential election on Nov. 5. In the United States, the Nasdaq fell 3.1% and the S&P 500 dropped 2.1%. The United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 lost just 0.1%. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index fell 5.6%. China’s Shanghai Composite Index lost 3.5%.
Despite the KOSPI’s decline, K-pop stocks — which have recovered ground in the second half of the year and now have a collective year-to-date deficit of 20.2% — were up across the board. JYP Entertainment gained 8.2%, HYBE improved 3.2%, SM Entertainment added 2.8% and YG Entertainment rose 2.7%.
On the live front, Sphere Entertainment Co. fell 8.6% after its latest earnings showed a slowdown in revenue at its Sphere division, with Macquarie lowering the company’s price target to $45 from $47. And at MSG Entertainment (MSGE), shares dropped 6.8% to $40.00 after Bernstein reduced its MSGE price target to $44 from $45 earlier in the week.
Over at radio, Cumulus Media fell 19.3% to $0.71 after it reportedly conducted layoffs at stations in Central Pennsylvania, Indianapolis, Detroit and San Francisco as part of broader job cuts ahead of the holiday season — all on the heels of recent layoffs at competitor iHeartRadio. Elsewhere music streamer LiveOne dropped 12.4% to $0.78 this week.
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With all apologies to Charli XCX, the 2024 concert season should have been dubbed “VIP summer” for the amount of upselling done by U.S. amphitheaters.
At Live Nation amphitheaters, revenue from VIP clubs was up 19% and VIP ticket premium revenue for major festivals was up more than 20% in the third quarter. Earlier this year, VIP/premium offerings represented 9% of Live Nation’s overall amphitheater business but “should be 30% to 35%,” CEO Michael Rapino told investors in February.
Amphitheaters where Live Nation controls the food and beverage experiences have the potential to deliver more fan spending. Converting an area of grass into a VIP club provides 20% to 30% returns on investment, Rapino explained. At Northwell at Jones Beach Theater, for example, Live Nation took the 15,000-seat venue from no premium offerings to three premium tiers. Of the 40 U.S. amphitheaters in its portfolio, the company could “Jonesify” half of them, Rapino said during an investor call on Wednesday (Nov. 13).
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Diving headfirst into VIP pricing is sure to help Live Nation’s bottom line. The company believes premium offerings can add $200 million in adjusted operating income per year, according to its investor presentation. This year, VIP net per-fan spending will have grown at 20% annually since 2019, well ahead of overall net fan spending growth of 8% annually.
From exclusive lounges to fan meet-and-greets with artists, the concert business has been better than other music industry segments at filtering customers according to their willingness to pay. VIP status became standard practice at music festivals to separate the people who can afford a $400 ticket to camp in a grass field and those who can afford deluxe accommodations, food and beverage, and transportation. The year-old Sphere in Las Vegas takes customer segmentation to a new level: Tickets are relatively expensive for a single concert without considering travel and accommodation — which Live Nation bundles with Sphere tickets through Vibee, a destination experience company it founded in 2023.
It may be ahead of other music companies, but Live Nation is merely following practices familiar to companies such as airlines, which charge more for early boarding, and theme parks, where paying a premium allows you to spend less time standing in line for rides. Insurance companies offer multiple tiers of services that include add-ons such as “accident forgiveness.” Everywhere you look, there’s an expensive option that’s out of reach for most consumers but well worth the value to others.
The wave of upselling now extends to VIP tiers in music streaming. Last week, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) announced it has 10 million Super VIP subscribers accounting for 8.4% of its 119 million subscribers. Super VIP, launched in the first quarter of 2022, provides such perks as better sound quality, priority access to music content and live event tickets. With a cost five times the normal subscription tier, Super VIP subscriptions helped TME’s average revenue per user increase 5% from the prior-year period. That success with VIP pricing is likely a harbinger of things to come. A single tier may not deliver the kind of profitability investors now demand.
“I think Spotify and the labels, long ago, realized this ‘one price for everybody’ thing gets these companies off the ground, but ultimately it’s not sustainable,” says pricing strategy consultant Rafi Mohammed, who espouses a strategy he calls “good-better-best” and encourages companies to create more valuable tiers of products and services for subsets of customers who are willing to pay extra. “If you’re a company and you’re not doing it, you’re making a mistake,” he says. “There are always going to be higher-end people who are willing to pay more for a more enhanced experience.”
With the current music streaming model relatively unchanged for two decades, music companies are increasingly engaging in the kind of customer segmentation taught in business schools. Companies that want to deliver strong, sustained growth are looking at ways to provide more valuable — and more expensive — experiences to those customers willing to pay for them.
Record labels are itching for a high-priced streaming subscription tier that would produce greater royalties. Spotify’s VIP tier — for lack of a better term — seems all but inevitable at this point. In September, Universal Music Group (UMG) COO (then CFO) Boyd Muir said the company was in “advanced talks” with the streamer for a high-priced tier that offers a better user experience than standard subscription plans. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek lifted the veil on a pending VIP plan in July, saying it would “probably” be priced at $17 or $18 per month and provide subscribers with “a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board, and some other things that I’m not ready to talk about yet.”
UMG has said that internal market research shows 23% of subscribers would be willing to pay more for a VIP experience. But Will Page, Spotify’s former chief economist, isn’t sure Spotify is ready for a VIP tier. “It needs to walk before it can run towards a VIP platform,” he says.
Since the days of pre-Spotify subscription services such as Rhapsody, the basis $9.99 (in the U.S.) price was raised only recently but hasn’t kept pace with inflation. Spotify launched in the U.S. in 2011 and didn’t raise the individual premium price to $10.99 until 2023. Had the price kept pace with inflation, that $9.99 tier would have cost $13.50 by the time the price hike took effect. While video-on-demand streaming platforms such as Netflix have consistently raised prices over the years, music platforms like Spotify refrained, keeping their prices unchanged for fear higher prices would stunt their growth. “I would love to see the industry earn its stripes in showing pricing power before it goes to base two, which is market screening power,” says Page.
In the meantime, the music business has other ways to cater to VIPs, including a new slate of “superfan” platforms and vinyl records. Vinyl mimics a VIP strategy by upselling fans to an expensive physical item over low-value online streaming. And just as film studios use a so-called “windowing” strategy by releasing movies to theaters before streaming platforms, artists and labels are increasingly selling vinyl LPs ahead of their streaming street dates — a strategy that’s been largely absent in music since 2016. To Page, artists and labels are missing a big opportunity by not using vinyl to create a VIP release window.
“In America alone, vinyl is going to be a billion-dollar business,” says Page, “and the people who can sell it are the types of artists who would appeal to a VIP strategy.”
Spotify, the world’s biggest music streaming platform, isn’t showing signs of slowing down. In the third quarter, revenue hit 3.99 billion euros ($4.32 billion) and subscribers grew by 6 million, the company announced Tuesday (Nov. 12).
The Swedish music streaming company has helped revolutionize how people listen to music but until recently, it didn’t have financial results to match its market power. Reacting to investors’ demands for both growth and profitability, last year Spotify tightened its belt and laid off about a quarter of its workforce, and this year’s quarterly financial results have shown marked improvements in margin and profitability without sacrificing all-important subscriber growth.
Although revenue was slightly below Spotify’s previous guidance of 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion), operating profit was a record high of 454 million euros ($500 million), exceeding guidance by 12%. After routinely posting operating losses in previous years, Spotify’s operating profit increased 70% from the second quarter and was up more than 14-fold from the prior-year quarter.
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Likewise, gross margin — revenue less cost of sales — reached 1.24 billion euros ($1.37 billion) and improved to 31.1% of revenue, up from 29.2%, 27.6% and 26.7% in the preceding three quarters. The margin improvement was attributed to gains from premium subscriptions as well as audiobooks and ad-supported gains.
Recent price increases in the U.S. and many other markets didn’t slow subscriber growth. Spotify finished the third quarter with 252 million subscribers, an increase of 6 million from the prior quarter and 11.5% higher than the prior-year period. Subscription revenue reached 3.51 billion euros ($3.86 billion), up 20.8% year-over-year. Premium average revenue per user increased 9% (at constant currency) to 4.71 euros ($5.18).
Advertising, a key ingredient to both Spotify’s freemium music model and podcasting business, continued to lag behind subscriptions. Advertising revenue of 472 million euros ($520 million) was up 5.6% from the second quarter and up 3.5% from the prior-year quarter. Music advertising was helped by growth in impressions sold and hampered by pricing weakness. Podcast advertising also suffered from pricing weakness and benefitted from growth in impressions sold.
The results sent Spotify’s share price price soaring in after-hours trading. Following the earnings release after markets closed, Spotify shares jumped over 9% to $459. Before trading closed, the stock hit an all-time high of $419.72 and posted its best-ever closing price of $419.48, up 2.3%. The stock closed above $400 for the first time on Friday (Nov. 8) and has gained 123% in 2024.
Spotify rode a post-election wave of market enthusiasm to close above $400 for the first time on Friday (Nov. 8), valuing the music-streaming giant at nearly $80.5 billion. Before finishing at $400.68, up 4.1% for the week, the company’s stock reached an all-time high of $405.88.
The Stockholm, Sweden-based company’s stock price has increased 113% in 2024 as the company overtook Universal Music Group (UMG) as the most valuable music company. When investors began to tire of high-growth streaming companies with little to show in profitability, Spotify underwent two major rounds of layoffs in 2023, helping reduce costs without sacrificing subscriber growth or revenue. With third-quarter earnings coming on Tuesday (Nov. 12), Spotify will show whether it has maintained that momentum. At least one analyst is optimistic ahead of earnings: Deutsche Bank raised its Spotify price target on Wednesday to $440 from $430.
U.S. stock markets soared this week following the election of Donald Trump on Tuesday (Nov. 5) and the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision on Thursday (Nov. 7) to lower interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point. On Friday, the Nasdaq composite closed at an all-time high of 19,286.78, up 5.7%. The S&P 500 gained 4.7% to close at a record high of 5,995.54. China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 5.5% to 3,452.30. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index improved just 0.7% to 2,561.15. In the U.K., the FTSE 100 fell 1.3% to 8,072.39.
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The 20-company Billboard Global Music Index gained 2.4% to an all-time high of 2,043.02, bringing its year-to-date gain to 33.2%. The index had 13 stocks in positive territory while six lost ground and one was unchanged.
The week’s top music stock was iHeartMedia, which jumped 16.7% to $2.44 after the company announced it will restructure much of its retiring debt and plans to save $200 million in 2025 through cost cuts and the embrace of technology. “Technology is the key to increasing our operating leverage and is a constant focus for us,” CEO Bob Pittman said during an earnings call on Thursday. “It allows us to speed up processes, streamline legacy systems and it enables our folks to create more, better and faster.” iHeartMedia shares are down 8.6% year to date but have risen 180% since May 24.
LiveOne gained 15.6% to $0.89 per share after the music streamer announced that revenue increased 14% to $32.6 million and paid members rose 27% to 645,000 in its fiscal second quarter ended Sept. 30. Reservoir Media was another top gainer, improving 9.1% to $9.00.
On the live front, Live Nation shares rose 5.1% to $123.02 following a post-election day boost. The concert promoter is currently facing a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice but could find a better outcome from new appointments made by the Trump administration. The election wasn’t the only reason for the stock’s gains: Morgan Stanley upped its price target to $140 from $120 based on “a combination of strong underlying consumer demand and powerful artist incentives to tour,” analysts wrote in an investor note on Tuesday. Deutsche Bank also increased its Live Nation price target to $130 from $122.
K-pop stocks surged this week despite HYBE and SM Entertainment both reporting sharp drops in profit last quarter due partly to weaker recorded music revenues. HYBE shares jumped 6.4% after the company reported a 99% drop in net income. Likewise, SM Entertainment gained 7.2% the same week the company announced quarterly net profit fell 96% on a 9% revenue decline and a 36% drop in recorded music revenue. Investors may have gained optimism from SM Entertainment’s announcement it will launch a new girl group — its first since aespa debuted five years ago — in 2025 with a single and album release in the first quarter.
JYP Entertainment, which has not yet announced quarterly earnings, shot up 12.6%, and YG Entertainment continued its hot streak, rising 6.3% and bringing its gain in the last three weeks to 17.6%. YG has received a boost from the success of “APT” by ROSÉ featuring Bruno Mars. The song is currently in its second week atop both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts.
Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) shares rose 2.4% to $11.39 ahead of the company’s third-quarter earnings on Tuesday (Nov. 12). Bernstein initiated coverage of TME with a $14 price target. Barclays initiated coverage with an “overweight” rating and a $16 price target.
German concert promoter CTS Eventim was the worst-performing music stock of the week, dropping 10.4% to 87.70 euros ($94.05). The company will release third-quarter results on Nov. 21. Elsewhere, Cumulus Media dropped 6.4% to $0.88, adding to the prior week’s 19% decline, while SiriusXM dropped 5.5% to $26.13.
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TikTok took another step to integrate itself deeper into the music streaming ecosystem on Thursday (Nov. 7), as Spotify and Apple Music users gained the ability to easily share songs on the short-form video app — posting them to their For You Page, for example, or sharing them via DM.
When TikTok’s popularity exploded in 2019 and 2020, it seemed like a competitor to many of the older streaming services. Suddenly users didn’t want to leave the addictive short-form video app to listen to songs elsewhere. TikTok proved to be especially effective at driving music discovery for younger listeners.
So it wasn’t surprising that, when Spotify celebrated new features at its Stream On event in 2023, executives poked at TikTok — “There’s a disconnect between where music is being teased and where music is actually being streamed,” for example — without naming it. In recent months, however, two platforms that once looked like rivals appear increasingly interested in collaboration.
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In November 2023, TikTok unveiled the “Add to Music App” to serve as “a direct link between discovery on TikTok and consumption on a music streaming service, making it easier than ever for music fans to enjoy the full lengthy song on the music streaming service of their choice,” as Ole Obermann, TikTok’s global head of music business development, said in a statement at the time. In addition, TikTok shuttered its own streaming service, TikTok Music, in September.
At the same time, Spotify has said it is newly focused on finding ways for users to share the music they love. For a long time, “sharing was generally seen as an afterthought to the core features on the Spotify platform,” Priscilla Chan, associate director on the business development team, explained in a blog post in September.
“Now, these partnerships and features are vitally important drivers of the viral loop of growth for Spotify,” she continued. It’s all part of the platform’s goal of “being everywhere where our existing and potential users are” to “extend our global reach.”
TikTok is reportedly testing a feature that allows fans to pre-save upcoming albums so they will be automatically added to users’ music libraries on Spotify or Apple Music once they’re released. The news of the test was first reported by Music Ally. A rep for the platform declined to comment. Pushing for pre-saves has been […]
As earnings season prepares to get underway, K-pop companies were among the week’s rare winners as music stocks broke a six-week winning streak.
YG Entertainment surged 6.1% this week as the company appears to have scored a hit with “APT” by ROSÉ, a member of the girl group BLACKPINK, featuring Bruno Mars. The track got off to a blistering start this week, topping Spotify’s global and U.S. daily streaming charts and earning 13.3 million streams in the U.S. in its first four days of release. SM Entertainment, home to NCT 127 and RIIZE, rose 4.1%, while HYBE, with a roster including Seventeen and Tomorrow X Together, improved 2.1%. JYP Entertainment, the agency behind Stray Kids and ITZY, improved 1.4%.
Stock prices are likely to see movement in the coming weeks as companies release their results for the quarter ended Sept. 30. The first music companies out of the gate are Reservoir Media (Oct. 30), SiriusXM (Oct. 31), Universal Music Group (Oct. 31) and Cumulus Media (Nov. 1). Other companies that have announced earnings release dates include Sony Corp. (Nov. 8), Tencent Music Entertainment (Nov. 12), Live Nation (Nov. 12) and Spotify (Nov. 12).
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The 20-company Billboard Global Music Index (BGMI) fell 0.6% to 1,974.72 in the week ended Oct. 25 after breaking 2,000 for the first time the prior week and posting gains the previous five weeks. In the week ended Oct. 18, the BGMI reached 2,001.28, more than doubling in value since the index launched in February 2022. After the recent decline, the index’s year-to-date gain stood at 29.7%, ahead of both the Nasdaq composite (up 23.4%) and S&P 500 (up 21.8%).
Stock markets were mixed this week. In the U.S., the S&P 500 rose 0.2% to 18,518.61 while the Nasdaq composite fell 1.0% to 5,808.12 despite Tesla’s 22% gain after the electric vehicle maker beat earnings expectations and upgraded its growth outlook. In the U.K., the FTSE 100 dropped 1.6% to 8,248.84. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index dipped 0.4% to 2,583.27. China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.2% to 3,299.70.
Outside of South Korean companies, one of the biggest movers of the week was Live Nation. Ahead of the company’s Nov. 12 earnings release, numerous analysts increased their price targets on the concert promoter’s stock this week: Redburn Atlantic (to $126 from $118), Jefferies (to $132 from $113), JP Morgan (to $137 from $118) and Goldman Sachs (to $132 from $128). Given that the third quarter is historically Live Nation’s strongest period and the company has set all-time records in previous quarters, Q3 results are likely to boast more all-time highs.
Spotify was one of the index’s few stocks to post a weekly gain — albeit with just a 0.1% increase. Morgan Stanley raised its price target on Spotify on Wednesday to $430 from $400. Analysts see much upside for Spotify. Global subscription penetration (excluding China) “remains relatively low” at 15%, Goldman analysts explained in a Tuesday (Oct. 22) investor note, and Spotify has the ability to further raise prices. Additionally, they wrote, Spotify’s growing audiobook business proved the company can generate more revenue from its subscribers than was possible when it offered just music.
Most music stocks had modest, single-digit declines this week. Warner Music Group fell 0.1% to $32.38, Universal Music Group dropped 1.9% to 23.61 euros, Tencent Music Entertainment declined 3.2% to $11.50, Reservoir Media dipped 3.4% to $8.55, iHeartMedia was down 4.3% to $1.80, and both Sphere Entertainment Co. and SiriusXM were off 4.4%.
LiveOne was the week’s biggest loser after falling 10.6% to $0.58. The music streamer has fallen 38% since its Oct. 1 announcement that Tesla will no longer subsidize the LiveOne-powered streaming service in new vehicles. Radio broadcaster Cumulus Media dropped 9.4% to $1.16, bringing its year-to-date decline to 78.2%.
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Only six months since launch, the “Feat. Nature” artist page on Spotify has generated major funding for conservation organizations.
On Thursday (Oct. 24) at the COP16 Biodiversity Conference in Cali, Colombia, organizers of the Sounds Right project — which launched the page on Earth Day in April — announced that $225,000 generated by the project will be donated to agencies working to protect areas of Colombia’s Tropical Andes, a region that boasts one of the world’s highest rates of biodiversity and native species.
Of that sum, $100,000 will go to Reserva Natural La Planada, which oversees 3,200 hectares of lands protected and governed by indigenous communities. Elsewhere, the Fundación Projecto Titi, which protects Colombian cotton-top tamarin monkeys in a 900-hectare reserve, will receive $80,000 over two years. FundaExpresion will receive $35,000 over two years, with the money going to community-led initiatives securing 450 hectares in the Andean forest, along with other local endeavors. And Jacana Jacana, an initiative focused on music, education and ecological awareness among children, will receive $10,000 over one year.
The recipients were selected by the Sounds Right Expert Advisory Panel, which is made up of conservationists and Indigenous rights activists. A representative for the project tells Billboard that the panel assessed projects based on their proven models of ecological and community impact, with a “strong intent to honor the communities whose ways of life nurture vital biodiversity strongholds, yet are often underfunded or overlooked.”
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Sounds Right organizers also announced the addition of seven new tracks to the “Feat. NATURE” artist page, with contributions coming from artists including Lykke Li, Ela Minus, AySay, Sam Lee, Alexis Taylor and Louis VI. The songs join a playlist that includes music by David Bowie with Brian Eno, Ellie Goulding, U.K. electronic outfit London Grammar, neo-soul and folk artist UMI with V of BTS, Indian artist Anuv Jain, Norwegian singer Aurora, and more, bringing the total number of songs on the playlist to 24.
As announced in April, songs on Spotify’s “Feat. Nature” artist page incorporate sounds of the earth, melding ocean waves, wind, bird calls and other nature sounds into original tracks and remixes. Since April, the playlist has generated more than 65 million streams from 7.5 million listeners in more than 180 countries, a representative for the project says.
“Feat. Nature” shares royalties with participating artists, with streaming income consistent with other artist payouts for music and ambient nature sounds on digital streaming platforms.
“We strive to leverage our platform for good and inspire, engage and educate listeners and the wider community to take climate action,” Spotify’s sustainability lead Hanna Grahn said in a statement. “Sounds Right is a fantastic initiative, leveraging the power of creativity and music to support nature. We are proud to be part of such impactful organizations and creators, and that nature finally is getting the praise she deserves.”
The rep for Sounds Right says that since launching, the “Feat. Nature” project has raised approximately $300,000 through royalties and institutional and individual donations, which are separate from the philanthropic funding that’s been raised to cover program costs. The organization will publish an annual impact report to show how income generated by the project through royalties and donations is being used.
Sounds Right was developed by the Museum for the United Nations — UN Live, a Copenhagen-based organization that uses culture to create local action and global change in collaboration with a variety of climate-focused partners.
Warner Music Group announced the launch of Warner Music Africa Francophone (WMAFR) on Thursday (Oct. 24).
The new venture will “spotlight incredible talent from Francophone Africa,” co-director Yoann Chapalain said in a statement. “It aims to connect diverse sounds and regions, elevate releases for maximum success, and expand the music’s reach globally.”
The launch comes at a time when demand for French-language music is growing. “Since 2019, French-language music streams have surged by 94%” on Spotify, the streaming service noted in a blog post in September.
“All regions of the world are embracing the richness and diversity of the French-language music scene,” according to Jeremy Erlich, head of music content at Spotify. “There’s been a sharp rise in the number of French-language music listeners on Spotify.”
Warner Music Africa Francophone will be a collaboration between Warner Music Africa, Warner Music France, and Africori, a distribution company. WMG previously announced that it acquired a majority stake in Africori in 2022.
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The company was working with around 7,000 artists at the time. “African music is booming all around the world and some of our artists are right at the heart of the explosion,” Yoel Kenan, CEO of Africori, said in 2022. “Through our partnership, Warner Music has proven that it is the perfect home for Africori and our artists going forward. I’m looking forward to continuing to work with them as we break more artists on a global scale.”
WMAFR will be led by Chapalain along with Marc-André Niang. Chapalain also serves as A&R Manager at Africori, and Niang continues on as A&R director, French-speaking African repertoire at WM France.
“It’s important for us to be able to create new synergies for the development and structure of the Francophone market in Africa,” Niang said in a statement. “While the region is steeped in both culture and talent, the ecosystem faces challenges. Our team will connect creatives and help shape the environment to drive cross-cultural success.”
Simon Robson, WMG’s president of recorded music for Europe, Middle East, and Africa, likened WMAFR to 91 North, a joint venture between Warner Music Canada and Warner Music India that launched in 2023.
“There’s a strong cultural trade route between France and West Africa,” Robson added. “WM Africa Francophone will help us support the artists in that space.”