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Ariana Grande is the latest singer-songwriter to get her own “Written By” playlist on Spotify. The playlist includes Grande’s biggest hits, including “7 Rings,” “Thank U Next,” “Dangerous Woman” and “we can’t be friends (wait for your love,)” as well as songs she has written for other artists. The playlist shines a light on Grande’s talents in […]
Spotify has launched a new experiment, offering educational video courses to its U.K. users on subjects including music making, creativity, business and healthy living. The new courses show that Spotify is hoping to expand its reach beyond music, podcasts and audiobooks into a new fourth vertical, but the launch is still in the testing phase.
The videos are provided through partnerships with BBC Maestro, Skillshare, Thinkific and PlayVirtuoso and are available on Spotify’s desktop and mobile apps. They can be found by clicking a new ovular icon at the top of the screen. Two lessons in each course are freely available to both free and premium subscribers, but to access a full course, users must leave the app and purchase additional lessons on a dedicated web page to continue. Spotify will receive a commission on whatever is sold through its platform, according to The Verge.
“Testing video courses in the U.K. allows us to explore an exciting opportunity to better serve the needs of our users who have an active interest in learning,” said Babar Zafar, vp of product development at Spotify, in a blog post announcing the test. “Many of our users engage with podcasts and audiobooks on a daily basis for their learning needs, and we believe this highly engaged community will be interested in accessing and purchasing quality content from video course creators. At Spotify, we’re constantly striving to create new offerings for our creators and users, and having built best-in-class personalized music and podcast offerings, we look forward to exploring the potential of video-based learning on Spotify.”
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The post notes that roughly half of Spotify premium subscribers have engaged with education or self-help-themed podcasts.
Spotify did not immediately return Billboard’s request for more information on whether it’s planning to expand the test to other markets, including the United States.
Daniel Ek, CEO/founder of Spotify, hinted at the company’s interest in expanding into education nearly two years ago during his Spotify Investor Day presentation held on June 8, 2022. “We will firmly cement Spotify as the home for some of the greatest artists and creators and educators in the world,” he said at the time. “I’m not aware of any other company has been successful in taking a multi-business model and multi-vertical approach within one user experience.”
This U.K. test proves that Spotify is still searching for profitability and keen to expand its user base beyond what music streaming can provide. According to MIDiA Research, growth in music streaming subscriptions is expected to slow from double- to single-digits in the coming decade as the market reaches maturity. Plus, the margins made from music streaming continue to be tight.
Alex Noström, Spotify’s co-president/chief business officer, has also hinted at the company’s educational focus in the past, saying at the 2022 investor day presentation: “In the next 10 years, there are additional markets and verticals that we believe are natural fits for our platform and audience…There’s news, sports and education. Those are vast markets [that] we can imagine Spotify playing in… [All] are big consumer markets, sometimes much bigger than music… We have an opportunity to consolidate user’s habits and purchases to Spotify and also expand the pie allowing broader and more convenient access to these new content carrier categories.”
Music stocks’ performance this week was a microcosm of the entertainment industry this decade, with streaming companies making up the top four performers while legacy broadcasting stocks finished at the bottom of the heap.
Chinese music streaming company Tencent Music Entertainment rose 6.0% to $10.95 following the company’s encouraging full-year earnings results on Tuesday (Mar. 19). Although total revenue declined 2.1%, the online music part of the business is booming. Subscription revenue from QQ Music, Kuwo Music and Kugou Music increased 39.1% to $1.7 billion while the number of subscribers grew by 18.2 million to 106.7 million. Tencent Music shares reached a 52-week high of $11.80 on Thursday (Mar. 21) but dropped 4% on Friday (Mar. 22) following news that Zhenyu Xie, president/chief technology officer, tendered his resignation. Xie will be replaced on the board of directors by CFO Shirley Hu.
Spotify gained 3.9% to $264.95, bringing its year-to-date improvement to 41.0%. On Tuesday, the streaming company released its fourth annual Loud & Clear report, a breakdown of the prior year’s royalty payouts. In 2023, the number of artists who received at least $10,000 from Spotify increased 16% to 66,000 — 2.7 times more than the number who received that much in 2017. The number of artists who earned $1 million or more from Spotify rose 18% to 1,250.
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Two smaller companies posted even larger gains. Anghami shares rocketed 56.8% to $1.74 this week and reached as high as $2.20 after a regulatory filing revealed that Saudi media company MBC Group had amassed nearly a 14% stake in the Abu Dhabi-based music streamer. The investment helped give Anghami some breathing room after the Nasdaq warned in October that the stock faced delisting for closing under $1 for the prior 30 days. Anghami closed below $1 from Feb. 1 to Mar. 7 but has closed above $1 since Mar. 15.
LiveOne jumped 10.9% to $2.04 after announcing on Monday (Mar. 18) that it expects record quarterly revenue with the help of increased Tesla sales, 30 new podcasts and more than $2 million in monthly recurring revenue from clients in its B2B streaming business. Additionally, the company revealed that it repurchased $250,000 worth of stock in the previous 30 days and extinguished $3 million of payables of PodcastOne, the podcast company it spun off in September 2023.
Streaming companies’ gains helped the Billboard Global Music Index rise 1.3% to a record 1,719.66 this week, breaking a two-week skid and topping the previous record of 1,715.81 set the week ended Mar. 1. The 20-company index had an even number of winners and losers.
Major indexes rose to new heights after the U.S. Federal Reserve indicated the central bank still expected three interest rate cuts in 2024 despite a recent increase in inflation. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite rose 2.9% to 16,428.82, a new closing high, and reached an intraday high on Thursday. The S&P 500 finished the week up 2.3% to 5,234.18, even after falling 0.1% on Friday. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 gained 2.6% to 7,930.92. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index rose 3.1% to 2,748.56. China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.2% to 3,048.03.
Broadcasters were at the opposite end of the spectrum. The index’s biggest decliner was iHeartMedia, which fell 7.7% to $1.91. After a sluggish year for national advertising, iHeartMedia executives have predicted 2024 will be “a recovery year” and first-quarter revenue decline will be less severe than previous quarters. Maybe so, but investors have dropped its stock 28.5% year to date.
Two other radio companies were among the bottom four stocks. Cumulus Media shares fell 6.6% to $3.41 and are down 35.9% in the first 12 weeks of the year. Cumulus’ revenue was down 11.4% in 2023, and CEO Mary Berner warned investors in February that “choppy” ad demand limited its ability to forecast in 2024.
SiriusXM, which is optimistic about its redesigned streaming app, dropped 4.2% to $3.88 and has fallen 29.1% this year. Liberty Media, which owns 84% of SiriusXM’s outstanding shares, plans to merge the SiriusXM stock with the Liberty SiriusXM track stock later this year.
A group of companies representing Spotify, Deezer, Epic Games and others, applauded the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple on Thursday (March 21), calling it a “strong stand against Apple’s stranglehold” on mobile apps.
“[Apple] stifles competition and hurts American consumers and developers alike,” Rick VanMeter, executive director for The Coalition for App Fairness (CAF), said in a statement. “As this case unfolds in the coming years more must be done now to end the anticompetitive practices of all mobile app gatekeepers.”
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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In its sweeping lawsuit filed in New Jersey federal court on Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department alleged that Apple violated antitrust laws by undermining apps and products that could compete with Apple or that could make customers less reliant on its iPhone systems, such as its digital wallet.
The U.S. case follows similar legal actions brought against Apple in the European Union, the United Kingdom and Asia, and it addresses some of the Apple policies that Spotify founder/CEO Daniel Ek has railed against for years.
“There’s global consensus that Apple’s abuses of its monopoly power have stifled innovation and threaten the digital economy,” Avery Gardiner, a lawyer and competition policy advocate for Spotify, wrote on X. “The DOJ case makes it clear that Apple harms the developers and creators who are hard at work to build the very best products and services for consumers.”
Both CAF and Gardiner acknowledged the DOJ’s case will take time to have any impact, and they urged Congress to pass The Open App Markets Act, a bill Ek has lobbied for since it was introduced in August 2021.
The Open App Markets Act would bar Apple, Google and other app stores with more than 50 million users from forcing app developers to use their payment systems as a condition of distribution. It would also block app store owners from punishing app developers if they extend deals to customers or offer their app for lower prices elsewhere.
Ek has argued that Apple and others act as anti-competitive gatekeepers because the terms required for inclusion in their app stores prevent Spotify and others from telling consumers about potentially cheaper bundle options, like Spotify’s duo and family plans. Currently, Spotify has to send customers to its website to sign up for those plans.
The Justice Department’s case also seeks for Apple to loosen restrictions on its messaging tools and to add features to the Apple wallet. Gardiner and CAF praised the case for what they described as an attempt to level the playing field.
“Competition is the foundation of innovation, and [this case] represents the latest step in the fight for a fair and competitive internet,” Gardiner wrote.
A week after her old friend Neil Young‘s return to Spotify, Joni Mitchell‘s catalog has been restored to the streaming service. Mitchell pulled her music from Spotify in early 2022 in solidarity with Young over their concerns about the vaccine and COVID-19 misinformation being spread on the platform’s popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
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Though Mitchell, 80, had not commented on her music’s return to Spotify at press time, in a note on her official website posted at the time of the boycott she explained, “I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”
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Last week, Young said in a post on his Archives site that the end of Spotify’s exclusive deal with Rogan led to the restoration of his music to the service. “My decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify,” Young’s post read – in a clear reference to the Rogan podcast, though he never mentioned the show, or its host, by name. Since last month, the Rogan podcast has been available on a variety of platform, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and YouTube.
“I cannot just leave Apple and Amazon, like I did Spotify, because my music would have very little streaming outlet to music lovers at all, so I have returned to Spotify,” Young explained about his turnabout.
At the time of Mitchell’s boycott not all of her music was actually removed from Spotify. While such iconic titles as 1970’s Ladies of the Canyon, 1971’s Blue and 1974’s Court and Spark went away during the pull-out, her four Geffen Records albums from the 1980s and early 1990s — Wild Things Run Fast (1982), Dog Eat Dog (1985), Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm (1988) and Night Ride Home (1991) — were still available. In fact, Billboard reported at the time that in the first four days after the wider catalog removal, songs from Mitchell’s Geffen albums across all streaming services saw at 484% increase in on-demand streaming activity in the U.S.
Young’s original 2022 boycott was also supported by several other artists, including his Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, as well as India.Arie, though CSN/CSN&Y and Arie’s music were back on the service in short order.
Mitchell’s return to Spotify comes amidst the singer’s late-career resurgence, which last month found her performing at the Grammy Awards for the first time. The emotional run through “Both Sides Now” from the singer who has been off-the-radar for years due to a brain aneurysm and a battle with the rare skin condition Moregellons disease included an introduction from superfan and collaborator Brandi Carlile and backing from Alison Russell, Lucius and Jacob Collier.
Spotify paid out $9 billion in music royalties in 2023, with $4.5 billion going to independent artists. That huge pool of money is divvied up amongst hundreds of thousands of artists — some wealthy enough to live without royalty checks while many others need streaming to help keep their lights on.
The number of artists who made at least $10,000 in royalties from Spotify rose 16% to 66,000, according to the company’s latest Loud & Clear report released Tuesday (Mar. 19). That was twice the growth rate in artists earning at least $10,000 as the 8% uptick seen in 2022 when that number rose to 57,000.
The number of artists who reached other thresholds also increased at a higher clip in 2023 than in 2022. Last year, the number of artists who made $100,000 from Spotify in 2023 rose 15% to 11,600, compared to 10,100 the prior year, when the number was up 6%. And there were 1,250 artists who generated over $1 million from Spotify in 2023, an 18% increase from 1,060 in 2022 when the $1 million club grew by just 2%.
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The company’s fourth annual Loud & Clear report provides an update on the company’s goal of allowing 1 million creators the opportunity to make a living from their art, a statement that goes back to CEO Daniel Ek at the company’s 2017 investor day presentation. How much an artist requires to pay the bills will vary by country, but it’s safe to say Spotify isn’t allowing 1 million artists to quit their day jobs and be working musicians.
Nevertheless, the number of artists who made what could be called a substantial amount of royalties on the platform continues to grow. The number of artists who made $10,000 from Spotify (66,000) last year was 2.8 times the 23,400 who reached that level in 2017. Compared to 2017, the number of artists who reached the $100,000 threshold in 2023 (11,600) was 2.7 times higher; and the number of artists who earned $1 million (4,300) last year was also 2.7 times higher. Over that period, Spotify’s annual revenue grew 3.2 times, rising from 4.1 billion euros ($4.6 billion) to 13.2 billion euros ($14.3 billion), according to the company’s financial statements.
By Spotify’s own estimate, the universe of working musicians is much larger than the 66,000 artists who earned $10,000 last year. The company says there are 225,000 emerging or professional recording artists globally. Separately, 235,000 artists have released at least 10 songs in their careers, a group that averages at least 10,000 monthly listeners.
Loud & Clear makes a point of highlighting how independent artists can make a living from streaming royalties. Last year, a quarter of the 66,000 artists in the $10,000 club were self-distributed through do-it-yourself platforms such as DistroKid and TuneCore. Unlike artists signed to record labels, self-distributed artists can pocket the entirety of their streaming royalties minus any distribution fees. Artists signed to labels may make more overall than independent artists, but they earn a fraction of the total receipts and must repay advances and marketing and promotion expenses.
Another Loud & Clear point of emphasis is that streaming is benefitting artists around the world. Indeed, the global nature of streaming platforms means music can easily travel from any corner of the globe to a mature streaming market where a high proportion of paid subscribers provides attractive royalties compared to ad-supported platforms. Of the 66,000 artists who generated at least $10,000 in Spotify royalties in 2023, more than half are from countries where English is not the first language. That’s not surprising given that Spotify is available in 184 countries and territories and has a major presence in large markets — such as India, Mexico, Brazil, Spain and France — with strong local, non-English music scenes.
To get a sense of which artists might be in Spotify’s $1 million club, Billboard examined a list of Luminate’s top 1,000 U.S. artists ranked by audio on-demand streaming. The list includes some young artists who have found success in the streaming era — such as Jelly Roll (No. 66), The Neighbourhood (No. 102) and PinkPantheress (No. 144) — and rely on streaming royalties more than more established artists with greater touring success.
Many of the top streaming artists are older musicians who earn far more from touring than streaming royalties: Fleetwood Mac (No. 54), George Strait (No. 97), AC/DC (No. 110), Elton John (No. 125), P!nk (No. 128), Billy Joel (No. 169), Journey (No. 172), Motley Crue (No. 395) and Garth Brooks (No. 489), among many others.
The top 1,000 list also includes bands that broke up long ago or haven’t released new music in decades: the Beatles (No. 49), Queen (No. 87), Nirvana (No. 112), Creedence Clearwater Revival (No. 134), Led Zeppelin (No. 151), Abba (No. 318), Bee Gees (No. 328), The Smiths (No. 341) and the Grateful Dead (No. 444). Those music royalties are undoubtedly welcomed, but these artists are certainly secure financially without them.
Other top-streaming artists are deceased: Juice WRLD (No. 15), 2Pac (No. 89), Frank Sinatra (No. 109), Elvis Presley (No. 146), Notorious B.I.G. (No. 150), Bob Marley (No. 167), Johnny Cash (No. 245), Dean Martin (No. 336), Prince (No. 362), Jimmy Buffet (No. 425), Tom Petty (No. 428), David Bowie (No. 441) and John Denver (No. 470).
Some artists don’t even pocket their Spotify royalties because they’ve sold their rights to investors. Katy Perry (No. 82) sold her recorded music catalog to Litmus Capital. Kenny Chesney (No. 157) sold a majority stake in his recorded music catalog to Hipgnosis Song Management. Jason Aldean (No. 50) sold a portion of his recorded music catalog to Spirit Music Group. Primary Wave acquired a 50% stake in Whitney Houston’s master recording revenue. The list of contemporary artists who sold their publishing rights is long; the list also includes Future (No. 12), Bruno Mars (No. 57), Imagine Dragons (No. 58) and Metro Boomin (No. 132).
Artists in the $1 million club are outliers, however. Anyone fortunate enough to be earning $1 million a year from Spotify already makes a good living from touring, merchandise, sponsorships and other areas. The point of Loud & Clear is to highlight the financial opportunities Spotify provides to those artists the report calls the “most dependent on streaming as part of their livelihood.” For that middle class of artists, streaming pays much better than it used to. While only a small fraction of 1 million artists can say they make a living from Spotify, the number rises every year.
BLACKPINK’s 2020 smash hit, “How You Like That,” continues to break records four years after its release. The track has officially reached one billion streams on Spotify, marking the first-ever K-pop girl group to reach the milestone. The song is now available to stream on Spotify’s Billion Streams Club playlist. BLACKPINK, featuring members Jisoo, Rosé, […]
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Source: Spotify / Spotify Music Videos Feature
Spotify is finally getting a feature it should have had: the ability to instantly watch music videos.
Today, Spotify announced that its music video feature is rolling out in “beta” and will feature a “limited catalog” in 11 markets.
As for the supported artists, Spotify users can see videos from Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, Ice Spice, Aluna, and Asake. Per Techcrunch, the company’s global head of consumer experience, Sten Garmark, says that users can expect Spotify’s entire music video catalog to include “thousands” of songs.
Per Spotify:
“So many times in my own experience and for countless others, music videos play a key role in hooking you: taking you from being a listener to leaning in and becoming a fan,” says Charlie Hellman, Vice President and Head of Music Product at Spotify. “They’re an important part of so many artists’ tool kits, and it’s a natural fit for them to live in the same place that more than half a billion people choose to listen to music.”
Users can access the music videos by hitting the “Switch to Video” icon above the song title for the songs supported by the feature.
When you hit the icon, the track will restart, and the video will appear in the center of the screen. You can flip your Android or iOS device to switch the aspect ratio to full screen.
The feature will also be available on desktop and the Spotify smart TV app, and it is currently live in the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Kenya.
Genmark says those markets specifically chosen were “based on a number of criteria, including market size and the availability of local content support.”
Neil Young is bringing his music back to Spotify more than two years after requesting its removal from the platform, the singer-songwriter announced Tuesday (March 12).
In January 2022, Young published an open letter asking Spotify to pull down his catalog, citing what he called the spread of vaccine misinformation on the wildly popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which was then hosted exclusively on the streaming platform. Several other artists, including Joni Mitchell, Indie.Arie and Young’s Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, subsequently followed suit, though CSN/CSN&Y and Arie’s music have since been restored to the service; Mitchell’s catalog remains absent.
In a new post on his Neil Young Archives website, the legendary artist said the end of Spotify’s exclusive deal with Rogan led to his decision to restore his music to the service. “My decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify,” the post reads – a clear reference to the Joe Rogan Experience, though Young never mentions it by name.
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“I cannot just leave Apple and Amazon, like I did Spotify, because my music would have very little streaming outlet to music lovers at all, so I have returned to Spotify, in sincere hopes that Spotify sound quality will improve and people will be able to hear and feel all the music as we made it,” Young continued, before shouting out Qobuz and Tidal, where his catalog also lives, as “High res” streaming options.
Young concludes his post by stating his hope that Spotify “will turn to Hi Res as the answer and serve all the music to everyone. Spotify, you can do it! Really be #1 in all ways. You have the music and listeners!!!! Start with a limited Hi res tier and build from there!”
Spotify announced plans to roll out a HiFi tier in February 2021, though those plans have yet to come to fruition. In June 2023, Bloomberg reported the streaming giant would finally launch the product later in the year, but the company declined comment when reached by Billboard – and the calendar rolled over without the tier materializing.
Young has long been an advocate of high-resolution audio, even launching his own (now-defunct) high-res audio download platform, Pono, in 2015 before shuttering it two years later.
In September, Billboard estimated that the absence of Young’s catalog on Spotify had cost him roughly $300,000 in lost recorded music and publishing royalties to that point.
At press time, Young’s music catalog had yet to be restored to Spotify, which did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s request for comment.
A dozen years after Spotify launched in the United States and 18 years into the existence of YouTube, streaming music is so ingrained in Americans’ behavior that 91% of the U.S. internet population used a music streaming service in the last year, according to the 22nd edition of MusicWatch’s U.S. Annual Music Study.
According to the report, released Monday (Mar. 11), the number of U.S. subscribers to music services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited reached 109 million in 2023 — meaning over half of U.S. internet users aged 13 and over now pay for a music streaming service. That number increases to 136 million if SiriusXM and Amazon Prime Music are included. SiriusXM is predominantly a satellite radio service that also has an internet product. Amazon Prime provides music streaming to customers who sign up for Prime for free shipping and other perks.
In 2012, just 56% of Americans used any type of music streaming service. That number jumped to 69% in 2014 and surpassed the 80% mark in 2018. But 2023 was the first time music streamers surpassed 90% of the internet population. MusicWatch counts music streaming on ad-supported audio platforms such as Spotify and Pandora, paid services such as Apple Music, and video services such as YouTube. For the sake of this survey, short-form video platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels are not considered to be music streaming platforms.
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The number of people who stream music has grown even faster than the proportion of the population that does so. In 2012, the U.S. internet population stood at roughly 125 million. By 2023, it had grown by nearly 60 million to 193 million. The way people access the internet has changed over that period. In the early days of the internet, people mostly had a dial-up home internet connection, but over time, home internet access improved while mobile internet usage exploded.
The prevalence of mobile internet has played an important role in music streaming adoption. Not long ago, MusicWatch principal Russ Crupnick noticed a change in the reasons why people paid for subscription services. Early subscription adopters were heavy users who found value in features such as playlists, connecting to their social networks and recommendations. Then, about five years ago, Crupnick found new subscribers’ reasons for paying a monthly fee started to change.
More recent adopters of paid music streaming services care more about access, not features, says Crupnick. As more people had smart speakers, bluetooth headphones and in-dash entertainment systems in their cars, it was important for services to offer a seamless listening experience as they moved from place to place. “It just works,” he says of subscribers’ rationale for paying. “It works everywhere that I want and works on all of my devices.”
Per-capita spending on recorded music increased 7% from 2022 as music subscriptions, CDs and vinyl all saw double-digit gains. That improvement came from both organic growth and price inflation, says Crupnick. Music subscription services pushed through a string of price increases after keeping their prices mostly untouched for many years — Apple Music in Oct. 2022, Spotify in July, YouTube Music also in July and Amazon Music in August.