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So-called “super listeners” make up an average of 2% of all artist’s listeners, but account for 18% of all streams for the artist — a figure that can grow to 30% of all streams for the biggest artists in the world, according to a new study released by Spotify For Artists.
That’s the headline takeaway from a new report by the leading digital service provider, which focuses on how an artist’s most dedicated fans drive streaming activity and engagement on the platform. For the study — which tracked listening behavior during several different periods across the first half of the year — Spotify broke down percentages for artists based on their monthly listeners, identifying how small segments of an artist’s fan base contribute higher percentages of streams than the majority of listeners. The company doesn’t explicitly lay out how it defines a “super listener,” other than to say that it is “your most dedicated active listeners in the past 28 days” who “are also the most likely to keep streaming your music.”
While the 18% figure is an overall average, super listeners tend to drive the highest percentage of streams for the biggest and the smallest artists, the company found. For artists with 0-10,000 monthly listeners, 1% of super listeners drove 22% of all monthly streams; for artists with 25 million or more monthly listeners, 5% of those fans drove 30% of all monthly streams. Artists with between 5 million and 25 million monthly listeners also scored highly, with 3% of super listeners driving 20% of all monthly streams, while those with between 1 million and 5 million saw 2% of listeners drive 16% of streams. Both the 10,000-100,000 range and the 100,000 to 1 million range saw 1% of listeners drive 13% of streams.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, those super listeners are also much more likely to purchase artist merch through Spotify, too. For artists with more than 10,000 monthly listeners, 2% of their super listeners accounted for 52% of all merch purchases, while the remaining 98% of listeners made up the remaining 48% of merch sales. And there is a top 10 market breakdown for where those super listeners come from, too: four of the top 10 markets are in Latin America (Chile at No. 1; Mexico at No. 2; Argentina at No. 6; and Colombia at No. 7) and three are in Asia (Hong Kong at No. 4; Japan at No. 8; the Philippines at No. 10). The remaining are Canada (No. 3), the United States (No. 5) and Poland (No. 9).
Other statistics in the report: new releases can boost the number of listeners to super-status by almost 20%, while retention of those fans appears to be high, with more than 2/3s of those new superfans still listening six months later. Check out the full report here.
The study comes amid an industry-wide conversation about streaming royalties, how exactly they should be allocated and whether a mechanism should exist to reward artists with dedicated fan bases, and how that should be implemented. But super fans are boosting artists in other ways in addition to streaming numbers — CD, cassette and vinyl sales are all up this year so far, according to Luminate’s mid-year report, which it attributes to superfans, with 15% of the U.S. population spending 80% more than the average fan in a given month.
Calling all Swifties who use Spotify — this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. The streaming service has unveiled a brand new interactive experience designed to let users officially decide their five favorite Taylor Swift albums, also known in the community as: “Eras.” To try out Spotify’s new “My Top 5: Taylor Swift’s Eras” […]
Spotify reported its revenues rose 11% for the second quarter as surging monthly active users and growth in premium subscribers tamped down costs from staff cuts in the previous three months. The company’s total revenue €3.2 billion ($3.53 billion) was up 11% from the year ago quarter, or up 14% in constant currency, a measure […]
Spotify is launching its Most Necessary Live series of live shows highlighting regional rap scenes and rappers in various cities across the U.S., Billboard can exclusively announce Monday (July 24). Serving as a physical extension of Spotify’s editorially curated Most Necessary playlist — dubbed as “the official voice of the next generation on Spotify” — Most Necessary Live […]
Spotify said on Monday (July 24) it is raising the price of its premium individual plan by $1 in North America, Europe and Asia amid widespread calls from investors, analysts and the music industry to join other streaming platforms that have raised prices. “The market landscape has continued to evolve since we launched,” Spotify said […]
Spotify will raise the price of an individual subscription in the United States by $1 — from $9.99 to $10.99 — according to a report Friday (July 21) at the Wall Street Journal. The move has been widely expected by investors and analysts following numerous comments by Spotify executives about an eagerness to raise the […]
Calm and Spotify announced on Thursday (July 13) that they’ve partnered up to make mindfulness more accessible in day-to-day life. 11 of the meditation app’s shows are now on the streaming platform, specially curated to support mental wellbeing by helping improve sleep, reducing stress and anxiety and building mindful habits. Therefore, those without a Calm […]
Spotify was the biggest contributor to the 13% increase posted by the 21 stocks tracked by the Billboard Global Music Index for the first half of 2023.
Fueled by cost-cutting and corporate reorganization, shares of Spotify gained 103.4% through June 30. While that wasn’t the largest on a percentage basis for stocks on the index, Spotify’s size — it has the second-largest market capitalization of stocks that Billboard tracks — meant the company’s improvement was the single largest factor in the index’s gain.
The Global Music Index is a float-adjusted index of 21 music stocks. Each company’s market capitalization — the value of outstanding shares — is adjusted to remove the shares of insiders, corporate owners and long-term investors. The remaining market value reflects the shares available to be bought and sold on the open market. The index does not weight stocks to balance the influence of larger and smaller companies. (MSG Entertainment is not included in the index because it wasn’t an active stock for the entire six-month measurement period.)
Only half of the index’s six streaming stocks posted gains through June 30: Los Angeles-based platform LiveOne — with a relatively small market cap of $151 million — shot up 173%, and China’s Cloud Music improved 7.1%. On the losing end, Tencent Music Entertainment, also based in China, fell 10.9%; France’s Deezer dropped 17.8%; and Anghami, based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, lost 26.6%.
Outside of music, other streaming companies’ stocks also performed well in the first half of 2023 after losing ground in 2022. Netflix and Roku gained 49.4% and 60.5%, respectively, while Warner Bros. Discovery and Walt Disney Company — broader entertainment companies with streaming platforms and, lately, much C-suite drama — improved 32.3% and 2.8%, respectively.
Strong demand for in-person experiences following the pandemic helped live-music companies recover from share-price losses in 2022. Live Nation shares improved 30.6% to $91.11, and the company had the second-largest gain in adjusted market capitalization. Sphere Entertainment, CEO James Dolan’s gambit to change the live-entertainment business, gained 31.9% after adjusting for the spinoff of MSG Entertainment in April. Germany’s CTS Eventim, stung by criticism over fee transparency by a German public TV show in June, dropped 2.9%. Live Nation’s market cap overpowered CTS Eventim’s loss, and all of the live-music companies collectively accounted for 32% of the index’s growth.
The index’s 13% gain was less than closely watched indexes such as the S&P 500 (up 15.9%) and the Nasdaq composite (31.7%). Both indexes are dominated by gains from tech titans such as Nvidia (up 189.5%), Meta (138.5%), Apple (49.3%), Microsoft (42%) and Alphabet (36.3%). Of that group, only Meta has a market cap under $1 trillion. The Billboard Global Music Index easily beat the 7.2% gain of the Russell 2000, an index of small-cap U.S. stocks with a median market cap of about $1 billion.
While Spotify’s share price of $160.55 is well below its all-time high of $387.44 reached in February 2021, it shows that investors regained some belief in the company’s long-term prospects. Spotify benefited from the same pandemic boost that carried Netflix to a record-high market cap. At the same time, investors were also enthusiastic about the potential for its podcasting business to evolve the music platform into an audio entertainment hub and improve margins constrained by label licensing deals.
Diving into podcasting required large cash outlays for acquisitions, staff and content deals with Joe Rogan, former President Barack and Michelle Obama, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, among others. By March 2022, investors had become impatient for margins to improve, and Spotify’s share price dipped to $118.20. As a wave of belt-tightening swept corporations worldwide, Spotify made drastic changes: It laid off 6% of its workforce in January and cut another 2% in June entirely from its podcast division. It restructured its podcasting leadership, canceled shows and consolidated its various podcast brands — The Ringer, Gimlet and Parcast — under the Spotify Studios umbrella.
Layoffs and reorganization have been especially common in the radio business. SiriusXM laid off 8% of its workforce in March and reorganized its podcast business. After the company announced it would shutter its stand-alone podcast app, Stitcher, its share price increased 18.5% in the last week of June. Its stock was down 22.4% at the year’s midway point, hurt by soft forecasts for self-pay subscribers and the weak advertising market that led to three radio companies in the index falling an average of 32.3%. IHeartMedia (down 40.6%) and Cumulus Media (34%) have also cut costs and laid off staff.
Two South Korean companies — both a mix of label and management company — accounted for two of the biggest gains outside of Spotify and Live Nation. HYBE, home to BTS, improved 62.2%, and SM Entertainment, the company behind NCT 127, gained 39.2%. SM’s share price benefited from a takeover battle. HYBE lost out to Kakao Corp. and Kakao Entertainment, which now collectively own 40% of SM, but its stock has more than reclaimed the losses suffered in June 2022, when BTS announced its hiatus.
Outside of South Korea, label and music publishing stocks had mixed results at midyear. Universal Music Group, the index’s largest company by market cap, and Warner Music Group declined 9.6% and 25.5%, respectively.
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Even with all the backlash that Bad Bunny earned himself from the Latino community by dating notorious culture vulture, Kendall Jenner, his latest album, Un Verano Sin Ti, still continues to make history in 2023.
Already being named the most streamed album of 2022, Un Verano Sin Ti has now gone on to become the most streamed album in Spotify’s history as it’s beaten out Ed Sheeran’s Divide to sit atop that streaming throne. Who knew reggaeton would go on to be more popular than folk-pop these days? According to Digital Music News, Bad Bunny’s fourth studio album hit the stream running with 356.66 million on-demand streams in its debut week May 6, 2022.
It’s only been dubs and love from there as the king of reggaeton has enjoyed all the success from the fruits of his labor as he’s let his work speak for itself.
Digital Music News reports:
The record spent 13 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, with 22 songs from the set on the Billboard Hot 100, the most in a week for a core Latin music artist and the most in a week performed all in Spanish. Un Verano Sin Ti became the first non-English album ever to top the Year-End Billboard 200.
Featuring collaborations with The Marías, Buscabulla, and Chencho Corleone, the album also made history at the Grammys last year as the first Spanish-language album to receive a nomination for Album of the Year.
“I never dreamed I wanted to be the biggest one or No. 1. I simply wanted to make it. Why? Because I love what I do. I’ve been doing rhythms since I was 13 years old, writing, singing songs in my head,” Bad Bunny told Billboard last year. “I never said I want to be the biggest or the best or the richest. I did it because I loved it, and my only dream was to be able to make a living out of it.”
Hopefully, the Kardashian Kurse doesn’t hit him like it did some of Kendall’s exes such as Ben Simmons, Devin Booker (whom Bad Bunny threw a subliminal shot at over Kendall), Blake Griffin or Kyle Kuzma. Aside from Booker, all them dudes looked washed up these days, but Booker’s chances at getting a ring seem as slim as his teammate, Kevin Durant.
Luckily the “kurse” hasn’t affected Bad Bunny’s success, but if that next album flops both critically and commercially, y’all already know what happened. Just sayin’.
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In the midst of her sold-out Eras Tour, Taylor Swift is making plenty of news off stage as well. On Monday (July 10), Spotify announced that the day the singer released her Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) album she made some history on the streaming service.
According to Spotify, the reimagining of Swift’s 2010 album became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day in 2023 so far when it dropped on Friday. The collection that includes the 16 songs from the original and deluxe versions as well as six never-before-heard From the Vault tracks also set another Spotify high-water mark.
The Taylor’s Version of the album featuring such fan favorites as “Dear John,” “Mean,” “Enchanted” and “Back to December” also notched a Spotify record for the most-streamed country album in a single day in Spotify history.
The news came just a few days after Swift had a Speak Now lyrical snafu during the her Eras Tour gig at Kansas City, MO’s Geha Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Saturday. During the nightly acoustic section of her career-retrospective show, Swift forgot the words to the album track “Last Kiss” not just one time, but twice.
After singing the first two lines of the opening verse, Swift accidentally jumped ahead to the “July ninth” portion of the second verse before pausing to fess up to her mistake. “Oh my God, the words… We have this rule on this tour where if I mess up a song that I have to play it again some other time on the tour so that I can avenge myself,” she explained to the crowd. “I got too excited, I got too excited. Will you allow me the honor of starting over?”
Then, after restarting and getting through the first three lines with no issues, she stopped once more after worrying that she’d done it again. “Oh my God! No, those are the right lyrics,” Swift said, repeating the opening lines. “I swear that I will not mess this up again! Oh my God! This one, I love this one. Why am I doing this to this song?”
Swift moves on to a pair of shows (July 14-15) at Denver’s Empower Field at Mile High next weekend.
See Spotify’s announcement below.