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On Aug. 10, the day before the 50th anniversary of DJ Kool Herc’s 1973 Bronx block party — considered the official birth of hip-hop — TIDAL hosted its first public event at its new high-rise offices near Manhattan’s Union Square. As part of the festivities, music consultant and writer ladidai conducted a panel featuring three artists at three different points in their careers: veteran Yonkers MC Styles P from The LOX, which headlined shows in Queens and The Bronx as part of the anniversary celebration; critically acclaimed Alabama rapper Flo Milli, who the following night would make a surprise appearance at the star-studded Hip-Hop 50 Live concert at Yankee Stadium; and rising Roc Nation signee Reuben Vincent, a North Carolina rapper. The panel focused on advice for developing artists about navigating the music industry and building career longevity.
“Artists have to look at themselves as entrepreneurs,” Styles told the crowd. Now in his third decade as a performer, he also owns a series of health-focused juice bars in New York. “If you think about the most successful people in hip-hop, they all have their hands in a few different pots. That’s just the way of the hustler.”
For TIDAL, events like these are a key component of a new strategy that, it hopes, will foster its own longevity. They are part of its revamped Rising program, which grew out of conversations with more than 100 artists and provides tools for creators that can streamline their business dealings so they can focus more on their art. This strategic focus on economic empowerment for artists derives from TIDAL’s new corporate owner, Block, the mobile payments company led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey that was known as Square when it acquired the streaming platform in March 2021 for an initially announced $297 million — more than five times the $56 million that Jay-Z paid to acquire it in 2015.
Block changed the way small businesses operate through its Square credit card reader, Cash App, and financial service offerings that cater to small-business owners and entrepreneurs overlooked by major credit card companies. The services and solutions it offers have helped it achieve a market cap of $39.6 billion at press time.
Not surprisingly, TIDAL’s new owner sees independent artists in the same vein: self-funded, slim-margin businesses that lack the tools needed to succeed in their line of work.
The financial services that TIDAL intends to offer will begin rolling out in 2024, and when they do, TIDAL plans to introduce a pricing structure that, if it attracts enough artists, will create an income stream that is not dependent on streaming subscriptions. “If we help creators manage and grow their businesses, so will we,” a representative says.
More than ever, artists in the music business are piecing together a living through streams, merchandising, live shows, social media ads and synch placements — supplemented with side gigs and temp jobs — as the old world of big advances and steady album sales becomes a distant memory and the odds of standing out in a torrent of new music grow slimmer.
Every day, over 120,000 audio tracks are uploaded to streaming services, according to Luminate — a figure that has nearly tripled in the past five years — making it harder for artists to break through and build a fan base, much less earn and manage their money. It’s a disparate, complicated and often confusing business, especially for up-and-coming artists trying to get by without the support of a traditional label or the institutional know-how of an experienced management team.
“The vast majority of artists on a streaming platform cannot afford to live off their music, even though that’s the No. 1 goal for them,” TIDAL global head of product Agustina Sacerdote says. “It’s not to be famous, it’s not to have an entourage of 20 people. It’s just to be able to quit their side jobs.”
Global head of product Agustina Sacerdote
Those artists who have established a foothold “are cobbling together ways of handling payroll and invoices, paying their quarterly taxes and understanding what’s a write-off and what isn’t. That’s part of being a small-business owner,” says Matt Graham, managing partner for talent management company Range Media Partners. He adds that when a young artist does break through, “a lot of money comes fast, and without the appropriate mechanisms to allocate things properly and pay people on time, you can run into tax issues with the government; you can run into lawsuits with collaborators — it’s a really tricky business to navigate.”
That’s exacerbated by a lack of financial management resources for emerging artists, in part because there isn’t much money in it for those with the know-how to help. Many business managers, for example, won’t take on clients who bring in less than $500,000 a year.
TIDAL’s Rising program operates with these hurdles in mind and is “anchored around three pillars: educate, amplify and connect,” says Alex Mas, the platform’s marketing director and one of the first five employees hired after the company’s 2015 U.S. relaunch. That includes offering artists resources, webinars and workshops on, for instance, balancing release and tour budgets, the mechanics of synch licensing and marketing, and understanding how paid media such as Facebook directly relates to streaming numbers and ticket sales.
TIDAL’s artist relations team also works to connect emerging acts with label executives, potential managers, lawyers and booking agents, among other industry facilitators. “It’s helping artists become more self-sufficient so they can go off and succeed regardless of the platform,” Mas says.
Given TIDAL’s modest subscriber numbers — some 2.1 million subscribers globally as of mid-2020, according to a lawsuit filed the following year, compared with Spotify’s approximately 138 million, a number that has since grown to 220 million — the company’s CEO, Jesse Dorogusker, who has spent over a decade at Block and was instrumental in the development of the Square card reader, says the platform’s support of artists must extend beyond monetizing the streams that artists generate on its platform. The representative says TIDAL does not disclose subscriber numbers, but adds that “streaming will continue to have value” for its new owner. “We’re a music platform and remain excited by the opportunity to evolve our streaming services.”
“Even if we were one of the bigger services, just making [an artist’s] experience better on TIDAL is not enough,” says Dorogusker, a Liz Phair superfan and Silicon Valley veteran who, before joining Block, spent eight years developing iOS accessories for Apple. “You have to know all of your revenue, your data, your collaborators, your access to capital, all of your taxes — it can’t be platform-captive,” he explains. “How could you hope for artists to be fortunate enough to work solely on their art if they have no access to this information?”
This is decidedly new territory for TIDAL, which is still, in the minds of most consumers, associated with Jay-Z, a claim to superior audio quality and a creator-first ethos. (It was notably the first streaming service to introduce full writer credits for tracks and the ability to search by producer.) And though sources tell Billboard that the Roc Nation owner has been just as, if not more, involved in TIDAL’s business since the sale — “I would say his spirit is felt,” senior vp of artist and label relations Jason Kpana says — the company’s messaging must pivot as it changes course. Dozens of industry figures, managers and artists Billboard contacted for their thoughts on TIDAL 2.0 all said they were unaware of its new business strategy. Now, as the company attempts to transform itself from a consumer-centric to artist-focused platform, will anyone be listening?
TIDAL debuted in May 2015 at a star-studded and controversial press conference at the James A. Farley Post Office in Midtown Manhattan. Jay-Z had purchased Scandinavian streaming service Aspiro and brought together 15 of his celebrity-artist friends — including his wife, Beyoncé; Kanye West; Madonna; Jason Aldean; Alicia Keys; Arcade Fire; Coldplay’s Chris Martin; Rihanna; and deadmau5 (replete with his bulbous rodent helmet) — to announce what Keys called “the first-ever artist-owned global music and entertainment platform.” Each of the artist-owners were given a 3% share in the company, and TIDAL began implementing a plan that leaned on exclusive album releases, video premieres and high-quality audio to draw in subscribers who were, by then, used to getting music for free.
Artist investors Usher, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Madonna, deadmau5, Kanye West, Jay-Z and J. Cole (from left) at the TIDAL launch in New York in 2015.
Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Thus began a strategy aimed at disrupting what was quickly becoming the status quo for the music business. TIDAL’s 16 artist-owners were protesting the low royalty rates of ad-supported streaming services like then-burgeoning Spotify that paid fractions of a penny per stream and vowed to use their collective power to boost royalties for all. Their stated mission was interpreted by some as noble and others as a scheme by some of music’s 1 percenters to line their already brimming pockets.
Ultimately, giant conglomerates Apple, Google and Amazon entered the streaming space and, alongside Spotify, swallowed up market share, edging TIDAL increasingly toward the margins. Yet the staffers who worked in editorial, marketing and industry relations there carved out a niche that focused on rising artists and independent creators, highlighting their stories and creating video content, playlists and podcasts around their work. “It has absolutely always been a part of the fabric of the company to allow emerging artists to find a way to grow in their journey,” says Kpana, who has worked there since 2015.
It was a business philosophy that aligned with Block’s vision, and executives there say it was a reason they acquired the streaming platform. But the purchase wasn’t without friction. Block closed the deal on April 30, 2021, acquiring 86.8% of TIDAL for $223.1 million in cash and $10.1 million in stock. Shortly thereafter, the City of Coral Springs Police Officers’ Pension Plan (a Block shareholder) filed a lawsuit that challenged the acquisition. The complaint alleged that Block CEO Dorsey and the company’s board of directors had breached their fiduciary duties by acquiring a company that they alleged was failing financially.
The lawsuit laid bare some of TIDAL’s financial issues, including multimillion-dollar losses for 10 straight quarters; some $127 million in liabilities, largely in the form of unpaid streaming fees to record labels; and a $50 million loan that Jay-Z extended the company in 2020. Several of TIDAL’s licensing deals with labels and relationships with artists had expired or were not legally enforceable. Sources also told Billboard that the streaming service had been chronically late on royalty payments to labels, a situation Dorogusker says has been remedied. The complaint also contained a morsel of insider business gossip, alleging that the deal was first hatched while Dorsey was vacationing with Jay-Z in the Hamptons and later in Hawaii.
The lawsuit was dismissed in May, albeit with Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick writing in her memorandum opinion that Block buying TIDAL was, “by all accounts, a terrible business decision.”
With that hurdle cleared, Jay-Z joined Block’s board of directors, and along with several of the original artist-owners, retained a small stake in TIDAL. (Each of those artist-owners either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment, and a representative for Jay-Z did not comment.)
Inside TIDAL’s new Manhattan office.
Julian Walter
McCormick’s assessment of the Block-TIDAL deal had merit. According to Goldman Sachs’ June 2023 Music in the Air report, the top six streaming services globally — Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Tencent Music and NetEase — accounted for 92.2% of the global streaming market, and by 2030, that number is predicted to climb to around 94%. And yet, the music streaming business model has yet to produce many profits for anyone, even a company as big and as synonymous with the space as Spotify, which reported a 2022 annual operating loss of 659 million euros (around $720 million) and recently slashed 17% of its work force, or some 1,500 jobs, in the pursuit of profits. (This week, Block also forced austerity measures on TIDAL, laying off some 40 people in an attempt to “right-size our team,” a spokesperson said.) Apple Music and Amazon Music are loss leaders for corporate behemoths with other profit-generators, Deezer is unprofitable, and SoundCloud shifted to distribution and other artist services in an attempt to capitalize on the troves of data it has collected through its streaming service, while also imposing layoffs in May.
Block’s plans for TIDAL, then, could not rely on a pure streaming play, and in a March 4, 2021, Twitter thread, Dorsey revealed his strategy. He wrote that the TIDAL deal was about making the economy “work for artists, similar to what Square has done for sellers.” He added, “We’ll work on entirely new listening experiences to bring fans closer together, simple integrations for merch sales, modern collaboration tools and new complementary revenue streams.”
The deal perplexed industry observers. “If Square wants to create new ways to help musicians sell real goods and digital goods, it could just do that,” Vox tech writer Peter Kafka wrote at the time. “Instead, Square is paying [what was then reported] $300 million for a failed music service that doesn’t help it accomplish any of those goals.”
Nearly three years later, several music industry insiders echo Kafka’s point. Dorogusker’s response: “There are very few companies on the planet that have the rights to offer 100 million songs to music subscribers” and produces a valuable trove of data. Under his leadership, TIDAL plans to use that data, and the access it provides to artists and their teams, to create tools of economic empowerment that don’t readily exist in the music business.
In June, TIDAL unveiled its Artist Home portal, which lets users add their social media accounts to their artist pages, connect with TIDAL employees for support, allow members of their teams to access their profiles and generally manage their look on the platform. It’s essentially a stripped-down version of Spotify for Artists or any of the back-end profile portals that digital service providers currently offer creators. It was a modest move compared with its streaming rivals, but leadership contends an important step forward.
“It is the first concrete milestone toward our vision of establishing a direct relationship with artists and building products and services for them,” Sacerdote says. “We have been in the music business for a very long time, but we have never built specifically for an artist or even dealt directly with an artist.”
TIDAL has always had relationships with the artist community through its artist-owners, exclusives that were intended to build market momentum — interviews, artist-curated playlists, podcasts, and album rollouts for superstars like West, Prince, Rihanna, Beyoncé and Jay-Z — and live events like its annual TIDAL X concert series in Brooklyn and activations at Roc Nation’s Made in America Festival in Philadelphia. But those initiatives were largely designed to pull in fans. Artist Home is the first time TIDAL has worked with artists to build a toolkit on its platform for artists.
TIDAL Rising, which has run in various iterations since the service’s birth, was initially similar to programs like Apple’s Up Next, YouTube’s Foundry and Spotify’s RADAR. But last May, it was overhauled to dovetail with the platform’s artist-empowerment focus. Initially, some two dozen creators were chosen to enroll in the program, which provides resources like webinars and workshops on budgeting money for tours and rollouts, platforms like artist showcases and traditional marketing, instructionals on effective digital marketing and industry connections that would otherwise be out of reach. But crucially, artists in the program are also eligible to receive anywhere between $500 and $50,000 in direct funding, no strings attached.
“We are sitting down with these artists and figuring out where they are in their career, but we’re not defining what funding they get based on what they have coming up,” says Kpana, the artist relations lead. “Mostly, we’re looking at them to see where we think we can be of most assistance, and that’s how we’re deciding what we give them. We’re not deciding what they do with the money.”
Artist relations lead Jason Kpana
Travis Shinn
Billboard spoke to nearly all of the initial two dozen artists and their teams in the Rising program, and though TIDAL executives declined to get into the specifics of who qualifies for inclusion and funding, a number said they were invited after previously building relationships with the TIDAL team through playlisting or editorial. All said the money they received gave them more control over their careers.
This past summer, for example, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Gabe Lee got the chance to open for more seasoned folk artist Pony Bradshaw on four sold-out dates in Texas during a mid-August weekend; at the end of the trek, his take was $1,200, minus hotel stays (when he wasn’t able to crash with friends) and fuel costs. “In the end, Gabe probably lost money on that trip; it’s expensive to be on the road,” says Torrez Music Group’s Alex Torrez, who manages Lee and signed him to his record label. The grant from TIDAL narrowed those losses while expanding his audience by having him perform for more than 2,000 people across the four shows.
For folk-punk artist Sunny War, who used to tour solo but required a full band to perform her latest record live, the money she received enabled her to pay for extra musicians, which allowed her to play bigger shows, and to buy proper road cases for her gear when she travels. Latin pop/hip-hop artist Angie Rose used her funds to buy new studio equipment (a laptop, microphones and software) she can use to record music on her own. For Nigerian American rapper-producer Akinyemi, the money went toward mixing and mastering costs, as well as marketing materials for his next release. Vincent — who participated in the panel at TIDAL’s Hip-Hop 50 event — was able to pay a video crew to shoot his performance at J. Cole’s Dreamville festival; he used the content to promote an upcoming release. For a handful of other artists, the money went straight to recording costs; for half a dozen more, it covered rent and daily expenses.
The music business has traditionally worked through advances, which must ultimately be recouped. TIDAL’s monetary distributions are more like grants. “This feels more like a social-good project,” says Alex Rosen, head of U.S. streaming at Partisan Records, whose group Geese is in the program. “I think it’s an empowering program. It’s really refreshing to not see any true expectations on funding, and it gives a band that is starting to break out a lot of freedom to help make their art.”
TIDAL sees it as a research opportunity. “At a basic level, it’s just a better use of marketing dollars,” Dorogusker explains. “We could talk about how great TIDAL is, or we could invest in artists and let them talk about how great being a Rising artist is. It’s marketing and communications, and the learning we get out of it is incredibly valuable.”
CEO Jesse Dorogusker
It also aligns with the emerging view of the business from the perspective of young artists, who in many cases are loath to sign away ownership of their masters in a label deal when there are other potential pathways to success. “We really value equity and ownership, so the core mission for the [TIDAL Rising] program really aligns with how we want to move forward with our artists on both the label and management side,” says Celena Fields, vp of marketing at indie music company LVRN, whose artist, singer-songwriter-producer Alex Vaughn, is in the program. “They’re holding our hand every step of the way, and instilling these resources that are super critical in an artist’s career, especially early on. It’s not just giving you the money, but really providing that educational aspect as well.” Up-and-coming managers, who are beginning to learn the ropes, benefit from the educational aspects, too.
TIDAL says it has hundreds of artists signed up for Artist Home, has grown its Rising program to 106 artists and has distributed grants totaling $830,000. It recently rolled out its Collabs feature — making it easier for creators to work with others through the platform — and held an artist summit in October with musicians from the United States and Poland that focused on career planning, financial well-being and the basics of music law and touring. The services are free for now, and the representative says that a timetable has not been set for when TIDAL will begin charging for its services.
While TIDAL’s financial support for new artists may be the sexiest part of its new business strategy, helping demystify the business is just as crucial. “The education component is humongous,” says Nicholas Judd, co-founder and CEO of music-focused business management and financial services firm LeftBrain, about the biggest obstacles young artists face. He explains that “having a more informed client start with us, where they’ve been very active in learning about and managing their own finances, means that we can have higher-level conversations and provide even more value because we’re not getting them from zero to one; we’re getting them from one to 10.”
To that point, in October, Block purchased Hi-Fi, a financial services startup that tracks artist royalty income from a variety of different sources — publishing, streaming, performance rights, distribution — in one place. Hi-Fi came the closest, Dorogusker says, to the business model the new owners are in the process of creating. He adds the acquisition is still in the “early days” of being incorporated into TIDAL’s structure, but that it will go a long way toward helping “to build products that help artists manage their money.”
If TIDAL becomes a destination for independent artists looking to optimize and grow their businesses, the expectation is that the company’s future will no longer depend on the financially difficult business of running a streaming service. Businesses that employ Cash App pay processing fees of just under 3% per transaction, and TIDAL will eventually create a pricing structure for the services it will offer. The company says that pricing will vary, with some services being monetized and others incorporated into Artist Home for free. “There’s no one size fits all,” a spokesman says. “How we set pricing is informed by many variables.”
Whether TIDAL’s turn toward artists will resonate remains to be determined, but insiders say there is a new sense of purpose at the company.
“Two years ago, when we bought a music streaming service, we told a story about building scalable self-serve tools for software and financial services to make emerging artists successful, but we didn’t have it yet. It was philosophical,” Dorogusker says. “Now we’re into the tangible. One of the fundamental flaws of the music business is that you mortgage your whole future for that first opportunity. And not everything has to be that way. You can have access to your data. You can have a way to project how many T-shirts you should print for a tour. We thought we could pull a lot of that knowledge in and turn that into tools for artists. But it’s going to be in the act of showing it, not just telling it. This is the start of that.”
This story will appear in the Dec. 9, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Paul Vogel will step down as Spotify’s chief financial officer on March 31, 2024, the company announced Thursday (Dec. 7). As the streaming giant searches for a replacement, Ben Kung, vp of financial planning and analysis, will take on expanded responsibilities to support “the company’s realignment of its financial leadership team,” the announcement stated. Vogel […]
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Who’s ready to rumble? UFC Fight Night is back with one of its last major matches of the year. Song Yadong and Chris Gutierrez will enter the ring for a bantamweight bout on Saturday (Dec. 9) with preliminaries starting at 7:30 p.m. ET and the main event occurring at 10 p.m. ET in Las Vegas.
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UFC Fight Night 233 was originally going to include a bout between Daniel Marcos and Carlos Vera, but due to travel issues, Marcos was unable to make it to the event, which led to UFC scrapping the fight altogether, according to MMA Fighting.
Besides Song vs. Gutierrez, fans can also look forward to seeing bouts between Anthony Smith vs. Khalil Rountree Jr. (light heavyweight), Nasrat Haqparast vs. Jamie Mullarkey (lightweight), Tim Elliott vs. Sumudaerji (bantamweight), JunYong Park vs. Andre Muniz (middleweight), Song Kenan vs. Kevin Jousset (welterweight), HyunSung Park vs. Shannon Ross (flyweight), Steve Garcia vs. Melquizael Costa (lightweight), Luana Santos vs. Stephanie Egger (bantamweight), Tatsuro Taira vs. Carlos Hernandez (flyweight), Rayanne Amanda vs. Talita Alencar (strawweight) and Daniel Marcos vs. Carlos Vera (catch weight).
For those who couldn’t get travel deals to see the fights live in person, you can stream Song vs. Gutierrez online and from the comfort of your home through ESPN+.
Keep reading to learn about the streaming options available.
How to Watch UFC Fight Night 233: Song vs. Gutierrez
ESPN+ is the exclusive streamer for UFC Fight Night 233: Song vs. Gutierrez, which means you’ll need a subscription in order to stream the bout. Preliminaries will start at 7:30 p.m. ET and the main cards will begin at 10 p.m. ET. If you already have a subscription, you can watch the preliminary matches and main card events for no additional cost. All you have to do is log into your account, and you’ll be able to watch it live.
Don’t have ESPN+? While the streaming platform doesn’t have a free trial, it is one of the more affordable streamers out there at $10.99/month. Click here or below to start your ESPN+ subscription.
Besides UFC Fight Night, ESPN+ is home to exclusive live events, sports series, TV shows and groundbreaking originals from major names in sports such as The Captain, America’s Caddie, Man in the Arena With Tom Brady, More Than an Athlete With Michael Strahan, Our Time: Baylor Basketball, Al Davis vs. The NFL, Vick, Be Like Water, Breakaway, the entire 30 for 30 series and other original content such as UFC fights, including the upcoming Vettori vs. Cannonier bout.
Looking for more savings? Bundling ESPN+ with Hulu and Disney+ will expand your library of content or you can check out Hulu + Live TV for access to hundreds of channels including ESPN, Starz and more.
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Baby Shark is swimming onto the big screen in its first ever major ocean picture titled Baby Shark’s Big Movie, coming to Nickelodeon and Paramount+ on Friday (Dec. 8). This marks the first feature-length original and animated film based the highly popular children’s show Baby Shark’s Big Show.
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The movie follows Baby Shark (Kimiko Glenn) and his family as they move to a new city and leave behind their old life. Now, he must learn to live without his best friend William (Luke Youngblood) by his side — while also trying to stop the evil pop star fish, Stariana (Ashley Tisdale), from stealing his voice and dominating the sea’s music world.
The star-studded cast also includes Cardi B, Offset, Lance Bass, Kulture Kiari Cephus, Wave Set Cephus, Chloe Fineman, Ego Nwodim, Aparna Nancherla, Patrick Warburton, Debra Wilson, Eric Edelstein and Natasha Rothwell.
Keep reading to learn the streaming options available.
When & How to Watch Baby Shark’s Big Movie for Free
Baby Shark’s Big Movie will premiere on Nickelodeon and Paramount+ on Friday (Dec. 8). If you have cable or live TV, you can watch the movie when it airs on Nick at 12 p.m. ET. Check with your cable provider’s channel guide to see what channel Nick is on. Don’t have cable? You may be able to watch it through an HD antenna like one here on Amazon.
Paramount+ is home to Nickelodeon content and more, which means if you have a subscription, you can stream Baby Shark’s Big Movie for no additional cost — just sign into your account and find it under Nick programs.
If you don’t have a Paramount+ subscription you can take advantage of their seven day free trial that’ll give you access to Baby Shark’s Big Movie and more. Once the free trial is up, you’ll be charged the regular subscription fee based on the plan you choose. Click here or the button below to start your free trial.
There are two plans you can choose from: Paramount+ Essential or Paramount+ with Showtime. The Essential Plan is the cheapest at $5.99/month and is ad-supported with access to tens of thousands of episodes and movies, NFL on CBS, UFEA Champions League and live CBS news. Paramount+ with Showtime is $11.99/month and has no commercials as well as expands your content library with Showtime original shows and movies. You’ll also get everything in the Essential plan along with live TV on CBS, college football and the ability to download content and watch it offline.
Programs you can look forward to watching include Survivor, NCIS, Blue Bloods, Big Brother, Jersey Shore Family Vacation, Frasier, Mixtape, Family Legacy, I Wanna Rock, Hip Hop My House, Behind The Music, Yellowstone, Fatal Attraction, Rabbit Hole, Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, 1923, iCarly, The Good Fight, Mayor of Kingstown, Seal Team, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Why Women Kill and Before I Forget. With Showtime, you can stream original shows and movies such as Yellowjackets, The 12th Victim, Dexter, Dexter: New Blood, George & Tammy, Homeland, Ziwe, Penny Dreadful, Buried and more.
More Ways to Stream Baby Shark’s Big Movie
Looking for more affordable streaming options? You can take advantage of live TV platforms that are offering free trials and promos, which will save you money and give you access to hundreds of channels and content.
DirecTV Stream is offering a five-day free trial on top of a $25 off the first two months when you bundle any of its plans with a sports package. When the free trial ends, you’ll be charged the discounted price for the first two months, then full-price, which will depend on the plan you choose.
Philo is another wallet-friendly option offering a week-long free trial that’ll provide you with over 70 channels and access to DVR. Once the free trial is over, you’ll be charged $25 a month.
Get a week long free trial as well as $20 off the first two months with FuboTV. You’ll be able to watch programs on up to 10 devices at once and get DVR to watch programs later. Once the free trial has expired, you’ll be charged the full subscription price based on the plan that you choose.
And, for the most content options, Hulu + Live TV give you a 30 day free trial, access to all of the Hulu library and hundreds of live TV channels including Nickelodeon. If you want even more program offerings, you can bundle it with Disney+ and ESPN+ for an additional cost.
Check below to watch the trailer for Baby Shark’s Big Movie.
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Martin Scorsese has returned with a star-studded cast in his film Killers of the Flower Moon. Already, the movie has been in talks as an Oscar contender, and was named the best movie of the year by the National Board of Review. Whether or not you got the chance to see the movie when it came to theaters back in October, you can now watch it from your couch starting Tuesday (Dec. 5), when it’s released on streaming.
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Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro star in the dramatic Western crime story based on true events and the book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. Focus is pulled onto a series of murders that took place in Oklahoma during the 1920s when oil was discovered on the tribal land of the Osage Nation. These murders were later called “The Reign of Terror” as White interlopers fueled with greed killed a slew of Osage tribal members who got wealthy off the oil.
Other cast members include Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser, John Lithgow, Tantoo Cardinal and more.
Keep reading to learn the streaming options available for the movie.
How to Watch Killers of the Flower Moon
You can rent or buy the movie on digital through Prime Video in UHD or HD definition. Renting will cost $19.99 and buying the movie is $24.99. You don’t need a Prime membership in order to buy the movie, just click here or the button below, and you’ll be able to purchase the movie and immediately watch it at your leisure.
The movie is also slated to drop on Apple TV+ for streaming, but an official release date has yet to be announced. Once it’s on the streaming platform, subscribers should be able to watch the movie for no additional cost. All you have to do is sign into your account and find it under new releases once it comes out.
Don’t have Apple TV+? The streamer offers a seven day free trial when you sign up, or up to three months free when you buy an eligible Apple device. After the free trial is over, you’ll be charged the regular membership price of $9.99/month.
With a subscription to Apple TV+, you’ll gain access to the entire library including original TV series, movies and sports such as Ted Lasso, Platonic, The Last Thing He Told Me, Silo, The Crowded Room, Severance, High Desert, Shrinking, The Big Door Prize, Bad Sisters, Schmigadoon!, The Problem With John Stewart, The Morning Show, Ghosted, Still, Tetris, Palmer and more.
You can also stream Apple TV+ on the Apple TV app, your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac and popular smart TVs including Samsung, LG, Sony, VIZIO, TCL, Toshiba and others, along with Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, Chromecast with Google TV. Apple TV+ is available on PlayStation and Xbox gaming consoles as well.
Watch the trailer for Killers of the Flower Moon below.
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Sped-up remixes continue to resonate on TikTok: The four most popular songs on the platform in the U.S. in 2023 were all sped-up, according to TikTok’s year-end report. The leader of the pack was the “more sped-up” version of Justine Skye’s “Collide,” followed by sped-up renditions of FIFTY FIFTY’s “Cupid,” PARTYNEXTDOOR’s “Her Way,” and Toosii’s “Favorite Song.”
U.K. listeners also enjoyed using up-tempo re-works of songs in their TikTok videos. In addition to “Collide” (No. 2 on the platform) and “Cupid” (No. 3), they also favored a sped-up version of George Ezra’s “Green Green Grass” (No. 4), MEYY’s “Pretty” (No. 6), and Raye and 070 Shake’s “Escapism” (No. 10).
The sped-up remixes that zip around TikTok are usually made first by creators (sometimes funded by label marketing efforts). If they start to perform well, it’s become routine for labels to release their own official versions.
“Back in the day, we used club remixes to diversify the visibility of a record,” Nima Nasseri, who then served as global head of A&R strategy for Universal Music Group’s music strategy and tactics team, explained in 2022. “The purpose was to bring back visibility to the main version. Now people are discovering the main version from the sped-up or slowed one. Instead of spending $50,000 for a remix from a big-name DJ, you’re spending relatively minimal amounts [on a sped-up rendition] and getting much more return and reach.”
Why have these simple remixes proved consistently effective? Steven Pardo, digital marketing director at Secretly Group, told Billboard in 2022 that “in a video platform that prioritizes catching attention immediately, being able to get the impact of the lyrics across more quickly is advantageous.”
Scott Plagenhoef, global head of music programming at Apple Music, echoed this sentiment during an interview with Billboard in March: “Sped-up songs allow for more of a track to be heard within the time constraints of a TikTok video and mirror the pace at which users consume content online.”
Increasing tempo can also “make the songs better — it brings out a different emotion,” according to Josh “Bru” Brubaker, a popular TikToker and radio personality for Audacy.
In the last 15 months, sped-up remixes have spurred chart surges for Thundercat‘s “Them Changes,” Miguel’s “Sure Thing” (actually a resurge, as it first charted over a decade ago), The Weeknd’s “Die for You,” Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary,” Mariah Carey’s “It’s a Wrap,” and more.
Due to TikTok’s popularity and its ability to drive streaming activity, Billboard launched a TikTok Top 50 chart in September, ranking tracks on the platform according to a combination of creations, video views and user engagement in the U.S. “The chart gives a clear picture of the music that is being listened to on TikTok, and consequently starting to trend on DSPs and other services,” Ole Obermann, global head of music business development at TikTok, said in a statement.
Across the first two months of the chart, hip-hop proved to be by far the most popular genre, accounting for more than 35% of chart entries. Pop was next, hovering at 20%, largely thanks to Taylor Swift, who had nine different charting tracks in the first eight weeks. The third most popular genre was R&B (10%).
U.S. listeners did listen to some music at its original tempo, according to TikTok’s year-end report. PinkPantheress and Ice Spice‘s “Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2,” Ohboyprince’s “Bounce When She Walk,” Young Nudy and 21 Savage’s “Peaches & Eggplants,” Ice Spice’s “In Ha Mood,” Jain’s “Makeba,” and Swift’s “Cruel Summer” rounded out the rest of the top 10.
Spotify shares jumped 7.5% on Monday (Dec. 4) following news the company will lay off 17% of its global workforce. CEO Daniel Ek called the layoffs a “crucial step” in a wider effort to be “relentlessly resourceful.” The layoffs amount to roughly 1,500 staffers based on the company’s recent disclosure of having 9,241 full-time employees. […]
Team,
Over the last two years, we’ve put significant emphasis on building Spotify into a truly great and sustainable business – one designed to achieve our goal of being the world’s leading audio company and one that will consistently drive profitability and growth into the future. While we’ve made worthy strides, as I’ve shared many times, we still have work to do. Economic growth has slowed dramatically and capital has become more expensive. Spotify is not an exception to these realities.
This brings me to a decision that will mean a significant step change for our company. To align Spotify with our future goals and ensure we are right-sized for the challenges ahead, I have made the difficult decision to reduce our total headcount by approximately 17% across the company. I recognize this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions. To be blunt, many smart, talented and hard-working people will be departing us.
For those leaving, we’re a better company because of your dedication and hard work. Thank you for sharing your talents with us. I hope you know that your contributions have impacted more than half a billion people and millions of artists, creators, and authors around the world in profound ways.
I realize that for many, a reduction of this size will feel surprisingly large given the recent positive earnings report and our performance. We debated making smaller reductions throughout 2024 and 2025. Yet, considering the gap between our financial goal state and our current operational costs, I decided that a substantial action to rightsize our costs was the best option to accomplish our objectives. While I am convinced this is the right action for our company, I also understand it will be incredibly painful for our team.
To understand this decision, I think it is important to assess Spotify with a clear, objective lens. In 2020 and 2021, we took advantage of the opportunity presented by lower-cost capital and invested significantly in team expansion, content enhancement, marketing, and new verticals. These investments generally worked, contributing to Spotify’s increased output and the platform’s robust growth this past year. However, we now find ourselves in a very different environment. And despite our efforts to reduce costs this past year, our cost structure for where we need to be is still too big.
When we look back on 2022 and 2023, it has truly been impressive what we have accomplished. But, at the same time, the reality is much of this output was linked to having more resources. By most metrics, we were more productive but less efficient. We need to be both. While we have done some work to mitigate this challenge and become more efficient in 2023, we still have a ways to go before we are both productive and efficient. Today, we still have too many people dedicated to supporting work and even doing work around the work rather than contributing to opportunities with real impact. More people need to be focused on delivering for our key stakeholders – creators and consumers. In two words, we have to become relentlessly resourceful.
I know you will all be anxious to hear the next steps about how this process will work. If you are an impacted employee, you will receive a calendar invite within the next two hours from HR for a one-on-one conversation. These meetings will take place before the end of the day on Tuesday, and while Katarina will provide more detail on all of the specifics, please know the following will apply to all of these bandmates:
Severance pay: We will start with a baseline for all employees, with the average employee receiving approximately five months of severance. This will be calculated based on local notice period requirements and employee tenure.
PTO: All accrued and unused vacation will be paid out to any departing employee.
Healthcare: We will continue to cover healthcare for employees during their severance period.
Immigration support: For employees whose immigration status is connected with their employment, HRBPs are working with each impacted individual in concert with our mobility team.
Career Support: All employees will be eligible for outplacement services for two months.
For the team that will remain at Spotify, I know this decision will be difficult for many. Please know we are focused on treating our impacted colleagues with the respect and compassion they deserve.
Looking Ahead
The decision to reduce our team size is a hard but crucial step towards forging a stronger, more efficient Spotify for the future. But it also highlights that we need to change how we work. In Spotify’s early days, our success was hard won. We had limited resources and had to make the most of every asset. Our ingenuity and creativity were what set us apart. As we’ve grown, we’ve moved too far away from this core principle of resourcefulness.
The Spotify of tomorrow must be defined by being relentlessly resourceful in the ways we operate, innovate, and tackle problems. This kind of resourcefulness transcends the basic definition – it’s about preparing for our next phase, where being lean is not just an option but a necessity.
Embracing this leaner structure will also allow us to invest our profits more strategically back into the business. With a more targeted approach, every investment and initiative becomes more impactful, offering greater opportunities for success. This is not a step back; it’s a strategic reorientation. We’re still committed to investing and making bold bets, but now, with a more focused approach, ensuring Spotify’s continued profitability and ability to innovate. Lean doesn’t mean small ambitions; it means smarter, more impactful paths to achieve them.
Today is a difficult but important day for the company. To be very clear, my commitment to our mission and belief in our ability to achieve it has never been stronger. I hope you will join me on Wednesday for Unplugged to discuss how we move forward together. A reduction of this size will make it necessary to change the way we work, and we will share much more about what this will mean in the days and weeks ahead. Just as 2023 marked a new chapter for us, so will 2024 as we build an even stronger Spotify.
– Daniel
In 2023, Taylor Swift has towered above her musical peers on multiple fronts. And earlier this week, she racked up another major achievement when she was named Spotify‘s top-streamed artist of 2023.
As part of its annual year-end Wrapped rundown on Wednesday (Nov. 29), Spotify announced that Swift had racked up 26.1 billion streams globally on the service since Jan. 1, topping the likes of three-time champ Bad Bunny as well as The Weeknd, Drake and Peso Pluma. This didn’t exactly come as a surprise considering the ongoing success of her late-2022 album, Midnights, as well as two chart-topping re-recordings: Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version), the latter of which racked up a whopping 375.49 million on-demand official streams in its first week.
Swift’s year on Spotify tops any artist ever on the platform, which — now 15 years since launching — keeps expanding its user base annually. For comparison, when Bad Bunny was announced as the top Wrapped artist in the prior three years, he had 18.5 billion streams in 2022, 9.1 billion in 2021 and 8.3 billion streams in 2020.
According to Billboard‘s royalty calculator, Swift’s 26.1 billion streams amount to about $97 million in recorded music royalties. And the year’s not even done yet. When estimating her total streams through December, that number would swell to 27.2 billion, amounting to recorded music royalties of $101 million through the end of the year from Spotify alone. Add in publishing revenue, and Swift’s music will have earned about $131 million on Spotify by the end of the year.
Of course, that only accounts for Swift’s performance on Spotify, which remains the streaming market leader. When tallying on-demand streams across all platforms — including such heavy-hitters as Apple Music, YouTube Music and Amazon Music — Billboard estimates that her catalog racked up a total of 38.3 billion streams through the end of the year, amounting to a total of about $160 million in recorded royalties, by Billboard’s estimates. With publishing, Swift’s total on-demand streaming revenue gets close to $200 million.
It’s worth noting that Swift likely takes the lion’s share of this money. In her contract with Universal Music Group and Republic Records, signed in 2018, she retained master rights to all of her music going forward. That includes all four of her re-recorded Taylor’s Version albums so far: Fearless, Red, Speak Now and 1989. That re-recording project — which she famously embarked upon after her previous label, Big Machine Records, was acquired by Scooter’s Braun‘s Ithaca Holdings in 2019, much to Swift’s chagrin — has performed beyond likely even Swift’s wildest dreams. And it’s proven a lucrative gambit for the superstar, whose Taylor’s Versions have consistently outperformed the originals on streaming since their respective releases.
Not bad for someone who famously pulled her catalog from Spotify less than a decade ago, calling it a “grand experiment.”
Additional reporting from Glenn Peoples.
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Eddie Murphy is ready to deck the halls and spread some Christmas cheer this season in the hilarious new holiday movie Candy Cane Lane. You can cozy up under the glow of your Christmas tree (real or artificial) and press play on the new film starting Friday (Dec. 1).
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Murphy stars as husband and father Chris Carver, whose obsession with the Christmas season drives him to ultimate extremes to win his neighborhood decoration contest — including a deal with an elf named Pepper (Jillian Bell). Too bad Pepper is a trickster who brings the 12 days of Christmas to life and wreaks havoc on the town. Now, it’s up to Carver, his wife (Tracee Ellis Ross) and kids to put a stop to the Pepper’s devious plan and save Christmas before it’s too late.
Other cast members include Thaddeus J. Mixson, Nick Offerman, Robin Thede, Chris Marino, Lombardo Boyar, Danielle Pinnock, Iman Benson, Madison Thomas, Genneya Walton, David Alan Grier and Chris Redd.
Keep reading to learn how to stream the festive new film.
How to Watch Candy Cane Lane
Candy Cane Lane is a Prime original movie, which means you’ll need a Prime membership in order to watch. If you already have a membership, you can press play for no added cost by signing into your account. You can find the movie in Prime Video under new releases. Click here or the button below to watch the movie now.
Don’t have a membership? Amazon offers a 30 day free trial, so you can watch the movie and more for free. Once the free trial is over, you’ll be charged the normal membership price of $14.99/month or $139/year. Click here or the button below to start your free trial.
If you’re a student you can take advantage of the student membership, which comes with a six month free trial and 50% off subscription fee. Those a part of a qualifying government program can also sign up for the EBT/Medicaid membership, which offers a 30 day free trial and half off membership fee.
Along with Candy Cane Lane, you’ll also have access to the entire Prime Video library including exclusive and original movies, TV series, sports and more. Programs you can look forward to watching include The Boys, Gen V, Citadel, Daisy Jones & The Six, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Harlan Coben’s Shelter, Swarm, Medellìn, The Power, Kelce, Harlem, I’m a Virgo, Invincible, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, The Horror of Dolores Roach, Fleabag, The Summer I Turned Pretty, The Wheel of Time and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Better Call Saul and more.
Looking for more content? You can expand your library of offerings with Prime’s premium channel options such as Paramount+, Max, Starz and AMC+.
Streaming isn’t all that you’ll have access to either, a Prime membership also comes with free one-day shipping, grocery delivery, access to Prime members-only deals and Prime Day, Prime Try Before You Buy, Prime Premiere and more.
Check out the trailer for Candy Cane Lane below.
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