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Spotify has launched a new AI playlist feature for premium users in the United Kingdom and Australia, the company revealed in a blog post on Sunday (April 7). The new feature, which is still in beta, allows Spotify users in those markets to turn any concept into a playlist by using prompts like “an indie […]
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
Blaque, the ‘90s R&B group comprised of Shamari DeVoe, Brandi Williams and the late Natina Reed, will be featured in a new episode of Unsung, premiering Sunday (April 7) on TV One.
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The girl group, signed by TLC’s Lisa Left Lopez, shot to fame in the late 1990s and early 2000s thanks to hit singles such as “808” and “Bring It All to Me.” The trio went on to tour with *NSYNC and TLC and released two albums prior to Reed’s death in 2012.
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Blaque also appeared in the 2000 cult classic, Bring It On, and released a previously shelved third album, Torch, in 2019.
TV One’s award-winning documentary series, which “celebrates the lives and careers” of recording artists and groups, premiered in 2008. James Brown, Phyliss Hyman, George Clinton, Tammi Terrell, B.B. King, 702, Jagged Edge, Wyclef Jean and Ice T are some of the artists that have been spotlighted in the series.
Read on for the best ways to stream Unsung for free, without cable.
Unsung on TV One : How to Watch Free
Blaque’s Unsung episode will debut on Sunday, April 7, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on TV One.
If you don’t have cable, you can watch Unsung on streaming platforms that offer live channels such as Philo and DirecTV Stream.
Philo is perfect if you’re on a budget. It’s free for the first week and just $25 per month after the trail period ends.
The streaming platform has over 70 cable channels including TV One, Lifetime, WeTV, VH1, MTV, CMT, BET, Paramount Network, Food Network, OWN, Trvl, TLC and AMC.
DirecTV Stream offers access to over 75 local and cable channels for one low price. DirecTV lets you stream TV One, Bravo, Lifetime, TLC, ESPN, A&E, E!, BET, CMT, FX, CNN, AMC, FYI, IFC, ID, Paramount Network, TBS, WeTV, Trvl, OWN, Univision and other cable networks along with ABC, CBS and more.
DirecTV Stream starts at $69.99 per month with a 24-month agreement. Eligible subscribers also get a free trial for the first five days.
Watch a clip from Sunday’s episode of Unsung below.
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There’s little doubt that TikTok drives the discovery of new and unfamiliar music. Exactly how much engagement it creates downstream — at on-demand music streaming platforms — is less clear.
It’s been roughly two months since Universal Music Group announced its decision to remove its catalog from TikTok after the companies’ licensing agreement ended on Jan. 31. To see if its absence from TikTok has hurt UMG’s streaming numbers, Billboard looked at Luminate’s weekly market shares for UMG, as well as for Sony Music and Warner Music Group, going back to the beginning of 2023.
The conclusion? Thus far, there’s no clear evidence that UMG’s U.S. market share has been affected by its catalog’s removal from the wildly popular platform. Since the week ended Feb. 8 through the week ended Mar. 28, UMG’s market share has not deviated from what could be considered normal trends. Importantly, the company has not suffered a major blow — either in market share or chart appearances — while absent from TikTok.
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In the eight weeks since TikTok started pulling UMG catalog following the lapse of their licensing agreement, UMG’s overall on-demand audio streaming market share (using a moving four-week average to smooth out fluctuations) dropped 1.8% — not 1.8 percentage points — from 38.72% to 38.02%. Most of that drop came from a 5.8% decline (from 34.42% to 32.43%) in market share of current (less than 18 months old) titles — an entirely normal fluctuation that reflects the ebbs and flows of any music company’s new release schedule. Since early 2023, the eight-week change in UMG’s current market share (again, using a moving four-week average) has dipped more than 5% five times. Sony Music experienced a 5% or greater decline six times. Warner Music Group saw it happen seven times.
Catalog (music over 18 months old) market share is less driven by music companies’ new release schedules but also tends to see small increases and decreases. In the eight weeks ended March 28, UMG’s catalog market share declined 0.8% (from 40.01% to 39.7%). That wasn’t atypical; WMG dropped 0.9% over the same period. Going back to the beginning of 2023, UMG’s catalog market share gained more than 1% six times and fell by more than 1% four times. UMG’s competitors saw their catalog market shares fluctuate by more than 1% more times than UMG.
Given the importance of on-demand audio streaming to record labels, a loss in market share would hit UMG in the pocketbook. In 2023, UMG’s record labels received about $6.17 billion in royalties from streaming, according to its 2023 annual report. Just a 5% decline in streaming revenue is worth over $300 million annually. TikTok, on the other hand, is a relatively small part of UMG’s business. The previous licensing deal with TikTok was worth about 1% of UMG’s annual revenue, CFO Boyd Muir stated in the company’s Feb. 28 earnings call — equal to $120 million annually based on 2023’s total revenue.
TikTok has a well-earned reputation for driving chart success for tracks — from Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves” to Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red” — by raising their profiles and creating downstream traffic at on-demand streaming services. A 2023 TikTok study conducted by Luminate found that higher TikTok engagement corresponds with elevated streaming volumes and that U.S. TikTok users are more likely than average consumers to both stream music and subscribe to a music streaming service. TikTok engagement went offline, too: The study found that 38% of TikTok users in the U.S. went to a show in the last 12 months and that 45% bought some merchandise — suggesting higher-than-normal levels of engagement with music.
But there’s evidence that TikTok is less valuable to music discovery than music streaming services that still offer UMG’s catalog. TikTok users who would potentially discover UMG’s music “still have a lot of ways to find new music and new artists in the absence of TikTok,” MusicWatch managing partner Russ Crupnick tells Billboard via email, “though admittedly it’s an important option.” MusicWatch has found that TikTok users are three times as likely to cite their favorite streaming service as the top source for music discovery as they are TikTok. And two-thirds of TikTok users say music streaming services are a source for hearing new songs and new artists; 49% of TikTok users cite TikTok as a favorite for finding new music.
Still, an absence from TikTok means UMG’s artists aren’t reaching young consumers where they spend much of their time. TikTok is an especially popular option for teens, notes MIDiA Research’s Tatiana Cirisano. A MIDiA survey of U.S. consumers found that 24% of all people surveyed listen to songs they first heard on TikTok on a monthly basis. That number jumps to 52% for 16-to-19-year-olds, and 55% of people in that age group say TikTok is one the top three places where they discover new music — ahead of YouTube (47%) and music streaming services (36%).
Looking at only streaming market share data does not capture the full picture, though. It’s entirely possible that UMG has been hurt by its absence from TikTok in other ways. If its catalog were available at TikTok, UMG could have had one or more out-of-left-field viral hits thanks to the unsolicited usage of its music by TikTok users. After all, TikTok can surface old music in expected ways.
What’s more, two months is also too little time to draw any grand conclusions. “The constant fluctuation in release schedules as well as the ever-evolving ways that consumers use social apps mean that it will be necessary to assess over a much longer timescale,” Chaz Jenkins, Chartmetric’s chief commercial officer, tells Billboard in an email. Additionally, Billboard examined market share in the U.S. only. Global market share data would tell a fuller picture.
Besides, some artists have found ways to work around the ban. As Billboard reported in February, artists are doing acoustic versions of songs, speeding up the recordings’ tempos and posting interviews to stay in front of their fans. “Artists impacted by this are just being more creative on TikTok about how they’re getting music out,” said Shopkeeper Management digital marketing manager Laura Spinelli.
For all of TikTok’s promotional value and ability to break hits, the app might be more of a silo than people think: MIDiA also found that 76% of consumers who said TikTok is a main source of music discovery don’t seek information on an artist after finding a song on the app. In other words, what happens on TikTok often stays on TikTok. Let’s see if the impact of UMG’s absence from the app will be just as contained.
It’s all about the artist, music executives say (and say and say). If you really look at the industry over time, though, it’s really all about the formats — the health of the business may have more to do with how people listen to music than what they actually listen to. For the last decade, that has been on-demand streaming, and the music business has boomed — from total revenue of $6.7 billion in 2014 to $17.1 billion last year, according to the late-March RIAA report. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the industry is worth almost double what it was at the beginning of the streaming boom. Internationally, the story is broadly similar — the business was worth $13 billion in 2014 and $28.6 billion last year, according to IFPI statistics.
In the U.S., at least, growth is slowing — revenue rose from $15.9 billion to $17.1 billion last year, and it hasn’t grown much in the last two years, accounting for inflation. The reason is simple: There are only so many streaming subscriptions to sell, and the U.S. now has a 12-month average of 96.8 million on-demand subscriptions in a country of 127 million households. It’s hard to know when we’ll reach Peak Subscription — 105 million in a year? 110 million in two? — but slower growth in the number of subscribers seems inevitable. This is one reason record companies are cutting back. It’s the end of hypergrowth for creators and rightsholders — at least in some places.
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Those places also include most of Europe, where the recorded music business grew 8.9%, according to the IFPI’s 2024 Global Music Report, compared with 7.4% in the U.S. and Canada. In the developing world, where the music business is much smaller, the figures tell a very different story: Asia was up 14.9%, with much of that growth coming from China, which was up 25.9%; Latin America grew for the 14th consecutive year, by 19.4%; and revenue from sub-Saharan Africa rose 24.7%. These increases are taking place in smaller businesses, but they mean that there’s plenty of room for growth — it’s just moving south and east.
We’ve all heard the simple and optimistic version of what comes next: Just wait until everyone in China, India and Brazil subscribes to a streaming service! (I hope they subscribe to Billboard Pro while they’re at it.) But this assumes a world where the global middle class continues to grow, trade and prosperity continue to expand, and developing economies stay relatively stable. Alas, as the small print says, past performance is not indicative of future results. Over the past two years, Russia has gone from a developing market into a geopolitical adversary, and tensions between the U.S. and China are heating up. (Whatever you think of globalization, it will be far worse in reverse.) If the U.S. forces a sale of TikTok, could China retaliate by imposing limits on American music? Could inflation in Latin America hurt consumer purchasing power in a way that stifles a streaming business that still depends more on advertising? Whatever happens is beyond the control of the music business. The potential is incredible — it’s just not reliable.
The truth is that there’s still plenty of opportunity in developed markets, including plenty of room to raise streaming subscription prices, but creators and rightsholders don’t have to just sit around and wait for that. Other opportunities are emerging, and growth could be fueled by licensing music for AI training, as well as for social media, video games, and the next iteration of the technology formerly known as the Metaverse.
Some of the most exciting opportunities might come from a traditional business model: Selling stuff. Yes, I know, it’s all so unbearably dreary compared to the “Free” future we were told to expect. But consider that, adjusted for inflation, the U.S. recorded music market is still only two-thirds the size of its 1999 peak. Back then — how old does that sound? — much of that revenue came from serious fans who bought a couple of albums a month instead of a couple of albums a year, mostly for more than the cost of a monthly streaming subscription today. Such dedication explains the fantastic growth in the vinyl market, which rose from $243.8 million in 2014 to $1.4 billion last year — almost a sixth the size of the music business of a decade ago in 2023 dollars. (I am proud to say that I have done my part.)
Sure, vinyl growth is slowing, too — the format isn’t for everyone and I am running out of shelf space myself, but consumers have demonstrated a willingness to spend more on their favorite artists, which is why music executives are so excited about superfans, which could be the most exciting opportunity available. The last decade of the music business was about making a hundred dollars a year from millions of people. The next 10 years will be about making millions — OK, probably thousands, but you get the idea — from hundreds of people. That won’t be easy, though. The music industry has always been, pardon the pun, a volume business. Making money from superfans requires finding that, figuring out what they want to buy, and marketing that, presumably online, better than live promoters or dedicated startups.
This could also solve one of the biggest problems with the recorded music business: it’s not making stars fast enough, and the new ones it has don’t shine for so many people. But what is a big problem in the hit-driven streaming business doesn’t matter so much when it comes to monetizing superfans — older acts still do big business, and there are riches in niches. From a financial perspective, K-pop is essentially a high-margin merchandise business focused on an audience that’s dedicated but not quite mainstream. And if labels are going to keep growing in the U.S. and Europe, at least some of their business might look a lot like that.
Spotify named Christian Luiga on Thursday (April 4) to be its new chief financial officer to replace Paul Vogel, who stepped down from the CFO role at the end of March. Luiga will be Spotify’s third CFO in five years, and he takes charge of financial planning and analysis amidst changes to how the streaming […]
Spotify will increase prices in five markets later this month and do the same in the U.S. later this year, Bloomberg reports. Spotify previously raised the price of premium individual plan by $1 in North and South America, Europe, and Asia last year.
The initial round of new price hikes — $1 a month for individuals, $2 a month for duos and families — will hit the U.K., Australia, and Pakistan, among others, according to Bloomberg.
A rep for Spotify declined to comment.
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In recent years, music rightsholders have regularly been calling for streaming services to raise prices. Appearing at a Morgan Stanley conference last year, Warner Music Group Robert Kyncl noted that the price of individual streaming subscription plans continued to lag behind inflation.
“We are the lowest (cost) form of entertainment,” Kyncl said of music. “We have the highest …engagement, highest form of affinity and lowest per hour price. That doesn’t seem right. It should change in an orderly fashion.”
Last year, Barclays estimated that a 10% price increase by all music subscription services would increase Universal Music Group’s revenue by $430 million and Warner Music Group’s revenue by $256 million.
Spotify moved to raise prices — $10.99 a month for individuals, $16.99 a month for families — in July of 2023. “The market landscape has continued to evolve since we launched,” the company wrote in a blog post. “So that we can keep innovating, we are changing our Premium prices across a number of markets around the world. These updates will help us continue to deliver value to fans and artists on our platform.”
Bloomberg also reported on Wednesday (April 3) that Spotify plans to introduce a new payment tier: $11 a month for individuals who only want access to music and podcasts. Those users will have to pay separately for audiobooks.
Spotify turned a profit in the third quarter of 2023, its first in a year. The company posted an operating loss of €75 million (around $80 million) in the fourth quarter. It now boasts more than 600 million users.
Spotify’s stock price is up about 5.5% ($284) in morning trading, following a brief spike of as much as 7.4%.
Members of the American Federation of Musicians voted to ratify the union’s agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The agreement, which covers basic theatrical motion picture and basic television motion picture contracts, gives musicians streaming residuals for the first time, as well as protections against artificial intelligence, according to AFM. In addition to […]
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Most smart TVs have built-in speakers, but it may not be enough to provide crystal-clear sound quality to make you feel […]
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
The length a family would go to be reunited is examined in the new series We Were the Lucky Ones, which premiered its first episode via Hulu on Thursday (March 28). Joey King and Logan Lerman star in the limited TV series, which is adapted from the novel of the same title by Georgia Hunter, and you can stream We Were the Lucky Ones at home now.
Taking place in 1939, the series follows the Kurcs, a Polish-Jewish family separated at the start of World War II. Three generations of the family are put at different parts of the world, and viewers will watch as each character fights their way to safety during one of the darkest times in history. Driven by their need to survive, each family member must cope with the idea of never seeing each other again while leaning on hope and perseverance to keep them alive.
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Other cast members include Hadas Yaron, Sam Woolf, Robin Weigert, Lior Ashkenazi, Amit Rahav, Eva Feiler, Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Moran Rosenblatt.
Keep reading to learn more about the series and the streaming options available to watch We Were the Lucky Ones online.
Is We Were the Lucky Ones Based On a True Story?
The miniseries was adapted from the novel We Were the Lucky Ones, which Hunter wrote based on true events that happened to her ancestors. The author was born into a family of Holocaust survivors, which she learned more about at a family reunion she went to in 2000, according to her author website. In 2008, she set out to research more about her grandfather, his siblings and the journey they underwent to survive and eventually find their way back to one another.
“We Were the Lucky Ones: A Novel” by Georgia Hunter
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Delve into the history of the Kurc family through the official novel written by Hunter. Within its pages you’ll be able to discover moments and scenes that didn’t make it into the Hulu series while gaining a further understanding of the struggles real people endured during World War II.
How to Watch We Were the Lucky Ones Online for Free
We Were the Lucky Ones is a Hulu original series that you can stream online exclusively through the streaming platform. Current Hulu subscribers can watch We Were the Lucky Ones for free when you log into your account.
Don’t have a Hulu subscription? New users will receive a 30-day free trial when you sign up for the streaming platform. After the free trial is over, you’ll be charged a subscription fee based on the plan you choose at checkout. Click here or the button below to start your free trial.
Hulu plans start as low as $7.99/month for the basic streaming package, or you can take advantage of a student membership for just $1.99/month.
For even more content you can bundle Hulu with Disney+ and ESPN+ and for live TV channel options, you can opt for Hulu + Live TV that includes over 90 live channels including ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN, Bravo, TLC, OWN, FX and A&E.
Hulu programs and exclusive content you can look forward to streaming include Freaknik, Only Murders in the Building, Poor Things, All of Us Strangers, Death & Other Details, Shogun, The Bear, Survivor and The Great.
Check below for the trailer of We Were the Lucky Ones.
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Universal Music Group announced on Thursday (March 28) that its artists will soon have the ability to tease unreleased music on Spotify.
Sharing snippets of unreleased songs on social media has been one of the most popular promotional methods for artists during the TikTok era (sometimes to the chagrin of songwriters). In many instances, artists haven’t even finished writing the song that they tease. But fan enthusiasm can make these scraps of music go viral anyway, especially on TikTok, sending artists scrambling to write another verse, record a full song, and release it as soon as possible — hopefully to a rapturous reception.
The Universal Music Group announcement is notable because it comes as the company’s stand-off with TikTok nears the end of its second month. Official recordings of UMG acts are not currently available on the app. (Same goes for many, but not all, songs that feature contributions from UMPG songwriters.) While most UMG artists continue to use the app as a social tool to communicate with their followers, their ability to promote their music on TikTok is severely limited.
Teasing songs on Spotify represents a potential alternative for these acts. “We’re excited to broaden our relationship with Spotify through the introduction of new content offerings and collaborations that will bring deeper ‘social music’ experiences to the platform,” UMG chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said in a statement.
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Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek added that “the forthcoming features will put more power in the hands of artists and their teams to help them authentically express themselves, efficiently promote their work, and better monetize their art.”
UMG did not say when its artists would be able to start sharing pre-release snippets on the platform. It’s also not clear the extent to which Spotify users will actively hunt for pre-release music on the streaming service — many prefer more passive forms of engagement.
TikTok, in contrast, excels at engaging those who see fandom as a participatory sport — they want to comment on unreleased demos and make their own remixes. And for younger listeners especially, the app is often a popular source of music discovery.
Midia Research found that TikTok is the second biggest driver of music discovery for Gen Z after YouTube. U.S. TikTokers “are nearly twice as likely to discover music on short-form video platforms than the average user of social or social-form video platforms,” according to a Luminate study released in November.
Spotify is then where many of these listeners go and listen to full songs they found on TikTok. To make this process even more friction-less, TikTok launched a new feature last year that allows users to quickly save music they find on the platform to Spotify and other streaming services.
But Spotify executives have been eager to tout the streamer’s ability to drive discovery on its own. “There’s a disconnect between where music is being teased and where music is actually being streamed,” Sulinna Ong, Spotify’s global head of editorial, said at the company’s Stream On event in 2023. “The most powerful time to reach fans is when they’ve chosen to engage with music, like when they open up Spotify.”
At the same event, Spotify co-president Gustav Soderstrom said that “Spotify recommendations drive close to half of all user streams.” “Each time your music gets played on a playlist like Release Radar, you receive, on average, three times more streams from that listener over the next six months,” he added. “And when a listener decides to follow you, they listen to, on average, five times more of your music.” This recommendation system sets Spotify apart from platforms that deliver “just a fleeting moment of viral fame.”
UMG also announced on Thursday that its publishing arm inked a deal with Spotify so the platform can share music videos in the U.S. Spotify music videos launched in beta for premium users in 11 countries — but not in the U.S. — earlier in March. At the time, Charlie Hellman, Spotify’s vp and head of music product, called videos “an important part of so many artists’ tool kits.
“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,” Hellman added in a statement.
