Streaming
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Morgan Wallen’s new album, One Thing at a Time, didn’t need 36 songs to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated March 18)— but the sprawling tracklist certainly didn’t hurt. The country singer’s third studio album notched 501,000 album equivalent units in its first week of release, according to Luminate, the biggest week of 2023 and one of the largest debuts in recent months.
One Thing at a Time undoubtedly benefited from its stats-padding length, but it still would have dominated the Billboard 200 had Wallen and his label, Big Loud Records, opted for an average length. With the bottom 18 tracks accounting for 36% of the album’s total on-demand streams, if One Thing were a single-CD, 18-track release, Billboard estimates it would have moved about 360,000 units last week — putting it well ahead of the No. 2 album, SOS by SZA. The 10 most popular tracks amounted to 41.8% of the album’s streams, with the track “Last Night” alone accounting for nearly 9% of the 36 tracks’ aggregated streams.
In fact, an 18-track One Thing at a Time would have bested most recent No. 1 albums in their debut weeks, including Lil Baby’s It’s Only Me (216,000 units), SOS (318,000 units), Metro Boomin’s Heroes & Villains (185,000 units) and Tomorrow X Together’s The Name Chapter: TEMPTATION (161,000 units). (That’s assuming One Thing at a Time would have sold the same number of CDs and digital albums with half as many songs.) Only two recent albums, Her Loss by Drake and 21 Savage (404,000 units) and Taylor Swift’s Midnights (1.58 million units), had better debut weeks than the hypothetical, 18-track One Thing at a Time.
One Thing at a Time is part of a curious paradox in current recorded music, as the widespread adoption of streaming services has caused artists to release single tracks more often while releasing increasingly lengthier albums, too. While the album is waning in popularity, it remains a vital artistic statement and commercial event.
The trend of longer albums runs counter to the experimentations of the early days of digital music. When Napster arrived in the late ’90s, many people believed file-sharing marked the death of the album format. In the ’00s, as consumers increasingly purchased individual tracks at online stores like Apple’s iTunes, labels experimented with the new paradigm. In 2005, Warner Music Group and Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman launched a digital-only label, Cordless Music, that released music exclusively in “clusters” of three or more songs instead of albums or singles. In 2010, country star Blake Shelton released two six-song EPs — called “six paks” — rather than a single 10- or 12-track album.
Today, streaming dominates music consumption and impacts how artists and labels package music. Album sales are lower than ever, but album lengths have never been longer. Because fans can stream an unlimited amount of music for a fixed price, artists can add songs knowing that a longer album equals more streams. And because streams tend to account for far more of an album’s chart position than downloads and purchases, artists have an incentive to keep people listening.
The result has been “track creep,” a consistently rising number of songs on popular albums. In 2022, the top 10 albums on the year-end Billboard 200 chart averaged 19.1 tracks and 69.9 minutes. The top album, Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti, has 23 tracks and runs 81 minutes. Un Verano Sin Ti is a product of the streaming age: Physical album sales account for just 1.1% of its album equivalent unit sales compared to 97.5% for streaming. Track creep is made easier considering that many albums, such as SOS and Drake’s 21-track Certified Lover Boy, don’t have physical versions.
Changes in how albums are counted for the Billboard 200 can probably help explain some of the track creep: In 2014, the year Billboard began incorporating streams into the Billboard 200 chart, the top 10 albums averaged 13.2 tracks and 51.9 minutes, meaning album lengths have increased by about six tracks and 18 minutes in the last eight years. (Here, Billboard counts only studio albums and excludes soundtracks and Broadway cast recordings, which are filled with score and instrumental tracks.)
In 1992, when CD sales began to dominate recorded music revenues, the top 10 albums averaged 11.9 tracks and 51.1 minutes. Garth Brooks had two of the four 10-track albums in the top 10 — Ropin’ the Wind and No Fences — and the longest, Totally Krossed Out by hip-hop duo Kriss Kross, had just 15 tracks. Albums — particularly in the country genre — often topped out at ten tracks, a limit set by record labels for paying mechanical royalties to music publishers.
In 1977, when the vinyl LP ruled the industry, the top 10 albums averaged 10.3 tracks and 45.1 minutes, and half of them had fewer than 10 tracks. The longest, Stevie Wonder’s double album, Songs in the Key of Life, had fewer tracks — 17 — than half of 2022’s top 10 albums. The top album of 1977, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, ran only 39 minutes — a full half-hour shorter than the average length of 2022’s top 10 albums. (In the 1977 top 10, Billboard included the soundtrack to A Star Is Born, which had only 11 tracks. That’s compared to 32 tracks for the Frozen soundtrack, the top album of 2014.)
One Thing at a Time might not need 36 tracks to top the Billboard 200, but having more songs means the album gets more streams and generates greater royalties. The least-popular 18 songs amassed 170.3 million on-demand streams in the album’s debut week. If those 18 tracks were released as a separate album — similar to the way Guns N’ Roses released Use Your Illusion volumes 1 and 2 simultaneously in 1991 — it would have been the No. 2 album of the week. Additional tracks provide diminishing returns but can contribute meaningfully to a successful record. Wallen’s previous album, the 32-track Dangerous: The Double Album, has received about 22% of its total track consumption — streams plus downloads — from its less-popular half. For a label that invests heavily in marketing and promoting an album, track creep can improve the return on each release.
Something the One Thing album has that single tracks and EPs lack is the oomph surrounding their marketing and promotion. In the wake of Napster, people may have underestimated the album’s ability to be an event unto itself. Single tracks get the attention of both fans and streaming services’ algorithms, but neither has the promotional impact of releasing a full album. As long as a label is driving awareness to a new release, why not give fans a few more songs?
Plus, artists don’t release albums as frequently as they used to. In the late ‘70s, artists often put out an album every year. Today, an artist will take two or three years — and often longer — between albums. Putting out longer albums could help labels make up for these widening gaps, with the caveat that only superstar releases tend to merit the kind of sprawling length seen in the form of recent releases by Wallen, Drake and others.
This kind of full-court press also serves to prolong — and boost — the success of individual tracks that would fade more quickly without an album attached. Eight of the 36 tracks on One Thing at a Time were released prior to the album’s street date and putting up strong numbers on their own. Still, their streams increased 89% the week of the album’s release. Four of the 8 tracks ended up in the Billboard Hot 100. In its sixth week on the Hot 100, Wallen’s single “Last Night” shot from No. 5 to No. 1 after a 53.5% jump in streams. Three other previously released tracks — “One Thing at a Time,” “You Proof” and “Thought You Should Know” — broke into the top 10 of the Hot 100.
Lady Gaga originally released “Bloody Mary” way back in 2011, but it only cracked the Hot 100 for the first time this January. The revival was due in part to a sped-up remix that careened around TikTok, soundtracking videos of users pairing up the track with an eccentric dance sequence from Wednesday, Netflix’s hit Addams Family update.
The surprise success of “Bloody Mary” in altered form presented Matt Kelly, operations manager and on-air personality for WVAQ in Morgantown, West Virginia, with a dilemma. “What version do we play?” he asks.
“The original is 100 beats per minute — so slow, relative to the new version that people are more familiar with,” he explains. “The sped-up is 130 bpm, but I hated that it sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks.”
So Kelly split the difference by making his own 120-bpm edit to play on the air. “It appeases the ear like it’s the sped-up version,” he says, “but I kept the pitch correction — so it sounds like Gaga, not Alvin.”
Homemade remixes, often sped-up or slowed-down, have been a hallmark of the TikTok era. In recent months, they’ve helped rejuvenate years-old songs from Lady Gaga and Miguel and driven swarms of listeners to newer releases from Lizzy McAlpine and Raye. In some ways, the music industry has adapted — it’s become common to see artists release official tempo-shifted versions of songs that have started to bubble back up, for example. Streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music, have playlists dedicated to these releases; SiriusXM launched TikTok Radio, which program director Marie Steinbock envisions as “completely reflective of exactly what is trending on TikTok.”
But much remains the same: Even if a sped-up remix is ubiquitous on TikTok, the original version of the track tends to get most of the exposure. There are no sped-up remixes in Today’s Top Hits, the most followed playlist on Spotify, for example. And even when labels decide to promote revived songs to radio, they push the original, so that’s usually what saturates the airwaves. The Weeknd’s “Die For You” topped Billboard’s Radio Songs chart in February, more than six years after its release, with the normal-speed version earned the overwhelming majority of its plays.
Can sped-up renditions thrive in the wild, or do they function primarily within the confines of TikTok? Homemade remixes will only become more prevalent in years to come, thanks to platforms that make it so easy to futz with audio. (Meng Ru Kuok, CEO of music technology company BandLab, is fond of saying that they “think everyone is a creator, including fans.”) In this environment, will the industry continue to prioritize originals?
Right now, the dominant school of thought in the music industry is that the sped-up versions are effective… as a conduit to drive listeners back to the version the artist released. “The sped-up versions are more attached to the medium in which people are consuming them than they are the actual song itself,” one senior label executive says. Listeners “are discovering a song through the sped-up version, but they’re consuming the original.”
And even as more acts put out sped-up and slowed-down reworks, there’s still a sense that the original version remains the truest reflection of artists’ intentions. “That’s their art and their creativity — that’s what they want the world to hear,” says Rich McLaughlin, program director at WFUV and a former executive at Amazon Music. “I’m focused on what the artists want to release to the world. That’s what interests me.”
That said, McLaughlin continues, “From a radio programming perspective, I want to be open to playing songs that our listeners want to hear. If there’s a version of a song that comes out that adds a dimension to the original that’s unique and something that I think our listeners are going to like, of course I would be open to playing that.”
Some radio stations are already experimenting with playing alternate versions. Josh “Bru” Brubaker, a TikToker (4.5 million followers) and radio personality for Audacy, often plays a mix stitching together songs that are trending on TikTok after his Today’s Top 10 countdown. The in-house DJs adjust the tempos to nod to the version that’s being incorporated into short video clips.
Kelly has been evaluating songs for WVAQ on a case-by-case basis. While he sped up “Bloody Mary,” he prefers to play the original version of Raye’s “Escapism,” not the faster rendition popular on TikTok. “I think that one loses some of what makes it a great song when it’s the sped-up version,” he says.
What about Miguel’s “Sure Thing”? Originally a hit for the R&B singer in 2011, it returned to the Hot 100 earlier this year after a sped-up remix took off on TikTok and has now climbed to a new peak of No. 28. “That’s one where I might gravitate towards the sped-up version if we needed it, because listeners are going to recognize that from TikTok,” Kelly says. “I could see making an edit where we can keep the timbre of his voice, what makes Miguel Miguel, but speed it up.”
It’s likely that no one is playing more sped-up remixes on the air than SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio, which launched in 2021. Steinbock currently has around a dozen uptempo reworks in rotation. “This has been my life lately: A song will trend on TikTok, and it’s sped-up,” she says. “And then I have to wait and see if the label is going to put out an official version or not.”
In some situations — she points to Justine Skye’s “Collide” and SZA’s “Kill Bill” — “people are consuming both [versions] at kind of the same rate,” so she can play the original without fear of alienating listeners. But when it came to The Weeknd’s “Die For You” and Mariah Carey’s “It’s a Wrap,” she waited until the artists released official sped-up remixes. “It’s kind of a dance,” she says. “Is the audience going to recognize it when it’s not that TikTok remix?”
The current iteration of remixes — the sped-up and slowed-down versions that can serve as rocket fuel for TikTok trends — is unlikely to be the last one. Ebonie Smith, in-house engineer at Atlantic Records, thinks fan-made remixing is only going to become more sophisticated and widespread in the years to come. Young listeners are “already changing expectations around what is normal to hear,” she says, pointing to the popularity of sped-up songs. But “once young people are able to parse out each element of a song, and that becomes somewhat gamified, we’re going to see remixing like we’ve never seen before.”
Jessica Powell, CEO and co-founder of AudioShake, an A.I. music software company, expresses a similar sentiment. “We’re going to see the same shifts in audio that have happened in video and image,” she explains. “There will continue to be really professional uses of tools like Photoshop, but you also have the other end of it — me turning myself into a fish on Snapchat. That’s all coming to audio.”
If this proves to be the case, it’s likely that streaming services and radio stations will have to change their relationship with tempo-shifted remixes, or whatever else young listeners decide sounds good a few years from now. Steinbock will be ready. She recently made room in her rotation for McAlpine’s “Ceilings,” a love-drunk acoustic ballad. It came out roughly a year ago but exploded recently on TikTok thanks to a high-speed rework.
“We’re playing the normal one just because it’s so big,” she says. But “I’m just waiting for an official sped-up version.”
Johnny Chiang, Pandora’s senior director of country programming, will expand his role to also oversee country music programming at SiriusXM, the company tells Billboard. Chiang will report to SiriusXM/Pandora’s GM and senior vp of music programming Steve Blatter.
Chiang’s new role fills duties previously held by JR Schumann, who exited SiriusXM in July 2022. Darrin Smith, SiriusXM’s vp of programming, oversaw the satellite broadcaster’s country channels on an interim basis.
Before joining Pandora in July 2022, Chiang served as vp of radio promotions and artist development at Red Street Records following the announcement that the label had launched a country division. Prior to his work with Red Street, Chiang spent 18 years at KKBQ in Houston and was also the Cox country format leader.
During Chiang’s time at KKBQ, the station was named the Country Music Association’s major market station of the year three times (in 2014, 2016 and 2018), as well as the Academy of Country Music’s major market station of the year in 2017. It also won the Marconi four times (in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2018). In 2016, Billboard named him the most influential country program director in the United States.
During Nashville’s Country Radio Seminar earlier this week, Chiang led a panel during CRS’ Digital Music Summit titled “Sweet Streams (Are Made of These),” which provided an overview of music streaming services. The panel also included Spotify’s Rachel Whitney and Amazon Music’s Michelle Tigard Kammerer, as each music service detailed their respective platforms’ tools for independent artists and discussed the role of playlisting in music marketing, how DSPs use data to make decisions and more.
Chiang’s role expansion comes on the heels of SiriusXM’s announcement earlier this month that it would be laying off 475 employees, or 8% of its workforce. In a statement that followed, CEO Jennifer Witz called the job cuts difficult but “the right thing to do” as the business grapples with lower ad sales, a still-delayed recovery in the automotive subscription business and major investments in its technology.
The U.S. recorded music business posted its seventh consecutive year of growth in 2022 as the industry continues to benefit from streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. After spending most of the last two decades in a painful freefall — piracy devastated CD sales and the download-driven unbundling of the album didn’t make up for it — the recorded music business has enjoyed a great run. Last year, paid subscription revenues surpassed $10 billion for the first time, according to the RIAA, and overall revenues reached $15.9 billion.
Here’s the bad news: Last year’s growth, in terms of both dollar and percentage increases, was the lowest since 2016, when the recorded music business started to recover from a 15-year downturn. Happy days may be here again, but they’re not getting happier like they were.
Total recorded music revenues grew 6.1%, but that’s about a quarter of 2021’s 23.2% gain. Paid streaming revenues improved 7.2% in 2022, a third of the 22.2% growth in 2021. It was the first time that this segment’s growth rate fell into the single digits since 2010. That year paid streaming revenues rose just 2.9% to $212 million. Over the next decade, as annual paid streaming grew to 57.8% of total recorded music revenue in 2022, the segment’s annual growth often exceeded 50% and fell below 20% only twice.
Ad-supported streaming’s revenue growth rate also fell into the single digits, also for the first time in more than a decade. Slowed by an advertising malaise that has also affected companies ranging from Alphabet to iHeartMedia, streaming services’ advertising royalties to record labels grew 5.6% compared to 44.4% in 2021 and 16.8% in 2020. In dollar terms, last year’s revenue growth was the lowest since 2015.
The slowdown shouldn’t catch anybody by surprise given the industry’s reliance on streaming, subscription services’ unwillingness — until recently — to raise prices and a finite number of potential customers. The problem comes down to basic math: Fees from subscription services accounted for 57.9% of recorded music revenues in 2022. At just 2.4% of total revenues, a high-growth segment like synchronization barely moves the needle despite rising 24.8% in 2022. Vinyl sales were strong once again — up 17.2% — but accounted for just 7.7% of total recorded music revenues.
Up-and-coming revenue streams such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram are just that — not yet ready to deliver meaningful royalties despite their popularity. Their revenues are included in the ad-supported streaming bucket that increased just 5.5% in 2022. TikTok faces high expectations but large uncertainty, too, as it faces pressure from politicians at the state and federal level that could reduce its importance. In addition, the company has installed parental controls that are likely to reduce engagement and further reduce its potential value to artists and labels.
A positive trend is subscription services’ decisions to raise prices on individual and family plan tiers. In 2022, Apple Music, Amazon Music and Deezer raised prices in the U.S. Spotify has not yet announced a price hike for standard subscription plans but has hinted it will follow suit in 2023. Labels are eagerly awaiting Spotify’s move. “We are the lowest (cost) form of entertainment,” Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl said Thursday. “We have the highest …engagement, highest form of affinity and lowest per-hour price. That doesn’t seem right.”
Globally, the situation looks better. The industry in China, the world’s most populous country, is flourishing thanks to streaming companies such as Tencent Music Entertainment and Cloud Music. In Japan, the world’s second-largest recorded music market, streaming revenues increased 125% in 2022, according to the RIAJ. At Spotify, which operates in 184 markets, revenue increased 21.3% in 2022 to 11.7 billion euros ($12.4 billion), with about equal growth rates from paid and ad-supported streaming. Annual revenues of two smaller streaming companies, Europe-focused Deezer and MENA-focused Anghami, grew 13% and 36%, respectively.
In the U.S., a maturing streaming business alone cannot maintain the breakneck pace of the last seven years. Labels will need more than the status quo to return to double-digit growth.
In the first trailer for the upcoming Apple TV+ series My Kind of Country, executive producers Kacey Musgraves and Reese Witherspoon break down the reason they decided to hop into the reality singing competition lane.
“When we got together a long time ago we were talking about how country music should stop limiting people and start opening doors… it’s music brought over from all over the world,” Witherspoon says in the two-minute sneak peek that dropped on Friday morning (March 10). “The bluegrass, the folk, the gospel. There’s so many threads woven through country music,” Musgaves adds.
The series that will pit 12 contestants against each other in a bid to become the next country star will feature a diverse group of singers from around the world trying to impress ground-breaking country stars Jimmie Allen, Mickey Guyton and Orville Peck. Each scout has picked a diverse roster of up-and-coming acts who they think have that special something and invited them to Nashville to showcase their unique sound.
In keeping with that theme, each artist’s team is packed with acts that span the globe, with Allen’s featuring singers from Mexico, India, North Carolina and South Africa, while Guyton’s squad has two Nashville and South African performers and Peck’s players from India, South Africa and California.
The winner of the competition will receive what is described as a “life-changing” experience from Apple, which will include global exposure across the Apple TV+ and Apple Music platforms.
My Kind of Country will debut on March 24.
Check out the trailer below.
Snoop Dogg kept his word. Less than a month after pledging to bring the Death Row Records catalog back to traditional streaming services “real soon,” the rapper-entrepreneur did just that on Thursday night (March 9). “Yessir. Heard you,” he tweeted along with a six-second hype clip. “Death Row Records catalog is back streaming everywhere tonight.”
Death Row released Snoop Dogg’s first two albums: the seven-times platinum Doggystyle in 1993 and the two-times platinum Tha Doggfather in 1996. Other album releases now back on Spotify, Apple Music and other services include 2Pac’s All Eyez on Me and The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, as well as the label’s comprehensive Greatest Hits album, Lady of Rage’s Necessary Roughness and Kurupt’s Against the Grain, among many others.
The label’s other stone-cold classic, Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, returned to DSPs in early February after it was reunited with Interscope Records after Dre sold his music assets to UMG and Shamrock Holdings for an estimated $200 million.
Snoop (real name Calvin Broadus) acquired the Death Row catalog and brand, along with its trademark, name and logo, from MNRK Music Group in February 2022, and almost immediately pulled the legendary catalog off streaming services, telling REVOLT it was because “those platforms don’t pay.” In December, Snoop quietly sold a stake in the label’s catalog to gamma, a new full-service music company led by former Apple Music executive Larry Jackson. Their first course of action was to release the catalog — without mentioning their partnership — exclusively on TikTok to give fans the ability to create their own videos using clips from classic albums like Doggystyle. The deal was touted as the “first-ever catalog reissue to release exclusively through SoundOn,” the distribution and marketing service that TikTok launched in 2022.
“Since I took Death Row off streaming almost a year ago, not a day goes by without people asking me to put it back up,” Snoop said at the time of the TikTok announcement.
Founded in 1992 by Dr. Dre, Suge Knight, The D.O.C. and Dick Griffey, Death Row’s fortunes began to falter late in that decade following the murder of 2Pac, the departures of Dre and Snoop and the imprisonment of Knight. In 2006, the label declared bankruptcy following a slew of legal troubles, including a lawsuit brought by “silent” Death Row co-founder Lydia Harris that resulted in a $107 million judgment being awarded in Harris’ favor.
Death Row was eventually sold to Toronto-based development company WIDEawake Entertainment Group at auction for $18 million in 2009. When WIDEawake declared bankruptcy in 2012, Death Row was acquired by eOne (then known as Entertainment One). In 2019, eOne was acquired by Hasbro. Last April, Blackstone purchased eOne Music (which was rebranded as MNRK Music Group in September) for $385 million. The acquisition included Death Row, which was then sold to Snoop.
LONDON – Vinyl sales generated more money for record labels and artists than CDs for the first time in more than three decades in the United Kingdom last year, helping drive a 4.7% rise in overall music revenue, according to annual figures from labels trade body BPI published Thursday (March 9).
In 2022, sales of vinyl LPs climbed 3.1% year-on-year in the U.K. to £119.5 million ($142.4 million) and now account for over half (55%) of all trade revenues from physical sales. The last time vinyl revenues eclipsed CD sales in the United Kingdom, BPI says, was in 1987 when Michael Jackson’s Bad was the year’s best-selling album and Rick Astley had the best-selling single of the year with “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
In total, 5.5 million vinyl LPs were sold in the United Kingdom last year. That marks the highest level of vinyl purchases in the country since 1990, according to BPI figures released in January measuring music consumption. The best-selling vinyl titles in the U.K. in 2022 were Taylor Swift’s Midnights, Harry Styles’ Harry’s House and Arctic Monkeys’ The Car.
Despite the ongoing vinyl revival, overall revenue from physical formats was down 10.5% to £216 million ($258 million), with CD sales slipping 24% to £89 million ($107 million).
Offsetting that decline was 6.3% year-on-year growth in streaming revenues, which climbed to £885 million ($1 billion) and accounted for 67% of U.K. recorded music revenues in 2022 — up from 66.2% the 12 months prior. Vinyl sales made up 9% of the market in terms of annual trade revenues, while CDs accounted for 7%.
Breaking down streaming revenue, paid subscriptions generated £763 million ($910 million), up 4.8% on 2021, while ad-funded revenue grew by more than a fifth (22%) to £63 million ($75 million). Digital download sales fell 17.5% to £28 million ($33 million).
Synch revenues were up even more sharply, rising 39% year-on-year to £43 million ($51 million), while public performance income spiked 23% to £143 million ($170 million).
Total U.K. recorded music sales — comprising digital and physical revenues, public performance rights and synch — climbed 4.7% to £1.32 billion ($1.57 billion) in 2022. That marks a rise of 36% over the past five years, according to BPI, as well as the eighth-consecutive year of growth.
The United Kingdom is the world’s third biggest recorded music market behind the United States and Japan with sales of just over $1.8 billion in trade value, according to IFPI’s 2022 Global Music Report. (BPI’s year-end sales figures are based on pound sterling, rather than the far stronger U.S. dollar, hence the perceived decline in overall revenues when BPI’s figures are converted into dollars at a constant currency basis).
“2022 was another great year for British music, but we must guard against any complacency in the face of growing challenges and keep promoting and protecting the value of music,” BPI chief strategy officer and interim CEO Sophie Jones said in a statement. She also called upon the U.K. music community to work together to “create the impetus” for further growth and “futureproof the success of British music in an increasingly competitive global music market.”
As previously reported, British artists accounted for the top 10 biggest-selling singles in the U.K. last year (either as the lead or as a featured artist) for the first time since year-end charts were introduced more than 50 years ago. Leading the pack was Harry Styles’ “As It Was,” which topped the U.K. singles chart for 10 consecutive weeks (it also spent 15 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100) and was streamed more than 180 million times in the country.
Joining Styles in the U.K. top 10 was Ed Sheeran, Cat Burns, Glass Animals, Lost Frequencies & Calum Scott, LF System, Sam Fender and Kate Bush, whose 1985 track “Running Up That Hill” spent three weeks at No. 1 following its high-profile Stranger Things synch; it was streamed 124 million times in her home country last year.
Styles also landed the year’s best-selling album with his third studio set, Harry’s House, making him the first artist to have both the United Kingdom’s top single and top album since Lewis Capaldi in 2019. Sheeran’s = (Equals) and Swift’s Midnights were the year’s second and third-best-selling albums.
On Thursday (March 9), the RIAA released its annual year-end report on recorded music revenues in the U.S., with an encouraging top line: In 2022, total revenue was up 6% to $15.9 billion, with paid subscription and wholesale revenues each surpassing $10 billion for the first time. That marks the seventh straight year of growth for an industry that at this point is far removed from the doldrums of the early part of the century.
In fact, the industry could credibly be a little underwhelmed by the rate of growth, as the 6% figure is the lowest percent increase across those seven years — and the only time other than pandemic-affected 2020 (+9.2%) that growth has fallen below double digits during that period. In actual figures, it’s the smallest increase ($900 million) year over year since 2016, when the business grew 11.4% and added $700 million.
There are plenty of other interesting takeaways to discern from digging through the RIAA’s report. Here are four (plus one bonus item!) that stand out.
Paid Subscriptions — Anything to Worry About?
Both the average number of paid subscribers (those subscribing to full-catalog services like Apple Music or Spotify’s paid tier) and the revenue from full-catalog paid subscriptions grew at much slower rates, both in percentage terms and in actual numbers, than in recent years. The former metric showed an increase of 8 million subscribers (9.5%; 84 million in 2021 to 92 million in 2022), while the latter metric reflected an increase of $600 million (7.2%; $8.56 billion to $9.17 billion). As with the overall growth rate for the industry, that’s the first time in several years that those figures grew by less than double-digit percentages. So, is it anything to worry about, when looking at how much growth there is left in the paid streaming business?
Not necessarily. For one thing, between 2018 and 2022, paid subscribers (up 96.2%) and revenue from full-catalog subscriptions (up 93.6%) have grown fairly in line with each other, and the revenue per subscriber has averaged $98.92 over that period of time (pandemic-affected 2020 was an outlier year, at $92.35). In 2022, the average revenue per subscriber was $99.77, which was down from $101.94 in 2021 but not out of line with the overall average.
That number should be expected to grow, given price increases by Apple Music, Amazon Music and Deezer in the past year and the increasing pressure on Spotify to boost its price higher than $9.99/month, where it has stayed since entering the U.S. in 2011. This will be something to keep an eye on as the year progresses, as strategies shift from gaining subscribers to getting more out of those who do subscribe, given that a ceiling on the number of subscribers could be coming into view (for context, the U.S. government counted 124 million households in the latest census).
Another reason for optimism: The above numbers don’t include limited-tier subscription revenue — things like Amazon Prime and fitness apps like Peloton — which crossed the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2022. Since 2020, when the pandemic led to a home fitness app craze and resulted in additional areas of limited music subscription beyond the traditional paid streaming realm, limited-tier subscription revenue has grown 47.7%. As more licensing opportunities arise, that sector should continue to contribute meaningful revenue moving forward.
Ad-Supported Streaming Takes a Hit
Ad-supported on-demand streaming revenue reached $1.8 billion in 2022, accounting for 11% of the overall revenues for the business last year. But growth was just 5.5% over 2021 — a big reality check after the category grew 46.7% in 2021 over pandemic-affected 2020 and 16.4% at the mid-year mark of 2022. Even in 2020, when the world essentially came to a standstill for several months, year-end ad-supported streaming revenues grew 16.8%, up $170 million — higher than the $95 million gain seen in 2022.
The advertising slump last year was certainly a blow to U.S. industries, with layoffs across the music and tech landscapes in particular. Many companies cited “economic headwinds” due to a combination of factors, including the war in Ukraine, rising interest rates, inflation and the threat of recession as companies scaled back spending that had ballooned coming out of the pandemic and readjusted forecasts for an uncertain future. All of that certainly played a part. But since 2018, ad-supported on-demand streaming revenue grew 137%, becoming an increasingly large part of the overall pie. In comparison, 5.5% is likely a disappointing number to many in the industry.
Vinyl, Vinyl, Vinyl
Another year, another big headline involving vinyl’s 16-year winning streak: For the first time since 1987, the number of vinyl LPs sold in the United States (41 million) surpassed the number of CDs sold in the calendar year (33 million). Vinyl sales reached $1.2 billion in 2022, up 17.2%, while CD sales plummeted once again, decreasing 17.6% to $482 million. Despite the eye-popping vinyl revenue numbers, however, actual unit sales only rose 3%, meaning that the price of vinyl is getting more expensive. In 2021, the average vinyl record cost $26.12; in 2022, that number rose to $29.65. There’s plenty to unpack there, including increased production costs and inflation.
Another notable development in the vinyl craze that has sharpened in recent years is the shifting market share among vinyl retailers. As far back as 2015, when the industry started to emerge from its nadir, the market was dominated by indie records stores (45.42%), internet/mail order sellers like Amazon (32.88%) and chain stores like Best Buy (15%), according to Luminate. By 2018, indie stores and Amazon sales had essentially settled into a market share tie — each at 41% — while the Best Buys of the world had shrunk to just north of 10%.
But beginning in 2019, a fourth player began to emerge: Mass merchant stores like Walmart and Target, which dramatically expanded their inventories. As a result, their market share went from less than 1% in 2015 — accounting for some 7,000 sales — to 10.19% in 2019 and 14.75% in 2021, with sales of 6.1 million units. While the market share economics have shifted during that time, sales have continued to increase for each sector across the board. In short, part of what has been driving the boom has been sheer visibility in some of the biggest stores in the country, which has correlated to more sales, and thus more visibility, and around and around we’ve gone. (For those curious, in 2022 indie stores accounted for 48.1% of the market, having reclaimed their dominant position as the country emerged from the pandemic.)
The Synch Explosion
In the past few years, more and more songs have caught huge waves due to synchs in popular TV shows and films. Think Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” following its Stranger Things placement, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” following its Wednesday placement and Gerry Rafferty’s “Right Down The Line” from Euphoria, to name a few. That seems to have stemmed from the explosion of content, as the streaming wars in TV/film world heated up during that time — with Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+, Apple TV+ and the rest all throwing money around to reel in subscribers. The RIAA numbers back that up: In 2022, synch revenue grew 24.8%, from $306.5 million to $382.5 million, marking a gigantic jump. In fact, from 2020 to 2022, synch revenue jumped 44.2%, outpacing the industry at large (which was up 30.3% in that span).
Will that upward trend continue? It’s unclear. The TV/film streamers have publicly cut back their content spends in the past six months as the battle for market share and subscribers veered into profligacy and waste, while corporations looked to reel in costs amid the broader economic landscape. But it’s possible those gains are here to stay, even if they regress a bit. One music group executive recently told Billboard that in addition to the big four streamers (Spotify, Apple, Amazon and YouTube), Netflix was quickly becoming a fifth major source of revenue thanks to a combination of direct synch payments and the long tail of streams that result from a high-profile placement. That’s something to keep an eye on moving forward.
Bonus Takeaway — Ringtones!
Finally, a small bonus addition from a personal favorite aspect of the RIAA report. The mid-to-late-2000s were, of course, a time of great uncertainty and anxiety in the recorded music business, as piracy and digital music chipped away at a once-dominant physical sales format. At their height in 2007, ringtones and ringbacks were able to plug the gap to the tune of $1.1 billion, according to the RIAA. (That would be around $1.6 billion today.) So, how much money did ringtones and ringbacks generate in 2022?
$11 million!
Please, RIAA, continue printing this as a line in every report, no matter how small the figure gets. While it’s currently the smallest line item by revenue in the entire report, I cherish it more than all the others.
SoundCloud named Eliah Seton as its new CEO, the company announced today (March 9). Seton, who has served as president of the company since 2021, replaces Michael Weissman, who is leaving the company “for a new opportunity,” according to a press release.
Simultaneously, the company announced that Union Square Ventures founder Fred Wilson has been named chairman of the board. Wilson, who has been on the board at SoundCloud since 2011, replaces company founder and former CEO Alexander Ljung, who will be taking a new role as chairman emeritus and remain a member of the board.
“As the only platform with direct relationships with artists and fans at scale, SoundCloud has a singular opportunity to forge the future of the music industry by unlocking the full power of fandom,” Seton said in a statement. “I am grateful to Mike for our partnership, to Fred and the board for their confidence and thrilled to work alongside our incredible leadership team to realize that vision.”
Seton joined SoundCloud from the Warner Music Group, where he spent a number of years first working for former WMG CEO Stephen Cooper, then as senior vp of strategy and operations for Warner International, before moving to ADA, eventually being named president of independent music and creator services for the major label. He moved to SoundCloud in 2021 during a shakeup of the company, during which Weissman moved into the CEO role and SoundCloud began an evolution from an indie-focused streaming service towards a hybrid organization that now offers label and artist services, as well as distribution, audience insights and a growing roster of artists and partnerships.
During that period, SoundCloud also rolled out a fan-powered royalties initiative, which switched up how independent creators got paid on the platform, and Seton led the deal that brought Warner Music artists into the fan-powered royalties fold. In August, the company laid off 20% of its global staff while it pursued a different strategy amid the advertising-affected market, though in December it announced its revenue grew 19% in 2021, according to financial statements published in Germany. In the past year, SoundCloud has inked joint ventures with Quality Control’s management wing Solid Foundation and Atlanta-based management and services company Third & Hayden, and partnered with artists such as Lil Pump, Tekno and Aly & AJ, among others.
Wilson replaces Ljung as chairman, who originally founded the company and was its CEO from 2007 to 2017, at which time Kerry Trainor took over as CEO and Weissman as COO. According to a press release, Ljung will “remain closely engaged and available to the company’s management team and employees going forward.”
“I have served on SoundCloud’s board for more than a decade and can honestly say that I have never been more excited about the direction and leadership of the company,” Wilson said in a statement. “Eliah’s passion for the business of music, relationships and vision are exactly what is needed for the next phase of SoundCloud’s growth. On behalf of the board, I want to thank Mike for his leadership, dedication and partnership over the past several years and welcome Eliah to this new role.”
Apple Music is ready for its long-awaited dive into classical music, with a standalone app. Announced Thursday (March 9), Apple Music Classical is pitched as the “ultimate classical experience,” and is said to be years in the making.
The app will invite classical fans to stream hundreds of curated playlists and thousands of exclusive albums, plus view exclusive artworks and digital portraits, browse composer biographies, editorial notes and more. AMC launches on March 28 but is available to “pre-order” now in the App Store.
Apple Music subscribers will be able download and use Apple Music Classical at no additional cost to their plan. While it’ll be a standalone app, only Apple Music subscribers will have access to it.
At launch, the service will boast the world’s “largest classical music catalog” with over 5 million tracks and works from new releases to recognized masterpieces, according to a statement.
The app’s search engine can locate recordings by composer, work, conductor, and even catalog number, and audiophiles will be rewarded with “thousands” of recordings rendered in immersive spatial audio.
Apple’s full-on plunge into classical follows the tech giant’s acquisition of Primephonic, the Netherlands-based classical music streaming service, in a deal announced back in Aug. 30, 2021, a precursor to the launch of a dedicated experience for classical music fans, which was tentatively planned for 2022.
“We love and have a deep respect for classical music, and Primephonic has become a fan favorite for classical enthusiasts,” Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and Beats, said at the time. “Together, we’re bringing great new classical features to Apple Music, and in the near future, we’ll deliver a dedicated classical experience that will truly be the best in the world.”
That dedicated classical experience is set to go live later this month everywhere where Apple Music is offered, with the exception of China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan; those regions will follow at an unspecified date, reads a corporate statement. Also coming soon is Apple Music Classical for Android.
The app will be available for all iPhone models running iOS 15.4 or later.