Tag: Data

Categories
Industry News News

Spotify under investigation for violations of GDPR compliance

GDPR, Spotify

The streaming giant is one of numerous entertainment companies that have been warned about the use and availability of their data in the wake of GDPR.

The Swedish Data Inspection Authority said it is investigating Spotify’s handling of customer requests under GDPR to find out what information the music streaming company hold about them. The streaming company has until July 1 to respond.  The authority claims it has received several complaints regarding potential shortcomings in Spotify’s record keeping, such as incomplete and unclear records.

The investigation will focus on three areas of Spotify’s GDPR compliance, including what information is provided to customers who request data, which information is copied by Spotify, and how the information is handled after collection.

GDPR troubles are nothing new to Spotify. In January, the company received complaints from a privacy organization in Austria named None Of Your Business. The group made similar complaints against other tech companies, including Amazon Prime, Apple Music, DAZN, Netflix, Soundcloud, and YouTube.

At its core, GDPR is a new set of rules designed to give EU citizens more control over their personal data. It aims to simplify the regulatory environment for business, so both citizens and companies in the European Union can fully benefit from the digital economy. The guidelines aspire to create a world where consumers know what information they are sharing with websites and corporations before it is shared, and it requires that companies willingly provide that data to consumers upon request.

None Of Your Business created the following chart to reveal how unprepared major tech companies are complying with the new EU law.

Of all the companies studied by None Of Your Business, Filmmit showed the best GDPR compliance.

Twitter user Peter Steinberger recently created a thread on his timeline detailing the experience of trying to retrieve information GDPR requires Spotify to provide. As Steinberger dug deeper, he found Spotify knows more about consumers than they may realize, including the type of headphones they use to stream music on the service.

GDPR went into effect in May 2018, but many companies have been slow to adapt. Spotify is the latest tech giant to be investigated, but unless more platforms take action soon similar headlines involving the company’s competition will emerge in the near future.

Categories
Industry News News

MySpace has lost all media uploaded from 2003-2015, including 50 million songs

It has been said that nothing lasts forever, and the people behind MySpace just confirmed that to be true.

MySpace has confirmed the lost all media uploaded to its platform from 2003 to 2015. The data was deleted after the associated files became corrupted during a server migration that took place at some point in the last year two years. The company does not have backups of the content.

Questions over MySpace’s handling of data began to appear a year ago, in 2018, when songs posted to the social media site before 2015 stopped working. MySpace claimed at the time that they were aware of the issue and that it would be fixed, but no further information was provided to the public.

In a message recently sent to one concerned user, a representative for MySpace wrote:

“As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your back up copies. If you would like more information, please contact our Data Protection Officer, Dr. Jana Jentzsch at DPO@myspace.com.”

Another, similar, email was sent to a concerned user who shared an image of their exchange on Reddit:

MySpace may not be as popular as it was a decade ago, but until its recent data loss it maintained an archive of alternative and digital music that may now be lost forever. Countless artists working today got their start on the platform and many uploaded songs or demos that cannot be found anywhere else online. The team at Consequence of Sound is claiming 50 million tracks have been erased, but it is impossible to know for sure exactly how much music has been lost.

The likelihood of similar data losses on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms is higher than most choose to believe. The Internet Archive will host anything freely distributable, for free, forever, and they have mirrors of their servers in California, Egypt, and Amsterdam. They’re a mission-driven nonprofit supported by philanthropists, foundations, and small-money donations (I’m an annual donor).

But don’t rely on someone else to back up your data. If you have songs, photos, videos, or any other information online that you want to keep, then you need to save it yourself. Keep backups, and keep backups of backups. Use cloud servers and external storage devices. No method is guaranteed to work all the time, so make sure you have multiple ways of accessing the data that is most important to you.

Categories
Industry News News

New Nielsen music report reveals an increasingly healthy industry

Annual report shows industry-wide growth and continued embrace of streaming services.

The internet has changed practically every aspect of the music business, including the speediness of reporting. In years past, the annual Nielsen music report would arrive in February or March, but the latest is already available online. The contents help to gauge the strength of the music business as a whole, which this year reveal an industry poised for big things in the months to come.

The biggest takeaway from this year’s report is that consumption is up. Way up. According to Nielsen, total music consumption rose 23% over 2017, mostly thanks to a 49% increase in on-demand streams from services like Spotify and Apple Music, among others. Industry pundits continue to take issue with the “album equivalent” metric (where 1,500 streams from an album are equivalent to one album sale) as it is open to manipulation and as a result, doesn’t accurately depict how people consume an album, but that’s all we have right now.

Other key takeaway include:

  • “Music streaming volume continued to rise, with the total number of on-demand audio song streams reaching 611 billion in 2018, a sizable 49% increase over the same time period in 2017.”
  • “Overall on-demand music streaming volume, including video, surpassed 900 billion streams, an increase of 43% over the same period last year.”
  • “Vinyl continued to soar, up 15% over the same period last year, with record-breaking sales during the week of the 11th annual Record Store Day.”
  • “Despite sharp declines in Digital purchasing, Digital Audio consumption (digital albums + track equivalent albums + on-demand audio streaming equivalent albums) was up a healthy 34%.”
  • “Four songs surpassed 1 billion on-demand streams this year, including Drake’s ‘God’s Plan,’ Juice WRLD’s ‘Lucid Dreams (Forget Me),’ Drake’s ‘In My Feelings’ and XXXtentacion’s ‘Sad.'”

Nielsen also identified several trends that emerged throughout the last year. These include Latin artists getting more traction on the top of the charts than ever, Drake breaking consumption records, more than double the number of female artists on the charts from the previous year, soundtracks scoring big with consumers (most thanks to The Greatest Showman), and K-Pop finally breaking through big in the U.S. (mostly thanks to boy band BTS).

The genre that saw the biggest streaming growth over the last year is country music, which saw a 47% jump. That fact speaks to the long-held belief that country fans held out longest before abandoning their love of physical media. With the trend now broken, it appears that streaming is and will remain the king of consumer consumption. At least, that is, until a new format arrives.

Categories
News

How many streams does it take to earn minimum wage?

Several weeks have passed since an artist of note shared their streaming royalties to express outrage with a flawed system, but it’s important to remember that silence is rarely an indicator of resolution. In truth, many who feel inadequately compensated for their work have no idea what, if anything, can be done to fight for better royalties. Others have given up the fight entirely, choosing instead to appreciate what little they do make because every bit helps.

Information Is Beautiful has been studying the most popular streaming services and their relationships with artists/labels for years. Their latest report analyzes data from Napster, Tidal, Apple Music, Googleplay, Deezer, Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube to determine several important numbers:

  • Artist revenue per play.
  • Total users (millions) per platform.
  • Percentage of free users on the platform.
  • Plays needed to earn minimum monthly wage ($1,472).
  • Total annual loss reported by the streaming platform.
  • Annual loss per user.

The results of this analysis apply to unsigned artists ONLY. Signed artists often have their material distributed through their label, who may have a different streaming agreement with platforms than the average DIY talent.

Our friends at Digital Music News have an in-depth breakdown of the latest IIB report that you can read at your desire, but right now we are focusing on what it takes for an average musician to make a livable wage. 

According to the chart shown above, musicians need two hundred thirty thousand monthly plays on Apple Music to generate roughly $1400. That’s three hundred and eighty thousand plays on Spotify for the same number. Deezer (260,000), Googleplay (250,000), and Tidal (130,000) all require similar levels of performance.

Keep in mind this is $1400 total. As in, everyone in the band or group has to split that amount. After you deduct costs and divide what remains that is barely enough to cover monthly cell phone costs and a mileage, let alone meals or other basic necessities. In order for ever member of a four person band to make a livable wage from streaming alone their material needs to be easily surpassing one million plays a month, and that – as many artists would tell you – is no easy feat.

How do we change this?

The debate over streaming royalties will not be ending anytime soon. The problem independent artists face that those signed to a major do not is leverage. Majors have catalogs streaming services need to succeed, which makes them more likely to bend to the demands of said label. Independent artists don’t have that kind of pull on their own, but perhaps a joint effort by hundreds or thousands could. Organization, however, will be difficult.

In the meantime artists must continue to be vocal about their concerns with streaming so that fans/consumers go the extra mile to support their favorite acts. Artists need to also start considering other revenue streams, including Patreon, as a way to further their career while also offering their fans additional access into their creative process. Music is more personal than ever, with everyone able to curate a personal soundtrack to life they listen to everywhere they go. In order to cut through the noise and establish a mutually beneficial relationship artists need to always be seeking ways to further connect with those who care about them most. That is where the key to longterm success, both financially and commercially, lies. 

Categories
News

Music streaming (finally) has more paying subscribers than Netflix

When the idea of the streaming age was first introduced nearly a decade ago the music business at large was worried that relying solely on song streams instead of album sales would destroy the industry as we knew it. In a way, they weren’t wrong. Streaming has changed everything, but unlike many expected the changes have been largely good. 

At the end of 2015, the total number of paying music streaming subscribers across all platforms was about three million people behind the amount that paid for Netflix. This was a massive change in a positive direction from the 14 million person difference that existed at the end of 2014, which is not all that unlike the 41.4 million to 28 million difference that existed at the end of 2013.

Many believed Netflix was a streaming giant that could not be toppled in terms of paying subscribers, but according to a new report from the highly-respected Midia Research tells another, perhaps historic, story.

According to the report, which you can see visualized above, 100.4 million people are currently paying for a subscription music streaming service. This is a staggering number, especially when compared to the fact Netflix ended the year – a year filled with explosive growth and popularity, I might add – with just 87.8 million subscribers.

The 100.4m subscription base represented a 48% year-on-year rise on 2015’s IFPI number (68m).

Midia’s Mark Mulligan estimates that around 43m of these were subscribing to Spotify, with 20.9m signed up to Apple Music, 6.9m to Deezer, 4.5m to Napster and just 1m to TIDAL.

Netflix has projected their current growth habits will continue through 2020, but it’s hard to say what will happen in the world of music. Could a single service one day have numbers to match that of Netflix? Only time will tell.

Categories
News

The Beatles Are A HUGE Hit On Spotify [Data Available]

The biggest band in the world is also the biggest band online.

Industry analysts predicted the release of The Beatles’ catalog on streaming services to be a big hit over the holidays, and now Spotify is proving that to be true with the reveal of data showing just how popular the pop icons continue to be. he Beatles songs have been added to over 673k playlists in two days and 65% of The Beatles listeners on Spotify are under the age of 34.

Here are the most played Beatles tracks from both the UK and around the globe during the catalog’s first 48 hours online:

UK: Most streamed tracks by The Beatles on December 24 and 25

  1. Come Together
  2. Hey Jude
  3.  Here Comes the Sun
  4. Twist and Shout
  5. Let It Be
  6. I Want To Hold Your Hand
  7. Help!
  8. Love Me Do
  9. I Feel Fine
  10. She Loves You

GLOBAL: Most streamed tracks by The Beatles on December 24 and 25

  1. Come Together
  2. Let It Be
  3. Hey Jude
  4. Love Me Do
  5. Yesterday
  6. Here Comes The Sun
  7. Help!
  8. All You Need Is Love
  9. I Want To Hold Your Hand
  10. Twist And Shout
Exit mobile version