Tag: streaming music

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Spotify crosses 100 million paid users milestone

Spotify, Streaming, Streaming subscriptions, 2019

The streaming war is far from over, but Spotify’s lead is growing with each passing day.

People are willing to pay for music. As funny as it sounds to hear that now, there was a time shortly after the dawn of the millennium where the industry wasn’t sure if that was still the case. The rise of digital piracy lead many to believe people were no longer willing to shell out cash to support recorded music, but premium streaming subscription services such as Spotify have proven that notion false.

This week, Spotify announced it has finally crossed the 100-million paid user mark during the first quarter of 2019. The streaming giant, which has long been the market leader for music consumption, added four million premium users in the three months ending March 31, a 4 percent spike quarterly and 32 percent over the previous year’s quarter. Ad-supported monthly active users now total 123 million, an increase of 6 percent on the quarter and 21 percent year over year. Overall, total monthly active users rose to 217 million in Q1, up 5 percent from the previous quarter and 26 percent year over year.

Spotify’s latest figures place the company’s total subscriber count at double that of its closest competitor, Apple Music. Apple CEO Tim Cook said in January that Apple Music hit 50 million subscribers at the end of last year.

Apple Music does, however, have a higher paid user count in the United States, which is the world’s largest market for music consumption. Apple Music is also growing faster in the US than Spotify. That growth may not be enough to overtake Spotify on a global scale, but it does show consumer preferences for streaming services are not yet set in stone.

Spotify’s advantage in the ongoing streaming war is its free tier. Apple Music requires a paid subscription, but Spotify allows over one-hundred million people a month to access its music library through a free tier that inserts advertisements in between songs.

Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal, and other streaming services have subscription numbers far below that of Spotify and Apple Music. So much so, that bringing up their paid user count in this conversation feels pointless. Still, with the right innovations, it is possible for anyone to rise through the ranks and become the next leading streaming service. After all, there was a time when it seemed like Netflix would reign over video streaming forever, but the recent news of Disney+ and its low monthly cost has made many to believe the service is in jeopardy of losing its position as the market king.

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Major labels demand ‘guaranteed money’ from TikTok owners

With current contracts set to expire this Spring, three of the biggest labels in the world are trying to secure additional revenue from the fast-growing social media platform.

The big three record labels — Universal, Warner, and Sony Music — are demanding more money for songs played on TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin, setting up a showdown with the hugely popular video apps, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

All three labels have contracts with the app owners, ByteDance, that are set to expire this Spring. Negotiations for new agreements have reportedly been ongoing for months, but little progress has been made. 

If a deal is not reached in the near future, the labels may choose to pull their catalogs from the service, which would likely force TikTok and Douyin to remove existing videos and prevent new uploads containing music owned by the companies. That action would ultimately lead to a diminished popularity for the app, which could eventually kill the platform altogether. 

Since negotiations are private, it’s unclear what money is currently being exchanged between ByteDance and the labels with music on its platforms. The fight for higher payouts allegedly stem from the rising popularity of the apps, which has “emboldened” the labels to seek better royalty payouts. Figures are, again, not public, but sources claim the big three labels are seeking a big enough change to earn them hundreds of millions in “guaranteed money.”

Reports of the platforms’ popularity are accurate. TikTok alone has over one billion downloads across iPhones and Google devices worldwide.

TikTok’s argument against the proposed changes is that the company is not a streaming service and therefore it should not be expected to meet the standard royalty rates paid by Spotify and similar platforms.

Todd Schefflin, Head of Global Music Business Development at ByteDance, responds to the reports of negotiations with:

“TikTok is for short video creation and viewing, and is simply not a product for pure music consumption that requires a label’s entire collection.”

Speaking to the platform’s ability to help artists, Shefflin added:

“A short video on TikTok can become a valuable promotional tool for artists to grow their fan bases and build awareness for new work.”

Shefflin brings up a good point. The irony in this story lies in TikTok’s ability to raise the profile of up and coming artists on a global scale. Lil Nas X currently has the number one song in America with the Billy Ray Cyrus assisted remix to his viral hit, “Old Town Road.” The song, which was initially released in late 2018, rose in popularity thanks in large part to a series of videos created by users of TikTok. Here are a few examples:

Major labels may see themselves as needing more money from TikTok, but they may need the platform’s ability to raise artist profiles even more. Removing music catalogs from an app with over one billion users would hurt music marketing at every level, but it would especially hurt developing artists.

That said, the industry’s growing reliance on streaming revenue cannot be denied. The music industry grew 9.7 percent in 2018, thanks mainly to the rise of paid streaming services Spotify and Apple Music. That’s impressive, but compared to where the music business was in 1999, there’s still a long way to go before the industry as a whole can reach its former heights of success.

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Apple Music surpasses Spotify in paid U.S. subscribers

Spotify may dominate the global market, but Apple Music continues to grow at an alarming rate.

Apple Music has surpassed Spotify in paid U.S. subscribers, according to a new post from the Wall Street Journal, which further indicates that the war for streaming music dominance is far from over.

The article published earlier this week reveals Apple Music now has 28 million subscribers in the U.S. while Spotify trails with 26 million. The news post also claims that Apple’s streaming music service has been adding subscribers in the world’s biggest music market faster than its rival with a monthly growth rate of 2.6-3% compared to Spotify’s 1.5-2%.

Globally, Spotify remains the streaming champ, boasting over 96 million paid subscribers compared to Apple Music’s 50 million. Spotify has over 200 million subscribers on its free tier as well.

Apple’s main advantage over its rival are the 900 million iPhones in use around the world, each one with iTunes installed and a credit card on file. If consumers grow tired of Spotify or otherwise dislike the service, making the switch to Apple Music is easier than joining any other competitor in the field.

Still, the news that Apple Music has surpassed Spotify in the US comes as a surprise to much of the industry. Spotify has long been considered the Netflix of music streaming, and its recent acquisition of several podcast businesses and services , not to mention the recent Hulu partnership, has positioned the company for additional growth in the years to come. The fact Apple Music has now surpassed Spotify, at least in U.S. paid subscriptions, is sure to make investors a little wary of what the future may hold.

Apple recently announced plans for its own video streaming platform, which it will likely bundle with Apple Music. If that comes to pass, Apple’s streaming division will grow even faster than its current rate, which would shrink Spotify’s lead in the marketplace.

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Despite streaming’s growth, the music industry is half the size it was in 1999

The streaming revolution is helping the music industry recover with each passing year, but there is still a long way to go.

Music fans and industry professionals too young to remember the panic that followed the start of the new millennium are lucky. For years, the widely accepted narrative that music piracy made easy by the internet was killing the business of music left many feeling lost and afraid. Labels downsized, if not folded entirely, and many artists on the rise struggled to convince fans that music was worth the same price it previously demanded.

Paid streaming subscriptions were sold to industry as a savior, ushering in a new era of consumption that would counteract the effects of illegal music downloading by making virtually all recorded music accessible from anywhere on Earth for one low price. The return for buying into that promise took years to appear, but there is no denying that streaming services have made a positive impact on music overall. Everyone knows someone who pays for streaming music. In fact, it’s increasingly hard to find someone who doesn’t

According to a new report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), global recorded music sales grew by 9.7% in 2018, to $19.1 billion, the fourth consecutive year of growth after many years of decline. The results were driven by a surge in paid streaming, which rose by 33% last year.

Adjusted for inflation, however, sales in 2018 were just over half of what they were in 1999.

As we previously highlighted on our blog, there are now 255 million paid music subscribers, accounting for 37% of total industry revenue. When ad-supported services are added, streaming now accounts for 47% of sales of recorded music.

That growth is impressive, but again it’s important to maintain perspective. While streaming continues to gain popularity, its market dominance most offsets losses in the sales of physical media.

Revenue for physical formats in 2018 fell 10% from the year prior, and digital download revenue fell by 21%.

Major labels now celebrate the success their artists experience from streaming services, which is surprising considering the stance many in the industry took against such platforms just a decade ago. It seems many see streaming as the best way to prevent piracy, even if it means a lower return than what physical media sales offer.

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490,000 songs ‘lost’ by MySpace are now back online thanks to digital hoarders

MySpace may not have maintained good backups of the media hosted on their servers, but a community of digital saviors have banded together to share nearly half a million songs previously thought lost forever.

Less than a month after MySpace confirmed the loss of over 50 million songs uploaded to the social media platform between 2003 and 2015, a group of dedicated music fans have delivered the internet a gift. 490,000 songs once hosted by MySpace are now available once more thanks to a community of so-called ‘digital hoarders’ who maintain deep and meticulously curated music libraries.

The ‘Myspace Dragon Hoard (2008-2010)‘ was published on Monday, April 1. The songs included were originally gathered by an anonymous academic study conducted between 2008 and 2010. You can stream the material using this link.

The music collection is arranged by the filenames assigned by MySpace’s Content Delivery Network, the key of which is in the metadata. file in this collection. MD5 and SHA hashes are also provided from the original and included in the main directory. There is no other information about the origin of this collection at this time.

If you’re afraid the material included may disappear again, downloads of the entire collection are available. At over 1.3 terabytes of mp3 files named by the Content Delivery Network of Myspace, this collection can best be described as unwieldy. Therefore, it has been left as a set of ZIP files (created by the Info-ZIP program) that can be browsed and viewed by using the “view content” links in the general item directory.

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Streaming now accounts for 37% of global recorded music revenue

Paid streaming subscriptions have taken the world by storm, and their increasing domination in the recorded music marketplace is likely to continue.

It’s no surprise that paid streaming subscriptions are on the rise worldwide. Here in the US, a report from the RIAA discovered that paid subscription streaming in the US remained the largest driver of revenue for the American music industry. Their data was backed up by a similar report from the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), which published its own findings showing that paid streaming revenue has also overtaken physical and download revenue in the UK.  The ERA found that 62.1% of all British music revenue last year came from paid subscription streaming.  Just 37.9% came from physical sales and digital downloads.

And we cannot forget the British. A recent data dump from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) revealed paid subscription streams accounted for 54% of British labels’ income last year.  Revenue from these streams grew 34% over 2017 to £468 million ($614 million).  Overall streaming music revenue grew to £516 million ($687 million).  Ad-funded streams (Spotify, Deezer, etc.) 25.8% to £19 million ($25 million).

As if all those reports were not enough to confirm paid streaming subscriptions impending rule over the recorded music marketplace, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has released its own report for 2018.

The report, which is available online, reveals that the global recorded music market grew 9.7% year-over-year in 2018 to $19.1 billion, thanks in large part to paid streaming subscriptions (which accounted for 37% of total global revenue). That figure is but more impressive still is the fact that all streaming-related revenue grew 34% year-over-year to $9 billion, accounting for 47% – essentially half – of all global revenue.  

The continued growth of streaming revenue helped to offset a 10.1% decline in physical revenue and a 21.2% drop in download revenue. Figures that, if trends hold true, will continue to drop in 2019.

Speaking to the report, IFPI’s Chief Executive Francis Moore explained:

“Last year represented the fourth consecutive year of growth, driven by great music from incredible artists in partnership with talented, passionate people in record companies around the world.

“We continue to work for the respect and recognition of music copyright around the world, and for the resolution of the value gap by establishing a level playing field for negotiating a fair deal for those who create music.

“Above all, we’re working to ensure that music continues its exciting, global journey.”

Artists around the world are continuing to fight for higher royalty rates while asking fans to consider purchasing physical media, but the fact remains that streaming is here to stay. The question is whether or not the companies that provide the services will work with artists to raise their returns or continue to keep mechanical royalties as low as possible.

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Pre-Adds (Pre-Saves) are the new pre-orders, but is that a good thing?

Consumers are replacing pre-orders with pre-adds and pre-saves, but is something important being lost along the way?

Fast-rising pop sensation Billie Eilish will release her debut record, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, this Friday, but the teenager’s album is already being considered a massive success. Despite not yet being released, the LP has already accrued more than 800,000 pre-adds on Apple Music, which allows users to register to add an album to their streaming collection before it ships, with Eilish setting a new record for the service.

That volume of pre-adds for Eilish’s album is a sign of how the industry is continuing to evolve. Speaking to Music Business Worldwide, Apple Music boss Oliver Schusser said:

“While most services focus the majority of their efforts around playlists, Apple Music still emphasizes albums because we understand their value as a storytelling tool for artists to create context around their music.

To that end, pre-adds are great early indicators of engagement around an artist and the intention of the fans. To actively pre-add an album, much like the pre-order we invented with iTunes, means that the fan is excited about the content and wants to be among the first to enjoy it the moment its available. That kind of engagement is very valuable to an artist and to us.”

Spotify offers a service similar to Apple Music. The company’s pre-save feature allows users to register to have the album added to their library and to receive an alert regarding the content’s availability. The reliability of the notifications depend on how many pre-saves a user registers, but the content is always added as soon as its made available.

While the figures for Eilish’s album are great, pre-adds and pre-saves are not a perfect replacement for pre-orders. Schusser was right to say the numbers can tell a lot about excitement for a release, and they can also help predict initial performance, but the tools currently available to artists through streaming platforms do not provide context about their audience.

If a user pre-saves or pre-adds an album, what does the artist get? Do they know my name? Where I live? My email address? Do they receive anything other than a counter that tells them I am one of the however many people that have decided to request notification of their release becoming available?

Streaming services also do not offer any data that informs artists as to whether or not consumers who pre-save their release actually listen to it.

The real winner in the rising popularity of pre-saves and pre-adds are the streaming services offering them. By using that functionality, consumers are providing the platforms with additional insight into their listening habits. Their actions are strengthening the algorithms that recommend content and create playlists. Whether they know it or not, consumers are strengthening the services they use more than the artists they’re hoping to support.

Still, streaming is here to stay and there is no getting around that fact. If the industry is lucky, Spotify, Apple Music, and similar platforms will make more listener data available to them as time progresses. That seems more likely than a rise in royalty rates based on recent events, but it’s still not going to happen overnight.

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Spotify Premium now includes Hulu at no extra cost

Will Spotify’s latest marketing ploy boost its subscriber count as Apple Music’s popularity continues to rise?

Spotify Premium now includes a free subscription to Hulu’s ad-supported plan. That perk goes into effect today, and it is available to new and existing users of Spotify’s Premium streaming service in the US.

The announcement marks the latest bundling collaboration between the two streaming giants in recent years. In 2017, Spotify introduced a plan for university students priced at $4.99 a month. The subscription included ad-free access to Spotify’s entire catalog, as well as access to Hulu’s limited commercial plan.

To take advantage of the offer, new Spotify users can sign up now. Once joined head over to the “Your Services” page within account settings and activate your Hulu subscription. If you already get Hulu through Spotify, you won’t have to do anything to start saving an extra $3 per month. On the other hand, if you subscribe to Hulu and don’t yet have a Spotify account, you’ll need to cancel your billing through Hulu, then set it up through Spotify to receive the discount.

Unlike the $4.99 Student Plan, which bundles Hulu’s limited commercial plan, plus the Showtime channel alongside the music streaming service, its new promotion doesn’t include any other free extras. The new deal does not allow subscribers to add additional services to their plan, which means those who access Hulu through Spotify will need to find another way to enjoy Game Of Thrones and Billions in the months ahead.

The timing of Spotify’s new offer could not be better for the company, who has spent the past week embroiled in controversy after taking a stance against raising the royalty rate it pays artists. The deal also reveals yet another way the streaming company hopes to combat the rising popularity of Apple Music, which has been growing its premium subscribe count at an alarming rate in recent months.

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XITE, a music video streaming app, debuts in the US

Finally, a streaming service solely focused on music videos has debuted in the United States.

The internationally popular music video streaming app XITE has made its official debut in the United States today, March 12. The free service, which is now available on a number of major platforms, arrives with a catalog including all three major labels — Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group — as well as indie labels and distributors like Beggars, EMPIRE, PIAS and Armada.

Already available in Europe, Canada, and the Middle East, XITE is a Netherlands based company that launched in 2008. The 24/7 music video streaming app has been quietly rolling out on Comcast X1 Infinity, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV over the past few days and weeks, with Roku availability coming soon and mobile and tablet availability scheduled for arrival the second half of the year. The official launch happens on the same day as the start of SXSW Music 2019 where the company will be participating in numerous events, including panel and mentor sessions.

XITE differentiates itself from other video streaming platforms by focusing solely on music videos and exclusive performances. The service allows users to favorite and skip videos; create new stations and playlists by genre, era or style of video; and adapts to users’ preferences based on watching and liking history. There are also dozens of XITE curated playlists to enjoy as well, some of which are highlighted in a video released to celebrate the platform’s launch in the United States.


“Music videos continue to dominate overall music streaming, and we see an enormous opportunity to bring a beautifully designed, pure-play music video service to the U.S.,” said co-CEO/co-founder Cees Honig in a statement. “We’re excited to give U.S. music fans a new way to enjoy music videos, the way we have for millions around the world.”

XITE is currently free to use, but a premium service is planned for later in 2019. Details of the premium service and pricing have not been revealed.

U.S. GM Shelly Powell added, “XITE is all about giving fans the best possible way to experience music videos — on the biggest (or smallest) screen in the house — whether they’re leaning back and enjoying a playlist created by our expert curators or making their own personalized channel.”

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Spotify, Amazon, and more sue songwriters to prevent royalty rates from rising

Four of the largest music streaming services are appealing a ruling that promises to raise mechanical royalty rates by 44% over the next five years.

How much is a song worth? According to most streaming services, the answer is roughly $0.003 per stream. A new ruling from the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) aims to raise that value to $0.004 per stream, but Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, and Google disagree.

The four streaming giants are appealing the ruling that hopes to raise mechanical royalty rates by 44% over the next five years. Spotify, Amazon, Google, and Pandora have each filed separate appeals, with Apple the only major streaming player choosing to abstain.

The four companies also released a joint statement detailing their decision, which reads, “The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), in a split decision, recently issued the U.S. mechanical statutory rates in a manner that raises serious procedural and substantive concerns. If left to stand, the CRB’s decision harms both music licensees and copyright owners. Accordingly, we are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to review the decision.”

In a statement released today, March 7, the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) said that a “huge victory for songwriters is now in jeopardy” due to the streaming services’ filings.

NMPA President & CEO David Israelite commented:

“When the Music Modernization Act became law, there was hope it signaled a new day of improved relations between digital music services and songwriters.

That hope was snuffed out today when Spotify and Amazon decided to sue songwriters in a shameful attempt to cut their payments by nearly one-third.

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) spent two years reading thousands of pages of briefs and hearing from dozens of witnesses while both sides spent tens of millions of dollars on attorneys arguing over the worth of songs to the giant technology companies who run streaming services.

The CRB’s final determination gave songwriters only their second meaningful rate increase in 110 years. Instead of accepting the CRB’s decision which still values songs less than their fair market value, Spotify and Amazon have declared war on the songwriting community by appealing that decision.”

“When the Music Modernization Act became law, there was hope it signaled a new day of improved relations between digital music services and songwriters. That hope was snuffed out today when Spotify and Amazon decided to sue songwriters in a shameful attempt to cut their payments by nearly one-third.

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) spent two years reading thousands of pages of briefs and hearing from dozens of witnesses while both sides spent tens of millions of dollars on attorneys arguing over the worth of songs to the giant technology companies who run streaming services. The CRB’s final determination gave songwriters only their second meaningful rate increase in 110 years. Instead of accepting the CRB’s decision which still values songs less than their fair market value, Spotify and Amazon have declared war on the songwriting community by appealing that decision.

No amount of insincere and hollow public relations gestures such as throwing parties or buying billboards of congratulations or naming songwriters “geniuses” can hide the fact that these big tech bullies do not respect or value the songwriters who make their businesses possible.

We thank Apple Music for accepting the CRB decision and continuing its practice of being a friend to songwriters.  While Spotify and Amazon surely hope this will play out in a quiet appellate courtroom, every songwriter and every fan of music should stand up and take notice. We will fight with every available resource to protect the CRB’s decision.”


Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) Executive Director Bart Herbison also responded to the companies’ decision, saying:

“It is unfortunate that Amazon and Spotify decided to file an appeal on the CRB’s decision to pay American songwriters higher digital mechanical royalties. Many songwriters have found it difficult to stay in the profession in the era of streaming music. You cannot feed a family when you earn hundreds of dollars for millions of streams.

Spotify specifically continues to try and depress royalties to songwriters around the globe as illustrated by their recent moves in India. Trying to work together as partners toward a robust future in the digital music era is difficult when any streaming company fails to recognize the value of a songwriter’s contribution to their business.”

If the ruling holds, the 44% increase will be only the second substantial increase to mechanical royalty rates to pass in the last 110-years.

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