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Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021

The global base of music subscribers continues to grow strongly with 523.9 million music subscribers at the end of Q2 2021, which was up by 109.5 million (26.4%) from one year earlier. Crucially, this was faster growth than the prior year. There is a difference between revenue and subscribers – with ARPU deflators, such as the rise of multi-user plans and the growth of lower-spending emerging markets – but growth in monetised users represents the foundation stone of the digital service provider (DSP) streaming market. So, accelerating growth at this relatively late stage of the streaming market’s evolution is clearly positive.

Ralph Emery, Country Music Broadcaster and Hall of Fame Member, Dies at 88

Emery notably interviewed a number of country music stars as the host of 'Nashville Now' for a decade, from 1983 to 1993.  Ralph Emery, a longtime country music broadcaster and a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, has died. He was 88. Emery’s passing was first reported on Saturday (Nov. 15) by the Tennessean, with a statement from his family that said he “passed away peacefully” that morning at Tristar Centennial Medical Center in Nashville. His cause of death has not been revealed.

SiriusXM buys business-music service Cloud Cover Music
US satellite-radio firm SiriusXM has made an interesting acquisition: ‘music for business’ company Cloud Cover Music.  The latter provides music to a variety of businesses across the US and Canada, and is in the same space as Soundtrack Your Brand. In fact, it’s in a similar space to two of SiriusXM’s existing services too: SiriusXM Music for Business and Pandora for Business. Will these three offerings be rolled up? Not for now. “Together these services provide comprehensive and complementary offerings for businesses of all sizes,” is how SiriusXM described its plans.  Other large digital music firms are also in this space: for example Apple launched its Apple Music for Business service in 2019 in partnership with B2B firm PlayNetwork.

Why less is more when it comes to touring for developing artists
There are the many challenges and and types of touring for developing artists. Read on and learn what’s best at every stage in a touring career.  For young, ambitious artists, there’s nothing more romantic and hopeful than the idea of jumping in a van and touring around the country for months at a time. Tours are crucial for grabbing attention, building audiences, carving out performance experience, and building industry connections. And when labels and managers look for new artists to sign, artists who regularly tour are almost always the first to get noticed. But while touring gives artists a lot, it comes with serious risks, drawbacks, and costs to consider as well. A “let’s tour until we make it” mentality could end up breaking up your band instead of bringing you closer to your goals.

Texas Songwriting Legend Robert Earl Keen Announces Retirement From the Road

The road may go on forever, but a Texas songwriting legend says he won’t be out on it anymore. Robert Earl Keen, a titan of Texas roots music, announced that after more than 30 years he’s hanging up his hat and retiring. At least from playing out on the road and for live audiences.  And so he settles into a quasi-retirement. He fully intends to keep writing and recording, as well as interviewing fellow musicians on his Americana Podcast. His official statement tells of plans to tour extensively until September 4 where he will play his final shows in Helotes at Floore’s Country Store, followed by a fan appreciation day on Labor Day. No official plans have been announced to include an Austin show in his farewell tour, but here’s hoping.

How To Use a Reference Track When Producing and Mixing
Producers and mixing engineers, you need to learn how to use a reference track.
In this post, I want to talk about why they’re important and how to actually get the most out of them. The end goal being, your song sounds as good as your favorite artists.

How one indie artist increased YouTube views 1550%
Looking to get more views on Youtube? Keep reading to learn about someone who really made it happen without unauthorized tricks and hacks.  If you’ve ever run ads for your music, you know it’s important to focus on your goals. Starting with a goal is key. But what happens when you begin with one goal and your campaign takes an unexpected turn? 

2021 major label revenue surged, but what does it mean?
Why was major label revenue was up 29% in 2021 compared to 6% in 2030 and 10% in 2019? Mark Mulligan of MIDiA runs the numbers to find out.  2021 was an anomalous year for the recorded music market. Two of the majors did an IPO, the pandemic continued to disrupt the marketplace, and major label revenues grew at unprecedented rates.  If the fourth quarter majors’ earnings follow similar seasonality patterns to previous years, collective major label recorded music revenue will be up by 29% in 2021, reaching $19.6 billion (a more bearish estimate is $19.3 billion). By way of comparison, 2020 growth was 6%, and 2019 was 10%. To put it another way, major label revenue increased by $787 million in 2020, and in 2021 it was up by $4.4 billion. 2021 was a red-letter year for the major labels, but was it a one-off or an industry pivot point?

OVER 73% OF THE US MUSIC MARKET IS NOW CLAIMED BY CATALOG RECORDS, RATHER THAN NEW RELEASES 

The MBW Review is where we aim our microscope towards some of the music biz’s biggest recent goings-on. This time, we drill down into a remarkable set of numbers contained within MRC Data‘s new report on the US music industry in 2021. The analysis  was based upon statistics that appeared in MRC Data’s end-of-year report for 2021, which was originally published on Thursday, January 6.

Releasing Music Is Easy, Marketing Music Is Hard. Here’s How Chartmetric Is Leveraging Data to Make Marketing a Lot Easier.
Today’s fans have instant access to a tremendous amount of music in the digital age. But few releases rise above the noise level. In an effort to change that, Chartmetric is helping artists harness data when marketing tracks and pursuing long-term career success.  What’s the biggest hurdle facing new music releases today? Shifting fanbase demographics and unpredictable social media trends are two factors that make it difficult to gain traction. But the most immediate cause of underwhelming commercial success may be the sheer volume of new releases.  According to CEO Daniel Ek, a staggering 70,000 tracks make their way onto Spotify daily. And podcasters upload an average of nearly 3,300 new programs per day, based upon data disclosed in the company’s Q3 2021 earnings report.

Spotify HiFi to Debut ‘In the Future’ — No Release Date in Sight
The long-anticipated rollout of Spotify HiFi is still on pause, the Stockholm-based streaming service has confirmed, and it’s unclear when exactly users will gain access to CD-quality audio.
Higher-ups first announced Spotify HiFi back in February of 2021, indicating at the time that additional details would emerge in the coming months – with a launch tentatively set for sometime during the remainder of the year. But execs didn’t publicly disclose these additional details about the proposed feature, which Spotify relayed would bring an extra monthly charge for premium subscribers.

GMR agrees provisional settlement with US radio industry
US boutique collecting society Global Music Rights is close to settling its long running dispute with the Radio Music License Committee, which represents much of the American radio sector in licensing talks.  
Founded by artist manager Irving Azoff in 2014, GMR represents the performing rights of a small collective of prominent songwriters. In doing so, it competes for members with the three other performing rights organisations that operate in the US, them being BMI, ASCAP and SESAC. Broadcasters wanting to play music written by any songwriter need a license from all four. 

LinkedIn to launch audio events later this month
The live, Clubhouse-like audio feature LinkedIn confirmed it was working on last year will debut later this month in beta as part of the company’s new events platform, according to a company blog post. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn said last March that it was doing “early tests to create a unique audio experience connected to your professional identity,” which was confirmed in the blog post by Jake Poses, LinkedIn lead for video, creators & events.  The virtual events will be built on LinkedIn’s in-house tools, and a video version is expected to be available later in the spring. TechCrunch reports that unlike other companies with audio chat features, such as Twitter’s Spaces, LinkedIn doesn’t plan to include ticketed events, where organizers could charge for access.

Write an album launch press release with these 7 steps
Learn everything you need to know about writing a new release launch or other press release.
Navigating through the press is not always so easy, but understanding how to properly create your new album launch press release is the best way to ensure that it gets appropriate media coverage. To help you out, professional content creator, copywriter, and editorial manager on Essaythinkers, Jessica Fenders is here to break it down…

MUSICIANS/ARTISTS: There’s Still Time To Schedule Your Year
By making goals, planning when to release music, and creating promotional social media posts ahead of time, you could make this the best year for your career yet.  Being an artist is hard. There’s so much to do and it seems like there’s never enough time. One way to lessen the burden to make a schedule for the year, and while this better done in December, it’s still not too late. Yes, it may change as your year rolls along, and that’s okay. It’s way easier to rearrange things than it is to have them suddenly sneak up on you. Although there can be many more factors to consider, I think it’s easiest to set up your yearly schedule into 3 areas – new music releases and the marketing surrounding them, list building through social media, and your ultimate goals. Let’s take a look at each

Apple Music Boss Admits Most People Can’t Hear a Difference Between Lossless and Compressed Audio

Apple Music hailed lossless audio as a step forward in the music listening experience – but Apple exec Eddy Cue doesn’t agree.  Cue is Apple’s Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services – and the head of Apple Music. In a recent interview with Billboard, Cue says he doesn’t believe people can tell the difference between lossless and compressed streaming audio.  “The reality of lossless is: if you take 100 people and you take a stereo song in lossless and you take a song that’s been in Apple Music that’s compressed, I don’t know if it’s 99 or 98 [people that] can’t tell the difference,” Cue says.  
“For the difference of lossless, our ears aren’t that good. Yeah, there are a set of people who have these incredible ears, and that’s one piece of it. There’s the other piece of it, which is do you have the level of equipment that can really tell the difference? It requires very, very high-quality stereo equipment.”

US and UK Vinyl Sales Crack 30-Year Highs Following Record Holiday Performance
Vinyl sales are continuing to grow in both the US and the UK, according to newly released data, with stateside fans having reportedly purchased 2.11 million vinyl albums during the seven days ending on December 23rd – the highest weekly total since at least 1991.  This and other interesting stats came to light in just-unveiled yearend reports from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and MRC Data. Beginning with the UK, the BPI revealed that domestic fans purchased north of five million LPs on the year – marking an eight percent improvement from 2020 as well as the format’s 14th consecutive year of commercial growth.

The “3 P’s” of Songwriting Success (Jason Blume)

I often tell my songwriting students that I teach tools—not rules. There are no rules in songwriting. Similarly, there is no road map that points the way to guaranteed success. But there are three things I consistently see in those who achieve their songwriting goals. Let’s look at the “3 P’s” that can lead to songwriting success.

2022 Grammy Awards likely to be postponed due to Omicron variant
The 2022 Grammy Awards is likely to be postponed this month by The Recording Academy as a result of the troubling Omicron variant.  As reported by Billboard, multiple sources have stated that postponement to a later date is almost an inevitability. The 64th Grammys were due to take place on Monday, January 31st in Los Angeles.  If postponement does occur, it would be the second consecutive year that the Grammys have been impacted by COVID-19. 

THE 12TH ANNUAL TRRMA (T3R) MUSIC AWARDS SHOW

THE 12TH ANNUAL TRRMA (T3R) MUSIC AWARDS SHOW SELECTS A NEW VENUE FOR OUR 12TH ANNUAL EVENT… THE FABULOUS TEXAS LIVE! VENUE AT 1650 E. RANDOL MILL ROAD IN ARLINGTON, TEXAS WILL FEATURE AND HOST OUR EVENT THIS YEAR.  BECAUSE OF THE WONDERFUL SUCCESS AND REPEAT REQUESTS AND COMPLIMENTS WE WILL AGAIN HOST A BANQUET STYLE ARRANGEMENT TO INCLUDE A RED CARPET AND A SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE. 

How much do music streaming services really pay artists?

Ever wondered how many streams it takes for an artist to make money? Read on to find out this year’s pay rates for artists on popular streaming plattforms.  According to ex-Design Ethicist at Google Tristan Harris, “We all ‘live in a city called the attention economy.’” Digital service providers, a.k.a. music streaming service, thrive on the attention economy. While they enable artists to reach global audiences without touring or direct advertising, these platforms often make headlines for their payouts.   But how do their payouts work? And how can artists get the most out of DSPs?