Welcome to Music Business Worldwide’s weekly round-up – where we make sure you caught the five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days. MBW’s round-up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their income and reduce their touring costs.
One of the larger music biz stories this week was a new global deal between Universal Music Group and Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Notably, for the first time, the UMG-Meta contract includes Meta’s instant messaging service, WhatsApp.
Another notable deal revealed this week was one between gaming giant Roblox and music distributor DistroKid. This deal, however, has a catch: Though indie artists can consent to their music being available to Roblox’s 80 million daily active users, they won’t be paid for the use of their work on the platform.
Meanwhile, Ross Liang, CEO of Tencent Music Entertainment, made some comments on the company’s latest earnings call that caught our attention: Apparently TME’s Super VIP music streaming subscription tier costs five times as much as a typical paid streaming subscription. As we suggest in our analysis below, Spotify could learn a lot from it.
Speaking of China-based music streaming companies, Kunlun Tech, owner of the Opera web browser and former owner of Grindr, has unveiled a new music streaming service driven entirely by AI. Melodio features “personalized, AI-generated music streams tailored to [users’] moods and scenarios.”
Finally, record producer and longtime Bruce Springsteen manager Jon Landau has sold the producer and neighboring rights royalties from his 55-year career to Primary Wave Music. Besides Springsteen, Landau has worked with Jackson Browne, Shania Twain and others.
Here’s what happened this week…
1) UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP AND META INK NEW GLOBAL DEAL, COVERING FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM… AND WHATSAPP
Facebook parent company Meta and Universal Music Group have signed an expanded global, multi-year deal.
UMG said in a press release on Monday (August 12) that the new deal will “further evolve the creative and commercial opportunities” for UMG artists and Universal Music Publishing Group songwriters across Meta’s global network of platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Horizon, Threads and, for the first time, WhatsApp.
The inclusion of Meta’s instant messaging service, WhatsApp, means that its users can now share licensed music from UMG within the app.
UMG said on Monday that its partnership with Meta to license music for WhatsApp unlocks “new value for UMG artists and songwriters in the future”…
Credit: Leonidas Santana/Shutterstock
2) ROBLOX STRIKES DEAL WITH DISTROKID – BUT INDIE ARTISTS WON’T BE PAID ANY MONEY FROM IT
Revenues at gaming giant Roblox are soaring – forecast to hit $3.5 billion across the course of this year.
But indie artists hoping to earn any of that money for the use of their music on the platform might want to look away now.
Roblox has struck a new partnership with DistroKid, MBW has discovered. The pact enables DK’s artists to make their music available to Roblox’s 80 million daily active users.
Only there’s a catch. When said artists’ music is played on Roblox… they will be paid ZERO for the privilege…
Photo Credit: Piotr Swat/Shutterstock
3) TENCENT MUSIC’S ‘SUPER VIP’ TIER COSTS 5 TIMES AS MUCH AS A REGULAR SUBSCRIPTION. SPOTIFY COULD LEARN A LOT FROM IT.
Streaming giant Spotify is readying to roll out a new “Super-Premium” subscription tier designed to better monetize music superfans – a development eagerly awaited by the music industry.
We don’t know yet for sure what will be part of this new “deluxe” tier (as Spotify CEO Daniel Ek described it in a recent earnings call), though there’s a good chance it will include high-fidelity audio (a feature that has been conspicuously missing from Spotify’s service thus far), and potentially “superfan clubs” as well as new playlisting and song management tools.
All Ek is willing to tell us so far is that it will be for “huge music lovers who are primarily looking for even more flexibility in how they use Spotify and the music capabilities that exist on Spotify.”
Yet if Spotify is still working to figure out exactly what to add to its “deluxe” tier, and just how it should be priced, it may want to take a look at Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), China’s largest operator of music streaming platforms…
4) BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN MANAGER JON LANDAU SELLS MUSIC INTERESTS TO PRIMARY WAVE
Primary Wave Music has struck its latest deal with Jon Landau, the record producer and long-time manager of Bruce Springsteen.
According to Primary Wave, the terms of the deal will see the company acquire Landau’s producer royalties and neighboring rights royalties across his 55 years in music.
As a producer, Landau has worked with artists including Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne.
Landau’s work as a music critic led him to his long-time relationship with Springsteen…
5) THIS CHINESE TECH GIANT, WORTH $4.8BN, JUST LAUNCHED A FULLY AI MUSIC STREAMING SERVICE
There’s a serious new player in the global AI music tech space.
Chinese technology giant Kunlun Tech, which has a market cap value of 34.49 billion Chinese Yuan ($4.8 billion), has launched what it claims to be “the world’s first AI-powered music streaming platform”.
The company says that its new Melodio service features “personalized, AI-generated music streams tailored to [users’] moods and scenarios”.
Kunlun is the parent company of web browser Opera and the former owner of Grindr. It claims to have an average monthly active user base of nearly 400 million across the “AGI, AIGC, content distribution, metaverse, social entertainment, and gaming sectors”…
MBW’s Weekly Round-Up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximise their income and reduce their touring costs.Music Business Worldwide
