Spotify in South Africa; Deezer Now Works with Amazon Alexa; End of iTunes?

Spotify To Launch In South Africa — www.forbes.com 
 Music streaming service Spotify will launch in South Africa this month.

Deezer now works with Amazon Alexa — www.theverge.com

Deezer Premium+ users will also be able to take advantage of Deezer’s Flow feature, which plays “a never-ending personal soundtrack” directly through Alexa voice commands.

Sony to Share Profits From Spotify Stock Sales With Indies: Will Universal & Warner Follow Suit? — www.billboard.com 
 Whether Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group will share any funds from the shares they own from Spotify when the streaming service goes public is an up-to-now-unanswered question.

‘End of iTunes?’: Leaked Apple email spells end of music downloads — metro.co.uk 
 Die-tunes: Industry experts predict that Apple will bin its music download store

The state of music streaming in Southeast Asia — theaseanpost.com 
 Music streaming platforms are mushrooming around the region.

Universal Music Says Artists Would Benefit From a Spotify Equity Sale — www.billboard.com 
 It’s taken two years and an IPO, but Universal Music Group is now ready to commit to sharing with its artists the bounty it will generate from the sale of its Spotify stock.

Digital music is booming in India but players can’t afford to be one-hit wonders — techcircle.vccircle.com

In a matter of hours last Wednesday, music streaming services in India suddenly came under the spotlight.

CD Baby, Now In Its 20th Year, Says It Paid Out $80M to Indie Artists in 2017 — www.billboard.com 
 CD Baby, now celebrating its 20th year in existence, unveiled a few significant milestones: in 2017 alone, CD Baby paid out $80.1 million dollars to independent artists, a 33 percent increase over 2016; and it passed $600 million in payouts over the past 20 years.

Spotify’s Daniel Ek, Troy Carter to Receive UJA Music Visionary Award — variety.com 
 Spotify’s Daniel Ek and Troy Carter will be presented with the prestigious Music Visionary of the Year award by UJA-Federation of New York.

Nearly 8.3m Brits were music-streaming subscribers in January — musically.com 
 While recent ERA and BPI figures have made much of the growth in revenue and consumption of music streaming services in the UK, they didn’t explains how many people in Britain pay for a music subscription.

Spotify’s IPO in six charts — www.recode.net 
 What we learned from the streaming company’s public filing.

Will Artists Benefit From Spotify’s Planned IPO? — www.rollingstone.com 
 Spotify’s planned IPO will make the major record labels hundreds of millions of dollars, but will artists also benefit from the potential windfall?

Neko Case Announces New Album ‘Hell-On’ & Shares Title Track — www.jambase.com 
 Listen to “Hell-On,” the lead single and title track from the forthcoming new Neko Case album.