The Spotify IPO; The Long Game for Playlists

Good morning: Another day loaded with lots of interesting news about the music streaming business. We added a Flipboard page to feature all of our news links, which you can check out here.

The 3 News Stories That Will Dominate The Music World In 2017 — www.forbes.com

Spotify’s IPO: It seems as if the music industry has been talking about Spotify going public for a long time now, and yet still little is known about when this will actually happen…or even if it will at all. There are plenty of signs pointing to an IPO, and it has now gotten to the point where whenever anything happens at the Swedish streaming company, it is broken down and analyzed, with every blogger and media outlet giving their own take on how the most recent event might matter when it comes to a future public offering.

Ways The Music Industry Can Change For The Better — www.forbes.com

Higher rates for streaming and YouTube views: The rates creators and rights owners earn from streaming and views are currently fractions of pennies. A songwriter or rights owner needs to see millions of streams/views to make any substantial income from this revenue stream. Streaming services and YouTube are the biggest platforms for consumers to listen to music, but those that make music are not able to make a sustainable living solely off income from those sources.

Sony Music earned $1.2bn from streaming platforms in 2016 — www.musicbusinessworldwide.com

Sony Music Entertainment generated 134.83bn Yen ($1.24bn) from streaming music in calendar 2016 — and 40.65bn Yen ($372m) in the three months to end of December alone. That means Sony’s recorded music division is now earning approximately $124m every month, $31m every week.

Mumford and Sons: “We’re out of the ‘oh shit’ stage of streaming’ — musically.com 
 Streaming music? It’s the best of times for young artists according to Ben Lovett, co-founder of Mumford and Sons and independent firm Communion Music.

The Long Game for Playlists — medium.com

Spotify and its ilk pass most of their revenues to labels — at least 70% and sometimes more than 100%. Yes, they can keep some of that by becoming a label. No doubt they are investigating that.

NPR Music App Experience Folded Into NPRMusic.org — www.npr.org 
 Retiring the NPR Music app will allow us to focus on continuing to improve those platforms, without sacrificing the content we know you love.

CBS Sets Radio Division Merger With Entercom — variety.com 
 CBS Corp. has unveiled plans to merge its radio division with Philadelphia-based Entercom, creating a broadcast platform with 244 stations and national reach across major markets.

Light & Free partners with Spotify for music activation — www.eventmagazine.co.uk 
 Danone brand Light & Free has teamed up with Spotify UK for a year-long partnership to strengthen connections between the Greek-style yoghurt brand and a music-loving audience.

Power chords and product reviews: A day in the life of Fender’s head of digital — digiday.com 
 How Ethan Kaplan, chief product officer and gm of Fender Digital, spends his days creating digital products to help aspiring guitarists keep learning.

Apple Music, App Store Among Apple’s Largest Growth Segment — www.billboard.com 
 The iPhone might still be the tech company’s largest revenue driver, but the tech giant is seeing more growth from the segment that includes Apple Music and the App Store than any other category.