The Fern Talks – Page 17950

Vice Launches Exclusive Music Docuseries ‘The Score’ on Apple Music

Apple and Vice have joined forces to bring an exclusive docu-series called ‘The Score’ to Apple Music subscribers.

The Score is a six-part series which looks at local music scenes across the world.

The first episode is called ‘Reservation Rap’ and focuses in on the music found on the Red Lake reservation in Minnesota. The trailer of the first series is available here. Other episodes will be released every other week, with Brazil, Vietnam and Iceland in the pipeline.

Alongside this new series Apple Music will be creating a personalized playlist tailored to the culture and music derived from the artists featured in each of the local scenes covered.

This new collaboration between Vice and Apple is the latest in a line of joint ventures bringing exclusive content to the $10-per-month subscription service. That includes exclusive content around Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour, and a weekly TV show with DJ Khaled.

Also, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Apple is also set to produce its own original TV show starring Dr Dre.

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Phife Dawg, Founding Member Of A Tribe Called Quest, Dies Aged 45

Phife Dawg, a founding member of the rap group A Tribe Called Quest, died yesterday (March 22nd) aged 45.

According to reports, the rap artist (real name Malik Taylor), had been battling ill-health for some years. The cause of this death is still unannounced, but it is known that he suffered from type 1 diabetes and had received a kidney transplant in 2008.

The American hip hop group was first formed in 1985 by Phife and his high school classmate Q-Tip, MC/producer of the group. Later, the group expanded with the addition of DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad and rapper Jarobi White.

Around 1998, the group went separate ways and disbanded, but came to together in January this year to celebrate their 25th anniversary. Ultimately, A Tribe Called Quest produced five studio albums, all of which Phife was present on. The most widely-known albums were The Low End Theory (1991), and Midnight Marauders (1993), both lauded as masterpieces by rap critics.

A number of artists and members of the music industry have taken to Twitter to pay tribute to the iconic hip hop artist and his contribution to the genre. DJ Chuck Chillout kickstarted the tributes.

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The group have yet to comment on Phife Dawg’s death.

(Image by fuseboxradio, Creative Commons, Attribution-Share Alike 2.o Generic, cc by-sa 2.0)

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Yet Another Artist Withholds Her Music From Spotify

We’re not gonna solve the Spotify debate overnight…

A handful of artists — major artists — are choosing to withhold their music from Spotify whilst opting for competing streaming services, like Apple Music and Tidal. But why?

It always seems to boil down to the fact that the platform offers a free tier. Artists simply disagree with fans listening to their music for free the second it’s released. So, instead they choose to launch their music initially on a service like Apple Music for example, where there is no free option. This way, artists can allow their music to gain revenue, as the per-play royalty rate is typically higher.

Gwen Stefani is now the latest artists to withhold her music from Spotify.

Gwen Stefani’s latest album, ‘This Is What The Truth Feels Like,’ is available on Apple Music and other streaming services, but is nowhere to be seen on Spotify. In a video interview with LinkedIn regarding streaming, Stefani spoke out on the massive devaluation that has occurred over the past twenty years.

”It sucks that we’re in a place where the value… of what you do… is less now.”

These comments are sure to annoy Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, who is rumored to be frustrated at the non-stop vilification that his platform has weathered. That sentiment is only being amplified by the stats: just today, the RIAA announced that streaming revenues from paid subscription services are at an all time high, and Spotify has the largest number of paid subscribers. Spotify also has a ‘freemium’ crowd of approximately 70 million, according to estimates, and argues that its ‘freemium funnel’ is effective.

Meanwhile, Ek and Spotify have been under pressure from major content owners to ditch their free tier, according to sources to Digital Music News. But Spotify has aggressively pushed back on those demands, especially given the extreme advantage it would offer rival YouTube.

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In 2015, Vinyl Earned More Than YouTube Music, VEVO, SoundCloud, and Free Spotify COMBINED

Streaming gets you exposure. Vinyl makes you money. Any questions?

According to US-based revenue data released by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on Tuesday, vinyl revenues trumped the combined earnings of YouTube music videos, VEVO, free Spotify, SoundCloud, and every other free streaming music service combined, by a healthy margin. In total, the ad-supported, free on-demand streaming channels contributed revenues of $385.1 million, a 30.6% jump over 2014 revenues.

Vinyl LPs, EPs, and singles, by comparison, sold a combined $422.3 million, which is 9.6 percent more.

Of that total, LPs (full, long-playing records) and slightly-shorter EPs contributed $416.2 million, or roughly 98.6 percent of that total. Singles, a niche decoration, remains a small part of the vinyl resurgence (for now).

Overall, LP, EP, and 45 sales grew more than 32% in 2015 over the previous year.

The glaring statistic shows vinyl’s superior revenue power, especially for such a tiny category (for now). Last year witnessed unprecedented surges in streaming, with free streaming absolutely exploding. Indeed, Spotify is rumored to have passed 100 million total users, while YouTube’s music platform is bigger than ever before in history. But that surge carries a cost: according to the figures, ad-supported, free streaming is a weak revenue-generator, and pound-for-pound, vinyl carries immensely more weight.

Paid streaming, on the other hand, packs a more serious punch. According to the RIAA statistics, there were an average of 10.8 million paying subscribers to streaming services in 2015. But that produced $1.22 billion in revenue, a major contributor to overall streaming revenues of $2.4 billion.

The rest is coming largely from Pandora, Sirius XM, iHeartRadio, and a collection of online radio platforms, a group that collectively contributed $802.6 million. Overall, ‘non-interactive’ digital radio services grew a modest 3.8 percent in 2015 suggesting a US-based plateau.

Vinyl appears far from flattening, though upcoming advancements in high definition vinyl could spark a second growth spurt.

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Streaming: The Music Industry’s Largest Revenue Generator

Today, the RIAA released data confirming that streaming is the U.S. music industry’s single largest revenue-generator.

For the first ever, streaming made up the largest component of the total U.S music industry revenue in 2015, which marks a major milestone for the format. The revenue mix in 2015 displays the ”most balanced revenue mix in recent history,” according to the group.

Major format categories Streaming, Digital Downloads, and Physical all took approximately one-third of the total industry revenue piece.

But streaming accounted for the biggest share, with 34.3%.

This is partially offsetting digital and physical declines, or at least what’s left of them. ”The continued growth of revenues from streaming services offset declines in sales of digital downloads and physical product,” spun Joshua Friedlander, SVP of Strategic Data Analysis at the RIAA.

In 2014, physical product accounted for 33% of overall music industry revenue, and digital accounted for the other 67%. In 2015, as digital revenue grew 3% overall, revenue from physical product shrunk 3%.

Streaming is driving digital music revenue with unprecedented growth over the past five years. In 2010, Streaming made up 7% of the total music revenue, which slowly grew to 9% in 2011. From 2011, Streaming grew 6% year-on-year until 2014. Between 2014 and 2015, Streaming grew 7%, which is the largest percentage year-to-year growth so far.

This indicates that streaming is growing at a far stronger rate, and generating more income than ever before.

But streaming itself is a varied and complicated terrain. The streaming category includes revenues from a wide range of subscription services, both paid (i.e. Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc.) and ad-supported (i.e. YouTube, ad-supported Spotify etc.) as well as streaming radio services (i.e. Pandora, SiriusXM).

Of that pie, paid subscription services were ”the biggest – and fastest growing – portion of the streaming market,” according to the data release. Power-players like Spotify, not to mention heavyweight entrants like Apple Music, are powering the paid growth.

This could become a big future breadwinner. Between 2014 to 2015, paid subscription revenue increased from 7.7 million to 10.8 million, which is the highest year-to-year increase since 2012. Indeed, it’s no coincidence that paid subscription revenue increased at the highest rate between 2014 and 2015, thanks to a paid-only emphasis by both Apple and Tidal

”Total streaming revenue exceeded $2 billion for the first time ever.”

The notion that streaming services have saved the music industry from deep decline, is one that Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek’s has been saying for a while. With streaming services racking up a recorded $2.4 billion in revenue in 2015, and taking the largest share of U.S, music industry revenue, it’s becoming harder to argue against this bold assertion.

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Tidal Charges Customer Credit Cards After Extending Free Trials

And the comedy of errors continues at Tidal.

After promising an extra, free month to trialling subscribers, Tidal has now mistakenly charged a number of credit cards held on file. A smattering of mishaps were shared with Digital Music News on Monday, including a charge on a DMN account itself. In response to an inquiry this morning, Tidal has yet to respond beyond their robo-responder:

“Due to high ticket volumes, we will try to respond to tickets in the order they were received. We appreciate your patience, and are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.”

The extension was prompted by a decision by Kanye West to modify his latest album, The Life of Pablo, a Tidal exclusive. The rework included a number of updated tracks, and some lingering controversy over the approach. Accordingly, the streaming platform announced an extra, free trial month roughly one week ago, designed to perk continued interest the service.

The Kanye exclusive worked wonders, with one report pointing to a massive leap in trial users to 2.5 million. It’s unclear how many of those will convert into bona fide, paying subscribers, though Kanye certainly seems to be bumping both awareness and exposure to the Tidal platform.

But that success is highlighting an endless string of errors, not to mention complications for part-owner Kanye. Despite searing success, Pablo didn’t even make the charts, thanks to a refusal (or omission) by Tidal to report figures to chart-tracker Nielsen. That, coupled with endless technical snags, recently caused the platform to become a punching bag for Saturday Night Live, whose skit included guest Ariana Grande singing missing tracks to compensate for Tidal file errors.

But all joking aside, a more serious question is whether Tidal’s relentless chopping of top-level executives could be stirring internal chaos and subsequent operational errors. And, creating competitive problems with near-flawless platforms like Spotify, which just announced its 30 millionth paying subscriber.

Image by B Rosen, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC by 2.0).

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Executive Shuffle: Deezer, Red Distribution, NAB, Kobalt, UMG.

A list of executive shuffles across the music business…

Deezer hires Aurélien Hérault as Vice President, Product. Hérault, who is currently head of research and development, will take on the new role to help place personalization at the core of the streaming service.

Red Distribution hires Trina Tombrink as Vice President, Promotion and Artist Development. Tombrink will be based in New York and will manage Triple A promotion for the company in North America. Tombrink will report to Danny Buch, Senior Vice President, Promotion and Artist Development.

NAB (The National Association of Broadcasters) hires Ray Baum as Vice President, Government Relations. Baum will report to Curtis LeGeyt, Executive Vice President, Government Relations. The role will be effective March 31st.

Kobalt hires Jess Willoughby as General Manager, Nashville. The role will be effective immediately, and Willoughby will report directly to Richard Sanders President, Kobalt.

UMG (Universal Music Group) hires Alexandra Lioutikoff as Executive Vice President, Latin Music. Lioutikoff’s role will be based in Miami and she will be responsible for managing Universal Music Publishing Group’s U.S. Latin and Latin American operations. Lioutikoff will report to Jody Gersen, UMPG CEO/Chairman, and Evan Lamberg, UMPG President, North America.

(Image by Dave Conner, Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic, cc by 2.0)

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The Media Needs to Get Smarter When Talking About Chinese Music

The western media needs to smarten up when talking about Chinese music. Recent coverage of the industry specifically, or even articles that reference the music business tangentially, have taken to recycling the same clichés, images and names.

China Music Radar

Spotify Reaches Settlement With Publishers in Licensing Dispute

The settlement concerns mechanical licensing rights, which refer to a copyright holder’s control over the ability to reproduce a musical work. The rule goes back to the days of player-piano rolls, but in the digital era mechanical rights have joined the tangle of licensing deals that streaming services need to operate legally.

The New York Times