👋 THE KNOWLEDGE: our weekly mix of the best news, analysis, and insider tips from across Music Ally's services. It's FREE, fun*, and every Friday. Plus receive a copy of the Sandbox Music Marketing Campaigns of the Year 2023 Report! Sign up here:
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Our cover feature has the inside story on what Facebook’s hugely ambitious music plans are. The first part is the proper (and imminent) monetisation of music videos at the same per-play rate as YouTube. The second part, however, is even more ambitious – a full music streaming service that may be some time off but which will […]
Lead: Streaming is unlocking intricate data about super fans and their listening behaviour, putting artists and labels in powerful new positions to make the most of this real-time flow of analytics. Hailed as a win/win for fans and artists, the whole dynamic here between performer and audience is evolving at light speed.Tools: YouTube’s new Music […]
In our cover feature we speak to Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine, the people behind Apple Music – the biggest launch in digital music for years. We look at what it is, what it does, where it will fit into the market and what impact it will have for its competitors. Cue and Iovine are […]
The Observer has gone to town on Stephen Witt’s new book – How Music Got Free – which is out next week. Music Ally read a review copy a few […]
Today’s Apple Music speculation comes to you via the Wall Street Journal, which has some more titbits on what Apple may be announcing next week at its WWDC conference. It […]
Last week’s claim by Digital Music News that Spotify “may soon be limiting its free, ad-supported access to just three months” has been sharply slapped down by the streaming service. […]
Lead: Periscope and Meerkat are the two hottest (i.e. most hyped) apps of the year so far. Only a handful of musicians have used them in their marketing thus far and the results have been, frankly, mixed. We look at what the potential here really is, how acts should be thinking about using them and why the rumble of copyright thunder is getting louder
In our cover feature we speak to those in music publishing about the issues that are getting them most excited this year as well as those that are causing them to grind their teeth. On the menu are developments relating to free, growing subscription services, taking a bigger cut of streaming income and the politics of equity stakes.
Lead: Prodigy, Skrillex, Steve Aoki and more are all piling onto Twitch, hailing it as an exciting new gaming platform that connects them to an otherwise-unreachable audience. They are also licensing music to the service so it can be used in gaming playback; but soon the labels and publishers will be seeking to turn this into a revenue stream. We look at how it works, show where acts are using it best and consider what the push towards monetisation will mean for the platform.
Our cover feature picks apart the IFPI’s numbers for digital music revenues globally in 2014. The headline is the milestone for digital which is finally delivering the same value to the record industry as physical at the global level. But we focus on the underlying story of streaming and the ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) associated with different streaming models. The ARPU across subscription streaming services is not that impressive when you take into account the free users as well as paying users but the ARPU for purely free ad-funded services – i.e. YouTube – is much lower.
Our cover feature looks at how the battle lines have been drawn up in regard to free, freemium and streaming. Universal, Sony and Ministry Of Sound have all recently – and very publicly – started to question free’s long-term viability as both a business model and a customer acquisition/upsell strategy. We speak to various key executives around the industry about the issues at stake as well as the rumours that are reaching fever pitch, asking them what, if anything, could replace free.
We’ve seen a few livestreaming services come in Music Ally’s lifetime – and, indeed, a fair few go. The latest is Meerkat, which is using Twitter as its distribution platform […]
