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This report contains all of Music Ally’s Country Profiles from the last 12 months, so you can spot the music industry trends across the regions that are most important to your work.
Away from the glare of global attention, the music industry in New Zealand has been enjoying a sustained streaming-led boom.
New Zealand’s recorded music industry is helping to prove that small can mean beautiful, with revenue on the rise and domestic talent performing well.
As part of its concerted efforts to clear rights for music in a UGC context on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and Oculus, the social media giant has now signed deals covering Australia and New Zealand.
The deal with APRA AMCOS (the Australasian Performing Right Association and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society), which represents, 95,000 songwriter and publisher members, will ensure remuneration for use of their copyrights on the tech company’s assorted platforms.
“This is a landmark deal not just for songwriters, composers and music publishers, it also provides the Australian and New Zealand public with peace of mind that music rights holders will be compensated for the use of their works on Facebook,” said Dean Ormston, chief executive of APRA AMCOS, in a statement.
A new study of entertainment habits for New Zealanders has some interesting findings about the music-streaming landscape there. The survey was conducted by New Zealand On Air, the body that funds audio and visual public-media content in New Zealand, and follows similar studies in 2014 and 2016.
Among the findings: 67% of 15-39 year-olds in New Zealand reported streaming music online in the past day, compared to 47% listening to live radio. The data suggests Spotify has overtaken YouTube as a source for streamed music too: in 2016 Spotify’s daily reach was 14% of respondents compared to YouTube’s 20% – this is for music specifically – but in 2018 that has switched to 23% and 19% respectively. YouTube’s reach as a general online-video service has increased from 35% to 42% over that two years, though.
If the first casualties of Sirius XM’s $480m investment in Pandora were the streaming service’s CEO, president and chief marketing officer, the second appear to be its listeners down under.
Pandora is shutting down its operations in Australia and New Zealand, pulling back again to a single-market focus on the US.
“While our experience in these markets reinforces the broader global opportunity long-term, in the short-term we must remain laser-focused on the expansion of our core business in the United States,” a spokesperson told Australian ad-industry publication AdNews.
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has taken an unwilling step nearer to extradition from New Zealand to the US, to face charges that could land him 20 years in prison.
New Zealand’s high court ruled this morning that Dotcom can be extradited, although his legal team are planning to appeal the ruling.
We’re not sure how many music-industry folk are hunting down virtual Pokemon in the streets around them, but the runaway success of Nintendo’s AR/location-based mobile game Pokemon Go this week is worth following.
One to make the heads of RIAA, IFPI etc. choke on their Froot Loops this morning. Kim Dotcom’s latest venture is MegaNet, the “people-powered, censorship-resistant Internet”, and he’s opening it […]
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 […]
