Why India Matters to Spotify, and Why it May Not Deliver

There are two key reasons for such weak uptake to date:

1. Music plays a different role in India:Bollywood and devotional are two of the most widely listened to music genres, neither of which are mainstays of subscription services, nor streaming music consumption in general.
2. Income levels are low:the average per capita income is $553 a month, with the luxury of a music subscription far out of reach for most Indians, other than urban elites. Spotify’s $1.80 price point in India may sound cheap, but relative to average income, it is 9.3 times more expensive than $9.99 is in the US. So, Spotify would need to be priced at $0.19 to be the same relative affordability as in the US, which coincidentally is the price for its day pass.

Music Industry Blog

Warner Music and Spotify have been involved in a rather unseemly and very public spat this week over Spotify’s India launch. I’ll leave for someone else, the discussions of the potential implications of a blanket license for songwriter rights in India for an on-demand streaming service. Suffice to say, the words ‘can of worms’ come to mind. Instead, I am going to focus on why India matters so much to Spotify.

The next one billion, perhaps…

Spotify’s Daniel Ek has made much of addressing the next one billion internet users as part of Spotify’s long-term opportunity. Given the fact that China is effectively off the table for now and that sub-Saharan Africa is probably a generation away from being a major streaming market, India is the key component of that next one billion.

Europe and North America accounted for 69% of Spotify’s subscriber growth in 2018. While this…

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Amazon Is Now The 3rd Biggest Music Subscription Service

(…) Amazon’s achievement is even more impressive than it first appears. Amazon’s music streaming adoption is concentrated among 4 of its Amazon Prime markets: US, Japan, Germany and UK. In these markets 35% of Amazon Prime subscribers are Amazon Prime Music or Amazon Prime Music Unlimited users.

Music Industry Blog

At MIDiA we have long argued that Amazon is the dark horse of streaming music. That horse is not looking so dark anymore. We’ve been tracking weekly usage of streaming music apps on a quarterly basis since 2016 and we’ve seen Amazon growing strongly quarter upon quarter. To the extent that Amazon Prime Music is now the 2^nd most widely used streaming music app, 2^nd only to Spotify which benefits from a large installed base of free users to boost its numbers. So, in terms of pure subscription services, Amazon has the largest installed base of weekly active users.

But it’s not just in terms of active users that Amazon is making such headway. It is racking up subscribers too. Based on conversations with rights holders and other industry executives we can confirm that Amazon is now the 3^rd largest subscription service. Amazon has around 16 million…

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My Spotify Top Songs of 2016 Playlist

My Spotify Top Songs of 2016 playlist is a nice mix of funk, soul, a little country and some surprises. Enjoy!

R.I.P., Maurice White – let’s pay tribute with a collective playlist on Spotify!

Maurice White performing with Earth, Wind, and Fire at the Ahoy Rotterdam; 1982 (Photo: Chris Hakkens / This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

I was saddened to read the following news earlier tonight:

Maurice White always was particularly close to my heart because he was both a musician’s musician and managed to achieve pop hits. I think I hated „Boogie Wonderland“ when it first came out, but it grew on me. Especially after reading the great story behind it which songwriter Allee Willis made me aware of on Facebook (check the comments section). 😉

I started to compile a Spotify playlist with my favorite Maurice White songs right after hearing the bad news. So far, it contains 4 hours 28 minutes of great funk, soul and jazz (use it in shuffle mode). Artists include (in alphabetical order) Barbra Streisand, Billy Stewart, Brian Culbertson, Deniece Williams, Earth Wind & Fire, El DeBarge, The Emotions, Fontella Bass, James Ingram, Ramsey Lewis, Ramsey Lewis Trio, The Salty Peppers, The Tubes:

I configured the playlist to be a collaborative effort. Feel free to add your personal favorites on Spotify. If you don’t have a Spotify account, post your music links (YouTube & Co.) in the comments section of this blog entry. And please retweet/repost this tribute in your social media circles!

My 200,000th play on Last.FM – or: 50 songs a day keep the doctor away!

Last.FM is not as much fun as it used to be when it was the top music portal, but – as a fan of statistics – I still try to scrobble the music I am listening to. And I was happy to see that I just hit the 200,000th song mark. Since I have been a member since February 23, 2005, this means that – statistically speaking – I listen to at least 50 songs a day.

While writing this, a playlist with my 1,695 favourite Spotify songs is running in shuffle mode. It just reached song #200,000: Marcia Griffiths, „Run Up and Down“ – which brings back nice memories of my Jamaica visits in the ’80s.

Detailed statistics
There is an interesting division: My top artists are funk-dominated, there is a lot of country among my top albums, and Bollywood seems to rule my top tracks,

Top artists (among 17,512 scrobbled)

The Global Implications Of The BBC’s Streaming Strategy

(…) Watch the BBC’s streaming endeavours closely because the outcomes will likely provide blueprints for thriving in the streaming era for media companies of all types and sizes right across the globe.

Music Industry Blog

Yesterday the BBC’s Director General Tony Hall laid out a vision for the future of the BBC (for an excellent take on this see the blog post from MIDiA’s video analyst Tim Mulligan, and yes the name may look familiar, he’s my brother!).  The BBC has long played a crucial innovation role in the digital content economy but it has yet to carve out a convincing role for itself in online music.  It has built up a compelling YouTube content offering and it has pursued a streaming coexistence strategy with its innovative Playlister initiative but the bigger play has yet to be made.  That looks set to change, with the announcement that the BBC is planning to launch a ‘New Music Discovery Service’, which would make the 50,000 tracks broadcast by the BBC every month available to stream for a limited period.  The initiative is interesting in itself…

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Auf PCs ist „Spotify-Killer“ Apple Music ein Rohrkrepierer (Update: Jetzt funktioniert’s … aber mit neuen Fehlern)

Ich bin überrascht, dass ein Konzern mit den Ressourcen von Apple nach 39 Jahren immer noch keine reibunglos verlaufenden Produkteinführungen hinbekommt – vor allem, wenn es sich um ein Hype-Produkt wie Apple Music handelt.

Bei dessen heutigem Launch las ich, dass der neue Streaming-Dienst für stationäre Nutzer ein Update von iTunes auf Version 12.2 benötige. Ich klickte also in iTunes auf „Nach Updates suchen“ und erhielt diese Meldung:

Wer profitiert von Spotify & Co.?

Dieser zwei Monate alte Beitrag ist mir erst heute aufgefallen – er ist aber immer noch interessant:

Zusammenfassend kann also konstatiert werden, dass die Labels und hier vor allem die Major-Labels vom expandierenden Musikstreamingmarkt profitieren, wohingegen die Musikschaffenden (InterpretInnen sowie UrheberInnen) kaum einen finanziellen Nutzen daraus ziehen können.

Musikwirtschaftsforschung

Eine vom französischen Musikindustrieverband (SNEP) bei Ernst & Young in Auftrag gegebene und Anfang Februar publizierte Studie über die Verteilung der Einnahmen aus einem monatlichen Premium-Abo von  EUR 9,99 bestätigt die bereits in der Blogserie „Is Streaming the Next Big Thing?“ durchgeführte Analyse, dass neben den MusikkonsumentInnen vor allem die Major-Labels & Verlage die Hauptprofiteure vom derzeitigen Trend zum Musikstreaming sind, wohingegen die Streamingservices selbst wirtschaftlich noch nicht nachhaltig arbeiten und die KünstlerInnen nur wenig vom Streamingkuchen erhalten. Die bekannt gewordenen Details der nicht öffentlich zugänglichen Studie, können hier nachgelesen werden.

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