News Merlin strikes strategic partnership with free music streaming app TREBEL TREBEL caters to users who are unlikely to subscribe to premium paid music services
News Read Sir Lucian Grainge’s first statement to investors as the CEO of a publicly-traded Universal Music Group UMG boss outlines "long-term, career-oriented" vision for the future
News Spotify offloads two thirds of its stake in DistroKid for $167m Spotify made a minority investment in DistroKid back in 2018
News Spotify subscriptions reached 172m in Q3, up by 7m on the previous quarter Spotify has published its financial results for Q3 2021
News Here’s exactly what Spotify, Apple and other streaming services want to pay songwriters from 2023 onwards. MBW rifles through the filings of Big Tech to see what the likes of Google and Spotify are proposing
News Sony Music Publishing strikes partnership with Punjabi/Hindi content specialist White Hill Music SMP to provide global publishing services, including administration, sync, and catalog promotion
News Primary Wave buys stake in Luther Vandross publishing and master recording income stream as part of $40m deal (report) Vandross has sold over 40 million records worldwide
News Superstar EDM duo Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike team up with Sony and Tencent’s JV label, Liquid State in China 300+ song strong catalog to be licensed to Liquid State in China
News Splice and SoundCloud join forces to launch artist development program, Nova Nova is open to unsigned Splice and SoundCloud creators
News Another big crypto deal in music, as Opulous inks NFT partnership with Japanese giant LINE LINE owns LINE Music and the LINE messaging app, and generated $1.5 billion in 2020
News Adele’s Easy on Me breaks Spotify record for most global streams in a week The British-born singer’s third UK Number 1 gained 217,300 chart sales in its first week
News YouTube guns for TikTok with rival Shorts, as it secures exclusive preview of new Ed Sheeran album Album to be released Friday October 29 via Asylum/Atlantic
News Karen Kwak named Executive Vice President/Head of A&R at Warner Records Exec to join the company on November 1
News Exceleration Music acquires Chicago-based label Bloodshot Records Exceleration was founded by indie sector executives Glen Barros, John Burk, Charles Caldas, Amy Dietz, and Dave Hansen
News From BTS’ new label partner to Kobalt’s $1.1bn catalog sale to KKR: It’s MBW’s Weekly Round-up The biggest stories of the past five days – and why they matter