News TikTok and Warner Music Group sign ‘first of its kind’ multi-year licensing deal – including scope for ‘additional and alternative economic models’ WMG boss Robert Kyncl and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew make major joint announcement
Analysis News HYBE share price bounces 3% after Jungkook breaks Spotify record with nearly 16m debut-day global streams of Seven It's the biggest opening day of any track in 2023 on Spotify, and the biggest ever opening for a collaboration
Analysis Hipgnosis Songs Fund may soon sell some copyrights. Why – and who might be the buyer? What's happening with one of the week's big stories – and where we think it might go in future
Analysis News Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s like-for-like net revenues rose 10.9% in FY 2023, streaming revenues up 14.8% last year Firm calls period its strongest FY performance since its IPO five years ago
Analysis Blog ‘We should all be keeping a close eye on HYBE and how it fares in its quest to rival major labels on a worldwide basis.’ The following op/ed from MBW founder Tim Ingham first appeared as the leader in the latest issue of MBW’s premium quarterly sister publication, MBUK
Analysis Peloton paid the record industry more than TikTok last year, says Goldman Sachs (and 3 more revelations from financial giant’s latest ‘Music In The Air’ paper) MBW combs through the latest iteration of one of music's most influential financial reports
Interviews Instrumental invites independent labels to join its AI-powered ‘Label Builder’ program – with guaranteed 20% streaming revenue growth Conrad Withey and team explain Instrumental's confidence in promising indie label clients a revenue uplift from streaming
Analysis Taylor Swift’s ‘Taylor’s Version’ re-records may be exceeding even her high expectations MBW crunches the latest streaming figures for Swift's catalog, and mulls what it means for her masterplan
Analysis Universal is spending $50 million to boost its market share in Thailand. Expect more M&A activity in Asia to follow. The majority-acquisition of RS Group in Thailand may indicate that more M&A swoops are on the way from Universal
Analysis The 3 major music companies employed over 27,000 people between them last year – up by 6,660 on 2017 MBW digs into the filings of the Big Three to reveal how many people were employed by their organizations in 2022
News Geoff Taylor joins Sony Music as EVP, Artificial Intelligence Former BPI boss will focus on one of the global industry's biggest priority talking points
Analysis News Exclusive: Scooter Braun wanted to sell Taylor Swift her masters. What happened? If you were gripped by MBW's investigation into this saga last week... buckle up
News BMG acquires Paul Simon royalty streams from Simon & Garfunkel recordings in ‘significant transaction’ Deal does not cover Simon's work as a solo artist
Analysis News The US recorded music industry grew by $500m on a wholesale basis in 2022. The US music publishing industry grew by nearly double that amount. Boosted by CRB result and record performance income, the US music publishing industry flew last year
Analysis Reliving the Taylor Swift catalog sale saga (and following the money…) MBW uncovers exclusive facts about the buying and selling of the catalog of the world's biggest megastar