Analysis News Spotify is paying $310m to Barcelona for a sponsorship. According to our calculations, that’s more than it’s ever paid an artist in royalties. Spotify announced its big deal yesterday. It's worth 89.08 billion streams.
Analysis News France’s recorded music industry topped $1bn in 2021 Results were published today (March 15) by French trade body SNEP
Analysis News Is this the real reason Epic Games acquired Bandcamp? (Clue: It’s got nothing to do with the metaverse.) Did shock acquisition have more to do with Big Tech commission rates than it did virtual worlds?
Analysis News Sony spent an average of $91m on music catalog acquisitions every month over the past 10 months Stat was recently revealed on an investor presentation by Sony Corp's Hiroki Totoki
Analysis Every 2 hours, the major music companies now jointly generate more than $5 million MBW crunches last year's fiscal numbers... and finds the majors piled on $4 billion in annual revenue
Analysis News Kobalt and Downtown cut ties with Russia; Believe continues to operate in market but is ‘monitoring the situation very closely’ Will CISAC suspend Russian PRO from its global membership?
Analysis Blog Why are hedge funds urging songwriters to sell their catalogs right now? Think about it. Randall Wixen explains his skepticism over Big Finance's keenness to buy music rights in 2022
Analysis News Spotify is no longer earning any money from Russia, as it de-monetizes ads and subscriptions in market (update) Spotify Chief Financial Officer Paul Vogel reveals news on the platform's position in Russia
Analysis Blog We’ve come a long way together, and it’s just the beginning… Mitch Glazier, CEO and Chairman of the RIAA, writes an exclusive op/ed for Music Business Worldwide on 2021's figures
Analysis News With $15bn in revenue, 2021 was the US record industry’s biggest EVER year (kind of…) MBW reveals historic numbers for the US market last year (although you should really factor in inflation)
Analysis News BMI hires Goldman Sachs to ‘explore strategic opportunities’. Could it end up selling? Other possibilities might include expanding into sync, or even acquiring rights
Analysis Blog Why music companies should stop using vague stats Eamonn Forde explores the rise of 'vaguestats' in the music business
Analysis News Spotify just patented its own A&R technology to predict breaking artists. Should labels be concerned? Daniel Ek's company suggests it could ink "recording deals" with on-the-rise artists... and spot them sooner than record companies
Analysis News Even without AWAL, Kobalt Music Group is a $600m+ annual business… and comfortably profitable Company posted first ever full year of EBITDA profitability in FY2021
Analysis News From Universal’s $10bn revenues to Epic Games’ Bandcamp buyout: It’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up The biggest stories of the week – and why they matter