Apple Music In The News

From price hikes at Spotify to Warner’s major new hire… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up

The five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days…

Music streaming services come out swinging against Canada’s new ‘discriminatory tax’ that requires them to hand over 5% of their Canadian revenues

Canada’s Online Streaming Act requires streamers to contribute 5% of their annual revenue to a number of programs designed to aid Canadian content creators

News

Sacem’s revenues rose 5% to $1.61bn in 2023; Board renews term of CEO Cécile Rap-Veber

Thanks to cost efficiencies, royalty collections rose 5%, while payouts to artists rose 17%

Analysis News

Sony Music Group boss Rob Stringer talks acquisitions, artificial intelligence and how music streaming services should start charging free users

Sony Music wants to see an end to free music subscriptions, and 5 other things we learned from its latest investor presentation

News

Pandora quietly raises prices amid continuing decline in paying subscribers

The music streaming service's owner, SiriusXM, is still seeing growing ad revenue in its Pandora segment

Analysis

The Brutal Reality: Power is shifting to AI-generated music and algorithmic discovery. Music rightsholders must wake up to the opportunity.

Stef Van Vugt, founder of Fruits Music, on Spotify's quiet moves and the rise of Suno

News

Brandon Silverstein’s S10 Publishing and Avex USA strike worldwide co-publishing deal with Kavi, producer on breakout Tommy Richman hit ‘Million Dollar Baby’

Avex USA, the US division of Tokyo-headquartered entertainment giant Avex, recently made a strategic investment in Brandon Silverstein's S10 Entertainment

News

Apple Music launches ‘Apple Music Partner Program’ for labels and distributors, including ‘premium’ data analytics tools

New program is available initially for a limited number of record labels and music distributors in the US