News Morgan Stanley is investing more than $700m to buy music copyrights in partnership with Kobalt Deal represents a return to managing investment for outside capital for Kobalt, which sold $1.4 billion in portfolios in past few years
News Tidal’s new ‘Collabs’ tool will give artists custom recommendations for potential ‘creatively compatible’ collaborators on the platform Artists who opt-in for TIDAL Collabs will get recommendations for other artists to potentially work with
Analysis News Four things we learned from Sir Lucian Grainge on Universal’s Q3 earnings call… that wasn’t ‘Merchants of Garbage’ From Deezer to AI and China, UMG's leadership team discussed a number of key topics for the business
Interviews Scott Cohen on his optimism for the music industry – and JKBX’s ‘transformative’ launch The CEO of new music trading platform speaks to MBW about the future for JKBX and much more
News Jungkook smashes record for fastest song to hit 1bn streams on Spotify with ‘Seven’ Seven smashed the previous record set by Miley Cyrus’ Flowers
Interviews ‘AfroFuture’s vision is to bring African art, cuisine, fashion, and music to a global audience.’ MBW's Trailblazers series interviews Abdul Karim Abdullah, Co-Founder and CEO of cultural entertainment platform AfroFuture
News BMG, following ‘more efficient and more effective’ strategy under new CEO Thomas Coesfeld, reorganizes structure; around 40 staff cut MBW obtains internal note that confirms a range of changes at Bertelsmann-owned company
Analysis Hipgnosis Songs Fund has been left concussed by ‘discontinuation’. But with a seemingly rock solid ‘call option’, Merck Mercuriadis still holds all the cards. On: Hipgnosis Songs Fund, the all important 'call option', Blackstone, and the most likely outcome of this week's mess
News The Beatles’ last song ‘Now and Then’ to be released November 2 Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr relied on AI tech to salvage the song that John Lennon wrote and recorded as a demo in 1978
News Paul Burger and Andrew Wilkinson resign as Hipgnosis Songs Fund non-exec directors ahead of tomorrow’s continuation vote The comes in the same month that HSF confirmed the Chairman of its current board, Andrew Sutch, will step down from his role
Analysis Spotify is embracing elements of Universal Music Group’s ‘artist-centric’ royalties model – following a new multi-year licensing deal between UMG and Daniel Ek’s platform Spotify's plans fit with the broad hopes of Sir Lucian Grainge's wishes as outlined at the start of 2023
News Spotify’s price hike didn’t hurt subscriptions, and 3 other things we learned on its latest earnings call MBW listened in to SPOT's Q3 earnings call. Here's what we learned...
News Spotify is changing its royalty model to crush streaming fraud and introduce a minimum payment threshold. Its plan? To shift $1 billion in payouts towards ‘working artists’ over the next 5 years. Exclusive: Music Business Worldwide has learned of Spotify's plan to introduce a number of new measures in Q1 2024 – and shift $1 billion away from bad actors
Interviews ‘We operate at the intersection between creativity and culture for our artists.’ Warner Music's Bob Workman on brand partnerships, and working on high-profile campaigns for superstars like Ed Sheeran…
News AI music startup Boomy partners with fraud detection company Beatdapp to ‘ensure the integrity’ of its platform Around 7% of tracks made on Boomy and then distributed to Spotify were deleted by Daniel Ek's company earlier this year