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 Changes to Spotify’s royalty model, including the 1,000 annual streams royalty policy, are officially live as of April 1 Changes to the way Spotify calculates recorded royalties go live on the platform as of Monday, April 1
Analysis News From Universal’s TikTok takedowns to Deezer’s 26m deleted tracks… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up The five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days…
News Deezer has deleted 26m ‘useless’ tracks since it launched artist-centric model with Universal Music Group The idea is to "declutter the platform" and "focus on tracks that are valuable to our users" according to CEO Jeronimo Folgueira
Analysis News On… Deezer nuzzling up to Universal’s ‘artist-centric’ model, a potential mass deletion, and a controversial tweak (update) It's been a big day in the music business – and it's raised a lot of possibilities...
News Spotify could ban white noise podcasts to boost annual profit by up to $38M (report) Bloomberg reports that Daniel Ek and co may make bold move to free up internal resources and improve profitability
News European Parliament working on music streaming market report Artists' remuneration from music streaming expected to “dominate” the study, reports Politico
News With 2bn plays on YouTube per day, Epidemic Sound swung to positive EBITDA in 2022 Epidemic's solid gain in net sales in 2022 was made on “significantly stronger streaming revenues,” the company said in a statement
Analysis Analysts are starting to believe that AI may be an existential threat for the major labels. Is that overly pessimistic? Why the majors' market share is stronger than you might think – just as so-called virtual idols come to prominence in China
Analysis News Universal is investigating new royalty payout models for streaming. Which one will it choose? MBW Explains is a series of analytical features in which we explore the context behind major music industry talking points – and suggest what might happen next…
News Strange Fruits rebrands to Fruits Music, plans launch of its own subscription app The rebranding coincides with the company’s fifth anniversary this year.
Interviews Strange Fruits has tens of billions of streams – but it’s not without controversy. Its 25-year-old founder speaks out. Stef van Vugt, founder of Fruits Music, answers MBW's questions on our latest podcast
News From Universal’s unrecouped balance program to BMG’s $784m revenues: It’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up The biggest stories from the past week – and why they matter
Company: Epidemic SoundMusic Publisher Epidemic Sound was co-founded in 2009 by its CEO, and ex-professional songwriter, Oscar Höglund