Welcome to global music business‘s weekly roundup – we be sure you catch the 5 largest tales that made our headlines over the previous seven days. MBW’s assessment is supported by China Travel Serviceserving to greater than 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their revenue and scale back touring prices.
After greater than a yr of rumors and studies that Queen would hit the billion-dollar mark in document gross sales, we acquired information this week that the legendary band, fronted by Freddie Mercury, might be recording and publishing Rights have been bought to sony Music price greater than anticipated: $1.27 billion.
Other than this deal (which has but to be formally confirmed), a lot of the information within the music world this week has targeted on one “music-industry-adjacent” firm: TikTok.
This week, MBW broke the information that Byte bounceAn owned social media firm is forming an funding group to purchase music rights and corporations, that means it could quickly develop into much less “music-related” and extra like an precise music firm.
This week we additionally realized cobalt Its subsidiary Amra, which payments itself as “the primary and solely world digital collections affiliation,” has invested greater than $50 million in its know-how to this point.
In the meantime, ByteDance plans to spend $2.1 billion to construct a man-made intelligence middle in Malaysia, making the China-based firm the newest know-how large to take a position closely within the nation’s booming synthetic intelligence {industry}.
Lastly, this week we pose the query: What if Spotify take Sony Music Group President Rob Stringersuggestion and begin charging for its free, ad-supported subscription tier? The brief reply is “it relies upon,” however Spotify will doubtless make some huge cash.
Right here’s what occurred this week…
1) QUEEN CATALOG to be acquired by Sony Music for $1.27 billion (report)
Sony Music Entertainment will purchase the recordings of legendary rock band Queen in a landmark deal price £1 billion ($1.27 billion at present change charges).
Sony Music has emerged because the profitable purchaser of Queen’s recording and publishing rights, in addition to royalties from earlier offers with the label, Hits reported on Wednesday (June 19), citing sources. disney music group and universal music group.
Queen’s repertoire consists of hits resembling “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “One other One Bites the Mud,” and “We Will Rock You.”
Common Music Group, as Disney’s distributor, will reportedly retain distribution rights in North America, however Sony will obtain royalties. UMG’s world distribution rights will switch to Sony in 2026 or 2027, making Sony Music the only distributor and proprietor of all Queen content material worldwide…
2) TikTok is forming an investment team to acquire music content and companies
Two years in the past, we requested TikTok if it was slowly turning right into a document label.
The Bytedance-owned platform lately entered the music distribution market with its SoundOn service and is hiring A&R executives with document label expertise.
On June 18, MBW revealed that TikTok is taking this growth to the following stage – planning to amass and put money into music rights.
We realized that TikTok is forming inner music content material funding groups in Los Angeles, New York and San Jose and specializing in “collaboration or acquisition alternatives within the world music content material discipline.”
In different phrases, TikTok is coming into the extremely aggressive music M&A market…
3) TikTok parent company ByteDance spends US$2.1 billion to develop AI HUB in Malaysia
Malaysia has develop into the main focus of synthetic intelligence-related investments by world know-how giants.
ByteDance, the guardian firm of China-based social video app TikTok, is the newest in a collection of tech firms betting on Malaysia, making massive investments centered on its booming synthetic intelligence enterprise.
In line with Reuters, the nation’s Funding, Commerce and Business Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz posted on social media final week that ByteDance “plans to put money into synthetic intelligence to make Malaysia a man-made intelligence hub within the area, with a proposed funding of roughly RM10.” billion”, which interprets to roughly US$2.1 billion…
Since its acquisition/launch by Kobalt in 2015, Amra has grown into a robust firm.
No surprise Francisco Companions, which acquired a majority stake in Kobalt in 2022, has recognized Amra as a progress precedence. (FP’s Matt Spetzler reiterated Amra’s standing as “the one world digital licensing platform” on the time.)
Right this moment (June 20), Amra launched a statistic that tells the story of how critically Kobalt/FP takes the chance in entrance of them: Amra has confirmed that its complete know-how investments to this point exceed $50 million, with the most important share of this determine It was spent prior to now three years…
The present “free” ad-supported music streaming mannequin could possibly be getting an overhaul.
Final month, Sony Music Group Chairman Rob Stringer took purpose at freemium providers supplied by firms resembling Spotify throughout a Might 30 speech to Sony Group buyers.
The Sony govt advised that DSPs ought to slender the rising “value hole” between paying customers and free customers, particularly in mature streaming media markets.
Stringer’s answer: Cost at the moment free customers a “modest payment” to hearken to music and different content material on an ad-supported service.
So what would occur if Spotify, as Stringer advised, now moreover began charging a payment for entry to its ad-funded tier…?
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