38 million tracks on streaming services were played ZERO times last year.

 

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Music Business Worldwide: Newsletter

38 million tracks on streaming services were played ZERO times last year. (Or: Why Spotify should take a leaf out of Elon Musk's book.) You may have read in the media that Elon Musk is now selling Twitter's blue-tick verification for a monthly subscription price. What you might not have read about is Musk’s stick to this carrot: like a canny gangster, Twitter has begun robbing its users’ technical security, before, seconds later, offering to replace it… for a tidy sum. On Wednesday (March 22), Team MBW received the following email from Twitter informing us that our Music Business Worldwide profile no longer enjoyed two-factor authentication. Guess how one reinstates mobile two-factor authentication on Twitter? Yup: Start paying Elon for a monthly subscription. This is Musk playing hardball: “How much do you value the security of your Twitter account? Are you willing to risk being hacked and unmentionables being tweeted out in your name? If not, pay up.” So, begrudgingly, we’ve had to. There’s a wider business lesson to be learned here: Elon Musk’s stone-hearted decision to start selling an essential service benefit that we’ve long grown accustomed to having for free. That idea, in turn, has brought to mind the Good Ship Spotify, and a fascinating slide from one particular presentation at SXSW in Austin last week... (MBW Reacts)

MBW Newsletter Sponsors Primary Wave: The Home of Legends. The world's leading independent publisher of iconic music CMS, CRM, Playlists, Royalty Accounting, Analytics: your music business all in one place The next generation label transforming viral moments into long term music careers.  Centtrip: The award-winning account for music payments, royalties, foreign exchange and touring expenses Viberate: Get premium music data analytics at an unbeatable price. BandLab: Home to 60M creators making and sharing music without limits Voly Music The Bespoke Financial Management Platform for the Music Industry Rights & Royalties Done Right. Drive more revenue with Vistex Music Cloud. Technology + Infrastructure + Methodology ➡️ Execution = Results Want your brand here? Contact Rebecca through this link...   $100m-backed rights company AMR Songs launches, acquires interest in catalog of The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian A well-funded new player has made itself known in the US music business. AMR Songs (AMR), described as a new “music publishing, rights management, and catalog marketing company”, has launched this week with backing from private capital. The Los Angeles and New York-based firm says it will use this capital for catalog acquisitions and frontline operations, including artist and songwriter development, label distribution, film and TV licensing, digital marketing, and more. Sources tell MBW that AMR Songs has raised USD $100 million in backing from institutional investors. MBW has also learned from sources that AMR Songs is already working on its second round of funding... (MBW) 'Yes, AI is the future of music – but not in the way you'd think.' The following op-ed comes from Oleg Stavitsky, CEO of Endel, an AI-powered sound wellness company headquartered in Berlin. Endel, which recently inked a deal to produce wellness playlists for Amazon Music, says that its patented technology takes inputs from a user’s movement, time of day, weather, heart rate, location, and other factors and then uses AI to generate personalized soundscapes that adapt to changes in real-time... (MBW) Cutting Edge acquires 'major' film music catalog from First Score Music in multi-million dollar deal Last month, UK-born Cutting Edge Media Music (CEMM) secured $100 million in financing from a group of banks led by Pinnacle Financial Partners to boost its cash reserves to invest in music for film, television, video games and more. That new $100 million raise came after a year during which the company invested $125 million, raised in an initial round, to acquire film and TV music rights. Now, CEMM has announced the acquisition of what it says is a 'major film music catalog' - from UK-based media company First Score Music Ltd. CEMM says that the acquisition gives it full master and publishing rights to more than 75 "premium" film scores. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but a source tells MBW that the transaction was in the high seven figures... (MBW)

MBW'S QUOTE OF THE DAY "I think the government devices should have no social media apps to be honest, not just targeted at us."   Amid calls from US lawmakers to have TikTok banned in the country, the company's CEO Shou Chew was grilled by members of Congress in a grueling hearing lasting several hours on Thursday (March 23), over the app's data privacy, alleged threat to national security and its parent company ByteDance's alleged links to the Chinese Communist Party... (Independent)

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Dont miss: Goldman Sachs predicted the global recorded music biz would generate $27.9bn in 2022. It didn't. Here's why. Goldman Sachs predicted last year in its updated Music In The Air report that the worldwide recorded music business would generate USD $27.9 billion in annual trade revenues in 2022. However, IFPI confirmed yesterday (March 21) that the real revenue number for the global recorded music biz in 2022 was $1.7 billion smaller than this Goldman forecast, at $26.2 billion. Happily, the reality isn’t nearly as gloomy as that comparison suggests. It’s just a bit complicated... (MBW Explains) Don't miss: Multimedia Music raises another $100m, acquires catalog of Emmy-winning composer Sean Callery Multimedia Music has secured what it says is a $100 million investment "uplift" from its group of investors and lenders (Metropolitan Partners Group, Bardin Hill, Pinnacle Bank and Regions Bank). The new investment means that the company's total funds raised to date grows from $100 million to $200 million. Multimedia Music launched in early 2022 with an initial $100 million in funding to acquire catalogs of film and TV music rights from production companies, composers and other rights holders. The company has also closed a deal to acquire the catalog of multiple Emmy-winning composer Sean Callery... (MBW)

JOB OF THE WEEK Believe is hiring for a Senior Label Manager in Milan, Italy. This person must have experience in the music industry within a distributor, record label, or management company. Previous account development experience is a plus... [Click here to find out more]

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Bully - Days Move Slow (Official Video)

Phil Salter

 

SOMETHING SPECIAL  Phil Salter (AUS) “Something Special” is happening! . .   After a brief sabbatical Phil Salter is back with some new recordings of his own original songs. “Something Special” is an inspirational song about believing in your dreams, and that anything is possible in life.    The song reminds the listener of how they might have felt when they were a kid, when they felt that they were invincible, that they could “fish in puddles” and actually catch a fish, because no one had yet told them that it wasn’t possible!   “You can be more than you want to be, and more than you dreamed!”