USA recorded music sales up as streaming soars

The USA, the world's largest recorded music market, saw double digit revenue growth in 2016. US recorded music sales last year were up 11.4% to $7.7 billion, fuelled by the streaming boom. The American streaming market grew 68% last year, and streaming services brought in marginally more cash than downloads, CDs and vinyl combined, with subscription streaming driving the growth, as revenues more than doubled year-on-year in 2016, while income from the ad-funded on-demand platforms like YouTube and Spotify Free were up 26%.

Streaming generates majors $10 million every 24 hours

MBW reports that streaming has become Sony Music's prime source of recorded music revenue abd in its last financial quarter generated around $3.3m a day for the company. Sony Music Entertainment posted 89.71bn Yen ($877m) in recorded music revenues during the three months to end of June - showing very slight growth on the 89.33bn Yen it posted in the same period of 2015. Quarterly streaming revenues grew 39% year-on-year, up to 30.67bn Yen ($300m) - working out to around $25m every week - making streaming Sony's majority earner in the period. Warner and Universal hit the same milestone in the first three months of this year. MBW say that with Warners earning $2m a day from streaming, Sony $3.3m a day and UMG $4m a day - the three majors are now cumulatively turning over just under $10m every 24 hours from streaming platforms.

http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/streaming-now-makes-sony-25m-a-week-overtaking-physical-and-download/

Streaming revenue now exceeds downloads at UMG

Parent company Vivendi's quarterly figures have revealed that streaming now provides a bigger share of revenues than digital downloads worldwide.  Digital income had already overtaken physical and licensing revenues combined at the world's largest record company. UMG revealed that its recorded music income in the first nine months of 2015 hit €2.75bn - up 12.3% year-on-year or 1.9% at constant currency/perimeter. Within that figure, digital income was up 5.9% (at constant currency/perimeter) to €1.38bn - equating to 50.1% of the total revenue pie - and streaming accounted for 51% of its digital income in the final three-month period. UMG isn't the first major to pass this milestone, though: streaming income overcame download at Warner Music Group back in Q2 this year.

New streaming 'transparency' in France

Universal, Sony and Warner have agreed to a new government-approved ‘code’ in France which sees them commit to new levels of transparency and “the fair sharing of value from the exploitation of music online”. The was deal announced the country’s Minister for Culture, Fleur Pellerin. The code will mean more clarity over the sharing of multi-million dollar advances from services such as YouTube, as well as the equity stakes that the majors own in digital platforms. Universal, Sony and Warner are believed to own around 15%-20% of equity in Spotify between them.

http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/now-major-labels-agree-improved-artist-streaming-deal-france/

AFM launches legal action to force digital pension payments from the major labels

The American Federation Of Musicians has launched a legal action against the three major record companies in the New York courts relating to an agreement between the majors and the AFM pension fund, in which the American branches of the record companies promised to pay 0.5% of all receipts from non-domestic digital transmissions of recordings into the fund. This agreement includes the ever growing monies from streaming, non-permanent downloads and ringbacks, and dates back to the 1990s - when such income was marginal. The AFM says that independent auditors have identified missing payments last year, but attempts to settle the matter directly have been unsuccessful. AFM International President Ray Hair says: "The record companies should stop playing games about their streaming revenue and pay musicians and their pension fund every dime that is owed. Fairness and transparency are severely lacking in this business. We are changing that".

Amazon launches music streaming

Amazon has launched its much talked about streaming music service in the US, offering access to "over a million songs" to its Amazon Prime customers but seemingly launched without a deal with Universal in place - and the streaming service offers ad-free access to a relatively small catalogue of songs (compared to the likes of Spotify, et al), which is shrunk further by the absence of any Universal material.

Beats gets $60 million

Beats has secured $60 million in new investment to help develop and launch its new streaming music service, which should go live later this year. The venture, co-founded by Jimmy Iovine is being led by Topspin founder Ian Rogers with creative input from Trent Reznor. It will operate through a separate company, a subsidiary of the headphone-making Beats Electronics firm.

Reznor , Dre and Iovine launch streaming platform

Oscar-winning musician and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor is working on a new music streaming service with Beats Electronics, the company co-founded by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine that bought online streaming service Mog. Reznor said that the project is currently called Daisy and is scheduled to launch in early 2013. Reznor said Daisy will be, “like having your own guy when you go into the record store, who knows what you like but can also point you down some paths you wouldn’t necessarily have encountered.”

Streaming revenues grows in importance

CMU Daily reports that streaming music services around the world should generate £696 million for the global music industry this year. The new research by Strategy Analytic predicts an increase of 40% year on year, making it (unsurprisingly) the fastest growing strand of the recorded music market. Download sales are also still increasing according to the Report, and should be up 8.5% this year. Meanwhile, physical product sales continue to drop, down 12%, though overall CDs and such like still account for 61% of music sold Worldwide. The 50/50 physical-to-digital domination switchover may have happened in some territories, but not as yet on a global level - though Strategy Analytics reckons this could happen by 2015. However one worrying trend was that overall spending on recorded music is likely to be down 2.6% this year in the UK, partially blamed on a weakened release schedule. In Germany the German Music Industry Association (BVMI) has reported a 0.2% increase in overall revenue for the half of 2012. The strongest growth was in album downloads, which jumped nearly 35 % year-on-year and online music sales now account for just under 20 % of total revenue in the German market, up from 14.4 % over the same period last year. The BVMI figures do not include revenue from streaming services - apparently streaming revenue accounted for about 2% of the German music market last year. Unsurprisingly, physical CD sales continue to fall (by 5.4 % in the first half of 2012), although CDs still account for 72 % of overall revenue.