Music Business Roundup: Apple Announcement, Tidal’s New Features, & More

Each week on Songwriter U, Songspace recaps the top stories in the world of music business. Here’s everything you need to know from the week ending on June 5th.

Apple’s Streaming Service Announcement
Next week is one of Apple’s annual conferences, and one of the main announcements is expected to be the launch of their music streaming service. In a market full of competitors such as Spotify, Tidal, and Pandora, Apple has “catching up to do.” Some things to look out for: if they were able to complete deals with all the major labels, how having 700 million iPhones sold affects their growth, what influence new artist partners have, and how download sales are affected by this change in focus.
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Tidal Talks New Features
Jay Z’s company has made a few announcements regarding upcoming updates: the new desktop app will improve the user experience, a student discount will now be available (with 50% off of each possible subscription price), and a partnership with Ticketmaster makes purchasing concert tickets much easier. All these features will be available in the coming weeks.
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Songkick & Crowdsurge Merge
The concert discovery platform Songkick has merged with the online ticketing platform Crowdsurge – bringing together two vital parts of the concert and touring industry. This merger helps everyone involved, as fans want to know more about upcoming shows, and promoters and concert goers alike want tickets to be easily available.
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Spotify Pays Out $300 Million In Quarter One
When it comes to streaming services, many are interested in how much money they are paying out to rights holders. Spotify has done well so far this year – reportedly paying $300 million to all rights holders involved. This brings their total to $3 billion in their seven year history.
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YouTube Goes Granular
YouTube is a huge player in the online video world, and also has a lot of influence when it comes to music consumption. One of the major focuses of the company recently is to increase their customization of video recommendations – which they hope will help them gain even more viewers than the 1 billion they currently have.
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