Music Business Roundup: Prince Goes for TIDAL, Facebook Looks Into Music, & More

Updated:

January 11, 2017 10:47 am

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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 July 3rd.

Apple Music Launches
This week the highly anticipated streaming service from Apple launched, as well as their global radio station Beats 1. Though there are some mixed reviews about the service itself, many people are interested to see how the service affects the music industry as a whole. For Apple, they hope that the music subscriptions will add to their brand and help them sell more products like iPhones in the future.
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Prince Chooses TIDAL
The musician has taken a stance on streaming services and has pulled his whole catalog from all of them except for TIDAL. It is not a completely surprising move, as Prince has been quoted many times about his problems with music on the internet. He likely chose TIDAL over other services for their promise to payout 75% of revenue to artists.
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Facebook Interested In Music Market
The social media giant has reportedly been in talks with all three of the major labels: Universal, Warner, and Sony. Though no one is completely sure about the contents of the discussions, it likely has to do with Facebook’s interest in video and how music plays into it. They want to focus on keeping users on Facebook, so by incorporating more video they may be able to take some users from YouTube.
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Chicago Levies New Tax
The city of Chicago has instituted a new tax that affects anything considered an “electronically delivered amusement.” This applies to services such as Netflix, but could also affect any kind of music downloads or streaming. The 9% tax is meant to help out the city’s budget, but it will probably face a lot of opposition.
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Big Machine Is Off the Market
The Nashville based label group that houses names like Taylor Swift was supposedly on the market late last year for upwards of $250 million. The label head Scott Borchetta didn’t seem to get quite the deal he was looking for (which would have included him becoming the next CEO of whatever major bought Big Machine), so BMLG is staying as is and has even renewed their distribution deal with Universal Music Group.
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