Welcome to Music Enterprise Worldwide’s weekly round-up – the place we be certain you caught the 5 greatest tales to hit our headlines over the previous seven days. MBW’s round-up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their revenue and scale back their touring prices.
This week, we acquired official phrase on the state of the recorded music enterprise in 2023. In line with IFPI‘s newest International Music Report, recorded music revenues hit USD $28.6 billion in 2023, up 10.2% YoY.
In the meantime, Kobalt introduced it had secured a $450 million revolving credit score facility to refinance its money owed, and had raised $266.5 million by way of its first-ever sale of asset-backed securities, backed by music royalties. Add to that its partnership with Morgan Stanley introduced a brand new months again, and the corporate says it has greater than $1 billion with which to purchase music rights.
Talking of huge numbers, social music creation platform BandLab has surpassed 100 million customers, having added 40 million over simply the previous yr.
We additionally acquired phrase this week that BMG‘s Chief Content material Officer, Dominique Casimir, is stepping down from her position. The announcement comes within the wake of some main adjustments introduced in by CEO Thomas Coesfeld.
Lastly, the Dagens Nyheter newspaper in Sweden reported that it had uncovered the true id of a musician on Spotify who has used 50 composer aliases and at the very least 656 invented artist names. His 2,700 songs on the platform have been streamed some 15 billion instances.
IFPI, the group that represents the recorded music trade worldwide, has printed its International Music Report, which reviews on international commerce revenues for the recorded music trade in 2023.
The headline stat from IFPI‘s report: International recorded music revenues rose 10.2% YoY in 2023 to succeed in USD $28.6 billion.
Final yr (2023) marked the worldwide music market’s ninth consecutive yr of progress.
Subscription streaming revenues grew by 11.2% YoY final yr, accounting for 48.9% of the worldwide market, which in greenback phrases, implies that subscription streaming revenues reached $14 billion in 2023.
Whole streaming revenues (together with each paid subscription and advertising-supported) grew 10.4% YoY to succeed in $19.3 billion in 2023 and accounted for greater than two-thirds (67.3%) of the overall international market…
Simply 4 months in the past, Kobalt introduced a partnership with funding funds managed by Morgan Stanley Tactical Worth to take a position greater than USD $700 million to amass music copyrights over the following few years.
Now, Kobalt has executed two new transactions that it says, mixed with the Morgan Stanley partnership, present it “with greater than $1 billion to proceed to develop and execute on its strategic initiatives”.
First up, Kobalt on March 19 introduced a brand new $450 million Revolving Credit score Facility from a Truist Securities-led “syndicate”, which in line with Kobalt will probably be used to “absolutely refinance present indebtedness”.
As well as, Kobalt has confirmed the elevate of $266.5 million through its first-ever Asset-Backed Securitization (ABS) transaction, backed by music royalties from a catalog of greater than 5,000 works from 66 writers…
BandLab, the social music creation platform owned by Singapore-based BandLab Applied sciences, simply reached a big milestone.
The app has surpassed 100 million registered customers, which implies that it has added 40 million customers since January 2023, when, as MBW reported on the time, the app confirmed that it had 60 million registered customers.
Talking with Bloomberg, BandLab Applied sciences CEO Meng Ru Kuok stated: “It’s humorous whenever you get to those giant milestones, particularly one thing like 100 million, which is barely laborious to fathom when it comes to the dimensions of the quantity”.
In December, Meng Ru Kuok was named MBW’s Entrepreneur Of The Yr award winner for 2023/2024. He instructed us on the time that he predicts there will probably be 1 billion music creators “by 2030, doubtlessly even sooner…”
BMG Chief Content material Officer Dominique Casimir is stepping down from her position after 15 years with the corporate.
The information was introduced by BMG on March 21.
The Berlin-based exec, who first joined BMG in 2008, was named Chief Content material Officer (CCO) of the corporate in Might 2022.
BMG stated on Thursday that Casimir has “performed a key position within the early improvement of BMG’s recordings enterprise”, noting that the exec progressively added higher duties to her remit together with GSA (2016), Continental Europe (2019), Asia Pacific and Latin America (2020) BMG’s international synch operation (2021) and the UK when she was named Chief Content material Officer in Might 2022.
MBW reported in January that, since Thomas Coesfeld took cost final summer season, greater than 100 workers have been laid off at BMG…
The existence of pretend artists on Spotify is now a widely known reality: Music launched by musicians underneath pseudonyms, who don’t have any actual on-line presence apart from their Spotify accounts and performs, and whose music could be discovered on a lot of Spotify’s key playlists devoted to ‘temper music’.
On Tuesday (March 19), Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter printed an expose on Spotify’s pretend artist drawback (not the newspaper’s first on that matter), and reviews to have recognized the musician “behind the world’s most listened to community of faux artists on Spotify.”
DN reviews that this particular person is a composer from Sweden named Johan Röhr, whose music, it says, has been launched on Spotify underneath “50 composer aliases and at the very least 656 invented artist names”.
In line with DN’s report, Röhr is behind over 2,700 songs which were launched underneath numerous pretend artist names on Spotify. A few of these names embrace Minik Knudsen, Mingmei Hsueh, Csizmazia Etel, and Adelmar Borrego.
His music throughout all of those pseudonymous artist accounts on Spotify, in line with DN, has been streamed roughly 15 billion instances…
