By Kevin Cornell
Another month is coming to a close, and TuneCore is here to fill all you independent artists in on some of the headlines you may have missed.
Whether it’s music streaming, publishing, product updates, studies and reports, or op-eds, we’re rounding up some music industry must-reads for all of you looking to stay in touch with the business and advance a career!
“Time Flies: U.S. Adults Now Spend Nearly a Half a Day Interacting with Media”
11 hours per day?! A new Nielsen study breaks down media usage/interaction in 2018. Sure, there’s a lot of focus around TV and tablets, but any artist interested in data around media consumption and app use might find these stats pretty interesting. Read it here.
“Number of Britons Illegally Downloading Music Falls”
That’s what we like to hear! (Pun intended.) While we all know streaming is an increasingly dominant format for enjoying music these days, it’s easy to forget just why streaming was adapted in the first place: to curb music piracy! Even more support for success in this area: YouGov UK checks in with Brits to find why there’s been an 18% decline in just five years. Read it here.
“Amazon Prime Music May Have Overtaken Apple Music in UK”
Speaking of our British friends, MusicWeek.com points toward recent Kantar Worldpanel research showing Amazon Prime Music gunning for that number two spot over Apple Music UK (behind Spotify). While these results are based on 15,000 consumers, not official stats from the companies, it’s an interesting look at the Amazon Prime Music consumer and what active user bases are looking like these days. Read it here.
“New Zealand Study Reveals Spotify Overtaking YouTube For Music”
New Zealand On Air surveyed natives to study entertainment habits and found that 67% of participants use online music streaming services on an almost daily basis (compared to live radio at 47%). Not entirely surprising given previous bi-annual surveys, but MusicAlly.com points out that Spotify is gaining on YouTube in terms of preference since 2016. Time to start re-thinking your NZ marketing strategies yet? Read it here.
“‘Putting the Band Back Together’ Citi Report Dissected”
Last month financial giant Citi put out a study aiming to “[remaster] the world of music” based on looking at recorded music, live music, advertising and music publishing figures. It got…mixed reviews from the industry at large. Music biz paper Billboard broke down what the study got wrong and what it got right. Read it here.
“YouTube Merges Artist Channel Subscriptions”
In an effort to improve music streamers’ experiences and encourage some much-needed “housecleaning” to artists, YouTube announced updates to how artist channel subscriptions will live on the platform. There’s a helpful YouTube Blog, but once ore our friends at MusicAlly.com offer a great breakdown to how this might impact you as an artist and channel owner. Read it here.
“Apple Music Users Spot ‘Friend Mix’ – a New Personalized Playlist of Friends’ Tunes”
We all know music fans want their friends to know what they’re listening to, and everyone’s got the friend who is not so shy about it. TechCrunch highlights a new offering from Apple Music that’ll let social streamers do just that! Read it here.
“Emo Rap, Genius and Google: Bright Spot in Dark Places”
In case you didn’t think there could be a long form read about trends, stats and the new-ish enigma known as emo rap, the Chartmetric Blog is all over it. In this piece they break down both the popularity of the genre, the subject matter shift, and what it means online. Read it here.