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!
How Artists Can Migrate Fans From Social to Streaming
Facebook published a case study focusing on Esperanza Spalding’s successful Facebook/Instagram marketing strategy and how she drove fans to streaming platforms. While we know not all artists have the benefit of being GRAMMY winners, they should all be taking notes on the relationship between these types of platforms. Read more here.
Global Streaming Revenue Up 34% Last Year
The IFPI published its “Global Music Report” in April, and to no one’s surprise, streaming continues to grow, resulting in higher revenue levels across the industry. To highlight one figure: the total revenue for recorded music in 2018 was $19.1 billion. Read more here.
Deezer Goes All-In on K-Pop
Has there been a higher surge in popularity than in the genre of K-Pop? If so, we haven’t heard of it recently. Deezer agrees, and has launched a specific channel for Korean pop music on their platform. Noticing the 157% increase in K-Pop streams, Deezer is looking to cater listening experiences for users. Read more here.
YouTube’s Metrics For Success
Bloomberg published a report about YouTube’s internal metrics that gauge the performance of videos: one that tracks total time spent on the platform, the other tracks “quality watch time”. For those artists less familiar with the latter metric, you’ll want to catch up. Read more here.
Free Streamers & Marketing Singles
Our friends at MusicAlly.com shared some thoughts from Cindy James, VP of streaming and playlist strategy at Island Records in their “Sandbox” issue in April. Namely, James goes into the strategy of where artists should be directing fans when it comes to promoting new singles. Read more here.
MySpace Songs From a Key Era Have Been Recovered
Remember how much music you used to enjoy from artists all over the world on MySpace? Well, when a botched server migration accidentally deleted them years back, we thought they were gone forever. Thankfully, some dedicated folks at the Internet Archive has us all covered with an easy search function. Go get your nostalgia on! Read more here.
Amazon Launches Free Streaming on Alexa Devices
Last month, Amazon made music streaming available at the free tier for Alexa device owners. This is an alternative to the need for a Prime membership to enjoy music via Alexa, and it should make for an interesting shift toward their focus on music for these devices. Read more here.
India Slips Into 15 Spot of Biggest Music Markets in 2018
It was streaming and physical that helped India move up from 19th to 15th on the global scale of music markets in 2018. Recorded music revenues were up over 24%, streaming was up 31% and even physical saw an increase of over 21%! Read more here.
Tags: amazon featuring industry news music industry myspace revenue streaming YouTube