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 your career!
$26 Billion Should Be Music to Artists’ Ears
The Consumer Technology Association reported that U.S. music consumers are expected to drop a combined $26 billion in music and video streaming subscriptions in 2019. Up over $5 billion from last year, a large chunk of this predicted spending will come from platforms like Apple Music and Spotify. Read more here.
MiDIA’s “Age Of Empowerment” Study Shows Indie Growth
Speaking of dough, $643.1 million is the total amount artists not on labels earned last year. We’re proud here at TuneCore to help independent artists of all stripes collect some of that revenue (which was up 35% from last year) and if you’re reading this as an artist, you should feel proud, and, well, empowered! Read more here.
Facebook Looks to More Revenue-Generating Updates
In an attempt to attract more content creators, Facebook in July announced more money-making options, including paid groups, ad placement, and tipping features. TuneCore already offers ‘Facebook Music’, a service for allowing uploaders to use your tracks so you can earn revenue, and it looks like Facebook has more up their sleeves to make sure creators get paid. Read more here.
Artists Take To K Street
It was announced this month that Dave Matthews, Anderson .Paak, and Maren Morris have helped launch a new lobbying group to represent their fellow artists in D.C. The Music Artists Coalition aims to help “music-related disputes”, signing on some heavy-hitters from the industry to push the message along. Read more here.
YouTube Music Lets Users Switch It Up
If you’re distributing your music to YouTube Music, you may want to consider upping your content marketing efforts across the platform: this month, Premium subscribers found out that they can now seamlessly switch between songs and music videos. YouTube announced some of the cool features that were rolled out on their blog. Read more here.
Mexican Music Industry Continues To Grow
Mexico’s music market has surged in recent years, so much to the extent that it’s actually helping to drive sales of smartphones. With revenue from music streaming up 30%, it’s no wonder. MusicAlly.com does a deep dive in their latest “Country Profile”. Read more here.
Jazz Finding a Younger Audience in the UK
The Guardian released an interesting story about the burgeoning new jazz fanbase across the UK that is made up of a younger-than-usual demographic. While jazz has always held a passionate base of fans, it’s important to note the DIY and indie nature of today’s jazz scenes – namely how digitally savvy fans find and consume it! Read more here.
JioSaavn Parent Company Tops the Indian Mobile Market
Reliance Jio has officially taken over as the top mobile operator in India with over 331 million subscribers. MusicAlly.com reports that this growth has done wonders in terms of driving the parallel growth of JioSaavn, the 104 million-monthly-user-music platform TuneCore distributes to everyday! Read more here.