Welcome to Music Business Worldwide’s weekly round-up – where we make sure you caught the five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days. MBW’s round-up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their income and reduce their touring costs.
This week we got confirmation that Concord has acquired LA-headquartered music distribution platform Stem, in what sources told MBW was a high eight-figure dollar deal somewhere above $50 million.
In another significant deal, Chappell Roan producer Daniel Nigro‘s Amusement Records has expanded its partnership with Universal Music Group. Amusement will now operate as a “central label venture” within UMG, with new artist signings able to partner across UMG’s family of labels.
Elsewhere this week, Dua Lipa won a copyright lawsuit over her megahit Levitating, with a US federal judge ruling summarily that the plaintiffs failed to show substantial similarity between Levitating and a 1979 disco song.
Also this week, Kakao Entertainment, whose parent company is a major shareholder in K-pop company SM Entertainment, debuted superfan platform Berriz, a direct competitor to HYBE‘s Weverse.
Finally, MBW founder Tim Ingham laid out the case for why Spotify and other DSPs should raise their subscription prices this year. Hint: It has to do with a metric called average revenue per content hour.
Concord has, as expected, fully acquired Los Angeles-based music distribution platform Stem.
MBW’s sources told us earlier this month that Concord was buying the distribution platform, suggesting a high eight-figure dollar deal somewhere above $50 million.
The official announcement of the acquisition on Monday (March 24) revealed that as well as buying Stem, Concord is making an additional investment into Tone, a royalty accounting and financial tools platform launched by Stem’s management team in 2023.
“We are now the most well-funded, well-supported independent player in the distribution space,” Stem founder and CEO Milana Lewistold MBW…
It’s been a good couple of weeks for famous songwriters fighting off lawsuits accusing them of copyright infringement. First Mariah Carey beat a long-running suit accusing her of ripping off elements of her enduring smash All I Want For Christmas Is You.
Now, news breaks that Dua Lipa has been victorious in another landmark case, this time pertaining to her megahit Levitating.
A federal judge in New York has dismissed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Warner Records-signed act, ruling that Levitating, released in 2020, did not illegally copy a 1979 disco song.
In an opinion and order issued Thursday (March 27), U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla granted summary judgment in favor of Lipa and her co-defendants, finding that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate substantial similarity between protectable elements of the works…
Kakao Entertainment, a prominent player in the Korean entertainment industry and a rival to HYBE, has officially entered the superfan platform space.
Kakao has launched a new app called Berriz, described as “a cutting-edge global fan platform designed to revolutionize the user experience.” The move from Kakao places it in direct competition with Weverse.
Kakao, together with its parent Kakao Corp., holds a 40.28% stake in K-Pop company SM Entertainment. It also owns South Korean Music streaming service Melon.
Notably, in 2023, Kakao and HYBE engaged in a months-long corporate battle to take control of SM Entertainment…
Universal Music Group has expanded its partnership with Grammy-winning producer Daniel Nigro’s Amusement Records label.
According to the official announcement, under the new agreement, Amusement will operate as a “central label venture” within UMG, with new artist signings able to partner across UMG’s “global family of labels.”
The expansion follows the success of Chappell Roan’s debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which was signed to Amusement and released via Island Records.
UMG’s newly-expanded partnership with Nigro also builds upon his long-term relationship with Olivia Rodrigo, a Geffen/Interscope artist. (Island and Geffen/Interscope are both UMG labels.)…
Speak to pretty much any senior figure at the world’s largest music rightsholders, and you’ll find it’s a bone of contention for them all.
How come a standard music streaming subscription in the US costs USD $11.99 per month, when – over in the land of film and TV – Netflix charges $17.99 per month for its equivalent service?
The answer, of course, is the consistency of Netflix’s price hikes over the past decade.
As recently as 2016, an individual subscription to Netflix’s Standard tier in the States cost consumers exactly the same amount per month ($9.99) as an Individual Premium sub to Spotify…
