Music Ally

It’s been a very sticky couple of months for audio-hardware firm Sonos since it launched a new version of its mobile app. Let’s just say that the reaction from Sonos, Inc. owners has been… unimpressed with the changes. Now CEO Patrick Spence has published a mea culpa in response to the protests. “We know that too many of you have experienced significant problems with our new app which rolled out on May 7, and I want to begin by personally apologizing for disappointing you,” he wrote. “There isn’t an employee at Sonos who isn’t pained by having let you down, and I assure you that fixing the app for all of our customers and partners has been and continues to be our number one priority.” https://lnkd.in/dP6vAY-T #musically #musicnews #readmore

Since Deezer’s last CEO Jeronimo Folgueira stepped down earlier this year, the fort has been held by interim CEO (and former WMG exec) Stu Bergen. Now a permanent boss has been found for the streaming service. Alexis Lanternier will be Deezer’s new CEO from 2 September, bringing with him plenty of experience in the e-commerce sector. His last business was ecommerce consultancy Branded, and before that he was EVP of Walmart Canada e-commerce. Read The Full Story Here: https://lnkd.in/dWYeebmT #Deezer #musically #musicnews #readmore

Explore Music Ally's diverse job listings, connecting with an extensive global audience across the US, UK, Europe, China, Africa, Latin America, India, Japan, and more. Find opportunities both on our website and in our daily newsletter. https://musically.com/jobs #musicallyjobslistings #musically #musicnews #readmore

Music Ally SI:X 2024: Submit your application! Calling all music and tech startups founded since 1 January 2019 and with fewer than 200 employees: our global showcase, contest and mentorship support programme Music Ally SI:X is open for applications! It's FREE to apply and it's supported by Amazon Music, ASCAP Lab, Music Foundry, Red Bull Media House, Reed Smith LLP and Universal Music Group Digital Innovation. Click here to find out more: https://lnkd.in/eAfiNWdZ #MusicAllySI:X #musically #musicnews #readmore

Universal Music Group’s financial results this week were the company’s 12th consecutive quarter of revenue growth in at least the high single-digits. Impressive, eh? But welcome to life as a public company: when both the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal’s follow-on coverage has focused on how much your share price has fallen in the wake of the results. “Universal Music shares slump 20% after streaming revenue growth slows,” was the FT’s headline. “Universal Music Sheds $13 Billion in Market Cap After Streaming Revenue Disappoints,” was the WSJ take. Both pinpoint the same cause of the slump: the fact that UMG’s revenues from subscriptions and streaming grew 4.1% year-on-year, when analysts had been expecting growth of more than 10%. “Investors bought UMG mostly for low-double-digit growth in paid streaming, in our view, the main basis for the rich valuation UMG trades at,” wrote analysts at Barclays in a note cited by the WSJ. “If paid streaming growth stays lower, we see UMG multiples falling.” Read The Full Story Here: https://lnkd.in/dCanHhwR #FinancialResults #musically #musicnews #readmore

AI music startup Udio has launched its latest version, Udio v1.5, with improved audio quality one of the updated features. “Udio generates 48kHz-stereo tracks and with v1.5, you’ll experience improved clarity, instrument separation, transients, coherence, and musicality across your generations,” promised the company. Users can now download individual vocals, bass, drums and ‘everything else’ stems from the tracks they create, and add keys (C minor, Ab major etc) to their prompts to guide its AI. However, the feature that jumped out at us was ‘audio to audio’. “Users are able to upload their own tracks and remix them. This enables you to take your own music and reimagine it in new and creative ways,” is how Udio explained that. https://lnkd.in/dqEAZzus #AIMusic #musically #musicnews #readmore

Spotify unveiled its ‘Countdown Pages’ feature in March 2023: individual pages on its service for upcoming albums where fans could pre-save, watch video clips, pre-order merch and browse tracklists. Since launching later in 2023, the feature has only been available to artists chosen by Spotify to test it out. Now it has opened up to a much broader swathe of musicians: anyone who’s had at least 5,000 active listeners in the last 28 days. Spotify’s global head of Spotify for Artists, marketing and policy Sam Duboff said this expansion would make countdown pages available to “hundreds of thousands of artists”, with Spotify keen to encourage them to use the feature. It has published some stats to persuade them. According to Spotify, nearly 70% of people who pre-save an album go on to stream it in the first week after its release. Meanwhile, artists who’ve uploaded short videos using the company’s ‘Clips’ feature to their countdown pages averaged double the pre-saves of artists who didn’t, according to a Spotify study of 500 musicians who got early access to the latter tool. Read The Full Story Here: https://lnkd.in/dZrW2Cv7 #Spotify #MusicPromotion #musically #musicnews #readmore

Early Bird Tickets for the Music Ally Publishing Summit 2024 in association with ICE are now available. This one-day annual event, focused on the modern music publishing business, will take place on October 10th at Kings Place, London. To get your tickets or to find out more click the link below. https://lnkd.in/dVpS_6q4 #MusicPublishing #musically #musicnews #readmore

Exclusive to Music Ally Subscribers: Country Profiles - data, forecasts, trends, and interviews Our latest Country Profile report focuses on South Africa. The country's recorded music industry has doubled in value since 2017, with more growth on the way. A boom in domestic talent has helped to drive listeners to streaming, with the success of amapiano artists like Tyla drawing significant attention to the country's music market. Read the report in full here: https://lnkd.in/dYQPqNqn #musically #musicnews #readmore

Business continues to be good for Universal Music Group, which published its latest quarterly financial results yesterday. However, the major label has raised an alarm about slowing subscriber growth at some of the biggest global streaming services. UMG’s Q2 numbers showed revenues up 8.7% year-on-year to €2.93bn ($3.18bn at current exchange rates) with recorded-music revenues up 5.8% and publishing up 10.1%. Within recorded music, UMG saw a 6.5% uptick in its revenues from subscription streaming services, although ‘streaming revenue’ – the phrase it uses to describe free streaming tiers and services – was down 4.2%. Physical sales continue to grow though: up 9.5% year-on-year. Publishing’s increase was put down to “the continued organic growth in streaming and subscription revenue and improvement in performance revenue”, with digital publishing revenues up 17.8% year-on-year. Merch is also a big hit for UMG at the moment: its merch and other revenues grew by 44.6% year-on-year. All positive? Well, that’s when we get to the comments on DSPs. During UMG’s earnings call its EVP, chief financial officer and president of operations Boyd Muir noted the “deceleration in growth” for recorded-music subscription revenues. Read The Full Story Here: https://lnkd.in/dAauvAmz #UMG #Streaming #musically #musicnews #readmore