Introducing our guests: Yasmo (musician, Vienna/Austria)

Yasmo is an Austrian rapper, who will join the discussion on “Parallel Worlds of Music Streaming” from 15:00-16:00 on October 20 in Joseph Haydn Hall of mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna with Hyojung Sun (University of York, UK), Dave Hesmonhalgh (University of Leeds, UK) and Fabian Schütze (analogsoul, Leipzig/Germany).

Yasmo is a Vienna-based rap artist and poet, who is artistically active since 2007. In 2009, she was the first Austrian artist to win the German speaking U20 Poetry Slam and in 2013 she was the first female artist to win the Austrian Poetry Slam competition. She travels with her texts around the world. In 2019, Yasmo and her band Klangkantine released her fourth studio album Prekariat & Karat, for which she was nominated twice for the Amadeus Austrian Music Award. And she was a co-curator for the Popfest Wien 2019.

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Towards a music streaming economy – Scandinavia part 3

Part 1 of the blog series highlights that the Scandinavian countries are the world’s music streaming avant-garde due to a well-established broadband Internet infra-structure, a high smartphone penetration rate and domestic business innovations (see also part 2). The most influential Scandinavian business innovation was Sweden’s Spotify, which was launched in October 2008 at the culmination of The Pirate Bay lawsuit. However, several other services early offered music access to music in Scandinavia. In 2009, Finnish smartphone company Nokia launched the Comes-With-Music service, which allowed unlimited music access for a year on special Nokia Comes-With-Music phones. In the same year, Swedish Sony-Ericsson in collaboration with Norwegian Telenor offered the PlayNow plus service on its special edition of Sony Ericsson Walkman phones (IFPI 2009: 8). However, the mobile phone manufacturers failed to meet the music consumers’ convenience. Nokia’s music was DRM protected until 2010 and limited to special Nokia devices, whereas Sony Ericssons’ music was DRM free, but limited in time and to special devices.

In 2011 both services were, therefore, were discontinued,[1] when Spotify, WiMP and TDC Play started to dominate the digital music market. In 2009, the Danish TDC Play was the first ISP music service offering unlimited music streaming from 6.1 million tracks without any additional costs (IFPI 2010: 8). Spotify’s ad-supported unlimited streaming tier was also bundled in ISP TeliaSonora in Sweden and Finland and the premium tier could be directly paid on the broadband bill (ibid.: 9). WiMP’s subscription service also succeeded in Norway due to its bundling in Telenor’s mobile phone contracts (IFPI 2011: 9).

Consumer convenience, therefore, was the key success factor for music streaming services in Scandinavia. It was easier to access music by a streaming services than downloading music from P2P file sharing networks with the risk of malwares and viruses. Music consumption studies in Norway and Sweden highlight this shift from P2P file sharing to music streaming as outlined in the following analysis.

Towards a music streaming economy – Scandinavia part 2

A series of blog entries tells the story of how the Scandinavian countries have become the forerunners of the music streaming economy and highlights the background of this development. In the second part of the  series on Scandinavian’s way to a music streaming economy technological and business innovations that fostered music streaming are highlighted.

The Scandinavian countries are forerunners in broadband Internet penetration. From 2000 until 2006 the share of households with broadband Internet access increased from almost zero to 70 percent in Denmark and Norway, even to 80 percent in Finland and Sweden. Currently, almost all Scandinavian households have a broadband high-speed Internet access (figure 1).

 

Figure 1: Recorded music revenue and broadband Internet penetration in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, 1996-2017

Source: Wlömert and Papies (2019: 56).

 

Towards a music streaming economy – Scandinavia part 1

It’s no accident that Spotify was launched in Sweden during the culmination of the The Pirate Bay lawsuit in 2008. Spotify was promoted as the legal alternative to P2P files haring and the Swedish music consumers were the perfect test market for such a Freemium music service. Sweden’s neighbouring country Norway was in a similar position: wealthy inhabitants, a high penetration of broadband Internet access and a passion for music. Therefore, the Swedish digital entertainment company Aspiro launched the music streaming provider WiMP (the later Tidal) in cooperation with the Norwegian telecommunication company Telenor and music retailer Platekompaniet in Norway in February 2010. Two months later WiMP also started in Denmark as the first music streaming service for PC, Mac and Android mobile.[1] However, in December 2009, the Danish telco TDC had added an unlimited streaming option to its music download service TDC Play (now YouSee Musik) in cooperation with tech company 24-7 Entertainment.[2] Thus, all three Scandinavian countries were pioneers in establishing a music streaming economy. The fourth Scandinavia country, Finland, lagged behind for some years, but in 2017 the Finnish sound recording market was as streaming-lined as its Scandinavian neighbours.

 

Figure 1: The global phonographic market in 2017 by digital market shares

Source: After IFPI Global Music Report 2018.

 

A series of blog entries tells the story of how the Scandinavian countries have become the forerunners of the music streaming economy and highlights the background of this development. In this blog post a comparative analysis of market figures for all Scandinavian countries are presented.

Spotify goes public – an economic background analysis

April 3^rd 2018 is a historic moment in the digitized music industry, when the Swedish music streaming company Spotify is listed at the New York Stock Exchange. Spotify’s stock exchange listing is not just a touchstone for the music streaming service’s business model, but for the entire recorded music industry that is back on a path of growth. Spotify is the darling of the big music industry players. It provides a legal business model that can be monetized by hefty advances and royalty payments. This allowed the music majors and the indie label licensing agency MERLIN to become Spotify’s shareholders in return for advance payments Spotiy could not afford. Sony Music Entertainment’s Spotify stake of 5.7 percent (Spotify 2018: 148) e.g. is worth US $500m to 1.3bn.[1] The following analysis highlights Spotify’s success story, but also outlines potential risks of going public. It also analysis who benefits from Spotify’s stock exchange listing and assesses the impact on the music streaming market.

Music Business Research 2016 – in retrospective

Dear readers of the music business research blog,

2016 seems to be the pivotal year in the recorded music industry. Although no annual statistics have been published until yet, we can take it for granted that the positive trend of 2015 continued in 2016. In 2015, the global recorded music market expanded by 3.4%. The US-market slightly grew by 0.9% and the German recorded music sales even increased by 4.4%.

The booming music streaming market was of course the main driver for the economic recovery of the recorded music business in 2015 and we can expect a further growth in 2016 and the upcoming year. The revenue growth of the streaming business compensated for the decline in CD sales, despite decreasing music download sales as highlighted in “The fate of the CD – an international CD-market analysis”. However, an in-depth analysis of the statistics unveils very different market dynamics in various countries. Whereas music streaming is the main business of the recorded music industry in Scandinavia, CD sales are still relevant in Germany and in Japan (see “The Music Streaming Market Revisited, 2011-2015”).

The Music Streaming Market Revisited, 2011-2015

Last year, I posted an analysis of the international music streaming for 2014 based on IFPI numbers. Since then the global streaming market was highly dynamic and therefore I updated my analysis and included also earlier data. In 2015 the global streaming revenue (subscriptions and ad-supported streaming revenue) increased by 42.5 per cent (IFPI 2016: 17) and had a volume of US $2.89bn. The music streaming market is almost as big as the music download market (US $2.97bn) (IFPI 2016: 49). Music streaming, therefore, accounts for 42 per cent of the global recorded music market. However, the market share of music streaming differs between countries. Whereas in Sweden the music streaming market share is 66.5 per cent of the overall recorded music market, in Germany just 11.4 per cent of the recorded music revenue comes from music streaming sources. And Japan, the second largest recorded music market in world, lags behind with meagre 4.6 per cent. In the following, please read an analysis of the international music streaming for the time-span from 2011-2015.

Animation of the international music streaming markets, 2011-2015

The Recorded Music Market in Germany, 2003-2014

The recently published figures of the recorded music market in Germany show a picture of stability. Compared to 2013, the recorded music sales increased by 1.8 percent to EUR 1.48bn as reported by IFPI Germany (Bundesverband Musikindustrie – BVMI) in the latest Yearbook on the Recorded Music Industry in Germany (Jahrbuch zur Musikindustrie in Deutschland). The still fast growing revenues from the music streaming business are the main reason for the modest overall sales growth of 1.8 percent. The revenues from music subscription rose by 77.0 percent to EUR 108.0m compared to 2013. In the same period, however, long-play download sales (mainly digital album sales) declined for the first time – by1.4 percent to EUR 145.0m. The single track download sales again decreased – after a sales decline of 4.6 percent in 2013 – by 7.4 percent to EUR 100.0m. The physical music sales are still declining by 1.7 percent in 2014. Nevertheless physical sales are still dominant on the German recorded music market with share of 74.9 percent (without revenues from neighbouring rights collecting society GVL and from synchronisation). The CD is still the most important audio format of the recorded music market in Germany with sales of EUR 985.0m and a market share of 66.7 percent.

The details of the development of the recorded music market in Germany from 2003-2014 are highlighted in the following analysis.