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Webinar: Best Music Marketing Campaigns of the Year Join us as we break down the key learnings from the best music marketing campaigns of last year, with actionable insights for you to implement in 2025. When? Wednesday 12 February at 5pm GMT (9am PT / 12pm ET) for one hour, plus Q&A https://lnkd.in/dc_J36A7 #musicmarketing #musically #webinar

Spotify’s decision to reclassify its Premium tier as a ‘bundle’ in the US last year – and thus pay lower mechanical royalties – sparked fierce criticism from music publishers. However, it also generated a lawsuit from The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) which argued that Spotify’s move did “not comply with applicable law and regulations”. In August, Spotify filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, calling the MLC’s position “nonsensical and factually unsupportable”. And while the judge in the case avoided that kind of language in her ruling yesterday, she nevertheless came down on Spotify’s side. The key question was whether adding audiobooks made Spotify a bundle under the definition set out by the US streaming rates system. “Audiobook streaming is a product or service that is distinct from music streaming and has more than token value. Premium is, therefore, properly categorized as a Bundle,” ruled Judge Analisa Torres, who described the regulations governing this as “unambiguous”. In a November financial filing, Spotify revealed that if the MLC were to win the lawsuit, the streaming service would have had to pay around €94m of additional royalties covering the period from the start of 1 March to 30 September 2024. Now, per the judge’s ruling, it will not. “We are pleased with this outcome, which demonstrates that, after careful review by the court, Spotify’s Premium service is appropriately categorised as a bundle and offers valuable content alongside music,” A Spotify spokesperson told Music Ally. Read More: https://lnkd.in/d5ixisuV #musicnews #musically #spotify #bundles #readmore

Welcome to the latest edition of Music Ally’s free LinkedIn newsletter, A Little Knowledge. This week: Apple talks music fraud; the lowdown on the Music Ally Connect 2025 conference; and a few little extras… #linkedinnewsletter #musicindustry #AppleMusic

"It’s a very small world, and I think that it’s been normalised that misogyny and bullying are taking place in the industry all the time." "When people feel uneasy about speaking out, it’s because they have a lot to risk. they have to risk their careers, their reputation, their mortgages on their house. They’ll lose work… Why risk everything for something where you may not believed?" "There is a toxic expectation around Black women’s bodies, which over time has kind of progressed into women having to take potentially dangerous and invasive surgical procedures or extreme beauty trends to achieve this image." "Misogyny is more of a societal plague than I can ever remember it being in my lifetime. And I think robust education for young people and young men on equality, respect, consent, and debunking so-called gender norms about who’s best suited to what kind of job is what has to happen in schools as a matter of urgency, or nothing will ever ever change." Yesterday's latest hearing for the UK Parliamentary inquiry into Misogyny in Music saw evidence from Dr Charisse Beaumont, Celeste Waite, Lucy Cox and Laura Snapes. Read our full report: https://lnkd.in/eb5yexmx

"It’s a very small world, and I think that it’s been normalised that misogyny and bullying are taking place in the industry all the time." "When people feel uneasy about speaking out, it’s because they have a lot to risk. they have to risk their careers, their reputation, their mortgages on their house. They’ll lose work… Why risk everything for something where you may not believed?" "There is a toxic expectation around Black women’s bodies, which over time has kind of progressed into women having to take potentially dangerous and invasive surgical procedures or extreme beauty trends to achieve this image." "Misogyny is more of a societal plague than I can ever remember it being in my lifetime. And I think robust education for young people and young men on equality, respect, consent, and debunking so-called gender norms about who’s best suited to what kind of job is what has to happen in schools as a matter of urgency, or nothing will ever ever change." Yesterday's latest hearing for the UK Parliamentary inquiry into Misogyny in Music saw evidence from Dr Charisse Beaumont, Celeste Waite, Lucy Cox and Laura Snapes. Read our full report: https://lnkd.in/eb5yexmx

Spotify has announced its latest milestone, and it concerns the current most-popular artist on its service. Bruno Mars has become the first musician to reach 150 million monthly listeners on Spotify. His recent rocket in listeners is the result partly of his recent collaborations: ‘Die With a Smile’ with Lady Gaga; ‘APT’ with Rosé and ‘Fat Juicy & Wet’ with Sexyy Red. However, there’s also his back catalogue: Spotify noted that 17 of Mars’ tracks have passed 1bn streams on its platform. In separate Spotify news, the company’s general counsel Eve Konstan has announced that she is stepping down. In a @LinkedIn post, she said she plans to focus more on non-profit and educational causes, as well as potentially joining the board of other companies. Read More: https://lnkd.in/dZenhzpK #musically #spotify #musicnews #readmore

This won’t sound like a music story initially, but bear with us. The rapid rise to prominence of AI startup DeepSeek AI in the US is a fascinating story that has properly put the cat among the pigeons. The pigeons in this case being the biggest players in Silicon Valley’s AI sector, who are in a mighty flap. What is DeepSeek? It’s a Chinese startup that has developed an AI model – called ‘R1’ – at a tiny fraction of the costs incurred by the big US AI firms. R1’s first showcase is a ChatGPT-style consumer app called ‘DeepSeek – AI Assistant’. Released on 11 January, it has shot to the top of the US App Store’s free chart, unseating ChatGPT and sparking a sell-off of US tech stocks in the process. Nvidia, whose chips have been a key element in AI investment in recent years, saw $593bn wiped off its market value in a single day, for example. VentureBeat has a good explainer of how DeepSeek developed its model so cheaply – reportedly less than $6m compared to the billion-dollar-plus investments made by the OpenAIs of the industry. TechCrunch rounds up what analysts are saying about it, and tech consultant Ben Thompson also has a good Q&A-style post explaining the what, why and how of DeepSeek. The next phase of this news cycle will partly be about the big US AI firms scrambling to respond – OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has already promised to “pull up some releases” to compete – and partly about potential privacy issues from DeepSeek’s app – Wired is already on the case of it “explicitly sending US data to China”. (Fans of global-political shithousery will be following this story with interest: while everyone’s attention was focused on the US potentially banning TikTok due to China-related national security fears, another Chinese company was preparing to launch an app and open-source AI model that would tank US tech stocks, challenge its biggest AI players AND still send lots of data back to China…) Anyway, the music angle. DeepSeek springing from stealth mode with a cheaper, arguably-better model – people are already enthusiastically arguing about that online of course – is something that can happen in the AI sector. Read More: https://lnkd.in/dyfs8E2t #musicnews #AI #musically #readmore #DeepSeek

Music service Spotify says it paid out $10bn to the music industry in 2024, taking its lifetime payments to labels, publishers and collecting societies to nearly $60bn. The figure was revealed in a blog post this afternoon by David Kaefer, Spotify's VP and head of music business. "The system we've built together is working, and where we are now is only the beginning," wrote Kaefer. "Today, there are more than 500 million paying listeners across all music streaming services. A world with 1 billion paying listeners is a realistic goal we should collectively set." Besides announcing the latest payout milestone, Kaefer's post serves as a defence of Spotify's business model, following a recent report – strongly criticised by the company – about its effective per-stream rates being much lower than rivals. Kaefer made a point of noting that "we offer an ad-supported tier, while some services don't" – a key reason for those lower effective rates – setting out Spotify's familiar view that this free tier is an important funnel towards paid subscriptions. "Onboarding people to paid streaming is precisely what has increased our payouts – tenfold – over the past decade," he wrote. Read our analysis of Spotify's figure, including year-on-year growth and how it relates to YouTube's ambition to overtake it in payouts by this year, in our full story: https://lnkd.in/egdxQ_vv

Music service Deezer has spent the last year developing a tool to detect wholly-AI-generated music uploaded to its service. Its announcement on Friday came with a startling statistic. The company estimates that around 10% of new tracks on its platform have been “fully AI generated”. That’s around 10,000 tracks a day. “Most of the daily delivery of AI tracks are never streamed on Deezer, but they are however diluting the catalog and may be used for fraudulent activity,” added Deezer in its notes accompanying the announcement. The company says that its tool can detect music created by models including Suno and Udio, but will also be able to expand to cover others as they emerge. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dA_VNZxu #musicnews #musically #ai #deezer #readmore