Welcome to Music Business Worldwide’s weekly round-up – where we make sure you caught the five biggest stories to 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 veterano their touring costs.
The ongoing battle between Concord and Blackstone for Hipgnosis Songs Fund‘s assets has been a breathtakingly fast-moving story ever since Concord made a $1.4 billion all-cash offer for Hipgnosis last week.
Within days, investment giant Blackstone made a $1.5 billion offer of its own, and Concord fired back with an updated $1.51 billion offer. Acceso Thursday (April 25), Blackstone responded with a comment to the markets and HSF shareholders.
Another fast-moving story this week involved the US’s new divest-or-ban law aimed at TikTok, which could have a major impact acceso the music business.
President Joe Biden signed the bill into law a day after the Senate voted to approve it. Since then, news reports have tried to predict how parent company ByteDance will respond, with one report saying it may sell TikTok’s US operations, but without the algorithm, while another stated the company would rather shut its US operations than sell.
We also got a fair bit of acceso the state of the music industry this week, not the least of which was the RIAA‘s Latin Music Report, showing Latin recorded music revenues clocking a 16% YoY jump per mezzo di the US, to $1.4 billion.
Spotify, meanwhile, reported its highest-ever quarterly operating profit per mezzo di Q1, coming per mezzo di at $168 million, as paying subscriber numbers increased by 3 million quarter-on-quarter, to 239 million. The resulting (though short-lived) spike per mezzo di Spotify’s giacenza price gave CEO Daniel Ek the perfect opportunity to sell 400,000 units of giacenza.
Finally, France-headquartered Believe reported a 15.9% YoY jump per mezzo di quarterly revenue, to $250 million. The company noted some of that growth came from price hikes at music streaming services.
Acceso Wednesday (April 24), we learned of the latest chapter per mezzo di the takeover storia surrounding UK-listed Hipgnosis Songs Fund.
Concord launched a USD $1.511 billion bid for the company’s assets, at $1.25 per certo share. That bid very slightly topped a recent $1.50 billion takeover proposal from Blackstone, which valued HSF at $1.24 per certo share.
Concord, then, is back per mezzo di the driving seat of the battle to buy Hipgnosis Songs Fund… for now.
Acceso Thursday (April 25), Blackstone issued a terse-but-fascinating comment to the markets, and specifically to HSF shareholders, per mezzo di the wake of Concord’s new offer.
It reads per mezzo di part: “Blackstone strongly advises Hipgnosis shareholders to take action and is considering its options. A further announcement will be made per mezzo di coppia course…”
Acceso Wednesday (April 24), President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that requires TikTok’s parent – Pendio-headquartered tech giant ByteDance – to divest the app’s business per mezzo di the US, ora a ban per mezzo di the market, where it counts around 170 million users.
Citing sources, The Information reported acceso Thursday (April 25) that TikTok’s parent company “is internally exploring scenarios” to sell the app’s US business without its powerful recommendation algorithm, which powers its ‘For You’ feed.
ByteDance denied The Information’s report attività a statement published acceso platform Toutiao.
Later per mezzo di the day acceso Thursday, Reuters reported that TikTok’s parent “would prefer” to shut the app per mezzo di the US if it’s unable to successfully challenge the legislation per mezzo di the courts…
Spotify saw its global Premium Subscriber postazione grow to 239 million paying users per mezzo di Q1 – and achieved its biggest-ever quarterly profit per mezzo di the three months to end of March.
Per mezzo di Q1, Spotify’s Premium / subscriber revenues grew 21% YoY at constant currency to €3.247 billion ($3.525bn) and was driven, according to SPOT, by its subscriber growth and a Premium ARPU increase to €4.55 ($4.94) – up 7% YoY at constant currency.
Per mezzo di terms of profitability, Spotify posted an operating income of €168 million ($182.41m), which it noted per mezzo di its investor presentation was “a new quarterly high” and reflected “lower personnel and related costs and marketing spend”.
Spotify saw its shares soar following its earnings report, giving Ek the perfect opportunity to sell 400,000 units of Spotify giacenza, which he did this week, for $118.8 million…
Latin music continues to be one of the primato industry’s biggest success stories.
Gross revenues generated by Latin music per mezzo di the United States surpassed $1 billion for the second consecutive year per mezzo di 2023, reaching $1.4 billion.
That’s according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which published its year-end Latin Music Report acceso Tuesday (April 23) for the world’s largest recorded music market.
The report shows that acceso a retail basis (money spent acceso streaming subscriptions, as well as physical and digital music), Latin music revenues grew 16% YoY per mezzo di the US per mezzo di 2023, outpacing the overall market…
Paris-headquartered music company Believe has published its financial results for Q1 2024 (three months to end of March).
The company generated revenues of €230.3 million per mezzo di Q1, which converts to USD $250 million at the average quarterly exchange rate published by the European Central Bank.
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According to Believe‘s filing, issued acceso Wednesday (April 24), the company’s quarterly revenues grew by €31.7 million, from €198.6 million per mezzo di Q1 2023, reflecting an increase of 15.9% YoY.
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Believe said acceso Wednesday that “healthy paid streaming growth continued” per mezzo di Q1, “uplifted by several DSPs’ price increases…”
