A Little Knowledge… #51

Welcome to A Little Knowledge #51 – our free weekly LinkedIn newsletter.

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?? BULLETIN NEWS: Spotify paid more than $9bn to the music industry in 2023

It turns out Spotify wasn’t quite done with announcing big numbers after publishing its latest financial results on Tuesday.

• “Spotify paid the music industry more money than ever in 2023: $9B+,” announced the company in a statement released later in the week. “That figure has nearly tripled over the past six years, and represents a big part of the $48B+ Spotify has paid since its founding.
• Time for some analysis. This week’s financial results revealed that Spotify’s annual revenues last year were €13.25bn – around $14.27bn at current exchange rates. That means Spotify paid out around 63% of its revenues to the music industry in 2023.
• We can also track the growth of those payouts, using?figures?revealed in 2022 ?on the ‘Loud & Clear’ site. They have grown from $3.3bn in 2017 to $5bn in 2020, and then more than $7bn in 2021.
• We do some more maths?in our full analysis , including looking at the average annual payout per artist and some tentative calculations on streaming fraud
• These latest payouts figures also give YouTube a new target to aim for, having openly stated its ambition to overtake Spotify and become (in its head of music Lyor Cohen’s words) “the #1 contributor of revenue to the industry by 2025”
• At a time when?TikTok is embroiled in a dispute with Universal Music Group ?partly over royalties, it’s hard not to also see Spotify’s announcement as a timely broadside at a disruptive rival – one which, remember, has been?rolling out its own streaming service .

???Read our full analysis?here .

?? WIDER ANGLES: Bigger picture stories with implications for the music industry

We like to keep an eye on stories that will impact upon or provide opportunities to?the music industry -?developments that we think our readers should be aware of. Here are four recent examples from our daily Bulletin email:

• Roblox?revealed that it had?71.5m daily active users at the end of 2023 , up 22% year on year - although it's losses are growing, too.
• Meta?has announced some of its plans?for?labelling AI-generated images ?across Facebook, Instagram and Threads?- and they would like to??extend this to video and audio
• A research project from University College, London and the University of Kent has?studied?algorithms belonging?to?TikTok, and made?some concerning findings about misogynistic content
• As financial-results season swings into gear,?Meta's latest results included plenty of big numbers: its family of apps are being used by 3.19 billion daily active people – and?Threads now has 130m monthly active users .

???Music Ally subscribers receive our daily Bulletin email packed with everything you need to know. Find out more about our subscription options or sign up for a free trial?here .

?? MUSIC ALLY JOBS

The latest and best jobs for the global music business, trusted by both top music industry companies and experienced professionals on top of their game.

Are you looking for a job? Click here to see the full list of vacancies!

?? A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA...

?And finally… our daily Bulletin newsletter is loved by subscribers for its instant industry analysis - but secretly, the part they like most is the ‘A Little Something Extra’ section at the bottom of the email. Here's a few of the best recent links:

• Our favourite outfit of 2024 is?already?here .
• Is?this ?more or less worrying than training an AI on copyrighted music?
• Bart's Lava Rocks??Bart's Lava Rocks .

This is only a glimpse into this week's The Knowledge newsletter – subscribe for FREE ?and every Friday it’ll arrive in your inbox with:

?? Exclusive access to selected courses in our LEARNING HUB; ??? The best new platforms in TOOLS; ?? Highlights from our latest COUNTRY PROFILE REPORTS; ?? ?? Some great and/or strange music in SOMETHING 4 THE WEEKEND; ?? A look back in TIME MACHINE; ?? The Music Ally Focus PODCAST; and ?? more links to our favourite unusual stuff in A LITTLE SOMETHING EXTRA.