Former CNN CEO Jeff Zucker has launched a joint venture with private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners and Abu Dhabi-based International Media Investments to acquire and invest in “large scale media, entertainment and sports content properties” on a global scale.
Chartmetric has told MBW that the improvements and additions within the recent ‘V2’ update to its platform reflect not only the need for increasingly granular data, but also the ongoing shift in balance of emphasis from artists to tracks. As well as categories such as genre, audience, Spotify streams, YouTube views, TikTok posts, Shazams etc., ‘Tracks List’ results can be filtered by growth metrics (100-1K% 7-day change, for instance) to instantly highlight fast-rising tracks.
Streaming service Deezer has published its latest financial results, revealing that its revenues grew by 12.1% year-on-year in the first six months of 2022. That meant revenues of €219.4m ($219.6m) split between Deezer’s consumer business (up 12.2% to €155m) and its B2B revenues (up 7.9% to €57.6m). Its home country France accounted for €132.4m of Deezer’s revenues in the first half of this year though: 60.3% of the total, only slightly less than the 60.9% for the same period last year.
The Record Label Industry Association of Korea has been surveying 1,500 streaming subscribers about their activity, including their favourite DSPs. According to Korea Bizwire, 52.7% chose Melon, the well-established Korean streaming service. That put it well ahead of YouTube Music (31.2%) and four other home-grown DSPs: Genie (20.2%), Flo (11.5%), Vibe (9.2%) and Bugs (8%). What about the big global players? Apple Music polled 7.3% and Spotify 4.7% in the survey, which (as keen mathematicians will already have twigged) allowed people to choose multiple services in their answer.
Deezer has big plans for Germany, and they involve a big partner: media giant RTL. The two companies announced their partnership in November last year, with plans to add music to the existing RTL+ subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service.
Spotify’s latest test is happening in Vietnam, although thanks to the internet (and specifically to helpful Reddit users) it’s now been covered in western news reports. The test is of a feature enabling listeners to record voice reactions to music playlists, which will then be published as mini-podcasts on their Spotify profiles. The news comes shortly after another test, this time in New Zealand, with a button encouraging Spotify users to create podcasts from within its main app
