From Taylor Swift crashing Ticketmaster to Tencent Music’s 1,000+ AI songs… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up
Welcome to Global Music Businessour weekly roundup – where we make sure you’ve captured our five biggest headlines over the past seven days. MBW rounding is supported by Centtriphelping more than 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their income and reduce their touring expenses.
This week, Ticketmaster’s website went down during a pre-sale for Taylor Swift’s Tour, with the crash resulting in calls, including from members of Congress, to live country and Ticketmaster have to break up.
After the pre-sale and ensuing outrage, Ticketmaster announced that it was cancel The general sale is scheduled for Friday (November 18), citing “extreme demand for the ticketing system and insufficient remaining tickets to meet that demand”.
The ticketing giant published a now-deleted blog post on Thursday (November 17), explaining what happened during the pre-sale, claiming that demand for tickets was so high that, Based on traffic to Ticketmaster’s website, Swift “will need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20 times as many shows as she’s currently doing)”.
The company notes that that volume means Taylor Swift has to give a stadium gig “every night for the next 2.5 years”. More than 2 million tickets were sold for Taylor Swift’s tour on November 15, “the most tickets ever sold to an artist in a single day” according to Ticketmaster.
Also this week, we reported that Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) said it has created and released more than 1,000 tracks with vocals created by AI technology that mimics human voices.
TME’s executive chairman, Cussion Pang, confirmed to analysts on the company’s Q3 earnings call that one of those songs “became the first song by an AI singer to be played.” online more than 100 million times on the internet”.
In other places, Primary wave purchased the rights to hit Whitney Houston songs as part of a deal for about 60 songs written by songwriters Shannon Rubicam and George Merrill, by the American pop duo Boy Meets Girl.
The purchase of the rights to Houston’s hit songs as part of Shannon Rubicam and George Merrill’s catalog follows Primary Wave’s $2 billion deal with financial giant Brookfield. last month.
In addition, MBW reported on five things we learned from BelieveQ3 earnings call, while BMG reached an agreement to purchase the rights to songs by Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson.
Here’s what happened this week…
Taylor Swift fans were furious this week after demand outstripped supply for the superstar’s Era’s Tour pre-sale, ticketed by Live Nation-owned Ticketmaster and promoted by a rival. of Live Nation is AEG.
On Tuesday (November 15), Ticketmaster’s website crashed during ‘Verified fan sales’ for Swift’s tour, with the issue resulting in calls, including from members of Congress, demanding that Live Nation and Ticketmaster be broken up…
The use of artificial intelligence-generated music has just accelerated.
We’re not talking about AI in mere instrument production, but rather the use of machine learning to actually mimic and even recreate human vocals – making the need for a real singer obsolete. .
MBW first explored this topic last March, in which we analyzed the long-term impact of HYBE’s investment in (and subsequently its acquisition) of Artificial Intelligence company Supertone. based in Korea – the company claims that its AI technology can create “a surreal and expressive picture”. voice [not] distinguishable from real people.
Now, in China, things have reached new heights: Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) says it has created and released more than 1,000 tracks with AI-generated vocals that mimic human voices out.
And get this: one of these tracks has surpassed 100 million streams…
3) TIKTOK, META, RUSSIA AND 37% GROWTH: 5 THINGS WE LEARNED FROM BELIEVE’s Q3 INCOME CALL
Paris-based Believe posted some impressive Q3 2022 results earlier this month, with revenue up 37% year over year.
The company now expects to record full-year 2022 revenue in excess of EUR 750 million, an increase of more than a third from 2021.
Doing so would push Believe’s revenue into the music’s ‘mini-major’ tournaments in addition to the likes of harmonyBMG and HYBE.
(Example: BertelsmannThe BMG he owns has grossed more than 663 million euros in 2021 compared to Believe’s 577 million euros, although Berlin-headquartered BMG has a significantly larger profit margin than Believe and is more affected. from the value of US dollars due to this company’s significant operations in the United States.)
Indeed, if Believe can sustain an annual growth rate of ≈33% next year, it will start to collect around a billion Euros per year…
Primary Wave purchased the rights to hit Whitney Houston songs as part of a deal for about 60 songs written by songwriters Shannon Rubicam and George Merrill, by American pop duo Boy Meets Girl.
That’s according to the Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reporting that the deal is estimated to be worth between $50 million and $100 million.
As reported by the FT, included in Shannon Rubicam and George Merrill’s catalog are two of Houston’s biggest hits: How Will I Know and I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me).
Primary Wave CEO Larry Mestel is quoted by the FT as saying “It’s one of the larger acquisitions we’ve made.”
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed…
BMG has reached an agreement to buy the rights to the song by Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson.
Included in the deal is Nilsson’s publishing catalog, as well as the artist and writer’s source of revenue from his hit songs.
Some of those songs include the hits Without You, Everyone’s Talkin’, One, and Coconut, as well as Jump Into The Fire, Gotta Get Up, Me and My Arrow, among others.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed…
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