Welcome to Music Enterprise Worldwide’s weekly round-up – the place we ensure you caught the 5 largest tales to hit our headlines over the previous seven days. MBW’s round-up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their earnings and cut back their touring prices.
The catastrophic wildfires nonetheless unfolding in Los Angeles County have clearly overshadowed each piece of music business information this week.
Amongst the devastation: Malibu’s beloved Harbor Studios, the place quite a lot of superstars have recorded, was sadly destroyed by the Palisades Fireplace.
Confirming the information on Instagram yesterday (January 9), proprietor Zach Brandon wrote: “I cried this morning, however not as a result of Harbor burned down. I cried as a result of it settled in with me that Harbor was taken from so many artists who cared so deeply about Harbor. It was a spot of musical freedom… a sanctuary in probably the most literal sense of the phrase. I cherished it.”
Brandon vowed that his crew would “come again stronger from this”, writing that “fortunately, the magic that has been bestowed upon us by our purchasers is one thing that may by no means depart. It’s within the soil, it’s within the air, and it’s in our souls.”
Elsewhere within the music business this week, we noticed breaking information involving Travis Scott, Daniel Ek, Blackstone, Spotify and extra.
Listed here are 5 of the most important headlines from the music enterprise over the previous few days…
We’re only a week into 2025, and the primary blockbuster copyright infringement lawsuit of the yr has already been filed in a New York courtroom.
In keeping with authorized paperwork obtained by MBW, Travis Scott, SZA and Future are being sued by RocNation-signed artist Victory Boyd, and her publishing firm Songs of Glory, for allegedly ripping off her music Like The Manner It Sounds to create their 2023 hit, Telekinesis.
Telekinesis has been streamed over 413 million instances on Spotify alone. It was launched as a part of Scott’s smash hit, US No.1album, Utopia (Cactus Jack/Epic Information/ Sony Music)…
Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek has launched into 2025 with one other important monetary transfer.
Ek bought an extra USD $27.8 million price of firm shares on Wednesday (January 8), persevering with a sample of considerable inventory transactions.
Since Ek cashed out a tranche of Spotify shares for the primary time in July 2023, he has banked round USD $568 million from SPOT inventory gross sales in whole (together with the most recent transaction), in response to MBW calculations…
It’s one of many key valuation and advisory gamers in music’s blockbuster M&A market. Now, Citrin Cooperman (CC) has an fascinating new proprietor… and a mammoth price-tag.
A Blackstone-led investor group has majority-acquired New York-headquartered CC, shopping for out the agency’s earlier investor, New Mountain Capital.
The Monetary Occasions experiences that the deal offers Citrin Cooperman – which claims to be one of many largest skilled providers corporations in the USA – an enterprise worth of over $2 billion…
The sum of money spent on music subscriptions by UK shoppers grew healthily final yr, up 7.8% YoY.
That’s in response to new preliminary stats from the UK’s Leisure Retailers’ Affiliation (ERA), whose members embrace Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and SoundCloud.
In keeping with ERA’s knowledge, some GBP £2.018 billion (USD $2.58bn) was spent on music streaming subscriptions in 2024, up from GBP £1.870 billion in 2023.
In financial phrases, that represented a YoY improve of GBP £146.4 million.
(To be extra-clear: ERA’s figures are retail quantities – i.e. what shoppers spent on subscriptions, reasonably than the wholesale determine paid to music rightsholders. They don’t embrace income from ad-supported tiers.).. (MBW)
Spotify is solely premiering a live performance movie from famous person artist The Weeknd on its platform this week, because the streaming firm expands its video content material technique.
Beginning Tuesday (January 7), the 45-minute particular, titled Billions Membership Stay with The Weeknd: A Live performance Movie, will stream solely on Spotify for 48 hours earlier than changing into accessible on different platforms.
The 48-hour exclusivity window represents Spotify’s first main check of time-limited long-form video content material….
