27 April 2018 - weekly round up (Music Matters)

Global recorded music revenues topped $17 bn last year - independent artists claimed $472m of it The global recorded music business generated wholesale revenues of USD $17.4bn - up 8.5% year-on-year. According to calculations by Midia Research, this figure represented year-on-year growth of $1.4bn, taking the industry back to its highest level since 2008 ($17.7 bn). This increase, says Midia, comes after the global recorded music industry grew by over $1bn in 2016. Perhaps the most surprising element of Midia's numbers concerns independent artists. Calculating the revenues generated via the likes of Tunecore, CD Baby and Bandcamp, Midia reports that self-releasing artists collected $472m in 2017, which gave them a 2.7% industry market share. That $472m figure was up 27.2% from the $371m Midia calculates independent artists took home the year before. Universal Music Group claimed the biggest global market share of the major record companies. Its $5.16bn in revenues resulted in a 29.7% worldwide share (inclusive of independent artists), says Midia. Warner saw the strongest growth of any major, however, generating $3.13bn, or 18% of the global market. Sony generated $3.64bn to claim a 22.1% market share, while the independent labels collectively generated $4.8bn - a 27.6% market share. These figures are based on distribution revenues, with Midia's Mark Mulligan explaining that "much independent sector growth was absorbed by revenue that flowed through digital distribution companies owned by major record labels that were thus reported in major label accounts." Either way, independent artist revenues plus independent label revenues accounted for a global total of $5.3bn in 2017 says Midia - slightly ahead of Universal's overall recorded music sales. Said Mulligan of the $472m generated by independent artists: "Up until now, this section of the market has been left out of measures of the global recorded music market with nearly half a billion dollars of revenue in 2017 and growing far faster than the traditional companies, this sector is simply too large to ignore anymore." After a Decade of Extreme Bootstrapping, Mixcloud Closes an $11.5 Million Round According to an article by Marsha Silva April 16, 2018 on the Digital Music News online publication; stating, Investors are making it rain at Mixcloud. Mixcloud is often plunked in the shadow of SoundCloud, though these musical ‘clouds’ are now quite different. These days, SoundCloud is emerging as a hotbed of ‘Xanax’ rappers, while Mixcloud is emerging as a longer-form audio content platform. Now, Mixcloud has $11.5 million to expand its vision globally. Mixcloud describes itself as “the leading digital audio streaming platform rethinking radio for listeners, curators, and brands alike,” which sounds about right. The site points to uploads from more than one million curators. Mixcloud’s founders originally charted a path to be something like a ‘YouTube for long-form audio’. The ten-year-old audio streaming platform is headquartered in London, where it’s been bootstrapping for most of its life. That’s a far cry from the wildly-overfunded Berlin-based SoundCloud, which has managed to burn enough cash to keep all of Germany warm. Of course, those types of fires can quickly get out of control: SoundCloud’s CEO, Alexander Ljung, recently got the boot after years of lavish non-budgeting — and 2018-9 is now all about survival in a brutal climate. Not the case at Mixcloud, where lean-and-mean has been a necessity. A quick profile in TechCrunch noted that the early days were aided by some UK governments grants, with employees sometimes working side jobs to keep the fire burning. The rest was the opposite of fancy offices and overspending, with scrappiness a core value. Now it’s time to shift gears. The $11.5 million round is coming from WndrCo, a media and technology holding company with offices in LA and San Francisco. As part of its investment package, WndrCo partners Ann Daly (the former president of DreamWorks Animation) and Anthony Saleh (an investor and artist manager of hip hop stars Nas and Future) will be joining the company’s board. Surprisingly, even without funding, the company has been able to maintain a decent following over the past decade. That’s noteworthy in an industry where survival itself is noteworthy. The partnership with WindrCo aims to expand Mixcloud’s services globally. Nikhil Shah, one of the four Mixcloud founders, said that WndrCo is the ideal partner for Mixcloud. We are excited that they share our long-term vision of what we are building, and to have them as a strategic partner for our next phase,” Shah noted. Anthony Saleh also said: “We at WndrCo couldn’t be more excited about coming together with the Mixcloud team and building on top of the great foundation they already have in place. We believe that the market opportunity, quality of the product, and the fantastic team make for a very special future for Mixcloud.”