Welcome to Music Enterprise Worldwide’s weekly round-up – the place we be certain you caught the 5 greatest 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 revenue and scale back their touring prices.
The primary week of a brand new 12 months tends to be quiet within the music enterprise world, however the first week of 2024 proved to be a busy one for Common Music Group, at the least by way of its public bulletins.
The world’s largest music rightsholder introduced three main offers to begin the 12 months, and every of them, in a roundabout way, displays the ongoing globalization of music expertise, genres, and consumption.
First, UMG confirmed a brand new multi-year licensing settlement with Tencent Music Leisure, the biggest proprietor of music streaming platforms within the rapidly-growing Chinese language market. Underneath the contract, TME-owned streaming platforms QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music and WeSing will proceed to have entry to UMG’s music catalog.
Later within the week got here the information that UMG is shopping for the recordings catalog and a few of the music rights of Oriental Star Businesses (OSA), the Birmingham-headquartered label that performed a key function within the improvement of UK Bhangra and launched the careers of quite a few British and South Asian artists, together with the legendary Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Lastly, we acquired phrase that UMG’s international indie artist and label companies division, Virgin Music Group, is buying Los Angeles-headquartered Saban Music Latin. Underneath the deal, VMG will purchase Saban Music Latin’s catalog and can launch future albums by chosen Saban artists.
In different information, the annual MBW Entrepreneur Of The Yr award has launched in affiliation with Goldman Sachs. The inaugural winner for 2023/2024 is Meng Ru Kuok, founder and CEO of Singapore’s Caldecott Music Group. Caldecott is proprietor of the BandLab music-making platform that has been a real disruptor within the music area, with 60 million registered customers and 17 million new tracks being created every month.
In a Q&A with MBW, Meng declared that he expects there to be 1 billion music creators worldwide by 2030, “doubtlessly even sooner.” However he predicted that “the definition of a ‘music creator’ or ‘musician’ will change, simply because the definition of a ‘photographer’ has modified with the arrival of smartphones.”
Elsewhere, in information from late final month (in case you missed it), Germany-headquartered BMG continued CEO Thomas Coesfeld‘s mission to refocus the corporate again on music rights and recordings, with the announcement that BMG is transferring its two stay corporations, Undercover and Karo, again to their minority shareholders.
Common Music Group has kicked off 2024 with a giant deal announcement: The world’s largest music rightsholder has confirmed a brand new multi-year licensing settlement with Tencent Music Leisure (TME).
Underneath the contract, TME will proceed to have entry to UMG’s music catalog for QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music and WeSing. The expansive partnership consists of music streaming in Dolby Atmos and high-definition (HD) codecs.
Tencent Music Leisure is the biggest music streaming platform proprietor in China. As of the top of September 2023, the corporate’s on-line music companies counted 103 million paying customers.
TME is majority-owned by Tencent Holdings, which in flip leads a consortium (Concerto Companions LLC) that owns a 19.92% stake in Common Music Group…
Common Music Group (UMG) has taken one other step in its formidable enlargement into South Asian and South Asian-influenced music.
The world’s largest music rightsholder introduced on Thursday (January 4) that it’s buying all the catalog of UK-based South Asian music label Oriental Star Businesses (OSA Ltd.). The deal consists of all the label’s recordings, in addition to publishing rights “the place held.”
OSA operated for some 50 years from its headquarters in Birmingham, till it was offered to Hello-Tech Music Ltd. in 2017.
With a catalog of some 18,000 songs, concert events and video recordings, the label performed a key function within the improvement of the UK Bhangra style and launched the careers of quite a few British and South Asian artists.
OSA was based in 1966 by Muhammad Ayyub and his brothers, who had migrated from Pakistan to the UK’s West Midlands in 1961. The enterprise started by importing data from India and Pakistan to the Birmingham space…
“There’s loads of room to develop in Latin America and we’ve made nice progress. We like our prospects there.”
These are the phrases of JT Myers, co-CEO of Virgin Music Group (VMG), in an interview with MBW revealed late final 12 months.
This week, we acquired some information that signifies simply how eager Myers and his co-CEO at VMG, Nat Pastor, are on Latin music and its artists.
VMG, Common Music Group’s international indie artist and label companies division, has simply confirmed that it’s buying Saban Music Latin.
Underneath the phrases of the transaction – payment undisclosed – Virgin Music Group will purchase Saban Music Latin’s catalog and also will launch future albums by chosen Saban Music Latin artists.
VMG at present operates divisions in a number of Latin markets together with Mexico, the Andean area, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and Portugal; it additionally operates a Latin division within the US…
MBW’s Entrepreneur Of The Yr award for 2023/2024 (sponsored by Goldman Sachs) goes to Meng Ru Kuok, founder and CEO of Singapore-based Caldecott Music Group, residence to music tech firm BandLab Applied sciences – and its flagship music-making platform, BandLab.
MBW defined in January 2023 simply how disruptive BandLab was changing into – with over 60 million registered customers on the platform, cumulatively producing round 17 million new tracks every month.
In keeping with Meng, that is merely scratching the floor of a future whereby the variety of music ‘creators’ on this planet turns into similar to the variety of music ‘customers’ – and the place these two phrases turn into considerably interchangeable.
As Meng explains in our Q&A beneath: “I believe there will probably be over 1 billion music creators by 2030, doubtlessly even sooner.
“Nonetheless, that is with the caveat that I additionally consider the definition of a ‘music creator’ or ‘musician’ will change, simply because the definition of a ‘photographer’ has modified with the arrival of smartphones…”
BMG has agreed phrases that can see its two stay corporations, Undercover and Karo, transferred again to their minority shareholders.
The information follows a current announcement by BMG CEO Thomas Coesfeld that BMG will give attention to its two core service areas of music publishing and recordings.
Coesfeld introduced a “extra environment friendly and simpler” new international technique at BMG in October.
The CEO’s plan has already seen adjustments together with the closure of BMG’s New York-based theatrical productions initiative; no extra lively commissioning of latest movies are actually happening at BMG.
As well as, BMG has consolidated its New York and Canada-based recorded music operations into its Los Angeles workplace.
And BMG has discontinued its centralized worldwide advertising and marketing division for recordings, which up to now has been led by the corporate’s EVP International Repertoire, Fred Casimir… (MBW)
