Welcome to Music Business Worldwide’s weekly round-up – where we make sure you caught the five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days. MBW’s round-up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their income and reduce their touring costs.
As forecast by MBW in April last year, Latin music officially generated more than $1 billion in US recorded music revenue in 2022.
Total retail revenues generated by Latin recorded music in the United States reached $1.09 billion in 2022, an increase of 23.8% YoY.
That’s according to new data published on Wednesday (April 12) by the RIAA, which also showed that Latin music’s revenue increase was considerably larger than revenue growth for the US recorded music industry as a whole, which was up 6.1% YoY in 2022, to a record high of $15.9 billion.
Latin music had a market share of 6.9% of all recorded music revenue last year, an all-time high for the genre, the RIAA said, and up from 5.9% in 2021.
Artificial intelligence also continued to make headlines this week.
The government in China has drawn up proposals to restrict the development of generative AI in the country, while Universal Music Group has reportedly told Spotify and other music streaming services to limit AI-powered tech from ‘scraping melodies and lyrics’ from its artists’ songs.
Elsewhere, Diddy retracted his claim that he pays Sting $5,000 per day in royalties for sampling the former Police frontman’s 1983 hit, Every Breath You Take.
Plus, Kobalt posted a $21.9 million operating profit in FY 2022, up 71% YoY, while global on-demand music audio streams crossed the 1 trillion mark in just three months this year.
MBW called it a year ago, and now we can say we were right: US revenues from Latin recorded music shot past the USD $1 billion mark in 2022.
According to data released on Wednesday (April 12) by the RIAA, total retail revenues generated by Latin recorded music in the States came in at $1.09 billion last year, an increase of 23.8% YoY from 2021.
The numbers show Latin music continues to grow as a force in the US music scene….
One thing that most people across the music business – and the political spectrum – seem to be able to agree on right now is that the rapid development of AI is going to be highly transformative for our professional and personal lives.
Recently, over 1,000 signatories, including hundreds of tech, science, and academic leaders, signed an open letter calling on all AI labs around the world “to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4”.
Over in China, the government has drawn up proposals to take the restriction of the development of generative Artificial Intelligence in the country into its own hands.
Meanwhile, in the music industry, generative AI and its potential to infringe on copyrighted content is becoming an increasingly pressing concern for major rightsholders.
Universal Music Group, the world’s largest recorded music rightsholder, has reportedly told Spotify and other music streaming services like Apple Music to limit AI-powered tech from ‘scraping melodies and lyrics’ from its artists’ songs…
Last week, Kobalt announced that its revenues in FY 2022 (to end of June last year) were up 22% YoY, topping USD $600 million.
Now, via a new filing at UK Companies House, MBW can publish more granular details on Kobalt’s financial performance in the year – including a remarkable jump in annual profits.
Kobalt Music Group‘s annual revenues in FY 2022 from continuing operations stood at $631.2 million, according to the filing…
Rapper and producer Sean Combs, better known as Diddy, quickly retracted his claim that he pays Sting $5,000 per day in royalties for sampling the former Police frontman’s 1983 hit, Every Breath You Take.
Diddy in 1997 released the Grammy Award-winning track, I’ll Be Missing You, which he performed with singer Faith Evans and R&B group 112. The song was a tribute to Diddy’s fellow Bad Boy Records artist and Evans’ husband, the Notorious B.I.G., or Christopher Wallace.
The track, which sampled the Police’s Every Breath You Take, topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 11 weeks. On Spotify, Diddy’s song has been streamed over 443 million times, far less than the almost 1.5 billions streams of the original song by the Police…
On-demand music audio streams across the world crossed the one trillion mark in the first quarter of 2023 amid the growing consumption of digital music.
That’s according to Luminate (formerly MRC Data / Nielsen Music), which revealed that the 1 trillion stream milestone was surpassed as of March 31. It marked the first year in history for that milestone to be reached in just three months, Luminate said.
Luminate data also showed that music listeners have cumulatively spent roughly 960,000 years streaming music so far this year……
