Type of business | Private company |
---|---|
Type of site | Digital media, international news [1] |
Available in | English |
Headquarters | |
Owners | Penske Media Corporation, Tim Ingham [2] |
Founder(s) | Tim Ingham |
Industry | Music industry |
URL | www |
Advertising | Yes |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | None |
Launched | 2015 |
Current status | Active |
Written in | PHP |
Music Business Worldwide (MBW) is a global music industry news and analysis website launched in 2015 by former Music Week editor Tim Ingham. As of December 2020, it ranked 22,845 in the list of most visited global websites according to Alexa Internet. [3]
Music Business Worldwide was founded by former Music Week editor Tim Ingham. He registered the company in 2014 and launched the website in 2015. [4] [5] In August 2015, Music Business Worldwide signed a content partnership deal with Business Insider . [6]
In May 2017, ex- Music Week publisher Dave Roberts joined Music Business Worldwide as associate publisher. [7] In October 2017, Ingham was presented with a Gold Badge award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (now The Ivors Academy) for having "supported or inspired the UK songwriting and composing community". [8]
In 2018, Music Business Worldwide signed a global content partnership with Rolling Stone . [9] In February 2020, Penske Media Corporation, the owner of Rolling Stone made a strategic investment into Music Business Worldwide. [9] As of December 2020, Music Business Worldwide was "more than 25% but not more than 50%" owned by each of P-Mrc Holdings, Llc and Tim Ingham. [2]
In 2019, MBW launched a weekly podcast. The first 124 episodes were broadcast without an overarching theme but were, in August 2021, [10] formalised as Season One. Until that point, the podcast had been hosted only on MBW's website, but thereafter all episodes were made available on mainstream podcasting platforms including Spotify, [11] with an even wider selection of platforms publishing it starting in July 2022. [12] [13]
In August 2016, Music Business Worldwide cited sources who said that Spotify was commissioning and promoting pseudonymous artists – which MBW dubbed "fake artists" – on its platform. [14] In July 2017, the Vulture made similar accusations, citing MBW’s story. [15] When Billboard covered the story, a Spotify representative denied such a practice. [16] Music Business Worldwide fired back by publishing a list of so-called “fake artists” on Spotify, who had no website or social media presence. [14] [17] [18] [19]
In February 2018, the publication uncovered a scam run on Spotify from Bulgaria. Music Business Worldwide estimated that the enterprise saw Spotify pay out over $1 million in royalties to the scammers. [20] [21] [22]
Music Business Worldwide has published reports featuring calculations, based on public filings, of the amount of money generated from streaming by the three major record companies. In February 2019, MBW calculated that Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group jointly generated approximately $19 million a day from streaming during 2018. [23] In February 2020, Music Business Worldwide calculated that the three companies were now collectively generating over $1 million per hour in royalties from streaming platforms. [24]
Downtown Music Holdings is an independent rights management and music services company based in the US State of New York. It comprises 10 businesses. All divisions live under the Downtown Music Holdings umbrella and are split between two verticals, Creator and Business.
Will Page is a British economist, author, podcaster and DJ. He is the former Chief Economist at streaming music service Spotify, a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
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Apple Music is an audio and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing playlists. The service also includes the sister internet radio stations Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country, which are broadcast live to over 200 countries 24 hours a day. The service was announced on June 8, 2015, and launched on June 30, 2015. New subscribers get a one-month free or six months free trial with the purchase of select products before the service requires a monthly subscription.
The Ringer is a sports and pop culture website and podcast network, founded by sportswriter Bill Simmons in 2016 and owned by Spotify since 2020.
Lost Kings are an American DJ duo consisting of Robert Abisi and Nick Shanholtz, based in Los Angeles. The duo gained popularity beginning in 2014 through their official remixes for artists such as Imagine Dragons, Krewella, Halsey, Vance Joy, Echosmith, Rihanna, and Tori Kelly, and through their original progressive house music. Managed by Disruptor Management, a joint venture at Sony Music Entertainment, they signed to Disruptor Records/RCA Records in October 2016.
Spotify, a music streaming company, has attracted significant criticism since its 2006 launch, mainly over artist compensation. Unlike physical sales or downloads, which pay artists a fixed price per song or album sold, Spotify pays royalties based on the artist's "market share"—the number of streams for their songs as a proportion of total songs streamed on the service. Spotify distributes approximately 70% of its total revenue to rights holders, who then pay artists based on their individual agreements. Multiple artists have criticised the policy, most notably Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke, who temporarily withdrew their music from the service.
Concord is an American independent creative rights company that develops, manages and acquires sound recordings, music publishing rights, theatrical performance rights and narrative content. It is a private company, funded by long-term institutional capital and members of Concord's management team.
Blackout Tuesday was a collective action to protest racism and police brutality. The action, originally organized within the music industry in response to the murder of George Floyd, the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, and the killing of Breonna Taylor, took place on Tuesday, June 2, 2020. Businesses taking part were encouraged to abstain from releasing music and other business operations. Some outlets produced blacked out, silent, or minimal programming for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the originally reported length of time that police officer Derek Chauvin compressed Floyd's neck.
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