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Music Streaming 2.0- New business models and emerging market.

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Music Streaming 2.0- New business models and emerging market.

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Music Streaming 2.0 – New Business Models & Emerging Markets - Midem 2017

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Assignment- 7 playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtXubnZUCa7Aa80WhOYZF5BYXELdHDgQQ

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtXubnZUCa7DfIPjx5EAT6H79hhBonfjG

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtXubnZUCa7AUV2_XkSHiyTeCwkMBOybP

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtXubnZUCa7DKjUlp1YV7HaIwNHSmwvi6

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtXubnZUCa7BisqJHfhUANvBN6Is-h-AL

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtXubnZUCa7D-a8Fup2J9tB1tZOOAB3z2

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtXubnZUCa7CzcDaMgGbPh_5vm9-bupFd

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Base song- Faye Wong's 'Dream Person'

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPwK3434nepJXivMtqv4jKGgQHFs5lXBvhttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPwK3434nepJXivMtqv4jKGgQHFs5lXBv

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuhu9dP_peU6SVQQA4mnDIq4xIvTteU7_

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Assignment 12.09.18
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtXubnZUCa7AhhEbaawQjV-2uB-o2g_32

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Playlist

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Sign in now to see your channels and recommendations!

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https://open.spotify.com/user/raihanizwan/playlist/4Bq26VKxNvHhl2yhnCn0DB?si=1zIik5DSTFSJdBza_ooASg

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbGACWoxw8GAr_amz2YSbkexrBY-4QH15

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Pity me, for I had not heard of Baby Shark until this weekend, when several people I spoke to at the End of the Road festival mentioned it. They hadn't actually heard it, just heard of it from friends with small kids. Specifically, how said friends were feeling the urge to slaughter said small kids if they played Baby Shark one more time. But if people who have never even heard it are talking about it, then clearly a primer is needed ...

What is it?

The phenomenon everyone is talking about is a nursery rhyme-like song and video, produced by a South Korean kids' entertainment company called Pinkfong. The Baby Shark song and dance video has had more than 1.6bn views on YouTube, by the simple expedient of creating something that sounds as if it was designed specifically to make adults want to yank their own teeth out with rusty pliers. In the video, a succession of cute kids do little dances while naming different sharks - baby shark, mommy shark, daddy shark and so on - before running away to safety.

Where did it come from?

Not South Korea, originally. Wikipedia claims it was an early 1900s children's rhyme, but the first musical iteration seems to be a faintly terrifying German techno version called Kleiner Hai by Alemuel, from a decade or so ago. That was translated into English (you can find videos of groups of Americans singing it: kids choirs, camp counsellors, parents poised between desolation and enjoyment).

Was it always so saccharine?

No! In an English translation of a 2012 collection of camp songs - that's camp as in summer, not as in Liberace - the song ends with the singer first losing an arm to the shark, then dying.

What changed?

Pinkfong. It removed the peril from the song, stripped away the techno - the Pinkfong version bears a resemblance to MMMBop by Hanson - and made it of a piece with its "aesthetic", that aesthetic being "child forcefed sherbet and given set of DayGlo paints". It released its version in 2016, and it gradually spread throughout south-east Asia like a virulent strain of flu, before crisscrossing the world on its way to pandemic status. Truly, a viral video. And, like any good virus, it has mutated: Pinkfong's Monkey Banana is the same track, with lyrics about a monkey instead.

How popular is it now?

Well, No 37 in the Official Singles Chart tells its own story. And the fact that people at a music festival who were otherwise engaged in watching Richard Dawson sing avant-folk songs about peasant life in eighth-century Northumbria would turn from that, seamlessly, to ask: "Have you heard Baby Shark?" suggests there is no reef to offer shelter. You'll never go in the water again.

Topics

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Scared of Baby Shark? A short guide to the year's most annoying song

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Pity me, for I had not heard of Baby Shark until this weekend, when several people I spoke to at the End of the Road festival mentioned it. They hadn't actually heard it, just heard of it from friends with small kids.

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Technology and How It's Helping British Underground Acts

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Technology and How It's Helping British Underground Acts

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In the 20th century, the vast majority of music you heard and bought was controlled by a small number of companies: record labels, radio stations and other dominators of the media. Artists needed them to reach the public and the public's choice was prescribed by what these gatekeepers believed could best turn a profit. You liked it or lumped it. Now, however, a networked world is giving artists and audiences the tools to reject those companies for ever.

In the 20th century, the vast majority of music you heard and bought was controlled by a small number of companies: record labels, radio stations and other dominators of the media. Artists needed them to reach the public and the public's choice was prescribed by what these gatekeepers believed could best turn a profit. You liked it or lumped it. Now, however, a networked world is giving artists and audiences the tools to reject those companies for ever.

The arrival of illegal filesharing on Napster in 1999 changed everything: it was a collision between a new format (MP3) and a new distribution system (the internet), both of which sat outside of the control of the traditional music business. It made the first cracks in the music culture cartel and gave the underground a hotline to a global audience for the first time.

As with all utopianism, though, there were many false messiahs. MySpace presented itself as a DIY revolution for artists, but spread itself too thin - it was simultaneously an audio player, a blog, a photo gallery, a video player, a sales window and a community platform where the users were also the creators.

Other platforms learned from this and focused on doing one thing well: community ( Facebook, Twitter), video ( YouTube), audio ( SoundCloud), sales ( Bandcamp), ticketing ( Songkick, Dice), self-serve distribution (TuneCore, CD Baby), alternative funding (Pledge, Patreon, Kickstarter) and so on. This decentralisation of the music industry became its reimagining as a Meccano set - where underground acts could choose the services they wanted based on their needs.

"After Napster, it was absolutely clear that digital technology was going to provide a platform that would allow artists to communicate with and sell directly to their fans," says Tim Clark of management company ie:music. "If they were clever, they could forge an independent path."

Today, the tools have ripened to the point where, if musicians build enough momentum, a record label becomes an indulgence, rather than a necessity. "Technology has democratised creativity," says Brian Message, a partner at artist management company ATC. "The tools are in everybody's hands to be able to create and to promote at any level."

This is exemplified most in 2017 by Chance the Rapper - Forbes estimates he made $33m (£25m) this year without the need for a label or even to sell physical music. But, before him, the dubstep and grime scenes in the UK saw a new generation of artists using YouTube for distribution, broadcast and community.

Luke Hood set up the channel UKF on YouTube in 2009 to support and showcase drum'n'bass and dubstep. It has since diversified across genres and drawn enormous audiences along the way, with 6.1 million subscribers to its dubstep channel alone.

"YouTube was a free, easy platform that everyone was using," he says when asked why he was drawn towards it. "A lot of acts on UKF can speak to their fans directly and establish a genuine connection that you couldn't do before in underground music."

Manchester grime act Bugzy Malone also built his following on YouTube. "It was definitely my main platform," he says. "I put things out there and I took feedback from the fans. I built it from scratch so that eventually I had a formula that worked." He now has close to a quarter of a million subscribers to his channel; his biggest video, Moving, has nearly 10m views.

YouTube allowed him to get to a level where he can work with record companies on terms he sets himself. He has a label-services deal with ADA, which offers functions such as disc manufacturing, physical and digital distribution, marketing and sales reporting.

"The guys are cool and massively helpful," he says of ADA. "But they're taking the lead from me and what it is that I want to do. They are there to back up the vision and be on the wagon that is already moving."

Yet record companies still profit from deals such as Bugzy's and take a cut of artists' earnings. Plus, their grip on companies offering services to independent artists is getting tighter. Sony Music now fully owns distribution firm The Orchard, while, on the label-services side, Warner Music owns ADA, Universal Music owns Caroline International and Kobalt owns AWAL (Artists Without a Label). All the record labels, major and indie, have an equity stake in Spotify.

But while the teeth marks of the old music business can be found in the emerging one, there are still ways acts can remain totally independent.

Benji Rogers set up direct-to-fan platform PledgeMusic in 2009 to allow acts to pre-sell, distribute and market their music. "It turns out that direct communication makes the artist the most money," he says. Rogers is also an early investor in SuperPhone - a supercharged communication and engagement tool built by musician Ryan Leslie, whereby all contacts and fans are managed through one phone number. "He is not in the mainstream," says Rogers. "He is literally the definition of independent."

Leslie was signed to Universal, but left to pursue a career where technology would give him the independence to create a new type of fan engagement that he felt the label system was too ossified to bend towards.

"Selena Gomez has 128 million Instagram followers, but she is definitely not selling 128m albums," says Leslie of the fundamental disconnect between social media profile and sales, from where the idea for SuperPhone sprang. "What I realised is that social media connections are very weak."

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'She has 128m Instagram followers, but she is definitely not selling 128m albums' ... Selena Gomez. Photograph: Chris Polk/Getty Images

In 2013, he gave his phone number to his Twitter followers to sign them up to SuperPhone. Within six months, 35,000 people had texted the number and, of that, 33,000 had responded to an automated request for more information about themselves. The following year, he went on tour and announced it to his fan database. "We sold 40,000 tickets with no label, no manager and no PR," he says. "All straight off SuperPhone."

After raising $75,000 in seed funding, he opened it up to all artists, including rappers such as Lil Wayne and Cardi B. They are all vetted in advance, so that they don't abuse the tools to spam fans, but rather use it carefully to maintain regular contact with them. "Success, in any iteration, happens at the speed of communication," he says.

All this comes as a reaction against the three-card trick Facebook has played on users: if you have a million followers, at best 2% of your audience will stumble across your posts, unless you pay Facebook to boost them, according to research by Ogilvy.

Quick guide
Five tips for staying independent in music

Think like an entrepreneur

"Young aspiring artists are also aspiring entrepreneurs," says Ryan Leslie, suggesting they find at least five key contacts for every part of their career - from lawyers and producers to video directors and graphic designers. "The top five in each category will hopefully be the nucleus that will catapult your career."

Be a digital polymath

"It's about making sure you are across as many platforms as possible and utilising all of them," suggests Luke Hood. "No one wants to rely on one revenue stream."

Avoid sales tactics

"Don't try and sell anything to people, even music," proposes Sephi Shapira. "Just monetise the engagement with the consumer."

Own everything

"It's one thing to license copyrights for a while, but it's entirely another thing to give them up in perpetuity," says Tim Clark. "It is the same thing with data."

Be outgoing - even if you don't feel like it

"You have to be tenacious," says Brian Message. "If you are a bit of a shoegazer in your bedroom, it will be a lot tougher than being a gregarious personality who is driven."

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"Every artist you know is - in some way, shape or form - paying Facebook and Instagram to reach their fans," argues Rogers. "What you get here is a sickness cycle. Would I build my business on Facebook? Hell, no! Because, in their business, I am the product. What is it giving me back?"

In a similar vein, social app EscapeX was set up to "decentralise social media" and give artists new levels of autonomy by putting them, rather than the major social networks, in charge of their communities. "The engagement economy is different," argues Sephi Shapira, the company's CEO. "It's not really the amount of fans that you have; it's how engaged you are and the spending power of your fans."

Thirteen-year-old Danielle Cohn - a megastar on lip-sync video app Musical.ly, where she has more than 8 million followers - recently signed up with EscapeX to take more control of her fanbase. In the app, she has a monthly subscription option, but Shapira says this only accounts for 10% of the money she makes

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'We could build something revolutionary': how tech set underground music free

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In the 20th century, the vast majority of music you heard and bought was controlled by a small number of companies: record labels, radio stations and other dominators of the media. Artists needed them to reach the public and the public's choice was prescribed by what these gatekeepers believed could best turn a profit.

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Streaming and Playlists- The future of going international?  

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Streaming and Playlists- The future of going international?  

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How Countries Around the World are Funding Music and Why it Matters

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How Countries Around the World are Funding Music and Why it Matters

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Courtney Barnett is a wise-cracking, guitar-mangling embodiment of what taxpayer support can do for a musician. In 2013, the Melbourne-based singer-songwriter was able to travel across the globe to play New York City for the first time thanks to support from the Australia Council for the Arts , a government agency. A year later, she was one of the first recipients of a new, state-sponsored grant that helped her record her debut album. When it came time to promote the results, 2015's Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit , government money also went toward financing her South by Southwest showcase and a European tour. Along with gracing critics' year-end lists and international charts, the record led to a Best New Artist nomination at the 2016 Grammy Awards.

Barnett counts herself lucky to have received these early fiscal shots in the arm. "Government grants gave me creative independence when I was starting out, because it meant I was worrying less about impressing for label and publishing advances, and I was less reliant on taking some big-company sponsorship to fund a tour," she says. As well as nurturing Barnett's artistic growth, the benefits were also deeply practical. Without government grants, she wouldn't have been able to take advantage of offers to play Coachella and American late-night TV shows.

Barnett played SXSW 2015 under the banner of Sounds Australia , a nonprofit founded several years earlier to spread the word about music from Down Under. Sounds Australia has organized events with more than 500 Aussie acts, including Nick Murphy, Hiatus Kaiyote, and the Preatures. Its funding sources are a hodgepodge of public and private, federal and state. The goal isn't charity: The Australian Trade Commission has a decades-long history of championing musical exports right alongside natural resources like coal or uranium, and researchers are currently investigating the value of the music Australia sends abroad.

Like Australia, many rich countries use public funds to nurture homegrown musical talent. The amounts are often paid out by federal arts councils that tend to prioritize traditional fine arts like painting and opera, while contemporary music frequently draws funds from public-private partnerships. Regional and municipal governments contribute, too. Though these webs of financial assistance for music can be complex, and unique from country to country, the overall impression is of a funding landscape increasingly driven by market forces as much as cultural ones. And the threat of an ax to these budgets is nearly always an election away.

Under President Trump, the relatively modest U.S. budget for arts spending-of the National Endowment for the Arts' $148 million budget in 2016, only $8 million went to programs for music, including opera-is now on the chopping block . The downturn isn't just happening in the States: More countries with generally higher levels of cultural spending seem to be acting more like America. It can seem more trivial than ever to worry about music spending when so many other issues are at stake. But in the countries with the strongest reputations for funding the arts, cultural expression, like other basic needs, is considered a universal right, not a privilege for the wealthy.

Scandinavia also shows that a rightward turn politically doesn't have to lead to less arts funding. Norway, for instance, has been led the past four years by a center-right coalition government that includes, for the first time, a nationalist party of the type that has been on the rise in Europe lately. And yet Arts Council Norway 's funding for music has soared, from less than $19 million in 2011 to nearly $47 million in 2017, which is impressive for a country with only about 5 million people. Total government spending on music in Norway also grew, from $117 million to around $140 million.

"Whether we have a right or left government, there seems to be a consistency in the culture politics," says space-disco luminary Hans-Peter , who started receiving grants later in his career, once he had a team to help him apply for them. "Norway is one of the best countries in the world to live in, and the arts funding is an important part of the social democracy." There's no guarantee of funding from year to year, so Lindstrøm uses the money mainly to scale up a current project, whether by making a video, pressing more records, or doing better marketing. Other musicians receiving Arts Council Norway grants range from avant-garde experimentalist Jenny Hval to postmodern metal explorers Kvelertak.

Scratch the surface of these admirably lofty ideals, however, and economic interests aren't far beneath. From ABBA to Max Martin, Sweden exports pop music like no other country, and its neighbors have surely taken notice. In Norway, there's now more talk of supporting music as an industry according to Joakim Haugland, whose Smalltown Supertown label releases Lindstrøm's records. Haugland welcomes more jobs being created in music and hopes the spending will also benefit more niche-oriented labels like his. Given Norway's small population, Smalltown Supersound relies on exporting its music to bigger markets. "The funding that we have might look good for you guys," Haugland says, referring to Americans. "But I would rather have the home market that you have instead of the funding."

Some 1,000 miles to the west of Norway, Iceland is a curious case. With only about 330,000 people-roughly half the population of Vermont-the tiny island nation has long punched above its weight culturally, thanks to phenomena like Björk and Sigur Rós. And yet in 2014, Iceland's parliament its budget for the national body that funds art projects from $45 million to $25 million , spurring intense criticism from people across the creative spectrum. Still, total government spending on music in Iceland is around $9 million a year according to Sigtryggur Baldursson, a founding member of the Sugarcubes who now runs Iceland Music Export, a public-private partnership. Noting that newer Icelandic bands are more pop-oriented than its previous indie and experimental music staples, he says, "We're trying to have music projects thought of more in the vein of startups."

Surely the biggest of Iceland's current batch of musical exports are pop-folk act Of Monsters and Men, whose 2011 album My Head Is Animal went platinum in America, among several other countries, and spawned the Top 20 hit " Little Talks ." The group never took grant money from the government, but to support its first North American tour, it did a financial boost of about from the Kraumur Music Fund , which was underwritten by a private foundation and now exists as an annual prize for best album made in Iceland. "It wasn't a ton of money when you're talking about touring a foreign band in another country," recalls Heather Kolker, Of Monsters and Men's longtime manager, "but it helped." Artists from Iceland, after all, can't just hop in a van and hit the road. Kolker, who lived there for four years, says the country's music really does play a part in boosting tourism. "The government should take it seriously."

In North America, it's hard to imagine a government-supported artist more prominent right now than Abel Tesfaye, the Canadian pop lothario best known as . Now a multiplatinum artist who has worked with everyone from Daft Punk to Kendrick Lamar, in August 2013 the Weeknd was already booked in overseas arenas ahead of his proper major-label debut album, . That's when his management received almost $150,000 for marketing, promotion, and more. (Neither the Weeknd nor his management would comment for this story.)

The money came from , a public-private partnership geared toward advancing the Canadian music industry. The Canada Council for the Arts , which funds classical music, almost $21 million in music grants and prizes last year, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government sharply increased federal arts spending. FACTOR, with funds from the Department of Canadian Heritage and Canada's private radio broadcasters, provided only about $11 million in , but that was mainly classified under folk, alternative, rock, and pop. A FACTOR grant financed the showcase gig that brought Majical Cloudz to the attention of Lorde, who later brought the Montreal duo on her North American tour. FACTOR also the making of Grimes's , as well as recent projects by Carly Rae Jepsen, White Lung, and U.S. Girls. In recent years, two of the larger Canadian provinces, and British Columbia , have also rolled out their own music funds.

If Scandinavian governments treat art as a right, Canadian officials seem to be buying into the idea that music creates economic value. "That's been the big shift in thinking, from a cultural activity to an investment," FACTOR president Duncan McKie explains. Likewise, and unlike the Canada Council, FACTOR is admittedly oriented toward commercial success. Where FACTOR is at least partly taxpayer funded, Canadian musicians have another, wholly private source of money available to them, too. Radio Starmaker , funded by the major commercial broadcasting companies, awarded about $6.6 million in last year, to Grimes, Majical Cloudz, Purity Ring, Fucked Up, and many other artists considered "rising stars."

"If I didn't get it I'd be making synth-pop," jokes Owen Pallett , the violin-looping singer-songwriter, recurring Arcade Fire collaborator, and Oscar-nominated film composer. More seriously, Pallett contends that trickle-down economics, at least in artistic communities, actually works. Even when he has been playing to smaller crowds in out-of-the-way towns, he says, he has been able to pay his band what he considers a living wage: What they'd make if they were working in a bar at home. "Government funding for the arts is a mark of a successful civilization and should be maximized," Pallett emphasizes. He's less interested in nitpicking FACTOR's funding choices than expanding them.

Grants can also keep artists afloat as they navigate the new economic realities of streaming. "Now the concept of putting even $10,000 into making a record is an expensive investment on something that probably isn't going to return that much," says Preoccupations guitarist and synth player Scott Munro, whose Calgary-based band has received FACTOR funding. "You'll make money off radio play, but it's definitely not like it was even 10 years ago. The granting system helps to ease that transition." For a band on Preoccupations' level-critically respected and able to play festivals worldwide, but not a presence on major charts-that money might mean being able to record in a better studio without going deep into debt or having to go back to holding down a regular job.

In country after country, government support for music, when not weathering cutbacks, seems to be growing more purely economically motivated. On the economic side is South Korea, which a $1 billion investment fund for its pop industry in 2005. That led to the K-pop boom that reached cultural ubiquity with PSY's "Gangnam Style." Official documents show that the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has allocated at least $6.7 million for music in 2017. However, the agency also found itself ensnared in the influence-peddling scandal that led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye; its CEO, Song Sung-gak, resigned last November amid embezzlement charges. And Chinese consumers have recently been boycotting Korean pop culture out of objection to a new missile-defense system.

As for cuts, Arts Council England had its overall budget by 30 percent under austerity policies in 2010, though it has rebounded slightly since. That same year, the once-prolific Scottish Arts Council was replaced by Creative Scotland , an agency with a broader remit. But earlier this year, Creative Scotland's current leadership warned of budget cuts.

In response to the planned cutbacks, the artistic community has resorted to the cold logic of business. In an April essay called " What Good Are the Arts? ," David Byrne invoked the economic argument for arts funding: "Investment in the arts doesn't cost us money-it us money!" Sure enough, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio's office recently issued a declaring that the city's "music ecosystem" generated $21 billion in economic output in 2015. But an ecosystem can't truly be measured in dollars; Byrne didn't create the Talking Heads' classic Remain in Light simply out of concern for Warner Bros. Records' shareholder value.

When President John F. Kennedy championed public support for the arts, in a 1962 magazine article, he that "the life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation's purpose-and is a test of the quality of a nation's civilization." And when a song rewires how we see the world, makes us cry or helps us fall in love, music lovers don't usually wonder if they should have put their time and money toward a well-diversified portfolio instead.

Funding the arts makes more sense if supporters acknowledge what it's really about-being the type of country where basic rights, including free creative expression, are assured-rather than couching it in economic language that may only bore its intended target while alienating the cause's natural backers. Advocacy for the arts could at least be .

"Even if cultural industries did not generate significant economic benefits-and they do-we would still argue the state should be funding art and culture," says Don Wilkie, co-founder of Montreal's venerable Constellation Records label. "In the western world at least, vast sums are continuously reallocated by the state in the service of corporate shareholders, but the culture industries arguably serve far greater numbers of citizens and surely are as worthy?"

All told, American musicians have advantages that artists in other countries don't. And there are certain benefits human beings everywhere should enjoy. Music is one. The profit motive has of course resulted in plenty of profoundly great music, as fans of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Madonna, Rihanna and Kanye West-or, truth be told, most of today's grant-funded musical exports-can attest. But public spending on art, for art's sake? It's still a test of the quality of a nation's so-called civilization. As Courtney Barnett says: "Whoever pays the piper calls the tune, you know?"

Back to home

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How Countries Around the World Fund Music-and Why It Matters

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Courtney Barnett is a wise-cracking, guitar-mangling embodiment of what taxpayer support can do for a musician. In 2013, the Melbourne-based singer-songwriter was able to travel across the globe to play New York City for the first time thanks to support from the Australia Council for the Arts , a government agency.

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Image: Zhang yu/Imaginechina

While more people move to streaming music over downloading as a consumption method, global providers like Spotify still struggle to turn a profit.

But thanks to its massive scale and diverse revenue opportunities, China's version of Spotify, QQ Music, is actually making money, the company claims.

According to Chinese reports, the general manager of the music division of QQ's owner Tencent, Wu Weilin (Andy Ng), said this week at a music industry forum that the service has managed to turn a profit.

Tencent is a Shenzhen-headquartered internet giant that is perhaps better known for its dominant WeChat messaging app. Its other big brand name, QQ, is a family of sites that includes a blog, a games platform, and a social network.

Image: Stringer/Imaginechina

QQ's ability to be profitable is no mean feat, where plenty of Western competitors have fallen by the wayside. The biggest player in the market now, Spotify, showed a net loss of over $200 million last year - despite raking in a massive $2 billion in revenue.

The main outflow of money goes to song royalties to record labels and copyright owners - more than 70 percent of Spotify's revenue went to that.

Other big names like Pandora report growing revenues too, but the company lost $169 million in 2015.

Apple Music, which doesn't have a free tier, says it has upwards of 15 million subscribers, but is unlikely to be profitable as a division just yet.

While QQ also has to deal with royalty payments, it's had a number of advantages.

Tencent has serious negotiating power at the table with record labels.

For one, as one of China's biggest dotcoms - WeChat has 762 million [pdf] active users - the company has far better negotiating power at the table with record labels.

Back in 2014, Tencent already used this to its advantage, striking exclusive Chinese distribution deals with large music producers the likes of Sony, Warner Music and South Korea's YG Entertainment.

Second, the majority of Chinese users are plugged into its ecommerce system, where they already buy tickets and book cabs cashlessly through WeChat.

This allows QQ Music to offer products like concert tickets, providing an additional line of revenue to its freemium model of advertisements and paid subscription.

QQ's enormous subscriber base

QQ's user numbers have also well eclipsed the competition. QQ Music reports 100 million daily active users, and 400 million monthly actives.

Spotify, in comparison, has about 100 million monthly actives, although it has 30 million paying subscribers - three times QQ's 10 million paying subscribers.

Still, despite QQ's smaller proportion of subscribers, Chinese analyst iResearch estimates that over half of users in China would have paid for something on their music apps this year. That could be a one-off purchase like an album or concert tickets, even if it's not an ongoing subscription.

Last Dec., Singaporean singer JJ Lin released a single on QQ exclusively. Within a week, 610,000 people paid 2 yuan (30 cents) each to download it.

Image: Wei hui/Imaginechina

That month, a new single from Faye Wong's daughter, Dou Jintong, sold 25,000 copies for the same price within three days.

The willingness to pay is key. iResearch added that beyond the 57 percent that already pay, a further fifth of users surveyed say they would be open to paying for something down the line, meaning QQ has a receptive audience with potential to spend.

And now, QQ is about to get even bigger. Tencent said two weeks ago it plans to merge QQ Music with two other popular music services, Kugou and Kuwo, run by China Music Corporation.

The spun-off entity will be run by Tencent, and will reach well over 800 million users across the three members.

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Why QQ Music, China's Spotify, is profitable while other streaming music providers aren't

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While more people move to streaming music over downloading as a consumption method, global providers like Spotify still struggle to turn a profit.

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Curated Playlists And Radio - Lessons - Tes Teach

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Lesson description: Whitepaper - Music Industry ... A MIDiA Research report prepared exclusively for Midem ... Streaming music services are not a neutral observer in cross border listening but ... Strategic use of local curated playlists transformed French act Feder's ... Streaming services are becoming full stack, end-to-end marketing and ...

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Hofstede's 5 Cultural Dimensions visualized on a world map

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Pitfalls of International Marketing Campaigns I Chris Halliburton

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Self Reference Criterion and Ethnocentrism

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Importance of tackling SRC and Ethnocentrism in International Marketing

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Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Video: Explained With Examples of Each Dimension

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Learn more about this model at: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_66.htm We know that we are living in a global age. Technology has brought everyone much closer together. This means that people of different cultures find themselves working together and communicating more and more. This is exciting, but it can also be frustrating and fraught with uncertainty.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oYfhTC9lIQ

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Leadership Speaker Erin Meyer: Low Context vs. High Context Societies

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A few things to consider, according to target country

https://www.tes.com/lessons/GbbtnIXdB4IMeg/mub-605-week-4

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Brexit and how it affects music industry

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Brexit and how it affects music industry

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https://www.tes.com/lessons/PvK86YhMvIYiog/brexit-and-music

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Okay

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Do we really need to 'go international?'

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Do we really need to 'go international?'

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What are the benefits of marketing and promoting outside of home country?

What are the challenges of marketing music globally?

What are the sources of income a music seller can obtain globally?

What is the job of a global marketer?

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The World is huge, with 1001 different types of people and problems. And markets. Take a look at these three videos. List down points  mentioned, and compare how these three countries work, in terms of music business.

https://www.tes.com/lessons/GbbtnIXdB4IMeg/mub-605-week-4

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It's inevitable. It's best to have this, to keep track of what we've done so far :D