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 maximise their income and reduce their touring costs.
Goldman Sachs gave the global music industry something to cheer about this week.
By 2030, according to Goldman Sachs’ highly-influential Music In The Airreport, annual global trade revenues pouring into the recorded music industry (labels, distributors, and artists) will grow to USD $53.2 billion.
That’s up by $7.5 billion on Goldman Sach’s prior most recent projection ($45.7bn). It’s also more than double the size of worldwide record biz revenues last year ($25.9bn) as counted by the IFPI.
Elsewhere in Goldman‘s 62-page report, written by respected GS analyst, Lisa Yang, alongside her colleagues, annual trade revenues in music publishing are projected to hit $11.6 billion by 2030, up $1 billion from its prior forecast of $10.6 billion.
Elsewhere this week, Korean K-Pop giant HYBE’s flagship group BTS announced that they’re taking a break to focus on solo projects.
The news spooked investors, with BTS’ ‘hiatus’ announcement causing HYBE’s shares to fall by nearly 25% to 145,000 South Korea Won on Wednesday (June 15), wiping around $1.5 billion from the K-pop giant’s market cap value.
This week also brought news of a new addition to SoundCloud‘s leadership team. Tracy Chan has exited his role at Amazon-owned livestream platform Twitch to lead SoundCloud’ global creator business as its new Senior Vice President of Creator. The news also means that Twitch is currently without a Head of Music. Watch this space.
Also this week, Vanessa Picken was named as the new Chair and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment Australia and New Zealand, while Spotify announced that it’s acquiring AI voice platform Sonantic.
How much is the global music industry going to be worth in 2030?
It’s a question that Goldman Sachs attempts to answer each year via an update to its highly-influential Music In The Air report, penned by respected GS analyst, Lisa Yang, alongside her colleagues.
This year’s 62-page update has now arrived – possibly along with a certain sense of nervousness for those investors who’ve cumulatively spent billions of dollars on music catalog acquisitions over the past 18 months…
SoundCloud has appointed music industry veteran Tracy Chan as Senior Vice President of Creator.
Chan’s appointment at SoundCloud means that he’s exiting his role at Twitch as Head of Music. Chan joined the Amazon-owned livestreaming platform in 2020 from Spotify, where he was Director of Product Management.
In a media statement announcing the news, SoundCloud President Eliah Seton calls Chan’s appointment, “a game-changing addition to [the] leadership team at SoundCloud…”
Spotify is buying London-based Sonantic, an AI voice platform that claims to be able to create “compelling, nuanced, and stunningly realistic voices from text”.
On Sonantic’s website, the company says its “technology is poised to revolutionize game and film production”.
Launched in December 2018 by Zeena Qureshi and John Flynn, Sonantic’s founders have backgrounds in speech and language therapy to Hollywood sound production…
