Composium Digest: Are award shows going extinct?
Anouk Dyussembayeva | March 16, 2021
Composium Digest is a newsletter-only addition delivered once a week. Get overviews of interesting stories happening in the music industry, stay informed of various opportunities music startups and companies offer, and catch up on some of the Composium articles you might have missed.
Before we start
The three trends I’m seeing in the music industry at the moment:
1) acquisition of music catalogs
2) the NFT craze
3) everyone buying or creating music streaming platforms
AI that predicts your response to music
Secret Chord Laboratories is preparing to launch dopr, which is a neuroscience-based AI platform that “predicts how an audience will respond to music.”
It was found that the reason top-performing songs are compelling is because they usually have an element of surprise. Something about that appeals to our brains on an unconscious level.
Such information could potentially be very helpful for songwriters and producers to navigate and predict what songs will be popular.
However, just because data says that a song will become a hit doesn’t mean it will, and the concept isn’t so simple. In 2017, Berklee’s forensic musicologist Joe Bennett looked at the components of Christmas songs.
Taking UK’s Spotify charts for the week of December 25, 78 of the top 200 songs were Christmas-related. They all had lyrics with the words “home”, “love”, “Santa”, “snow”, and etc.
He also found out that 49% included sleigh bells, 95% were written in major, and the median tempo was 115 BPM (beats per minute).
With this perfect formula on hand, songwriters Steve Anderson and Harriet Green composed the ultimate Christmas song – "Love’s Not Just For Christmas”. Spoiler: the song didn’t even make it to the charts.
On the other hand, it does work in some cases — ScriptBook, for example, uses machine learning to approximate box office revenue through screenplay analysis. In other words, the startup analyses the movie’s screenplay and its visual story. ScriptBook’s predicted The Passenger to earn $118 million. How much did it actually make? Around $118 million. The predictions are extremely precise.
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Aaand K-pop is back on Spotify
I remember when. I remember, I remember when Spotify made an official statement on why hundreds of K-pop songs were off their platform, the reason for that being they weren’t able to renew a global licensing agreement with Kakao Entertainment (previously Kakao M)?
Let’s just say that the fans weren’t happy, and so the two companies resumed the discussion. They have now reached an agreement, which isn’t much different from the originally offered ones, and the songs should be back on Spotify very soon.
Giphy meets music
Songclip has raised an $11 million round. The startup, which is “offering a SaaS technology platform for integrating licensed music on social and digital platforms,” is tapping into a $5 billion potential revenue stream.
How? By creating an API that can be integrated with different apps and offering the most searchable library made up of 5-30 second compliant music clips.
Confident that can be a more social experience on social media, the app’s co-founder predicts that “in the next nine to 12 months … just like you never have a phone without a camera, you’re not going to have an app without music clips as a feature when you make videos.”
Songtradr buys Song Zu
Songtradr, an intelligent B2B music licensing marketplace, acquired Song Zu, an award-winning music & sound design company.
Why: Song Zu is one of the leading music audio and post-production services in the APAC (Australia and Asia Pacific) region. This acquisition further establishes Songtradr as one of the strong players in the music licensing business.
Before this deal, Songtradr also acquired Big Sync Music and Cuesongs, which are part of the Vinyl by Songtradr. The launched program gives users access to “creative talent, commercial music licensing, … pre-cleared music, sonic branding, custom composition,” and other features.
Big picture: The music licensing company’s brand solutions division is designed to help the advertising industry with brand storytelling — everything from sonic branding to building connections with their target audience.
These acquisitions are a huge part of cultivating Vinyl by Songtradr, and, in turn, the marketplace as a whole.
You can shop your favorite artist’s merch… on Amazon Music
Amazon Music announced that it will now have artist merchandise on its mobile app. For the world’s largest e-commerce company, this seamless integration isn’t surprising.
This adds a fun — and convenient — element to the user experience (while driving more revenue), creating yet another way for stars to connect with their super-fans.
To celebrate the launch, the streaming platform offers exclusive merch from musicians like Selena Gomez, Gwen Stefani, Pentatonix, and more.
TikTok competitor acquires streaming platform
I think we can all agree that one of the huge trends we’re seeing in the music industry now is everyone either selling/buying streaming platforms, or building them.
Riding the wave, Verzuz, a music platform created by Timbaland and Swizz Beatz, was bought by Triller. This deal automatically makes the two producers the shareholders of Triller Network.
This is great news for the TikTok competitor, since UMG removed its catalog from the app due to Triller not paying its artists on time, and signed a licensing deal with TikTok instead.
Whether the deal will position Triller as enough of a rival to TikTok, however, is yet to be found out. So far it seems that Triller is just copying — its announcement of TrillerTV looks like it’s following the path that TikTok already paved.
Can’t say the same about Verzuz though — the platform specifies in music battles, and “has had more than 5 billion impressions.” Let’s see where this goes!
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Are award shows going extinct?
It’s no big secret that many award shows — including The Emmy Awards, the Grammys, and predictably Oscars — are seeing an all time low amount of audience watching their shows.
While many can blame Covid for this, the numbers have been declining for years. Many fear that sooner or later, the award shows will die out, especially with streaming taking over. The award ceremonies have also been facing criticism for not being diverse enough. Some artists have took to Twitter to accuse and boycott Grammys.
Whatever the reason for the declining numbers may be, someone needs to come up with a solution. Bloomberg has some good suggestions for where to start.
DistroKid teams up with Snapchat
This year we see more and more social media platforms announcing they’re signing deals with music distributors, which is probably why DistroKid is partnering with Snapchat.
This will allow DistroKid musicians to license their works on Snapchat — given that the social platform has more than 265 million DAU (daily active users), this will give more exposure to the artists’ songs.
This isn’t the only partnership DistroKid recently landed: on February 24, it teamed up with Twitch to let its qualifying members join the Twitch Affiliate Program. This gives artists a chance to connect with fans and earn revenue on the platform.
On the other hand, Snapchat has been working hard to make its platform a hub for musicians and creators. Last year, it bought Voisey, which lets you overlay your vocals on top of instrumentals and thus compose your own “songs.”
FastCompany has published its annual list of 10 most innovative music companies
In 2021, we see both promising startups and big players impacting the music industry and empowering artists. The list includes companies like Verzuz for its music battles, Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment, Bandcamp for revolutionizing the way artists are paid, and more.
Who raised a funding round
This week, Epidemic Sound — a company with a library of royalty-free background music — raised $450 million, giving it a $1.4 billion valuation.
Investors include EQT Growth and Blackstone Group. The funding will be directed towards making CEO Oscar Höglund’s vision of soundtracking the internet a reality.
The numbers are quite fascinating: YouTube videos featuring its music are played 1.5 billion times every day… and that figure, as well as the amount of competitors, continues to grow.
Catch up on Composium’s original articles!
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