Author: Jessie Sparrow

The German music market has grown again after two years of decline. The growth drivers were streaming services and, surprisingly, vinyl records as well.

Ostensibly driven by income from audio streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube Music, Audible and Co. as well as vinyl sales, the German music market recorded an 8.2 percent increase in sales for 2019. This emerges from the annual report of the Federal Music Industry Association .

Income from streaming services and vinyl sales have increased

After two years of declining sales, the German music market grew again last year. According to the Federal Association of the Music Industry, it should have brought in 1.6 billion euros and occupy fourth place in the global ranking. According to the association, audio streaming with a plus of 27.0 percent and, surprisingly, vinyl records, whose turnover from sales increased by 13.3 percent, are responsible for the growth. The turnover from CD sales, however, fell by 10.5 percent.

According to the association’s chairman, Florian Drücke, two thirds of the music business in Germany has now shifted to the digital space. Audio streaming, for example, accounts for around half of total sales. CDs make up 29 percent, audio downloads 6.2 percent and vinyls 4.9 percent.

These genres have boosted sales

Pop music continued to be the biggest sales driver last year with 25.8 percent. Hip Hop and Rap, on the other hand, took second place for the first time with 19.7 percent, closely followed by rock with 19.6 percent. The genres “children’s products” and dance accounted for 9.8 percent and 7.3 percent of sales.

It has more than 60 million users, is popular with teenagers and has made some of them stars: the Musical.ly app . Three years after the start, the hype startup is now announcing its exit. 

Snap’s share price shows just how hard it is to compete against Facebook. The parent company behind the Snapchat app has steadily lost its value since it went public. After the startup turned down a three billion offer from Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and Instagram simply copied many functions – with success. With that, the unique selling point of Snapchat was gone from one day to the next.

Musical.ly: Purchase price between $ 800 million and $ 1 billion

Perhaps this story explains why the Musical.ly app has now decided to sell. The Chinese social media giant Toutiao is taking over the startup, founded three years ago, for a sum of between 800 million and one billion US dollars. The company announced on Friday. In a 2016 funding round, Musical.ly was valued at $ 500 million. The offer should continue to run independently in the future.

Interestingly, the exit is rated very differently by the media. In times when investors are no longer so enthusiastic about social media, the sale of Musical.ly stands out as a “success story”, writes Techcrunch . At Recode, on the other hand, the sale is viewed more critically: It is a sign that the shareholders no longer believe in steep growth. The truth should lie in the middle: Of course, it is a success when an app makes a million-dollar exit, precisely because successful social media platforms apart from Facebook have become rare. However, one can also assume that – if everyone really believes that a startup can seriously compete with Facebook – a sale would not have been an option.

Musical.ly, the springboard for teen stars

Musical.ly was founded in 2014 by Luyu Yang and Alex Zhu. The company’s headquarters are in Los Angeles. Similar to Snapchat, the app is particularly popular with young users. Teenagers can imitate well-known songs in playback style, the so-called Musical.lys last a maximum of 15 seconds. The app has – according to its own statement – more than 60 million users. The platform has made some of them stars: The German twins Lena and Lisa grew up on the social network, they now have more than 20 million fans.

Youtube Music and Google Play Music are said to have reached the 15 million subscriber mark.

The music streaming services from Google now apparently have more than 15 million subscribers. The US media company Bloomberg reported on Wednesday evening .

The subscriber numbers include the two streaming services Youtube Music and Google Play Music. This also includes users who have taken out a test subscription and have not yet paid for the service.

Still far from the competition

Bloomberg names two insiders as sources who do not want to be named because the information is not publicly available. Youtube did not want to comment on the number of subscribers to Bloomberg.

Google is still a long way from its two major competitors, Spotify and Apple Music. Spotify has more than 100 million paying users and Apple has more than 56 million . The Wall Street Journal reported in early April that in the US market, Apple Music, with 28 million paying subscribers, overtook Spotify, whose premium version is used by 26 million people in the US. Google’s two streaming services are still a long way from achieving user numbers of this magnitude.

Google’s plans for Youtube Music

Even before the streaming service started, there were many music videos on YouTube. However, users had to put up with advertising. The Youtube Music app, which specializes in music, has only been available since May 2018, and its paid version is ad-free. In the long term, it is likely that some of the successful features of Google Play Music will be integrated into Youtube Music and that Google’s older streaming service will be abandoned in favor of Youtube Music.

Google has already started to redirect certain user groups to Youtube, such as artists who are interested in using the Google Play Artist Hub. The service allows independent artists to upload their music and specify how they want their music to be available on Google Play. One of the options is to stream your own tracks on Google Play Music. On the English-language page of the Google Play Artist Hub, a notice appears that no new registrations are possible. Interested parties are advised to become a YouTube artist instead and use one of three suggested partners to offer music for sale or download.

The Chinese Tencent group is planning the IPO of its music division in the USA. It would be one of the biggest IPOs in the tech industry – and that would suit the Chinese model company.

The Chinese Internet company Tencent is planning to spin off its music division and go public in the United States. Even if details of the deal have not yet been communicated, one can already understand the dimensions of such an IPO (Initial Public Offering): The IPO could cost around 4 billion US dollars – with a valuation of the company of around 25 billion dollars.

For comparison: The Swedish competitor Spotify, which successfully launched in early April via direct placement on the New York Stock Exchange, was valued at around $ 26.5 billion at the time – the current price is just above the value that the company received during the first Trading day reached.
The first speculations about a Tencent spin-off already existed in April after Spotify launched. Both companies each own around nine to ten percent of each other’s shares – a fact that, excitingly, has resulted in higher analyst ratings for both companies.

The reasons for such a step can only be speculated: Of course it is fascinating for both partners to fish in each other’s waters. It remains to be seen whether the bill will work equally well for Tencent Music and Spotify. And the cooperation with Spotify, if it is not limited to financial matters, can open doors for Tencent Music with the big labels. After all, the western music market is still structured a little differently than other industries.

Tencent will conquer the west in the next few years

E-commerce, online advertising, social media, payment and video games – there is apparently no lucrative area that the Chinese Internet company leaves out. And that works damn well in the core market of China. In many cases, Tencent is following the country’s usual (and not disreputable) strategy of creative copying. As with a mashup, different technical features are linked and combined – with the aim of generating added value from the transfer. Tencent, that much is already clear today, is an issue for the large Internet companies in the western world and will leave its mark on the West in the next few years.

Music and a pleasant audio environment can increase productivity in the workplace and provide relaxation afterwards – at least that’s what studies suggest. We’ll show you some tools that will provide you with crackling chimneys, birdsong, cozy cafes and pleasant background music.

What do we all have great  noise-canceling headphones or modern laptop speakers for? For example, so that we can be pampered musically or simply with beautiful nature noises at work. Since the 1970s, researchers have repeatedly found a connection between music and increased productivity. In 2005, the American Teresa Lesiuk found out that people under the influence of music complete their tasks faster than those who cannot be exposed to sound. She was also able to determine a positive effect in terms of the wealth of ideas. How can that be?

Background audio helps with work

Put simply, it’s the dopamine. The happiness hormone – assuming the right choice of music – ensures a positive mood and stimulates motivation. While fast-paced pieces of music are said to be helpful for simple activities, researchers recommend quieter titles for more complex tasks. There are also relaxing natural sounds or sounds specially designed to activate different brain regions, such as white, brown or pink noise. All this and more are provided by the providers of various audio services and apps, some of which we present here.

These music and audio tools will help you

Focus at Will

If you want to take music and ambience really seriously for more productive work, Focus at Will offers you well-founded content. According to the developers, the music, composed according to neuroscientific findings and specially curated for certain requirements, increases the attention span compared to the normal value of 20 minutes to up to 200 minutes. The service is primarily aimed at students, professional writers, developers and lawyers. According to the developer, the catalog of music and ambient sounds such as running water amounts to several thousand hours. You can use Focus at Will as a client on macOS and Windows , as an app on iOS and Android or in a web browser.

Price : Free / from $ 9.95 per month per user (Pro version)

Noisli

At Noisli you get a versatile sound mixer with which you can put together a feel-good atmosphere from up to 28 different sounds with a click of the mouse. Would you like the crackling of a campfire with ocean surf and rumbling storm clouds in your ears? Or do you prefer noise that increases concentration? Noisli makes it possible. As a small additional feature, Noisli even has a text editor on board, which is supposed to enable trouble-free and efficient work, as well as colored backgrounds and timers for automatic switch-off. It is available in every browser, as an app for iOS and Android and as an extension for Google Chrome . You can hear up to 16 different sounds per day for one and a half hours free of charge.

Price : free / from 8 euros per month and user (Pro version) / 2.29 euros (app)

Hipstersound.com

The name says it all – and hipster sound doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously. The service offers you various restaurant and café soundscapes, to which you can switch on other noises such as rain and open fire, but also casual jazz, piano and guitar music. Only three environments are available in the free web service; more are available in the premium model. This also brings additional features such as a rain noise simulator and a generator for noise of different frequencies.

Price : Free / $ 29 per year per user (Premium)

Coffitivity

It is a cliché that aspiring writers, bloggers and creative workers in general often sit in cafes to be diligent. There is a reason for this, however: Quiet work environments supposedly suppress the creative thought process, while ambient noises that are too loud distract from the essentials. The Starbucks backdrop is therefore exactly in the middle. The makers of Coffitivity take advantage of this and offer different types of background rumors from restaurants, bistros and more. You can virtually sit down in the browser. Coffitivity is also available as a free, somewhat streamlined app for iOS and Android and as an open source app for macOS .

Price : Free / from $ 9 per year per user (Premium)

Spotify

Unsurprisingly: Spotify, the world’s best-known music streaming service, can also give you a musically support at work as it does during sports workouts and relaxation. For this you will also find a variety of suitable playlists on Spotify itself, which are designed for concentrated work. It’s best to find out for yourself how well the respective combinations fit you. We have picked out a few recommended ones for you .

Price : free / 9.99 euros per month and user (premium)

Rainy mood

“Rain makes everything better” – at least that’s what the Android and iOS app Rainy Mood thinks and provides you with a varied selection of rain and thunderstorm noises in an endless loop that you can put together individually. This should ensure relaxation and a pleasant working atmosphere. You can also use Rainy Mood in your browser for free. Here, however, you do not have the opportunity to put together your own individual rain backdrop. The ministry does that for you. For this you can also play music selected by the provider that is embedded by YouTube.

Price : free / 3.19 euros (Android) / 3.49 euros (iOS)

Noise

If you are busy with your iPhone or iPad , or at least have it close by at work, you can use the Noise app to create a productive work audio atmosphere. You can put together your backdrop from twelve different ambient sounds such as the babbling sound of the sea, a cozy café or the spring wind. If you want different sound environments for different situations, you can save your compositions as mix tapes. Additional noises and the option of running Noise in the background are available as an in-app purchase or as part of the premium version, which also supports Airplay.

Price : free / 1.09 euros (individual sounds / functions) / 8.99 euros (premium)

Amazon is launching an alternative to Spotify Free. The free, advertising-financed music streaming offer from Amazon Music can be used on smartphones, tablets and Fire TV devices.

So far, Amazon has only offered its free, ad-supported music streaming service to owners of an Echo speaker . Since November 19, 2019, it can be used via the Amazon Music apps on any smartphone with Android and iOS, web browser and Fire TV products without Amazon Prime membership.

Free Amazon Music Offer: You only need an Amazon account

With theAmazon offers free streaming service * an alternative to the free Spotify Free offer from the music streaming industry leader Spotify. There is a big difference between the two free services: While Spotify Free users have access to the complete streaming offer of 50 million tracks, Amazon’s free service delivers a reduced selection of music based on playlists and, according to their own statements, “thousands” of radio stations on a song, artist, era or genre. They also have access to the top playlists – and “the best Christmas carols”.

The advertisements on Amazon’s service take place after playing some songs and are several seconds long. The length and number of advertising depends on usage, according to Amazon. Offline playback is not possible in the advertising-financed model, which is reserved for paying customers.

Despite the comparatively limited scope, it is clear that Amazon’s offer is a clear challenge to Spotify. According to the latest figures , Spotify has 248 million users , 113 million of which are paying customers. Spotify’s ad-financed service also offers a wider range of functions: Among other things, users can also create their own playlists. For people who only listen to music in the background, the restrictions should not be relevant.

Amazon Music with 3 paid models

In addition to the new free offer, Amazon now offers three different paid models for its music streaming service. Prime Music is part of the Amazon Prime Bundle , which costs 69 euros a year. It includes access to two million songs and “thousands of playlists”.

Amazon Prime Music Unlimited is divided into two sections:For 9.99 euros per month * , users get access to 50 million songs, thousands of playlists and radio stations. Similar to Spotify, Amazon offers family membership for 14.99 euros. Furthermore, Prime customers can book the Unlimited tariff a little cheaper for 7.99 euros. Since September 2019, Amazon has been offering the Amazon Music HD service with better sound quality to match its premium echo loudspeaker Echo Studio (test) . HD content is transmitted at up to 3.7 megabits per second, while the standard quality on Amazon Music is a bit rate of 320 kilobits per second. Amazon’s HD Music costs from 14.99 euros or 12.99 euros for Prime customers.

The supposedly planned by Apple super subscription for music, news and TV services is apparently taking shape. Such a service could be launched as early as 2020. Apple hopes for more customers.

A few weeks ago, the media had already reported on Apple’s alleged plans to want to put together a combination of the paid services Apple TV Plus and Apple Music. According to new information, the rumored Super Abo should – at least in the US – include Apple TV Plus and Apple Music as well as Apple News Plus. This subscription offer could be launched as early as 2020, as Bloomberg reports, citing company insiders.

Super subscription: Apple is said to have negotiated with publishers

The new rumors about the supposedly planned super subscription feed on information about commission negotiations that Apple is said to have conducted with publishers involved in the News Plus service. Accordingly, the iPhone group is said to have secured the rights there to bundle the subscription service with other paid services. The News Plus service, launched in March in the US, offers users access to a range of magazines and newspapers and costs ten US dollars a month. Apple keeps half of the income and the publishers get the other half.

According to the insiders, the publisher would lose income in the event of such a super subscription, as the costs for the individual News Plus service would have to be reduced. However, the publisher’s revenues are apparently well below their expectations anyway. According to Bloomberg, a publisher can expect on average less than $ 20,000 a month. With Texture, the service taken over by Apple , which forms the basis for News Plus, the income was significantly higher. The number of News Plus subscribers is unknown. The service is available in the US, UK and Australia.

Apple wants to bundle fee-based services

Apple, in turn, wants to increase the number of customers by bundling its fee-based services in a super subscription. Apple is already experimenting with linking the services. Most recently, students with a music subscription were given free access to the newly launched TV Plus . TV Plus for one year free of charge for Apple hardware buyers who bought it after September 9th. Apple apparently has a similar model in mind for the future as Amazon has introduced with its Prime subscription. The group has not commented on the media report.

The rapidly growing YouTube music app is apparently inspiring Spotify to new features. Music videos could soon be available on the world’s largest music streaming service.

As the reverse engineering expert Jane Wong found out, Spotify is working on a significant functional expansion of its playback screen. So far, it has either been dominated by the presentation of the album cover or shows the quite new Spotify canvas .

Spotify app: Playback screen is drilled out

In the future, Spotify apparently wants to give its users the choice of which content should be shown on the playback screen. A new tab selection at the top of the screen should obviously be able to display the complete music video in addition to the album type and the canvas.

With this function, Alphabet’s Youtube Music is currently setting itself apart from Spotify. Here, the user has the choice in a prominent place whether only the song or the video should be played.

Spotify Canvas: Nice, but not particularly useful

With the Spotify Canvas, the streaming service tried to create a kind of visual replacement for videos. So far, only selected artists can store three to eight-second moving image loops, which are displayed instead of the album cover and should offer a more contemporary form of presentation than a rigid album cover can. Spotify refers to the canvas animations as “album art for the streaming age”.

Nevertheless, the short canvas animation is no substitute for a music video and probably no user will want to look at the moving representation more than once. A full integration of available music videos could probably give the service a further boost, but above all increase the benefit for the listeners significantly. Spotify announced content a few years ago, but has not yet implemented it.

YT-Music puts Spotify under pressure

It is quite possible that those responsible saw no immediate need because no other service offered a corresponding service. The cards have been reshuffled with the seamless video integration in the Youtube Music app.

It is currently unclear when a corresponding function will be rolled out and what this will look like in concrete terms. As Wong’s screenshot shows, the Spotify developers are still in the middle of the conception phase because they write: “Thank you for your interest in videos. We are still researching what could happen at this point [in the app]. “

Jane Wong, the tech blogger who no unofficial app feature can hide from

Reverse engineering is the passion of software developer Jane Wong from Hong Kong. According to her own statements, she likes to spend her weekends looking through apps for new features that have not yet been officially announced.

So she can look back on a considerable backlog of finds that has brought her the attention of big media houses like the BBC time and again. At t3n, too, we have often taken up your research results.

Spotify generates 28 percent more sales with 31 percent more paying customers than last year. The biggest leap is the net profit, which increases from 43 to around 241 million euros.

Spotify has presented its annual report for the third quarter of the current year and surprised analysts and investors. They had expected a loss and not earnings per share.

The increase in profits comes from the increase in premium customers, mainly from Southeast Asia and Latin America. But increases in student and family accounts also have their share in the development.

Spotify was able to acquire around 31 percent new payers and increase the number of users from 87 million to 113 million customers. At the same time, sales with premium customers increased to around 1.5 billion euros.

Spotify only achieved around 170 million euros through its advertising-financed service. Here the streaming service grew from 109 million to 141 million users. This means that Spotify has a share of 45 percent of paying customers, who are responsible for over 90 percent of sales.

Spotify: User numbers are growing twice as fast as Apple Music

The streaming market leader can refer to 248 active users for the key figure of “monthly active users” (MAU), which is important for assessing digital services. This is also a significant increase compared to the 191 million MAU in the same quarter of the previous year.

Compared to the direct follower Apple Music with its around 60 million customers, Spotify points to a twice as fast user growth, as well as a much higher activity of its own users. Amazon Music also sees the company lagging behind, which is mainly due to the fact that there is a much less favorable relationship between paying and advertising-financed customers.

The company’s podcasting strategy is also showing initial success. With around 500,000 podcast titles, Spotify already offers a noteworthy offering, which, according to the company, is already used by around 30 million MAUs.

All of this causes the streaming service to raise its own forecasts. 270 million people are expected to use Spotify by the end of the year. The number of premium customers is expected to grow by another ten million.

The good news led to an eight percent rise in Spotify shares.

The majority of sales in the German and American music industries are generated through streaming services. In addition, vinyl could soon make a comeback.

The revenue share of streaming services in the German and American music industry grew in the first half of 2019. Services such as Spotify and Apple Music account for an increase of 27.7 percent and 56.4 percent of total sales in this country. In the USA it is already 80 percent of total sales and an increase of 26 percent. These are the results of the Recording Industry Association of America , or “RIAA” for short, and the German Music Industry Association , “BVMI” for short.

Growth drivers in the music industry: Spotify and Apple Music

In the first six months of 2019, the German music industry is expected to have achieved total sales of around 783 million euros, 7.9 percent more sales than in the first half of 2018 and the highest growth rate since 1993. According to the Federal Music Industry Association, audio streaming is responsible for this, which is said to have increased by 27.7 percent. The remaining share of total sales is made up of 28.2 percent CDs, 6.6 percent music downloads, 4.4 percent vinyls, 1.2 percent music DVDs and Blu-rays, 3.0 percent ring tones and Co. and with 0.3 percent other physical media such as Super Audio CDs (SACD) or cassettes.

According to the RIAA, the US record industry is also said to have recorded an increase in sales of 18 percent in the first half of 2019. With 80 percent of the 5.4 billion US dollars, the largest share was also achieved through streaming services. The American music industry achieved the remaining share of total sales 9 percent through the sale of physical media, 9 percent through downloads and 2 percent through so-called “synchronization royalties”, ie the use and licensing of pieces of music in films, for example.

The growth drivers are Spotify , with over 100 million subscribers, and Apple Music , with over 60 million subscribers , for which the California-based company launched a web app a few days ago .

Is the vinyl record making its comeback soon?

In Germany, CD sales are said to have stabilized slightly with a decline rate of 11.7 percent, halved compared to the same period in the previous year, while sales of vinyls are said to have increased by 7.4 percent. In the US, vinyl sales are said to have increased by 12.9 percent, while CD sales remained almost unchanged. Specialized media such as Rolling Stone therefore attest vinyl records a comeback and predict that vinyl sales could soon exceed CD sales for the first time since 1986.