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THE BUSINESS OF MUSIC
www.musicweek.com
BIG INTERVIEW Downtown
10
Music Publishing “We’ve seen licensing fees slip but opportunities increase”
REPORT 12
Spotify in Sweden “If you’ve been doing really well under the old model, something new can be scary”
15.08.14 £5.50 REPORT
14 The Beatles in Mono
“The Beatles get more important, not less”
Can Twitch make you rich? V
DIGITAL ■ BY TOM PAKINKIS
ideo games streaming phenomenon Twitch has opened its arms to
the music industry after its first successful concert stream at the end of last month. Twitch is the world’s leading
video platform for video games enthusiasts – typically used for viewing and broadcasting live streamed gameplay with more than 55 million monthly visitors. The platform live streamed
its first music event on July 30 in collaboration with Steve Aoki, capturing one of the DJ and producer’s performances in Ibiza. The move came in response
to more than 80% of Twitch’s gaming audience expressing an interest in watching live music on the platform. Aoki, a video games fan himself, had also reached out to Twitch to discuss how he could engage with the platform’s audience. The live concert stream marked the
“If you want to reach our growing audience of 55 million gamers, reach out to us” COLIN CARRIER, TWITCH
launch of his Twitch channel. “The results from his
broadcast validated our community’s interest in watching live music,” said Twitch chief strategy officer Colin Carrier. “Steve Aoki’s two-hour broadcast
on Twitch attracted over 250K unique viewers. “The audience was also
incredibly engaged via Twitch chat,” he added. “Using emoticons, it became a virtual dance party with over 15k unique
chatters sending 182k chat messages. Most notably, almost half the clicks to date on the pre- order link for Steve’s upcoming album were the result of his Twitch broadcast. Therefore, it represents a very significant potential consumer base for the music industry.” While Carrier said it’s too early
to comment on where Twitch’s “music space experiment” will go from here, he pointed to a number of artists and labels that are already using the platform. Dance label Mad Decent, for example, has a Twitch channel featuring producers competing on games. Steve Aoki, said: “There has
been a long relationship between games and recorded music. With the gaming industry now doing live broadcasts on Twitch, it makes sense to bridge these two cultures with live music.” Carrier added: “If you want
to reach our growing audience of 55 million gamers, reach out to us and see how you can connect with our community.”
STEVE AOKI’S TWITCH CONCERT BY THE NUMBERS
80 Percent of Twitch’s gamer
userbase expressed an interest in watching live music on the platform prior to the concert
250k
Unique users tuned in during the two-hour stream
27k Peak viewership
380k Views overall
182k
Chat messages sent via the platform during the concert stream
Universal is worth 10 billion Euro, says Credit Suisse Credit Suisse said Universal’s
true value was “materially ahead of consensus” with others typically putting the company’s estimated price tag at “around €6.5bn”. The news comes a year after
Universal Music Group has been significantly undervalued by analysts in the past - and is now worth a staggering 10 billion Euro (£8 billion). That’s according to a report
from respected financial services expert Credit Suisse, which has raised its rating of UMG parent Vivendi to a ‘buy’ - largely driven by the music company’s health and future prospects.
Warner Music completed the purchase of Parlophone Label Group from Universal for £487m. A forced divestment, the sale effectively brought the price paid by Universal for EMI - a deal cleared in September 2012 -
down to around £700 million. Credit Suisse’s report, Global
Music, brought good news for the music market. The firm suggests that major music labels are set for “a period of strong growth” off the back of the rise of streaming, predicting that the industry will return to revenue growth in 2016 if streaming penetration claims 20% of income in the top 10 music markets around the world. In a separate report called
Apple: iTunes to I Services to the I Annuity’, Credit Suisse analysts suggest that the rise of streaming music will be greatly accelerated by Apple pre-loading its devices with Beats Music or another streaming service. “With an installed base of more than 800m connected devices, and fiercely loyal customers, this could significantly accelerate the take up of paid streaming services globally,” it reads.
VIDEO GAMES LIVE STREAMING GIANT LOOKS FOR CLOSER RELATIONSHIP WITH MUSIC
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