Spotify losses deepen despite rapid expansion

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Streaming leader Spotify said Monday that its losses deepened last year even as the company topped $2 billion in revenue amid the global boom in online music.

The Swedish company founded in 2008 has been at the forefront of the music industry’s turn to streaming, which offers unlimited music on demand, yet it has never turned a profit itself.

Luxembourg-based holding company Spotify Technologies, submitting its annual earnings report, said its revenue jumped 80 percent to 1.945 billion euros ($2.18 billion) in 2015.

The growth rate is significantly stronger than the 45 percent it charted in 2014 and slightly higher than the 74 percent seen in 2013.

“In many ways, it was our best year ever,” the company said in a message to shareholders, describing Spotify as the top driver of growth for the entire music industry.

The company said its revenue from advertisements nearly doubled and that its user base also grew significantly.

Spotify said it had 89 million active monthly users by the end of 2015, up from 60 million a year earlier, of whom some 28 million were paying for subscriptions.

The company’s founder, Daniel Ek, had said in March that Spotify reached 30 million paying subscribers.

But the growth did not erase losses, with Spotify putting a priority on investments at a stage when streaming is increasingly becoming mainstream.

The company’s net losses totalled 173 million euros, nearly seven percent deeper than a year before.

“We believe our model supports profitability at scale,” the company said.

“We believe that we will generate substantial revenues as our reach expands and that, at scale, our margins will improve,” it said.

“We will therefore continue to invest relentlessly in our product and marketing initiatives to accelerate reach,” it said.

Spotify says it offers more than 30 million songs on-demand but has also faced growing competition.

Tech giant Apple last year launched its own streaming service and rap mogul Jay-Z has spearheaded rival Tidal, adding to a market that also includes French-based Deezer and US-based Rhapsody.

Spotify has also faced prominent holdouts including Tayor Swift, Adele and Radiohead who have kept some or all of their music off the service, in part due to objections to its free tier.

source: interaksyon.com

Iggy Azalea rise tests music industry on race, gender

LOS ANGELES | Iggy Azalea has soared to stardom as a rare white woman in hip-hop, but her meteoric rise has triggered a backlash that reveals much about the music business’s fault-lines on race and gender.

The 24-year-old Australian, who released her first full album just nine months ago, is up for four Grammy awards on Sunday, including the prestigious Record of the Year for her smash hit “Fancy.”

But even as Azalea wins plaudits from the industry and packs arenas, detractors see her as uncanny or even offensive — a white, blonde woman who raps in an accent that is identifiably African American.

Her most vociferous critic has been fellow rapper Azealia Banks, a black woman who has accused Azalea of mocking African Americans.

Banks, who has never been nominated for a Grammy, charged that Azalea — whom she taunted as “Igloo Australia” — shied away from issues important to the black community such as police brutality.

“When they give these Grammys out, all it says to white kids is, ‘Oh yeah, you’re great, you’re amazing, you can do whatever you put your mind to.’

“And it says to black kids, ‘You don’t have shit — you don’t own shit, not even the shit you created for yourself,’” Banks said in a radio interview.

Azalea — who moved to the United States as a teenager to pursue her hip-hop dreams and has been romantically linked to African American men — has denounced Banks as a “bigot.”

“There are many black artists succeeding in all genres. The reason you haven’t is because of your piss poor attitude,” Azalea wrote on Twitter.

HIP-HOP NOW GLOBAL

Hip-hop has gone global since its birth in New York in the 1970s — and Azalea is hardly a trailblazer as a white rapper.

The all-time best-selling rapper — Eminem — is white, as are Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, the duo who won four Grammys last year.

But a more unique factor is Azalea’s gender. No women, black or white, have come close to achieving the sales of hip-hop’s leading men, some of whom are notorious for misogynistic lyrics.

James Braxton Peterson, a scholar of hip-hop at Lehigh University, said that the music’s US audience was now predominantly white — but also male — meaning that Azalea was able to connect with a ready audience of white girls and women.

“Hip-hop culture is a black American art form that, much like jazz and the blues and other art forms before it, has transcended the origins of its emergence,” Peterson said.

Peterson said it was unrealistic to stop the globalization of hip-hop, which has become a potent political force in parts of the world as diverse as France, Ghana and the Gaza Strip.

Yet hip-hop, by its very nature, draws more questions about artists’ identities, he said.

“In most other musical forms, if somebody else writes your lyrics, that’s fine, that’s pretty normal. But in hip-hop, if someone else is writing your lyrics, it calls into question all sorts of questions of authenticity,” he said.

Azalea has been dogged by accusations of using ghostwriters. Nicki Minaj — one of the most acclaimed female rappers — was widely seen as criticizing Azalea last year when she said that the world should know, “When you hear Nicki Minaj spit, Nicki Minaj wrote it.”

The Trinidad-born Minaj later accused the media of putting words in her mouth and has congratulated Azalea on her success.

WHAT IS GENUINE?

It will never be known if Azalea would have achieved similar success if she rapped in Australian brogue. British hip-hop artists such as The Streets and London Posse kept their accents and enjoyed success, although not on the massive scale experienced by Azalea.

Despite the charges of inauthenticity, Azalea — like many rappers — has injected herself into the music. In “Work,” one of her first songs, she raps of her struggles to start in hip-hop and declares: “People got a lot to say / But don’t know shit ’bout where I was made.”

But her lyrics have also faced close scrutiny. She apologized for another song in which she described herself as a “runaway slave master” — a phrase she insisted was metaphorical and not racist.

Azalea, a prolific user of Twitter, recently wrote she was annoyed by strangers trying to “set the guidelines for how I should act or what’s genuine for me.”

“I’m myself, as strange as I may be, daily,” she wrote.

source: interaksyon.com

Jury clears promoter AEG Live of liability in Michael Jackson’s death

LOS ANGELES | A Los Angeles jury cleared concert promoter AEG Live of liability on Wednesday in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Michael Jackson, in a trial that offered a glimpse into the private life and final days of the so-called King of Pop.

The verdict, which concluded that the doctor the company hired to care for the singer was not unfit for his job, capped a sensational five-month trial that was expected to shake up the way entertainment companies treat their most risky talent.

“The jury’s decision completely vindicates AEG Live, confirming what we have known from the start — that although Michael Jackson’s death was a terrible tragedy, it was not a tragedy of AEG Live’s making,” defense attorney Marvin Putnam said in a statement following the verdict.

Putnam, who was heckled by Jackson supporters outside the courthouse, said after the trial that AEG Live had never considered settling the case out of court.

Still, the case sent shock waves through the music industry, with concert promoters as well as well-known entertainment insurers expected to beef up policies for acts they insure and potentially raise some prices.

Jackson’s 83-year-old mother, Katherine, and his three children sued AEG Live over the singer’s 2009 death at age 50 in Los Angeles from an overdose of the surgical anesthetic propofol.

The Jackson family claimed in its lawsuit that AEG Live, the concert division of privately held Anschutz Entertainment Group, negligently hired Conrad Murray as Jackson’s personal physician and ignored signs that the “Thriller” singer was in poor health prior to his death.

The family matriarch was in court for the verdict, which came on the fourth day of deliberations, and appeared to be emotional as it was read, lifting her glasses to wipe at her eyes. She smiled briefly as she left the courtroom.

MURRAY WAS ‘COMPETENT’

In explaining the verdict outside court, jury foreman Gregg Barden said jurors had concluded that Murray was competent for the job he was hired to do.

“We felt he was competent to do the job of general practitioner,” said Barden, who works for the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Now that doesn’t mean that we thought he was ethical, and maybe had the word ethical been in the question, it could have been a different outcome.”

Juror Kevin Smith, 61, who works for Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, added: “If AEG had known what was going on behind closed doors it would probably have made a world of difference, but they didn’t.”

Murray, who was caring for Jackson as the singer rehearsed for his series of 50 comeback “This Is It” concerts, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2011 for administering the propofol that killed the star. He is in a California prison and is expected to be released later this month.

Jackson family lawyer Kevin Boyle said outside court that attorneys and the family were “of course not happy” with Wednesday’s verdict.

“We will be exploring all options, legally and factually,” Boyle said.

Jackson fan Julia Thomas, who has been at the courthouse every day for the past five months, said she thought the jurors did not properly understand the second question on the verdict form, which asked if Murray was “unfit or incompetent to perform the work for which he was hired.”

“Most of us are shocked,” Thomas said. “It’s almost like a dream. I think the question went way over their heads. I think it was a trick question.”

FAMILY SOUGHT $1 BILLION IN DAMAGES

Jackson family lawyers had suggested in closing arguments that damages could exceed $1 billion if AEG Live was found liable. AEG Live had argued that it was Jackson who chose Murray as his physician and that it negotiated with the singer to pay Murray $150,000 per month, but only at Jackson’s request.

University of Southern California law professor Jody Armour said that the plaintiff’s argument that AEG Live disregarded Jackson’s health in their pursuit of profits did not persuade the jury.

“The jury decided the case on the notions of personal responsibility, and concluded that Michael Jackson had some responsibility in picking Murray and creating the circumstances surrounding his own death,” Armour said.

Several relatives of Jackson testified during the trial, including his mother, eldest son Prince and ex-wife Debbie Rowe.

Rowe, who was married to Jackson from 1996 to 1999, told the court that doctors had competed for Jackson’s business and took advantage of the singer’s fear of pain by giving him high-powered pain killers.

Rowe said she first grew concerned about Jackson’s prescription drug use in the early 1990s after he underwent surgery on his scalp and that she saw the singer use propofol to sleep as early as 1997.

PERSONAL LIVES, LEGAL HEADACHES

Following the case, there also may be some changes in store for the entertainment industry as concert promoters and producers move to insulate themselves legally from stars they work with.

“The thing that is really going to change is the boiler-plate and liability waivers in contracts,” said Gary Bongiovanni, editor of concert industry trade magazine Pollstar. “When contracts are written, they’re going to be a little more clear.”

Jay Gendron, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and former legal affairs executive with Warner Bros film studio, said employers must draw a line in the sand with stars whose personal lives may later become legal headaches.

“At a certain point you just have to say, ‘No,’ because the risk is too high,” Gendron said. “You have to look at your business template and ask, ‘Is this something we’re willing to risk?’”

Although AEG Live came out a legal victor, the trial did give the company a black eye, said Rich Tullo, the director of research at Albert Fried and Co who follows AEG Live’s main competitor, Live Nation Entertainment Inc.

“I really kind of think this (trial) in the long-term benefits Live Nation with the artists,” Tullo said.

“This is a people business and this is a bad people thing. Even if this is the doctor Michael Jackson wanted them to hire. … Just from the optics of it, it looks awful,” Tullo added.

“Where it could benefit Live Nation is in a 5 to 10 percent market share increase,” he said.

source: interaksyon.com

One Direction sets Nov release for album 'Take Me Home'

LOS ANGELES - British-Irish boy band One Direction took the music industry by storm earlier this year when its debut album topped the US Billboard chart, and now the group is planning a second wave of success with a new record due in November.

The cheeky quintet, who rose to fame in 2010 on UK television talent show "The X Factor", will release their sophomore album "Take Me Home" on Nov. 13, Columbia Records said on Thursday.

"Take Me Home" will feature tracks co-written by the One Direction boys along with British artists such as Ed Sheeran and McFly's Tom Fletcher. The album's lead single "Live While We're Young" will premiere on radio on Sept. 24, and be available digitally from Oct. 1.

One Direction, made up of Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles and Liam Payne, surged onto the US airwaves earlier this year with catchy pop hit "What Makes You Beautiful", gaining a strong following among teenage girls known as "Directioners".

The band made Billboard history in March this year, becoming the only UK group to debut at No. 1 with their first album, "Up All Night", which has sold 12 million records worldwide.

The new album comes on the heels of One Direction's performance at the London Olympics closing ceremony earlier this month and will be linked to their worldwide tour in 2013. –Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com