Business
How Kobalt is betting on music’s middle class and DIY stars
Streaming services have made music ubiquitous, driving more exploration by consumers who don’t have to pay for each song or album individually. Musicians are correspondingly able to find their own niche of fans scattered around the world.
(This is the third installment of our EC-1 series on Kobalt Music Group and changes in the music industry. Read Part I and Part II.)
As Spotify gained rapid adoption in his native Sweden in 2006, class=”crunchbase-link” href=”https://crunchbase.com/organization/kobalt-music-group” target=”_blank” data-type=”organization” data-entity=”kobalt-music-group”>Kobalt’s founder & CEO Willard Ahdritz predicted music streaming and the rise of social media would increasingly undercut the gatekeeping power of the major label groups and realign the market to center more on a vast landscape of niche musicians than a handful of traditional superstars.
Both of these predictions have proven directionally true. The question is to what extent and how are industry players actually realigning as a result?
What musicians need in addition to the administrative collection of their royalties (explained in Part II) is a menu of creative services they can tap for support. Kobalt’s AWAL and Kobalt Music Publishing divisions provide such services to recording artists and songwriters, respectively, and do so on purely a services basis (getting paid a commission but not taking ownership of copyrights like traditional labels and publishers do).
Niche middle class vs. Global superstars
The whole music industry is growing substantially due to streaming music’s mainstream penetration in wealthier countries and increased penetration in emerging markets.
As the overall pie is growing, the non-superstar segment of the market is indeed growing faster than the superstar segment, taking over a larger portion of industry royalties.
According to data from BuzzAngle, the top 500 songs in the US in 2018 accounted for 10% of on-demand audio streams — a dramatic decline in market share compared to 2017 when the top 500 songs accounted for 14% of streams. Stepping back, the top 50,000 songs made up 73.2% of all US streams in 2017 but that declined to 70.5% in 2018.
-
Business6 days ago
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fines BloomTech for false claims
-
Business5 days ago
Langdock raises $3M with General Catalyst to help businesses avoid vendor lock-in with LLMs
-
Entertainment4 days ago
What Robert Durst did: Everything to know ahead of ‘The Jinx: Part 2’
-
Business6 days ago
Klarna credit card launches in the US as Swedish fintech grows its market presence
-
Entertainment4 days ago
This nova is on the verge of exploding. You could see it any day now.
-
Business4 days ago
India’s election overshadowed by the rise of online misinformation
-
Entertainment7 days ago
How to set boundaries in the early stages of dating
-
Business4 days ago
CesiumAstro claims former exec spilled trade secrets to upstart competitor AnySignal