Spotify and Universal Tune Neighborhood Ink Licensing Deal, Growing Trace’s Role as ‘Early Adopter’ of Tools
Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Universal Tune Neighborhood
CEO of UMG Sir Lucian Grainge and Billie Eilish attend the Universal Tune Neighborhood’s 2020 Grammy after occasion presented by Lenovo at Rolling Greens Nursery on Jan. 26, 2020 in Los Angeles.
“With UMG’s commitment to being an early adopter,” Daniel Ek tells Billboard, “we demand to originate extra opportunities to join both frontline and catalog artists with recent and present followers.”
Spotify and Universal Tune Neighborhood maintain finalized a brand recent and expanded multi-one year global licensing settlement. As share of the draw, presented Wednesday (July 22), the designate community deepens its feature as an early adopter of Spotify’s marketing tools and varied tech parts that both events hope will foster extra impactful connections between followers and artists in innovative solutions.
“With this settlement, UMG and Spotify are extra aligned than ever in our commitment to making constructive your total music ecosystem thrives and reaches recent audiences world wide,” stated Sir Lucian Grainge, UMG chairman and CEO, in an announcement. “Given our commitment to innovation and early adoption of music technologies, and Spotify’s leadership within the trend of ahead-thinking tools, our recent partnership will provide our artists with recent and highly efficient opportunities to join with followers on Spotify’s rising platform.
With the pact, Spotify now has licensing agreements with all three predominant labels and Merlin, the indie sector’s global digital rights licensing company. The music streaming leader closing renewed with UMG in April 2017.
In an announcement to Billboard, Spotify chairman and CEO Daniel Ek explained that his firm’s mission is to “give creative artists the different to live off their work, and followers the different to revel in and be inspired by it,” including, “our Marketplace approach — and the tools and products and providers we make to assist creator teams decide with, develop, and better monetize their fanbase — are significant to this mission.”
Ek stated, “Now not like varied music promotion alternatives, ours are native to our platform. So no longer easiest are artists reaching listeners when and where they’re actively deciding on to determine with music, but they’re reaching listeners who’ve shown interest within the artist’s music and maintain the ability to listen to extra. These tools disclose an different to prevail within the correct viewers on the correct time in solutions artists can’t with varied platforms.
“With UMG’s commitment to being an early adopter, and to offering treasured enter on our marketing tools, we demand to originate extra opportunities to join both frontline and catalog artists with recent and present followers around the sector.”
Ek stated that he and Grainge maintain spoken broadly on the solutions they’ll work collectively on persevering with the streaming-fueled resurgence of the once-sick recording industry.
“Our teams both perceive technology and innovation are wanted to the manner ahead for music,” he stated. “With this pioneering settlement and UMG’s enter, Spotify will continue increasing unparalleled, ahead-thinking, artist-centered technology that would possibly assist inspire extra connections between artists and followers on the correct time in solutions that varied platforms can’t.”
One of Spotify’s most up-to-date artist-centric tools, Marquee, used to be impartial no longer too prolonged ago migrated out of beta and into wide liberate. The subsidized recommendation tool enables labels like UMG to focal level on an artist’s present fanbase with pop-up banner adverts for recent releases. In accordance with inner numbers equipped to Billboard in leisurely June, over one-fifth of users who had been served a Marquee advert streamed the liberate in its first two weeks.
The UMG settlement comes at a busy time of growth for Spotify, which impartial no longer too prolonged ago presented that it is setting up shop in Russia and 12 varied European nations. Since its closing licensing pact with UMG, Spotify has additionally presented the platform in India, over a dozen markets within the Center East and Africa, and Vietnam. It is now operating in 92 full markets globally and is reportedly shut to increasing to South Korea.
As of March 31, the streaming service had some 130 million paying subscribers and 286 million full monthly full of life users. Total revenue within the first quarter of 2020 used to be €1.85 billion, and the firm stated that trade remained “very wholesome” despite the worldwide uncertainty introduced on by the COVID-19 pandemic.