Never heard of Plern?

Here’s how an upstart Thai streaming music platform quickly topped 1 million app downloads despite heavy competition from Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music.

The Tuned Global-powered platform launched just a few months ago.

Digital Music News published an in-depth case study following an interview with Asawin ‘Ant’ Rojmethatawee, EVP of Music Streaming Business at GMM Grammy and head of Plern.

Music is an effective marketing tool and in 2021, no one knows that better than mobile network operators — telcos. 

Telcos have been bundling their phone plans with music streaming service subscriptions for almost as long as the format has existed.

But as they wake up to the advantages of bolting music-related content onto their existing offerings, some are even going one step further by launching their very own music streaming apps. 

Music Business Worldwide has interviewed Tuned Global CRO, Spiro Arkoudis to discuss the opportunities and challenges for mobile network providers who want to enter the music game and how companies such as mJams and True Digital are doing it.

In this episode of Stream by Stream, Spiro Arkoudis, CRO of Tuned Global demystifies the role of enriched metadata for the music streaming industry with Jean-Luc Biaulet, co-creator of Music Story.

What are the risks of inaccurate or sloppy metadata? How do Deezer and other digital music services boost user engagement through enriched music metadata? What criteria should Digital Service Providers (DSP) look at when they are looking for a metadata provider?

The drone industry has grown exponentially in the past few months, with the market size projected to be $63.6 billion in the next four years.

This growth is expected to occur because of its increased usage in agriculture, construction, mining, telecommunications, law enforcement, and, more recently, music entertainment.

More specifically, drones are being utilized in a lot of music events, as seen during One Republic and SZA concerts earlier in the year.

Below are some ways drones signify the future of music events.

The commercial potential of music streaming is steadily rising worldwide.

In 2020 alone, the IFPI announced that music streaming generated US$13.4 billion; that’s 62.1% of global revenue from recorded music that year.

In addition to standalone streaming services and telcos with built-in streaming apps, music is also increasingly being integrated into different verticals such as gaming, fitness and social media.

These developments make music streaming a potentially lucrative opportunity – not just for mainstream international services such as Spotify and Apple Music, but also for niche services in emerging markets where there’s still a lot of room for growth.

Music streaming may be a global phenomenon, but regionality still matters, and the demand for localised services is higher than ever.

I recently spoke with Tuned Global’s Chief Revenue Officer, Spiro Arkoudis, about the challenges and opportunities of launching streaming services in emerging markets. He shared some of Tuned Global’s insights from working in different regions across the globe.

In this episode of Stream by Stream, Spiro Arkoudis, CRO of Tuned Global talks to Hazel Savage, the CEO and co-founder of Musiio about AI in music.

What is Artificial Intelligence in a digital music world? How does AI help personalisation and user engagement for a streaming service? How have companies such as Epidemic Sound improved their user experience using Musiio AI music technology?

Musically recently published this report about the Chilean music market. Chile’s recorded music Market gained its 11th straight year of growth in 2020, according to local Music Ally sources, helping to cement its place as one of Latin America’s most vibrant digital music industries.

While Chile took to streaming relatively late, this industry is performing well with a 56.2% income growth in 2020.

The leading digital music services in Chile are Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and YouTube Music. But March 2021 saw the launch of a new competitor called PortalDisc, the first 100% Chilean music streaming service.

It's no secret, pandemic or no pandemic, streaming is the predominant form of music consumption today.

No doubt, the Western music streaming world is dominated by services such as Spotify and Apple Music that offer an ‘everything for everyone’ menu.

We are, however, witnessing a rise of services that dig deeper and offer a specialist take based on geography, genre or even leisure activity. In fact, Spotify’s revenue growth is slowing down, partly due to the rise of local services in emerging markets.

Taking all of that into consideration, is music heading in a similar direction to the TV world where consumers are prepared to pay for a range of different subscriptions with different types of content rather than just sticking with one option?

Streaming is today’s predominant form of music consumption, with 443m users of paid subscription accounts worldwide — with some analysts predicting as many as two billion by the end of the decade.

The two biggest services, Spotify and Apple Music, offer some 70 million tracks – with Spotify reporting that 60,000 new tracks are being added daily to its service.

With so many tracks being released every day, a considerable challenge for those running streaming services is navigating release timeframes, and ensuring that track metadata is correct.

DSPs expect to have new releases available almost instantly – while having to exercise considerable care in preventing pre-release leaks.

Let's understand how a reliable Music Content Delivery Technology can solve their problem.

The fitness space has been going through a significant transition since 2018 with the emergence of connected devices targeted at the home exercise market. The lockdown experienced in 2020 accelerated this transition with the advent of live and on-demand classes to groups of fifty plus. The benefits for all are clear, no more travelling to the gym or struggling to book a class and a much larger audience.
But what about the music? User experiences vary from no music at all to a request for users to select a playlist on Spotify, to instructors playing music without licensing, generating a significant business risk.

Let’s dig through the challenges and solutions around music and streaming in the digital fitness industry.