Huawei screenshot
News

Huawei launches Arabic music streaming service in Middle East

Huawei launches Arabic music streaming service in Middle East and partners with Rotana Records, Qanawat and Mazzika to provide access to a wide range of local and international music. The ad-free service has been launched in five countries – UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq and Jordan. More countries from the region are expected to be added to that list. Huawei Music Service is pre-installed in all Huawei devices with operating system versions EMUI 5.0, 5.1, […]

Sonos IPO at Nasdaq
News

Sonos goes public on Nasdaq

Sonos listed on the Nasdaq (Thursday 2nd August) raising $208 million making it the 2nd-largest consumer discretionary IPO of 2018, the share prospectus initially valuing the company at $1.8 billion. The shares were offered at $15 and after an initial surge followed by profit taking the share price is fluctuating around $20 per share giving the company a market capitalisation (5th August 2018) of just under $1 bn.   Sonos files to go public Despite […]

Euro notes
News

DEEZER raises €160m from private investors

DEEZER raises €160m from private investors and enters into an exclusive distribution agreement with Rotana to digitally distribute Rotana’s music and video content in the Middle East and North Africa region. Kingdom Holding Company and Rotana, led by Chairman HRH Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal together with Access Industries, Orange and LBO France have invested a total of €160 million in a private share placement which values DEEZER at €1 billion. The new funding will be […]

Downloading at computer
Downloads

Fewer Britons are illegally downloading music

Fewer Britons are illegally downloading music according to a recent YouGov poll. YouGov’s Music Report reveals that one in ten Britons (10%) download music illegally, down from 18% five years ago. This number looks set to decrease. While 63% of those that illegally download music expect to still be doing so in five years, 22% do not. Added to this, 36% say that using unverified sources to access music is becoming more difficult. This decrease […]

Spotify NYSE launch in April 2018
News

Spotify grows users, revenues and losses

Despite record growth Spotify continues to lose money and is forecast to continue on a losing streak for the next two quarters according to its latest (Q2 2018) financial reports. Spotify grew its user base finishing the quarter with 180 million Monthly Active Users (MAU) and 83 million Premium Subscribers, up 30% and 40% respectively year on year. Revenue for the quarter was €1,273 million, up 26% and 34% year on year for the two […]

Tencent logo
News

China’s Tencent Music looks to go public in US

Hong Kong based Tencent Holdings has submitted a proposal to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to spin-off its Tencent Music Entertainment Group (Tencent Music) on the New York Stock Exchange. Tencent Music is the leading online music entertainment platform in China and Chinese media sources believe that Tencent Music will be valued at between $29 bn and $31 bn after this flotation. The Initial Public Offering (IPO) is expected to raise up to $4 bn […]

SNEP H1 2018 Report
News

French music streaming grew by 39% in first half of 2018

French music streaming grew by 39% in first half of 2018 according to SNEP (Syndicat National de l’Edition Phonographique) the French music record industry association. 27 bn tracks were streamed during the first six months of 2018, an increase of 39% over the same period in 2017 and this makes up 56% of the total music market. Growth in music streaming has been consistent over the past five years with a six-fold increase from 4.5 bn streams in […]