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Business News Week In Five
CMU Digest – 2 Aug 2013
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 2 August 2013
The five biggest stories in the music business this week…
01: It was revealed that Spotify doubled its revenues in 2012, but saw losses increase too. The latest financial filing from Spotify shows that its revenues grew last year from 190.4 million euros in 2011 to 434.7 million euros. However, overall losses widened to 58.7 million euros, up from 45.4 million the previous year. Commenting on the figures, the company also talked up its “unheard of” free-to-paid conversion of 20% and assured everyone that it is “continuing to build for long-term growth – both for our company and for the music industry as a whole”. CMU report | Music Ally report
02: Bauer bought Absolute Radio. After two years of speculation over its future, Absolute Radio was sold to Bauer by current owner TIML Radio on Monday. Bauer also bought Planet Rock earlier this year, and already owned Kerrang! Radio. What the future holds for Absolute, and how Bauer’s three rock stations will now work together, if at all, remains to be seen. CMU report | Guardian report
03: The latest RAJAR radio listening figures were announced. The main news was that Nick Grimshaw had clawed back some of this listeners he lost when he took over from Chris Moyles on the Radio 1 breakfast show. Though he is still lagging behind Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme for early morning listening. Radio 1 saw overall listening figures up, while Radio 2 and 4 broke listening figure records, so that’s nice. CMU report | Radio Today report
04: Research showed that the music industry’s annual economic impact on Nashville is $9.7 billion. The Nashville Area Chamber Of Commerce published some research on the economic impact the Tennessean city’s music industry has on it as a whole. The findings were that music brings in $9.7 billion each year. The city’s mayor Karl Dean said that the key now was ensuring that it stays that way by adapting to a changing music industry. CMU report
05: The Independent On Sunday drastically cut back its arts output. The IOS announced plans to revamp its arts coverage, which will mean cutting back on original writing. Amongst those to lose space in the paper is popular music writer Simon Price. CMU report | The Stage report
Just as The Independent was cutting its arts coverage, we were increasing ours – well, by association. The team from our sister magazine ThreeWeeks are back in operation once again up at the Edinburgh Festival, with reviews, interviews and features galore from the world’s biggest cultural event. Find out more here.
Back at CMU, this week we interviewed Raffertie about his new album, his new sound, and ‘discovering’ AlunaGeorge, plus Alela Diane put together a very good playlist for us.
In the Approved column, we had Mogwai‘s soundtrack to ‘Les Revenants’ (aka French zombie drama ‘The Returned’), Michachu affiliate Tirzah, Japanese pop-rap duo Charisma.com, and comedy podcast Limmy’s World Of Glasgow.
