CMU Digest

CMU Digest 23.02.18: Amazon Tickets, Spotify, touting rules, agent of change, CD sales

By | Published on Friday 23 February 2018

Amazon

The key stories from the last week in the music business…

It was confirmed that Amazon Tickets is closing down. Amazon’s ticketing business began in the UK with ambitions to also launch in the US, though the latter plan was called off last year when the web giant failed to agree a partnership deal with Ticketmaster. This week it told promoters the UK side would now be wound down too. Despite this, there is speculation Amazon may has yet launch an alternative ticketing platform based around its Echo devices. [READ MORE]

It emerged that Spotify’s founders will have super voting rights after the streaming service becomes a publicly listed company. It means certain existing shareholders will have more say over the future direction of the company than those who buy shares on the New York Stock Exchange. Spotify’s founders are following the lead of the Google and Facebook founders in this regard. [READ MORE]

There was speculation that the Irish government might back a ban of ticket touting. Two members of the Irish parliament proposed outlawing the resale of tickets at marked-up prices last year, but those proposals were called off in favour of a government review of secondary ticketing. Now that review is done, it’s thought MPs Noel Rock and Stephen Donnelly may reintroduce their proposed new law and that the Irish government might back them this time. [READ MORE]

The Scottish government announced it was adding the agent of change principle into planning rules in the country. It means that property developers putting new residential buildings next to existing music venues will have to take responsibility for identifying and addressing future sound issues. The UK government recently added agent of change into English planning rules, and the Welsh executive did likewise last year. [READ MORE]

New stats confirmed that physical music sales in the last quarter of 2017 were down 5.8% year-on-year. The new figures from Kantar Worldpanel showed that across the whole home entertainment retail sector physical product sales were down 8.8%. Home video is seeing the steepest declines at the moment, while sales of physical gaming products were actually up. [READ MORE]

The big deals from the last seven days in the music business…
• VMS Live allied with Eventim on ticketing [INFO]
• ICE announced a deal with Facebook [INFO]
• Killing Moon Management signed My Vitriol [INFO]
• Deutsche Grammophon signed Agnes Obel [INFO]



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