The US recorded music business grew 15% in the first half of 2017 to $46 billion – primarily due to streaming, with 30.4 million American subscribers to U.S. based services by the end of June. Wholesale revenues – what labels get after retail takes its cut – grew 14.6% to $2.7 billion. Much to the delight of record labels, the main push in streaming came from paid subscription, which this year hit $1.49 billion in the first half of 2017. Record companies have been pushing streaming services to drop their free tiers so they and artists get paid more, often threatening to restrict major releases if they don’t get their way. Digital downloads continued their decline, down 23.8% to $757million – compared to $993.5m in the first half of 2016. CD albums also dropped but their decline slowed down to 2.9% ($430.6 million), vinyl was up 3.2% to $181.7 million retail sales.
New Mushroom label Bloodlines made Jet singer Nic Cester its first signing. His debut solo album Sugar Rush comes first week of November. Cester, who’s been living in Italy, recorded with Italian band Calibro. He’ll do a one-off at Memo Music Hall on Thursday November 2 with an all-Italian band, the Milano Elettrica. Younger readers might not be aware that Jet signed their EMI deal on a car bonnet at a legendary Beat Christmas party – and went on to sell six million records.
The late producer and sound engineer Tony Cohen will be inducted into The Age Music Victoria Hall Of Fame for his contribution in shaping the sound of Melbourne through his work with Nick Cave, Paul Kelly, Hunters and Collectors and The Models. The awards are on Wednesday November 22 at 170 Russell. For more info on the awards and afterparty, see their website.
The Australian Financial Review reported that the Asian investment company has put Aussie ticketing and live events promoter TEG for sale. It bought it for $640 million, bought new assets including promoter Paul Dainty’s company, and is now looking for bids of $one billion.
The songwriters behind 3LW’s Playas Gon’ Play are asking a Californian judge to decide if their lyric “Playas, they gonna play / And haters, they gonna hate,” was infringed ten years later by Taylor Swift on Shake It Off with “The players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate” line. Swift’s people called the lawsuit “ridiculous and a money grab.”
