Latest / The Price of Music / US hits 100 million paid music subscriptions, Mariah Carey cleared of copyright infringement

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US hits 100 million paid music subscriptions, Mariah Carey cleared of copyright infringement · The Price of Music

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  Gables, FL Tequila, 40% ABV. Hello and welcome to The Price
• 1:08
  of Music, the show that looks at the money behind the music
• 1:10
  industry, with me, Steve Lamac and Music Allies head of Insight
• 1:14
  Stuart Dredge. I've had a reasonably quiet week
• 1:16
  this week, trying to recover after South by Southwest while
• 1:20
  obviously at the same time getting ready.
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  I'm off to the 6th Music Festival later this week, and
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  then on to Skegness on Saturday to DJ at the Shine on 10th
• 1:29
  Anniversary weekend, which will be vaguely messy I imagine.
• 1:34
  How about you, Stuart? How's life in the In the Fast
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  lane of Music news? Yeah, it's like it's been one of
• 1:40
  those crazy weeks really. But yeah, I've been, do you know
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  what I, I realised last week? I haven't got any concert
• 1:44
  tickets lined up. And so I've been, I've been
• 1:46
  remedying that. So I'm going to see, I'm going
• 1:48
  to see Supercrass. I really want to see the beta
• 1:51
  band, but I think I might have missed out on tickets, right?
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  But if I haven't, I might see them.
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  But yeah, I'm, I've, I've realised.
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  Are you always used to have a constant look forward to And I
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  was shocked to find I didn't. I don't know how we've let this
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  happen. How is the chair of live ended
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  up working with somebody who doesn't have a a wallet full of
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  tickets? I do now.
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  I do now. Don't let it happen again, young
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  man. Where should we start this week?
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  I know. Well, there's a couple actually.
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  We're recording this on Tuesday afternoon about 2:00 and there's
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  a couple of breaking stories, which we'll get to later. 1 is
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  about an infamous company of old, namely Napster is back in
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  the news. And also there's an interim
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  report from the CMA referring to their investigation into ticket
• 2:40
  sales, specifically the Oasis ticket sales.
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  They've made some comments about Ticketmaster and the sales
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  process for the Oasis shows. Again, we'll come back to that
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  in a second. But shall we start with, here's
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  something which you, you mentioned previously, the IFPI
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  Global Music Report 2025 is out. And I don't know what
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  interesting Nuggets of information have you picked out
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  of this? Are there any themes or headline
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  findings that you think we should share?
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  Yeah, I could start with a big number if you like.
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  Yeah, always start with a big number.
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  Actually no two big numbers. OK, so one big number is if you
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  want to buy this report that the IFPI, this is a bit the global
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  labels body, you're gonna buy this report.
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  Yeah, it costs 616 1/2 grand. Is that what I mean?
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  We mentioned this last year when it was some obscene.
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  Has it gone up? Does it go up with inflation?
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  I I think it maybe has done, I'm trying to win it last year, but
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  yeah, but this is like, this is like, and this is, to be fair, a
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  massive PDF or a book and it's got literally every country in
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  the world. They track all the stats, all
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  the analysis of what's gone on. So it's a big weight thing.
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  But yeah, I, I haven't got that kind of money lying around, so I
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  haven't bought it yet. Right.
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  It's on the Christmas list anyway.
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  But the other big figure is 752 million, which is how many
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  people are using paid streaming subscriptions across the world
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  now. And that is 85,000,000 more than
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  the year before. So that's kind of the growth of
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  people using subscription services, which is what everyone
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  was kind of excited about. Other than that, it's just a lot
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  of big figures really. I mean the, the, so this is for
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  recorded music. So it doesn't include live,
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  doesn't include publishing, doesn't include merch, all the
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  other things, just recorded music.
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  That was worth $29.6 billion for the music industry last year.
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  That's a rise of 4.8%, but that growth is slowing down.
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  The previous year it was 10.2%. And so that was one of the
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  talking points was the, the streaming growth is kind of the
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  money growth is slowing down. Should we be worried about that?
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  And that is partly because maybe we're reaching a ceiling in the
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  big, the big countries like the US, the UK of how many people
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  have paid to pay for a subscription.
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  They've done a really good job of getting people to pay for
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  streaming. And so the next phase might be
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  charging more for it, swimming to pay for more for a more
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  features or putting the price up, which we've talked about
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  before. Free streaming had quite a bad
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  year, like the kind of free ad supported streaming where you
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  get adverts in between the songs.
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  Those revenues grew by 1.2%. And there were quite a lot of
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  rumblings from labels about well, needs to do a better job
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  of this. Like if people are getting
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  streaming for free, you need to be making money from ads in a in
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  a much more, you know, strong have a way and what is growing
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  fast, what the ministry calls high potential markets.
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  So this is this is got the continents like Africa, the
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  Middle East and Latin America, China, a lot of countries,
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  Southeast Asia, the places where traditionally they didn't have
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  they weren't huge in terms of the money they made from
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  recorded music, but they have huge populations and now in
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  streaming, they're growing really fast.
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  The other start by Picta actually is so like
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  traditionally the FBI has like a, it has like a league table of
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  the biggest countries for recording music.
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  And it's been quite static at the top.
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  Like the US is always top, then Japan, then the UK, then
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  Germany. And those are kind of the big 4,
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  right? But over the last decade, China
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  has gone from 14th in that league table to 5th.
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  And it nearly overtook Germany last year.
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  So China was really surged to become one of the biggest, you
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  know, music markets in the world.
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  So yeah, that was that. And they had this event, which
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  is always quite good fun. They have the IFPI will book
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  somewhere in London and they'll get a representative from each
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  of the major labels and occasionally an independent 2 or
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  not this year. And they'll sort of they'll all
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  talk about the trends and basically they'll sit there and
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  read off bits of paper about what they want to say.
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  So they've they've all prepared, which is why it's quite
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  interesting because they've all prepared something they want to
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  say. And this year, a chap called
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  Dennis Cooker from Sony Music, he's their digital boss.
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  He went in really hard on AI companies who don't want to
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  license music, which is obviously we've talked about
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  endlessly in the last year. But he said, yeah, they don't
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  want to pay. They're talking rubbish when
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  they say they should be able to train on music without paying
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  for it. He even said he reckons they
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  might be competing unfairly with Spotify and YouTube Music and
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  Apple Music in the future, which kind of, I don't know what you
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  think about this, but it made me stop and think, hang on a
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  minute. I'm not sure.
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  I think people will listen to AI music, but I'm not sure you
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  would stop listening to Spotify and all your favorite artists
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  there because it's their music over here that's been trained on
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  stuff without permission. But he seemed to be saying that
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  that's one of the label's worries, that this stuff will
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  compete with human artists. But if it doesn't have to pay,
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  then it's an unfair contest. That's, I mean, that's
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  interesting, isn't it? Well, would they, would they?
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  So I mean, it's the point that they may stop paying for a
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  Spotify subscription and move across to just listening to
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  music which has been made-up by AI.
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  Is that, well, that's the thing that maybe go that's, that made
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  me think that's not going to happen.
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  But I think what he was saying is these, these will in some way
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  compete with services like Spotify and it's not fair if
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  they have to do that without paying any money for the music
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  they're training on. So I, I kind of got the point,
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  but it was interesting because I, I separately, a colleague the
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  other day was, was, was browsing around one of these services,
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  one of the ones that's being sued.
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  And he was saying the quality is improved to the point now where
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  it's kind of like he described it as something like commercial
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  radio filler tracks. Yeah.
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  I mean, there, there are openings aren't there, but it's
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  whether it's whether it'll have a financial impact.
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  If you're a free streamer and you listen to some things on
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  Spotify, you could listen to something equally as good on a
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  service which is just providing you with II.
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  Even if it's, it depends on the types of music.
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  I can imagine and I've got, no, I've got no evidence for this
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  because I haven't listened to what AI has done with ambient or
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  chilled out music. But you can imagine if you just
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  want a background of nice relaxing music, then I'm sure AI
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  could probably provide that and you can listen to a playlist of
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  that on say an AI streaming platform rather than going to
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  Spotify. But would that make you think
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  I'm going to cancel my Spotify subscription?
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  I'm not sure it would. So it's, I can see, I can see
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  the rise of it being popular and I can see parts of people's
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  listening habits which might be affected.
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  I don't know if there's a financial impact at the end.
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  But if Sony are saying, if Sony are worried about it, I mean, I
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  hope they're genuinely worried rather than sort of trying to
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  catastrophize things to make us all turn on AI.
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  But if they are generally worried about it, maybe they've
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  that might they know more than we do or have an instinct for
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  it. Yeah, I mean, the other thing
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  actually on this panel, there was also someone called
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  Cassandra Strauss who's from Universal Music on their AI
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  team. And she was talking about the
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  positive stuff and she was saying actually they are there
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  are AI companies out there who want to come and do licensing
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  deals, who want to partner music.
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  And so there was a positive aspect to this panel.
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  And, and Dennis from Sony said that as well, like they're,
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  there are good eggs out there they want to work with.
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  And so that was the kind of, it was, it was the same, same old
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  thing really. I think the labels are kind of
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  leaning into the people who want to work with them.
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  And they're really keen for regulators, governments to kind
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  of crack down the ones who aren't.
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  So, yeah. But otherwise it was, it was
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  kind of a, you know, things are still growing.
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  And like, I remember, I mean, God, I remember when there was
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  that decade on that 15 years when like revenues were going
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  down every year and everyone was going, Oh my God, piracy is
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  killing history. Everything's terrible now
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  they're sort of sitting there going right.
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  Growth is slowing down a bit. What do we need to do to then
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  drive it to the next level, which I think is a it falls
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  under like a good, a good challenge to have compared to
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  the days when everything was falling on your head.
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  So it was it was good. There's the slow down is one of
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  the headlines that came out of it.
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  But I think people are grappling with that challenge rather than
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  moping as they were, you know, a decade ago.
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  Talking of growth and emerging markets, the Afro Beats boom has
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  meant that Nigerian artists have seen a big increase in revenue
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  from Spotify in 2024. How big?
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  Yeah, 132%. Well.
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  So big. Yeah, Big.
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  So this is like, So what Spotify does is they they released their
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  big loud and clear update, which we talked about last week and
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  then they go around the world basically talking to journalists
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  in individual countries saying here are the stats for this
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  country. So I think so far it's happened
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  for Nigeria. There was also a story from
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  India the other day as well. So they're kind of releasing
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  extra data every week to kind of get more stories.
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  And so, yeah, so this is, again, it's like the other data we
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  talked about. So it's, it's how much Spotify
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  paid out for the music to the rights holders, so labels,
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  publishers, not directly to the artists.
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  So it's not how much the artists earned, it's how much was paid
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  out for their music. And yeah, it was 58 billion
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  naira, which is the currency in Nigeria, which is around 37.8
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  million. And that is up 132%.
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  And they also said people spent last year more than 1.1 billion
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  hours listening to Nigerian artists around the world, which
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  is Afrobeat. It's artists like we've talked
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  about Remma and Ayra star in the in the past, like these are some
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  of the artists who've broken out, had enormous global hits.
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  But the other thing here is this is Spotify almost taking its
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  claim or its role in that and saying, look, we are one of the
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  big platforms that's making this happen, which is true.
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  But it's also it's actually quite a wider thing.
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  So YouTube has been really big for Afrobeats, for example.
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  Apple Music has worked very hard.
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  So it's it's not just a Spotify thing, it's across the board.
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  But yeah, if you're an artisan doer now.
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  And, and actually I was talking to someone listening actually to
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  someone at this IFBI event from Mavin Records, which is the the
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  big Afrobeats label now owned by UMG.
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  And the guy from there was saying this is really exciting
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  because where this success means there's more investment, people
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  are going to come, more music companies will come to Nigeria,
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  more streaming service will invest in it.
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  So it's that whole kind of success breed success thing.
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  So I think the Nigerian industry is very excited about what it
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  can do, how it can capitalise on all this.
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  So yeah, I think we'll be seeing more artists following their
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  footsteps in the year ahead. Next this week this is returning
• 13:06
  to an old story, but lawyers for UMG Universal Music Group have
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  hit Drake with what is being described as a zinger packed
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  filing in their defamation legal battle.
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  Remind us of the the details of this spat so far and and then
• 13:24
  bring us up to date with the with the zinger packed filing.
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  Yeah, honestly, like, legal filings can be really dry, can't
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  they? But this was like, well, I say
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  it was a delight. It wasn't a delight for Drake,
• 13:34
  but it was a delight for everyone else who's watching the
• 13:36
  case. But yeah.
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  So Drake is suing Universal Music Group for defamation over
• 13:41
  Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us, which was what probably the big
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  one of the biggest tracks last year, making some famously spicy
• 13:49
  accusations about Drake's romantic preferences.
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  It was released by one of UM GS labels.
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  UMG is also Drake's recordings partner.
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  So this is already a tangled web.
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  He's not suing Kendrick Lamar, he's suing UMG is the other
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  aspect to this. And literally, I mean, honestly,
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  this, this legal filing, it begins with a quote from Drake
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  sort of saying, basically, if you diss me, I won't reply.
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  And then says plaintiff, one of the most successful recording
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  artists of all time lost a rap battle that he provoked in which
• 14:20
  he willingly participated. And instead of accepting a loss
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  like the unboloed rap artist he often claims to be, he has sued
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  his own record label in a misguided attempt to salve his
• 14:29
  wounds. It's just, I mean, it's it's
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  basically a a diss track in itself.
• 14:35
  This filing. It also points out that he
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  released a diss track accusing Kendrick Lamar of domestic abuse
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  and saying one of his managers father's son.
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  So kind of saying, hang on, mate, You defamed him as much as
• 14:45
  he defamed you. And it makes this wider point
• 14:48
  that rap battles diss tracks. They are exaggerated, wild
• 14:53
  accusations, like saying the worst, most untrue things you
• 14:55
  can think about to rye your opponent.
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  And also, you know, UMG's argument is people listening
• 15:01
  understand and expect that. So no one would have listened to
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  it and believed everything they say is true.
• 15:05
  You think of it. It's like it's a which Drake's
• 15:08
  lawyers don't agree with. They've actually since hit back
• 15:10
  and said this is again one of these sentences you just have to
• 15:14
  read out. Millions of people all over the
• 15:17
  world did understand the defamatory material was a
• 15:19
  factual assertion, assertion that plaintiff is a paedophile.
• 15:24
  So Drake's lawyers are arguing no, everyone listened to that
• 15:26
  Kendrick track and said, no, we think Drake is a paedophile
• 15:29
  because you said it on that, that song.
• 15:31
  So it's a real, a really fascinating legal point.
• 15:36
  Like if you're rat battling someone, can you actually not
• 15:39
  say things that that that would get you in a court of law
• 15:43
  because everyone listening understand you're just making it
• 15:45
  up. Yeah.
• 15:46
  And that's. If you were to go back
• 15:48
  retrospectively through the back catalogues of, well, virtually
• 15:52
  any frontline rap artist of the last, what, 20 years or more,
• 15:58
  I'm sure somewhere in their catalogue they have made a false
• 16:02
  claim about someone or some, well, some what.
• 16:04
  I was going to say something. I don't think the thing was
• 16:06
  suing court, but someone must have taken umbrance and said,
• 16:09
  hang on. He's called me this.
• 16:11
  I'm not this. I mean, I don't know.
• 16:13
  I mean, if if Drake wins, does that mean that the floodgates
• 16:19
  will open after that says, well, everyone suddenly, suddenly rush
• 16:23
  to court and say, well, I was falsely accused of something in
• 16:28
  this song so well. This is what UMG is arguing.
• 16:31
  It's saying it will have a chilling effect on arts and
• 16:34
  culture. Because you can't.
• 16:35
  And Drake's lawyer. In fact, I'm now getting sent
• 16:38
  the press releases from Drake's lawyers, which I'm quite excited
• 16:40
  about by the journalists. He, he said that he, they're
• 16:43
  arguing that UMG is pretending it's about rap battle.
• 16:46
  But actually they describe it as a greedy company is finally
• 16:49
  being held responsible for profiting from dangerous
• 16:51
  misinformation that has already resulted in multiple acts of
• 16:54
  violence. So they're saying that this,
• 16:56
  this track did actually cause. So I mean, the, the other point
• 16:59
  here, I mean, it's just it is marvellously entertaining as an
• 17:02
  as an outsider watching someone, a legal filing just lay into an
• 17:07
  artist who. But it does make you think,
• 17:11
  whatever happens here, whether the case is settled, whether
• 17:14
  Drake wins this relationship, it feels like all the bridges are
• 17:17
  being blown up between Drake and Universal Music Group, which
• 17:20
  then begs the question, what will Drake do next if he if he's
• 17:22
  not working with them, because he could go independent, he
• 17:26
  could sign with a rival major. You know, whatever happens after
• 17:30
  this, the dust settles from this could be one of the biggest
• 17:33
  examples of a major artist getting that moment of saying
• 17:35
  right, what, why do you how will I release music now?
• 17:37
  Will I do it all myself? And so I would think everyone
• 17:41
  else in the industry besides eating popcorn while reading all
• 17:44
  these filings is probably thinking, right, maybe we should
• 17:47
  be getting our pitch ready to get Drake to come and sign with
• 17:49
  us. So I wonder if that's that
• 17:51
  background. To to immediately release a
• 17:53
  track, which I imagine will be a diss track about UMG accusing
• 17:57
  UMG of all kinds of things. I mean, that's surely the next
• 18:00
  that must be is that must be the first single after leaving the
• 18:03
  label would be. I mean, true.
• 18:07
  I mean, although having seen how spicy EMG's lawyers are in this
• 18:10
  filing, I maybe wouldn't pick a fight.
• 18:12
  I I wouldn't pick a rap power with them because, you know, you
• 18:14
  don't want to lose again. But but yeah, I mean, it's,
• 18:16
  it's, it's a really like, like it's honestly it's, it's, it's
• 18:19
  funny and amusing and entertaining.
• 18:20
  But there is a very serious point here, which is about, you
• 18:23
  know, what can you claim and what can't you claim in a, in a
• 18:26
  rap battle? And can you be hauled to court
• 18:29
  over it? And so if this does get to
• 18:30
  court, that's the point that's going to be in.
• 18:32
  Like you say, it could open the floodgates for all manner of
• 18:35
  other other things in the future.
• 18:37
  Going back to something from earlier on, you were talking
• 18:39
  about, you know, the streaming subscriptions are up, free
• 18:43
  streaming profits are down. Here's something which, well,
• 18:47
  it's something of an alternative to the way we stream music at
• 18:50
  the moment. And this here's the question,
• 18:53
  there's a new thing, it's called what's new to me called Play
• 18:55
  Credits. And could this be a new way for
• 18:59
  people to pay to stream music? Can you explain play credits to
• 19:04
  us? Is it, I mean, is it like you're
• 19:06
  in an amusement arcade, you put a fiver in and get loads of, you
• 19:10
  know, those weird tokens that you can then use in the arcade
• 19:13
  games, but instead buying music? Is that is that anywhere close
• 19:18
  to it? Essentially, that is, yeah.
• 19:20
  And you know you can go and whack a hammer on a thing and
• 19:22
  win a prize. Yeah.
• 19:23
  Yeah. That's it.
• 19:23
  Yeah. Yeah, it kind of is actually,
• 19:25
  Yeah. I mean, so this comes from a guy
• 19:27
  called Mark Mulligan, who is the MD of Media Research.
• 19:30
  He's one of the most respected kind of analysts and consultants
• 19:33
  in the music industry. And what I like, he's a very
• 19:35
  nice man as well. But what I like about him is he
• 19:37
  he he enjoys putting theories out there about, well, this is
• 19:40
  how things could change. This is what this is the new
• 19:42
  idea. And his latest one is play
• 19:45
  credits. So this will be.
• 19:46
  Yeah, essentially you would subscribe to your streaming
• 19:48
  service. You'd still pay your your kind
• 19:49
  of tenor a month or whatever it is.
• 19:51
  And then for your subscription, you get a certain number of
• 19:54
  credits. So I don't know, call it 1000
• 19:55
  credits for argument's sake. Yeah.
• 19:58
  And, and each song you stream will cost you some credits.
• 20:03
  So the standard might be it costs one credit to stream a
• 20:05
  song, but he would say actually if a label wants to.
• 20:09
  Promote a new song heavily, they could drop it to zero credit to
• 20:12
  make it free, or they could charge 10 credits if they think
• 20:15
  they can get away with that. So it'll be it'll be under the
• 20:18
  control of the artist or the label to decide how many credits
• 20:21
  a song stream was worth. And he said he reckons it work.
• 20:25
  I mean, he said it works for stock photography libraries.
• 20:27
  This is how they work. It's also how a lot of AI
• 20:30
  services work actually. If you use something like, in
• 20:32
  fact, things like Suno and Udio where you're creating our music,
• 20:35
  you get a certain number of credits.
• 20:37
  And each time you create a track, it costs you 2 or 4
• 20:39
  credits and also Splice. So musicians who use Splice, you
• 20:44
  get credits there that you can use on samples, downloading
• 20:46
  samples. So this model did exist, but it
• 20:50
  hasn't. It has been tried in streaming
• 20:52
  music, but only by a few small start-ups and it's never really
• 20:56
  caught fire. But that's maybe because those
• 21:00
  were tiny start-ups who didn't reach the point.
• 21:03
  So what Mark Mulligan is saying, maybe a big service should try
• 21:06
  it. It would be a big change.
• 21:08
  I don't know if would it appeal to you like that, Sort of having
• 21:11
  that thought of how many credits I've got less, how much songs
• 21:13
  can I stream before I have to top?
• 21:14
  Because you could top up as well.
• 21:15
  When you run out of credits, you could top up and buy some more.
• 21:18
  You wouldn't actually run out of music.
• 21:22
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• 21:24
  selling through the roof like Heinz or Mattel, you think about
• 21:27
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• 21:33
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• 21:36
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• 21:42
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• 21:47
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• 21:50
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• 22:26
  Terms apply. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't
• 22:31
  it? I suppose one of the questions
• 22:32
  is, is it going to make somewhere down the line?
• 22:36
  Is it going to make artists richer?
• 22:38
  Is there going to be more money in the pot to pay to artists?
• 22:42
  Will there be more money going to record labels?
• 22:44
  The record label, so as we said earlier, still wants growth,
• 22:48
  still want to make even more money out of streaming.
• 22:51
  Will it create more revenue for everyone involved?
• 22:54
  That's the thing. Because if it will, then there
• 22:57
  will be people in the music industry.
• 22:59
  You'll back it, surely. Well, that's it and it and it
• 23:02
  doesn't, it may not solve some of the problems there are like
• 23:05
  it wouldn't, it wouldn't change the fact that the money would go
• 23:07
  to your right shoulders and if you've got a terrible label
• 23:09
  deal, you won't see much money. Yeah, of course.
• 23:11
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but but it would, I don't
• 23:16
  know, maybe you could tie this thing with a system that
• 23:18
  involved the credits you spend on music.
• 23:20
  The the money from that would go to those those.
• 23:22
  Artists to the actual artists, yeah, rather than going into a
• 23:25
  central fund and then being distributed.
• 23:27
  But I'm just. Trying to imagine what would
• 23:30
  happen if Spotify tomorrow said, right, we're switching to play
• 23:32
  credits. It would be people would be up
• 23:35
  in arms and it would be a big Hoo ha.
• 23:36
  So I wonder if it's something that someone new needs to try
• 23:39
  and and prove can work before the big people would try it.
• 23:42
  But I like I like the idea of it being kicked around.
• 23:44
  Like I think it's a good idea that everyone is saying right,
• 23:46
  How could things be different? And actually there is there is a
• 23:49
  start up who we had a start-ups contest from Musicali last year
• 23:53
  and it was one of the finalists. And it's it's got a name that I
• 23:56
  think may make you grimace because it's name is foreplay
• 23:59
  PLAY. But PLAI, which I didn't want to
• 24:04
  say it, but they were talking, I think about a paper play type
• 24:08
  system, maybe not the same as this, but this idea of you would
• 24:11
  pay for every play you have on a service.
• 24:14
  So there are there are people thinking about it and maybe that
• 24:16
  means that someone will try it and we'll find out if people
• 24:18
  like it. Talking of streaming, Napster,
• 24:22
  remember them Napster, the old school file sharing service
• 24:27
  turned streaming operation has been sold.
• 24:30
  Sold again. It has.
• 24:33
  So like, I don't know how much you've followed Napster since
• 24:36
  the heyday, the heyday of the heyday of the file sharing.
• 24:39
  I barely sleep at night for wondering what's going on at
• 24:42
  Napster. Who owns Napster this week?
• 24:45
  Yeah, that's it. Always at the front of my
• 24:47
  thoughts of Napster. I have not thought about them
• 24:51
  almost well at all. Honestly like it.
• 24:55
  So it started off as a famous file sharing service, got sued
• 24:59
  by labels, shut down. Then it was owned by a company
• 25:02
  called Roxio who would like a digital media company.
• 25:05
  Then it was owned by Best Buy, the US supermarket chain.
• 25:08
  Then it was bought by a a virtual reality concert startup
• 25:12
  called Melody VR. And then most recently, three
• 25:14
  years ago, it got bought by this consortium of investors led by a
• 25:17
  couple of Web 3 blockchain crypto firms.
• 25:22
  Now, I mean, you sort of look at that and go, it's been getting
• 25:24
  progressively more sort of amusing.
• 25:26
  And so today it's been bought by a company called Infinite
• 25:31
  Reality. It's paying $207 million for
• 25:35
  Napster. So, you know, a decent price, an
• 25:39
  infinite reality. I had to go and look them up who
• 25:41
  they are. So it's, it's a, it's a company
• 25:43
  that helps businesses build like 3D websites and virtual stores
• 25:47
  and AI assistants. So it's kind of metaverse AI in
• 25:50
  that space. It also owns a production, big
• 25:53
  production studios. It owns a talent management
• 25:55
  agency. It owns E sports teams and it
• 25:59
  also owns the drone racing league which is my favorite
• 26:02
  aspect. Hang on, there's a drone racing
• 26:06
  little Just the idea of what you race drones you.
• 26:10
  Can and it's a professional, a professional sporting league.
• 26:13
  There were people. Being paid to race drones.
• 26:17
  Yeah, I mean, I'm quite I'm quite.
• 26:20
  So I'm really going to be selling it short here.
• 26:22
  I'm sure in my head it's like Robot Wars but with more
• 26:25
  jeopardy, like people just flying drones around a track and
• 26:28
  crashing into each other. And then so but this company,
• 26:31
  like this company raised 3 billion funding round $3 billion
• 26:35
  in January. Like it's got a lot of money and
• 26:37
  it's valued at 12.25 million billion dollars.
• 26:40
  So this is a big, highly valued tech company going, yeah, we've
• 26:45
  got drone racing league, we've got E sports teams, we've got
• 26:48
  all kind of metaverse business going on.
• 26:50
  And now we're going to buy Napster.
• 26:51
  And what's what do you think they'll do with Napster?
• 26:54
  Do you think they'll invest money in trying to re establish
• 26:58
  its name? Yeah, so I mean, Napster has
• 27:01
  been doing some kind of interesting stuff anyway, like
• 27:03
  it's been doing it's been doing virtual, virtual Hangouts where
• 27:07
  you can go and sort of go into a virtual room and hang out with
• 27:09
  an artist and, you know, listen to their music.
• 27:12
  So it's going to carry on with that sort of thing, like this
• 27:13
  idea of how can you go to virtual concerts and virtual
• 27:16
  listening parties online. They're going to be selling
• 27:19
  physical merch and ticketing, which is something that everyone
• 27:22
  is doing streaming. They're going to cross promote
• 27:25
  quite heavily. So if you are watching the Drone
• 27:27
  Racing League, I think you'll be seeing Napster's famous logo on
• 27:30
  some some drones perhaps. And with it's esports teams.
• 27:34
  And yeah, they're basically saying they're going to they're
• 27:37
  going to kind of put the month behind it, which is is quite,
• 27:41
  quite a good time. Because earlier this year there
• 27:43
  were some reports actually that some labels and distributors
• 27:46
  were unhappy with Napster saying that he'd been paying royalties
• 27:48
  late. And there was a billboard story
• 27:50
  saying it was they were complaining about that and
• 27:52
  considering. So if that was a money cash flow
• 27:57
  thing, I don't know details then now it's got this big backer
• 28:01
  behind it. That should solve all that.
• 28:04
  At the same time, when I mean the history of the music
• 28:07
  industry is when someone gets bought for loads of money or
• 28:10
  when someone raises loads of money, the music industry goes
• 28:13
  right then rubs its hands, right.
• 28:14
  We'll be having a nice slice of that.
• 28:16
  Thanks. So I would think that people
• 28:18
  will be going to end up saying, right, you've got all this money
• 28:21
  in this big backer. Now how are we going to benefit
• 28:24
  from that? What are you going to do for us?
• 28:25
  So it's going to be, it's going to be interesting, but it does.
• 28:28
  I mean, you know, the cynic in me says next year we'll be
• 28:31
  talking about someone else buying it again because it seems
• 28:33
  to be this thing property that gets passed from owner to owner.
• 28:35
  But maybe this is its forever home, to use a phrase that they
• 28:39
  use for pets. You know, maybe it's found its
• 28:41
  forever home and it's all be great.
• 28:43
  But yeah, this is broken this afternoon.
• 28:44
  And yeah. Yeah, OK.
• 28:47
  Another story which says I mentioned is only just broken as
• 28:50
  well, but the Competition and Markets Authority has provided a
• 28:55
  progress update on its investigation into Ticketmaster,
• 29:00
  which was well came as a result of the widespread complaints
• 29:05
  about the sales of Oasis concert tickets.
• 29:10
  Shall read you some of this This is you can find this on the the
• 29:13
  government's own website. But the IT says under concerns.
• 29:17
  The CMA is concerned that Ticketmaster, which sold more
• 29:20
  than 900,000 tickets during the Oasis ticket sale, may have
• 29:24
  breached consumer protection law by a labeling certain seated
• 29:28
  tickets as platinum and selling them for nearly 2 1/2 times the
• 29:33
  price of equivalent standard tickets without sufficiently
• 29:36
  explaining that they did not offer additional benefits.
• 29:39
  And indeed, we're often located in the same area of the stadium
• 29:43
  as your regular ticket. This risk giving that last bit
• 29:47
  I've just added on. I'm trying to pricey as we go,
• 29:51
  but it does say I quote this risk giving consumers the
• 29:55
  misleading impression that platinum tickets were better.
• 29:58
  Also, it says to not informing consumers that there were two
• 30:03
  categories of standing tickets at different prices, with all of
• 30:07
  the cheapest standing tickets sold first before the more
• 30:10
  expensive standing tickets were released, resulting in many fans
• 30:14
  waiting in a lengthy queue without understanding what they
• 30:17
  would be paying for by the end. It's also says next steps.
• 30:23
  Since the opening of the investigation, Ticketmaster has
• 30:25
  made changes to some aspects of its ticket sales process, but
• 30:30
  the CMA does not currently consider these changes are
• 30:33
  sufficient to address its concerns.
• 30:36
  Those are the sort of headlines. There is a quote.
• 30:40
  Hailey Fletcher, interim senior director of consumer protection,
• 30:44
  says we're concerned that Oasis fans didn't get the information
• 30:47
  they needed or may have been misled in buying tickets that
• 30:51
  they thought were better than they were.
• 30:55
  I guess this is pretty much what we expected, wasn't it?
• 30:58
  At least, you know, this early stage or at this stage of the
• 31:02
  investigation. Because I think we, I think we
• 31:05
  said at the time during the, the whole Ferrari about the sales of
• 31:09
  the Oasis shows, the tickets for Oasis, we said it's going to
• 31:14
  come down to transparency. I don't think there's not a lot
• 31:19
  I think that the government are probably willing to do to get
• 31:22
  involved in how people sell tickets.
• 31:24
  And we'll have more of this after the, you know, the, the
• 31:26
  consultation into actual ticketing and secondary
• 31:29
  ticketing, I imagine. But it's really saying tell
• 31:32
  people what they're buying and how much it's and how much it's
• 31:36
  going to be. It's transparency, isn't it?
• 31:39
  That's it I think and I think we we talked at the time about how
• 31:42
  fans just wanted to know why, why the price suddenly gone up
• 31:45
  to what it more than they expected.
• 31:46
  And and it yeah, like you say, it's quite a it's about very
• 31:50
  much the the specific thing of did you mislead fans and how and
• 31:54
  why. It's interesting.
• 31:55
  I think the fact that it's not like we are finding them or we
• 32:00
  are investigating them. It's like we're working with
• 32:02
  them to improve this. That seems to be the wording,
• 32:05
  isn't it? That which is I guess a
• 32:07
  constructive positive thing and that this is, it's not like a
• 32:10
  big, it's not a big fight, it's not a crackdown, a clampdown.
• 32:12
  It's we're going to make sure this doesn't happen again.
• 32:15
  We're going to work with them. I've been looking, I don't think
• 32:18
  Ticketmaster has commented yet. Like we're, we're actually
• 32:20
  recording this something, it's just been announced this
• 32:22
  morning. And even the BBC and the
• 32:24
  Guardian are both saying we've contacted them for comment, but
• 32:26
  they haven't replied yet. So I guess we'll hear their
• 32:29
  point of view on this, but it's good news for fans, I think
• 32:33
  because it will, it will sort of set the lines.
• 32:35
  Will it don't? This is not, this is how you
• 32:37
  don't what you don't do in future.
• 32:40
  So yeah, I guess this, this is how it's supposed to work, isn't
• 32:43
  it? Regulators, they see a problem,
• 32:45
  they they see a problem, they figure out what should be done
• 32:47
  and they they they make it happen.
• 32:49
  Yeah, there'll be more on that. And as Stuart says, excuse me,
• 32:54
  as Stuart says, there will be, I'm guessing, a response, a
• 32:57
  likely response from Ticketmaster, which may have hit
• 33:01
  the press even by the time this show comes out on Wednesday.
• 33:06
  As I say, we're recording this on Tuesday, so who knows, by
• 33:08
  tomorrow we might have more from Ticketmaster or they may wait I
• 33:11
  guess until the final report before commenting.
• 33:14
  We'll see. We've got what I think.
• 33:16
  One last I was going to say story.
• 33:19
  I mean, it is a story, but it's not it's not the big heavyweight
• 33:23
  story. This is very much, you know,
• 33:25
  local news programs where they always finish with an and
• 33:28
  finally story. Well, this is a slightly more
• 33:31
  fluffy and finally story. And finally, Mariah Carey has
• 33:36
  been cleared of copyright infringement in a case over her
• 33:39
  1994 Christmas A staple. All I want for Christmas is you.
• 33:45
  Who was who was making a claim here?
• 33:48
  This is a name that I'm going to struggle with.
• 33:50
  A person called him Adam Stone. He performs on the name Vince
• 33:56
  Vance, which is an incredibly hard name to say, but he he
• 34:02
  claimed that she, Mariah Carey infringed a song of his that was
• 34:07
  kind of similar, similar in style and looks.
• 34:12
  And he was claiming at least $20 million in damages, which I
• 34:15
  mean, the, the BBC story in this said that all I want for
• 34:18
  Christmas to you is earn more than $60 million since it was
• 34:21
  released in 1994. So it's been like one of
• 34:23
  probably that's going to be the most lucrative Christmas song of
• 34:25
  all time, hasn't it? I'm trying to think I mean.
• 34:27
  Well, white. Imagine White Christmas might be
• 34:30
  up there. I guess so, yeah.
• 34:32
  Yeah. But, but I mean, so this this
• 34:35
  sounds like a pretty brutal ruling for, for, for Adam Stone,
• 34:40
  who was suing her. I think the judge said they
• 34:42
  didn't share the so he said his lawyers had not met their burden
• 34:46
  of showing that the songs were substantially similar.
• 34:50
  And he's got to repay the legal bills that Mariah Carey's has
• 34:54
  had to pay. So it's very much a victory for
• 34:56
  her. And I think there was, it's one
• 34:59
  of those cases where they got musicologists in, which always
• 35:02
  fascinates me. I think they had one person who
• 35:04
  said low, look, there's all these other songs before the
• 35:08
  track that the, the, that Vince Vance was talking about with
• 35:12
  similar lyrical ideas. Like this idea of All I Want for
• 35:14
  Christmas For You is not an original thought.
• 35:17
  People have had that song before.
• 35:19
  But musically, the depositions were like, no, they're not.
• 35:22
  They're not similar. This has not been copied.
• 35:25
  So, yeah, Mariah gets to keep. Well, I don't I, I would say she
• 35:28
  gets to keep her $60 million, but I'm, I'm fairly sure she's
• 35:30
  made a good job of spending some of that money.
• 35:34
  She might be investing it wisely, but I want where I carry
• 35:36
  to be buying Thrones and, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff.
• 35:40
  That's how I in my head, that's. What I was just about to say,
• 35:44
  they're listeners. They're another insight into
• 35:47
  what goes on in the mind of the dredge, I think.
• 35:52
  I think that feels like an end point.
• 35:54
  Thank you very much for listening.
• 35:55
  As always, if you have enjoyed the show, please subscribe to us
• 35:58
  in your podcast app and spread the words.
• 36:00
  Or you can look up our Patreon page where you can support our
• 36:05
  endeavours for a couple of quids a month.
• 36:07
  And of course, if you have a question, if there's anything
• 36:10
  even out of today's program, you're thinking hang on a
• 36:13
  second, but what about but any financially based queries that
• 36:20
  you have or anything where you think we might be able to give
• 36:22
  you some tips? If you're a musician or anyone
• 36:25
  else in the music industry looking for advice, which
• 36:30
  vaguely includes money, then drop us a line.
• 36:34
  We love hearing from you. You can contact the podcast at,
• 36:38
  well, e-mail us at the price of music, podcast@gmail.com.
• 36:42
  That's the price of music, podcast@gmail.com.
• 36:46
  Till next time, take care everybody.
• 36:48
  Tara.