Music History

And “indie,” in the current day, doesn’t necessarily mean “small”: the big-tent Beggars Group (4AD, Matador, Rough Trade, XL, and Young Turks) is inarguably a major business. North Carolina’s Merge Records has had multiple Billboard top tens, and is distributed by a NASDAQ-listed public company that counts among other clients Walmart, Target, GameS... See more

We already know that by ownership independents account for nearly half of the recorded music market. The reality is that the feeding frenzy in the independent sector is a sign of the majors’ weakness rather than their strength.

Streaming has shattered the barriers to market entry the majors created in the CD age. That trend will only continue.

The ke... See more

The music streaming industry is at a critical juncture . While revenues are at an all-time high, driven by 800 million premium subscribers and a global market worth c. $22 billion, market developments threaten to create and entrench a two-tier system that disadvantages independent music stakeholders. This report evaluates industry changes through a... See more

A month earlier, according to Music Business Worldwide, UMG acquired the remaining 51% of PIAS, Europe’s largest independent music company. These acquisitions illustrate Universal’s recognition that this is where the revenue growth in the music industry is happening.

Although late to the party, this year Universal, through Virgin Music Group, acquired Downtown Music Holdings for $775 million in cash in December 2024. Downtown Music Holdings includes a number of companies, most notably CD Baby, Fuga, AdRev, SongTrust, and Downtown. Through these companies, Universal now owns independent music recordings, distrib... See more

“Built on a foundation of artist-centric principles, Streaming 2.0 will represent a new age of innovation, consumer segmentation, geographic expansion, greater consumer value and ARPU growth,” writes Grainge in today’s letter.

In cases where the MLC is not able to match musical works to copyright owners, the MLC is authorized to distribute the unclaimed royalties to copyright owners identified in the MLC records, based on the relative market shares of such copyright owners as reflected in reports of usage provided by digital music providers for the periods in question.

T... See more

The most prominent recent victory for organized musicians was 2018’s Music Modernization Act, which, among other things, established mechanical royalties for streaming, based on a “grand bargain” offering streaming services indemnity from infringement lawsuits in exchange for royalties. The MMA was sponsored by conservative Republicans Bob Goodlatt... See more

New technologies may be disruptive to the existing population of working musicians, but even more irresistible to the general public than new technology are new forms of music, which may introduce new classes of musicians who don’t fit neatly into the existing professional categories. Take the rise of rock and roll.