Cultura Voice

  Spotify’s share price hit an all-time high on Friday (January 8), rising 7% at the bell on the New York Stock Exchange to end the day at $353.11. This jump translated into a market cap valuation of $66.94bn, according to YCharts. That share price – and that market cap – were both more than three times bigger than Spotify’s value back in mid-March 2020. The lowest point of Spotify’s share price that month came on March 16, when it closed at $117.64 – resulting in a market cap of $21.68bn. Friday’s bump in Spotify’s share price came in the same week that Bank Of America increased its Spotify share price target from $357-per-share to $428. Bofa’s Jessica Reif Cohen raised that share price target while suggesting that Spotify’s Q4 2020 results – announced early next month – are likely to show “sequential improvement in average revenue per user”. Spotify’s current share price (sitting at around $346.80 at the time of publication) is higher than the majority of analysts quoted on eToro...

  The global pandemic hasn’t slowed down Tencent Music Entertainment’s acquisition strategy in music. Earlier this year, the company, which is majority-owned by China’s Tencent Holdings, acquired a minority slice of Universal Music Group via a Tencent-led consortium’s $3.4bn buyout of a 10% stake in UMG. In June, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) also acquired its own sliver of Warner Music Group, paying around $100m for a stake worth around 0.8% of WMG. (Tencent Holdings acquired a further 0.8%.) Last month, revealed that both Tencent Holdings and TME had acquired a minority stake in the fast-growing, AI-driven A&R platform Instrumental. And today (November 19), Tencent Music has announced an additional acquisition of a minority stake in an intriguing music company – Los Angeles-based virtual concerts platform Wave. Wave blends broadcast technology and real-time gaming graphics to transform artists into digital avatars in a virtual world, through which they can play livestream...

The roll-out of the streaming platform means that Apple Music is now available in 167 markets in total. That’s more than double the number of countries in which Spotify operates – 79 – as reported in the Swedish service’s annual results at the close of last year. Apple’s move comes as part of a global expansion of the company’s most popular services, with the App Store, Apple Arcade and iCloud available in 20 more territories from today. Meanwhile, Apple Music’s in-house ‘radio’ station, Beats 1, will now broadcast in seven Middle Eastern countries – Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain – bringing a live global listening experience from studios in Los Angeles, New York, London and Nashville. “We’re delighted to bring many of Apple’s most beloved Services to users in more countries than ever before,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and International Content. “We hope our customers can discover their new favor...

Belgium-based, independent music trade body IMPALA has said that it is ‘gearing up to oppose Tencent’s buyout of a 10% stake of Universal Music Group.’ The European organization argues that ‘the impact of such a sale would change the whole music ecosystem’, and that smaller companies will be at a competitive disadvantage. In a statement issue today (November 26), IMPALA, which represents over 4,000 independent music companies and national associations, says that it is also ‘concerned about who might buy the additional UMG stakes that are up for grabs’. Tencent Music Holdings is the majority shareholder of Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), which owns QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo and has an estimated 90% market share of digital music in China. According to TME’s latest Q3 results, it reached a total of 35.4m paying music subscribers in the three months to end of September, while the firm’s online music services – including both streaming and downloads – generated RMB 1.85bn (US $...