Welcome to Music Business Worldwide’s weekly round-up – where we make sure you caught the five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days. MBW’s round-up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their income and reduce their touring costs.
The catastrophic wildfires still unfolding in Los Angeles County have obviously overshadowed every piece of music industry news this week.
Amongst the devastation: Malibu’s beloved Harbor Studios, where a number of superstars have recorded, was sadly destroyed by the Palisades Fire.
Confirming the news on Instagram yesterday (January 9), owner Zach Brandon wrote: “I cried this morning, but not because Harbor burned down. I cried because it settled in with me that Harbor was taken from so many artists who cared so deeply about Harbor. It was a place of musical freedom… a sanctuary in the most literal sense of the word. I loved it.”
Brandon vowed that his team would “come back stronger from this”, writing that “thankfully, the magic that has been bestowed upon us by our clients is something that can never leave. It’s in the soil, it’s in the air, and it’s in our souls.”
Elsewhere in the music industry this week, we saw breaking news involving Travis Scott, Daniel Ek, Blackstone, Spotify and more.
Here are five of the biggest headlines from the music business over the past few days…
We’re just a week into 2025, and the first blockbuster copyright infringement lawsuit of the year has already been filed in a New York court.
According to legal documents obtained by MBW, Travis Scott, SZA and Future are being sued by RocNation-signed artist Victory Boyd, and her publishing company Songs of Glory, for allegedly ripping off her song Like The Way It Sounds to create their 2023 hit, Telekinesis.
Telekinesis has been streamed over 413 million times on Spotify alone. It was released as part of Scott’s smash hit, US No.1album, Utopia (Cactus Jack/Epic Records/ Sony Music)…
Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek has launched into 2025 with another significant financial move.
Ek sold a further USD $27.8 million worth of company shares on Wednesday (January 8), continuing a pattern of substantial stock transactions.
Since Ek cashed out a tranche of Spotify shares for the first time in July 2023, he has banked around USD $568 million from SPOT stock sales in total (including the latest transaction), according to MBW calculations…
It’s one of the key valuation and advisory players in music’s blockbuster M&A market. Now, Citrin Cooperman (CC) has an interesting new owner… and a mammoth price-tag.
A Blackstone-led investor group has majority-acquired New York-headquartered CC, buying out the firm’s previous investor, New Mountain Capital.
The Financial Times reports that the deal gives Citrin Cooperman – which claims to be one of the largest professional services firms in the United States – an enterprise value of over $2 billion…
The amount of money spent on music subscriptions by UK consumers grew healthily last year, up 7.8% YoY.
That’s according to new preliminary stats from the UK’s Entertainment Retailers’ Association (ERA), whose members include Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and SoundCloud.
According to ERA’s data, some GBP £2.018 billion (USD $2.58bn) was spent on music streaming subscriptions in 2024, up from GBP £1.870 billion in 2023.
In monetary terms, that represented a YoY increase of GBP £146.4 million.
(To be extra-clear: ERA’s figures are retail amounts – i.e. what consumers spent on subscriptions, rather than the wholesale figure paid to music rightsholders. They don’t include revenue from ad-supported tiers.).. (MBW)
Spotify is exclusively premiering a concert film from superstar artist The Weeknd on its platform this week, as the streaming company expands its video content strategy.
Starting Tuesday (January 7), the 45-minute special, titled Billions Club Live with The Weeknd: A Concert Film, will stream exclusively on Spotify for 48 hours before becoming available on other platforms.
The 48-hour exclusivity window represents Spotify’s first major test of time-limited long-form video content….
