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The music industry’s 9-figure war for Taylor Swift
Michael Beach
September 04, 2018
Free agent: Taylor Swift’s current contract with Big Machine Records expires in November and the bidding warlooks to be intense.
Album sales for the Billboard Top 200 during the first week of her most recent release:
1) Taylor Swift — 1.2M
2) Everyone else — 863K
Historic start: Her first 5 albums sold between 6–10M copies each. No other artist has ever had a start like that.
Each night of her current tour grosses between $5–9M.
She accounts for 80% of her current labels revenue!
Quote from Doug Davis — Founder @ The Davis Firm:“There’s no precedent to look to regarding the top-selling artist of the digital era becoming a total free agent…Taylor Swift is at an extraordinary point in her career where she can write her own ticket in regards to the commercial terms and deal structure. If she is seeking to break financial records and extend with a major, she could have the biggest artist deal of the century so far. If she wants to be creative and choose an alternative structure for capitalization, she could create her own business model. It’s very exciting.”
Streaming revenue for Forbes Celebrity 100 up 119%:
1) 2015 — $177m
2) 2016 — $387m
Musicians make just under $0.01 per stream.
14artists from the Celebrity 100 generated 1B+ streams in 2016.
How Spotify makes money:
1) Subscriptions — 90%
2) Advertising — 10%
Spotify currently has 157M users around the world.
Types of users (% of total):
1) Non-paying — 86M (55%)
2) Paying — 71M (45%)
Big news: The music industry just finished the best year in a decade with $8.7B in revenue w/ streaming accounting for 65%.
Streaming revenue by year (% growth):
1) 2014 — $1.8B
2) 2015 — $2.3B (↑ 28%)
3) 2016 — $4.0B (↑ 74%)
4) 2017 — $5.7B (↑ 43%)
The post The music industry’s 9-figure war for Taylor Swift appeared first on Cross Screen Media.
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