MBW’s Stat Of The Week is a series in which we highlight a single data point that deserves the attention of the global music industry. Stat Of the Week is supported by Music Group Fivea technology-driven record label, distribution and rights management company.
It was inevitable, but it’s no less breathtaking: around 100,000 new songs are now uploaded to music streaming platforms every day.
So say two of the most influential figures in the modern music industry: Universal Music Group CEO and President, Sir Lucian Graingeas well as the outgoing CEO of Warner Music Group, Steve Cooper.
Addressing the music matters conference in Singapore on September 27, Grainge said that 100,000 tracks were now “added daily to music platforms”.
He argued that this vast volume of music, along with the additional “associated content” on social platforms, makes it increasingly difficult for artists to break into substantial audiences online.
Therefore, Grainge suggested, record labels – with their ability to market, promote and develop artists – are becoming increasingly central to musicians’ careers.
Steve Cooper, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia Event September 12, said: “Today, any day of the week, approximately 100,000 music tracks are uploaded to SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple, [and] soon.
“The complexity of being able to separate one’s music from the other 99,999 the tracks uploaded that day are incredibly complex [and] incredibly difficult.
Cooper suggested that the emergence of Web3 platforms would add to this complexity for artists, due to “the interactivity needed to get a creator known and kept [them] prominent”.
The WMG exec added, “Most creators don’t have the capital, skill levels, [or] the expertise to do all of this and succeed. As such, Warner sees Web3 as a “tremendous opportunity” to further assert its role in helping artists get noticed, Cooper said.
“Today, every weekday, around 100,000 music tracks are uploaded to SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple, [and] soon.”
Steve Cooper, Warner Music Group
This confirmation of the 100,000 leads per day figure comes just 18 months after Spotify’s announcement (in February 2021) than more 60,000 tracks per day were uploaded to its platform.
This 60,000 This milestone came nearly two years after Spotify announced to investors (in April 2019) this “nearly 40,000” leads were added to its service every 24 hours.
Before that, in the first semester 2018Spotify said that 20,000 tracks were uploaded to its platform every day.
Put these statistics into perspective: From 2018 to 2022, the volume of songs downloaded from Spotify et al daily was multiplied by five.
This information arrives as a major streaming service – Apple Music – confirms that the total number of tracks on its platform has now exceeded 100 million.
This figure was higher than 70 million less than two years ago.
Announcement of the milestone of 100 million this week, Apple’s Global Editorial Manager, Rachel Newmansaid, “Around the world today, in 167 countries and regions on Apple Music, any artist of any description can write and record a song and stream it around the world.
“Every day, more than 20,000 singers and songwriters submit new songs to Apple Music – songs that make our catalog even better than it was. the day before.”
(An interesting side note: if we are to believe the 100,000 a day stat from Lucian Grainge and Steve Cooper – and they both run publicly traded companies, so we’ll go ahead and do it – that would mean that each of the 20,000 singer-songwriters cited by Apple downloads an average of five songs per day.)
Obviously, this 100 million This stat won’t be unique to Apple Music: the recent rapid growth in volume of music downloads has been driven by the independent distribution sector, where companies pride themselves on the number of services (Spotify, Apple Music, youtube music, Amazon Music etc.) they can stream music at once.
The question is, is Rachel Newman’s statement really true? Do 100,000 new tracks swarming Apple Music every 24 hours actually make its catalog “even better than it was the day before”?
Or do they actually make it bigger, more overwhelming, and less manageable?
In reality, do they increasingly dilute the good stuff, making it harder and harder to find?
A hundred million tracks, if all of those tracks equalized at 3 minutes each, would take you about 571 years to listen to as a result – sleepless.
This is obviously impossible in a single life. Or, indeed, in five lifetimes. So who really benefits from this ever-changing musical quagmire?
Distributors of independent artists like DistroKid and TuneCore, of course, receive compensation from each DIY artist whose music they upload to streaming platforms. There is therefore a financial gain for these companies (DistoKid was not recently valued at $1.3 billion for nothing.)
But is 100 million tracks better for audience what, say, 20 million? (Especially considering that, statistically, some 80% of all tracks on Spotify have less than 50 monthly listeners. And that, according to a senior official of a major record company, “everyone knows that most this the music has not even been listened to once”?)
Is it better for loss-making platforms like Spotify, whose spending on cloud-based storage and hosting for its digital music catalog continues to soar?
(In fiscal year 2021, according to an annual report Filing with the SECSpotify spent extra 33 million euros year-over-year on “information technology costs” primarily due to an “increase in our use of cloud computing services”.)
And is it better for the honest partners of streaming services – artists and labels alike – who upload the best music possible, in the simple hope of finding an audience that likes it? (Dinosaurs!)
Surely we all live in hope that companies like Spotify and Apple Music are building (or purchase) sophisticated technology that prevents dangerous and/or hateful content from reaching the ears of young users.
But what about basic quality control?
How can we be sure that a significant number of leads among the 100,000 now downloaded daily are not – in the words of Sony Music Group President, Rob Stringer – simple “flotsam and jetsam”?
By what he basically means: loads of 30-second “sleep” or “sound effects” tracks uniquely designed mess with the pro-rata royalty payment system favored by the biggest digital players in music?
So: 100,000 runs per day. More 100 million total tracks.
We are far, very far from “1,000 songs in your pocket”. But maybe not for the better.
Five Music Group’s repertoire has won Grammy Awards, dozens of RIAA Gold and Platinum certifications, and numerous No. 1 positions on a variety of Billboard charts. His repertoire includes heavy hitters like Bad Bunny, Janet Jackson, Daddy Yankee, TI, Sean Kingston, Anuel and hundreds more.The music industry around the world