On Wednesday, Luminate, the data company powering the Billboard charts, released its 2023 year-end music report.

It’s no surprise that Taylor Swift had a big year — with five of the top 10 albums on the US album chart, 1/78th of all the on-demand streams in the US, and a staggering 1.7% of the entire US market; It’s also no surprise that Country music had another big year, with over 20 Billion streams.

But there’s more…

Larry Miller and guest co-host Britnee Foreman from Exceleration Music read and digested the whole 79-page report, so you don’t have to.

In this mini-episode they share key takeaways and surprises, and make a few predictions based on what they learned.

After you’ve listened to the podcast, you can access the entire Luminate report HERE.

The public stocks of many music companies like UMG, WMG and Spotify now trade on NYSE, NASDAQ and foreign exchanges. But wouldn’t it be cool to easily invest in US and overseas labels, publishers, royalty funds, digital services, concert promoters, venue operators, creator tools and broadcasters across the entire global music sector, in a single trade? Join MUSQ founder David Schulhof as we unpack how the first music ETF came together — now.

Player piano rolls… electric guitars… wah wah pedals… ProTools… AutoTune… and now AI. But is artificial intelligence the next step in creator tools or something far more threatening? Join Living Colour guitarist and technologist Vernon Reid as we unpack how AI technology is affecting the way we create, record, license, and consume music.

With Britnee Foreman from Exceleration Music.

Deep into the streaming era, vinyl outsold CD sales last year for the first time since 1987 and grew for the 16th straight year. We unpack the state of vinyl with John T. Kunz, owner of Austin’s Waterloo Records; Russ Crupnick, Managing Partner of MusicWatch; John Pette, co-owner of new vinyl pressing plant OUTTA WAX; Gina Williams, Senior Director of Independent Retail and Vinyl Marketing at Warner Music Group; and Larry Jaffee, author of Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century.

Continue reading “The Billion Dollar Needle Drop”

Our new report How Streaming Impacted the Value of Music made waves in BillboardMusic Ally and other cool places!  In this episode of the Musonomics podcast we cover streaming’s impact — not just on revenue, but on the dramatically increased multiples of revenue sophisticated investors have paid for music rights over the past decade.  We discuss what our report says, how we put it together and what it means.  With DiMA chief Garrett Levin.

Many American music executives and students have difficulty understanding neighboring rights — which have nothing to do with territorial proximity. Neighboring rights are similar to the public performance rights associated with musical compositions — so they’re “neighbors” from a legal perspective — but they’re paid to record labels and performing artists rather than to songwriters and publishers. Neighboring rights have great potential in the streaming age, but with each country comes a different challenge in reporting and collecting. In this episode we unpack these issues with peermusic CEO Mary Megan Peer and Concord COO Vic Zaraya.

George Wein single handedly created the model for the popular music festival. In this episode, host Larry Miller of NYU Steinhardt celebrates George’s legacy with the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals with a cast of Wein’s friends and colleagues. Included are Newport Jazz Festival Artistic Director Christian McBride, City Winery’s Michael Dorf, Newport Festivals Foundation Executive Director Jay Sweet and COO Kira Favro, Newport Board Chair Bruce Gordon, Secretary of Commerce, and former Governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo and longtime friend Jerry Chazen.

This episode of Musonomics features an exclusive interview with Jon Platt, Chairman and CEO Sony Music Publishing, recorded in front of a live virtual audience at NYU in conversation with Larry Miller, our host and head of NYU Steinhardt’s Music Business program. Jon’s work with songwriters like Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Kanye, and Drake has afforded him a well-deserved place as a shrewd creative executive and as a major advocate of music creators. Jon discusses his unique career path from his early days as a DJ and his development as a creative at EMI, the competitive advantage of diversity and inclusion and the future of music publishing.