Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
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Part 5:
Q: How successful have you been in terms of creating a new revenue stream for artists?
“Its not been hundreds of millions yet, but we’ve definitely put a good few million back into the pockets of artists. That is important because it wasn’t something they were doing already. All the content we create, we create from scratch. Without us, it simply wouldn’t exist. The Napster site is slightly different: they are obviously licensing content, same as every other streaming service. The main difference on the Napster side is we pay more [per stream] back to artists than any other streaming service. Now that, in our mind, is fantastic, but that’s not the goal – to pay slightly more isn’t really good enough, right? So, on the streaming side, we’ll continue to pay more, but we think there’s a whole world of other ways we can benefit artists: be it the upsell of live tickets, be it them having digital items available – whether it’s NFTs, whether we build our own blockchain, launch our own tokens, reward people with digital currency – that, for us, becomes quite interesting, it’s a big part of what we’re thinking about for launch later this year. So, as Melody, we’ve been able to give people a good few million dollars of revenue they wouldn’t have otherwise had. And on the Napster side, last year we generated around $100 million of revenue and we paid more than any other streaming service. We feel good about those things, but we still think there’s a lot of work to be done.”
Q: What is your reaction to the developments with the #BrokenRecord debate?
“Streaming has grown exponentially over the last few years, which is clearly good news for the industry overall. We firmly believe that artists need to be fairly paid for their work and that music is an art form that must be respected. Although the streaming ‘pie’ is growing year-on-year, we know that a large amount of artists don’t feel that they’re reaping the benefits and clearly something needs to be done. The streaming landscape is a competitive business to be in, and at Napster we already pay the vast majority of our revenue back to rights-holders and artists. With that in mind, we’re focused on how we can directly benefit artists via other means, by monetising livestreaming for example, or by investing directly into original content creation. As part of the relaunch of the Napster brand later this year, we intend to bring a number of new initiatives to the table that will directly benefit artists and the industry.”
Part 4:
Q: It feels like we’ve been waiting for virtual reality to explode into the mainstream for years, but it hasn’t quite materialised. What potential do you see in VR at this point?
“There’s still so much potential for VR. One of the challenges we face is that, when we started the business, we knew it was very early. I think at that point, if you’d said to us that it could be 10 years before everyone has a VR device in their home, that would have been a very different conversation. VR hasn’t quite made it into everyone’s home and that’s just how it is. That’s a shame, because we think the technology is amazing.”
Q: Why do you think that has been the case?
“We don’t think people have been able to get that hands-on with it. They don’t necessarily see it in the shops or know someone with [a headset]. At Melody, we’ve been trying to give people – especially music fans – compelling reasons to go out and get a VR device. But we’re not the marketing board for VR, we can only do so much. The technology has gone through a few iterations: it was a bit blurry to start with, cumbersome and a bit bulky. Now we’re getting into the realm where these devices are actually getting pretty damn good – and that is going to change things, so it’s my opinion that VR will end up being very successful. Whether it gets overtaken by AR [augmented reality], which we think is probably quite likely, that is a scenario that we see. The prospects for AR are greater – the idea that we can all be wearing a pair of sunglasses that put things in our world around us, everyone can see the use case for that. VR has always been something you needed to strap onto your face, so we think AR might supersede VR. But we’re looking two, three years out. We love new technologies but, in order to run a business or benefit artists, you need to be able to deliver reach. More and more VR devices are out there, but they’re still not at the point, in our mind, where there’s that tipping point to being a huge industry. We were relying on VR-only for about 18 months and then we launched on smartphones. Within about two or three weeks, we had more users on phones than we did on VR.”
Part 3:
Q: And so, without further ado, it’s time for Matchett to tackle a host of hot topics, including where VR goes next…to the MelodyVR brand?
“We’re not totally waving goodbye, we’re going to keep operating the Melody platform for at least the time being and maybe a couple of years into the future. Growing that business in the way we did enabled us to acquire Napster, so there is a lot of fondness towards the name, but we’re hopefully on the path now to a lot more fans and that’s really what this is all about. We spend our days speaking to artists, speaking to management, speaking to labels – and Napster’s been very well received over the last few years. Granted, whenever it was, 20 years ago: pirating music – not good! We’re not endorsing that in any way. But certainly, over the last few years, Napster has built itself into a decent little streaming service.”
Q: What gap do you envisage Napster Group filling in the market?
“What we see right now is a very fragmented landscape. For example, you might stream the new album on Spotify, watch the video on YouTube, have the live concert on Melody and buy the T-shirt from Ticketmaster or a different merch platform, everything is very fragmented for a fan. Also, for an artist, if you want to promote your livestream against an album, or you want to promote your music video against a livestream or a new single release, there are very few places you can do that in a seamless way. So when we think about labels, we want to give them the tools to be able to not just distribute recorded music, but also to see benefits of that against other types of format and content – content we create, content we licence – so really giving people a bit more of a full spectrum, so to speak, of an artist’s repertoire.”
Part 2:
Since unveiling its concerts app in May 2018, MelodyVR has worked on immersive shows by acts such as The Who, Rag’N’Bone Man, Sigrid, Liam Payne, Post Malone and The Streets. It stepped up its operations during the pandemic, launching Live From LA – a free music series broadcast from a specially designed studio location in Los Angeles. The series featured the likes of John Legend, Kesha and Cypress Hill. It also set up a separate 360° studio in London within the Victorian theatre at Alexandra Palace for its Wireless Connect three-day virtual festival. Artists included Stefflon Don, Mist and Steel Banglez.
“We worked with Wireless the year before, when it took place in Finsbury Park, and that was a really interesting broadcast,” says Matchett. “We streamed pretty much the whole festival and had around 250,000 fans tune in over the weekend to check that out. It was a great use case for us in terms of technology.
“The following year, everything had to be cancelled because of Covid so that gave us an opportunity to work with the Wireless team and put on a show that was totally virtual. The artists performed in real life, but they were in a closed, safe environment. We had around 75 acts perform through the course of that festival and that was great fun to curate.”
One of the most memorable MelodyVR events to date was Liam Gallagher’s Down By The River Thames last December, which saw the ex-Oasis frontman and his band deliver a set broadcast from a barge travelling along the Thames.
“We had this run of shows last year in partnership with Live Nation,” notes Matchett. “Liam was the last show that we did towards the end of last year. It was an amazing setting, sailing down the Thames on a barge – very Liam, classic London – and it was pretty successful, I think there were around 35,000 tickets sold, if not a few more. It was largely Liam’s idea – he wanted to get the barge, he wanted to make this work and being able to facilitate that was fantastic.
“Obviously, none of us expected this pandemic,” he continues. “But we’ve managed to adapt and pivot slightly away from traditional concerts into our own studios in both Los Angeles and London. It was great to see that artists were still willing to come out and put on a show for their fans. Whether it was Liam on the Thames or John Legend in LA, everyone was willing to try and give back to the community.”
Yet the Napster name comes with a certain amount of baggage, so why adopt it?
“Brand awareness,” he explains. “In the music industry, everyone knows what Napster is. Outside of the music industry, people go, ‘Oh, is that still going?’ It is globally recognised as a music company and being able to relaunch that in an exciting way is part of the appeal. There was a lot of back and forth about whether we kept Melody or wrapped them both together, but we made the difficult decision to run with Napster as it’s a globally known brand name and there’s real value in that.”
Full article
Part one...
AM Interview:
There was a time, not so long ago, when the record business considered Napster to be public enemy number one. The notorious file-sharing site shook the music world to its core around the turn of the 21st century. The RIAA, Metallica and Dr Dre sued it for copyright infringement, while The Guardian said it “nearly killed the industry”. Others were more conciliatory: Chuck D spoke out in support, the Dave Matthews Band declared it “the future” and Limp Bizkit and Cypress Hill headed out on a free Napster-sponsored tour.
Music consumption would never be the same again. The streaming pioneer lasted just over two years in its original guise, shutting down in July 2001, but its impact is still being felt two decades on. What’s more, the name outlived the controversy as Napster was rehabilitated as a legitimate streaming service. At last count, it boasted three million users and 90m licensed tracks – enough to persuade music virtual reality platform MelodyVR to part with $70 million (£50.7m) to acquire the firm from RealNetworks last year. The British company is rebranding as Napster Group in the wake of the deal, billed as “paving the way for a unique music service that will offer both immersive live performances and music streaming – for the first time ever”.
“We didn’t do any form of music streaming and pretty much all the content we created was foreground content,” explains Napster Group CEO Anthony Matchett, who co-founded MelodyVR with business partner Steven Han**** in 2015. “And as much as we would have liked to have added music streaming, there are a number of reasons why that isn’t straightforward. You have to ingest 100 million tracks and then distribute them around the world. That’s a pretty heavy tech lift.”
A Digital Music News report named Napster as the best-paying streaming platform for artists in 2020 at a rate of $0.019 per stream, although that also reflects a lower rate of streaming consumption among users compared to bigger services. The company, which reported 10.8 billion streams and revenues of $113m in 2019, was listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM listing in February.
“We love the Napster brand – it’s the first platform that a lot of people used back in the day,” Matchett tells Music Week. “More to the point, it’s got this wonderful history of being disruptive. It has gone from something that was very disruptive, then looked on quite unfavourably, to now being perceived as quite favourable by the music industry – paying the most to artists, for example. “We see huge potential in combining the businesses together, launching something that’s new, exciting and hasn’t been seen before, under the Napster brand, but with all of Melody’s content and a lot more. That was the attraction, not trying to compete on an apples-to-apples basis in the streaming market, but the two plus two equals six, in this case, of putting both companies together.”
Several page Music Week spread and no logos of the brand. Normal for the magazine or weird and another missed opportunity?
AM talks about AR and that is the future, odd.
Made lots of money for artists, great, but shareholders have suffered.
Talks of NFTs/tokens/blockchain and thinking about for the launch - if they don't know now, how are they going to be in position to provide, again, odd.
Emmy Lovell's contribution - may as well not have bothered.
Overall, same old story being spun. Wait til the end of the year, it will be amazing.
Well the article doesn't give us any new info that we have not seen in the recent interview and admission documents however some general statements from AM really do leave more questions than answers!
If you want to read it you can sign up to music week 4 week free trial and then login and read todays Issue. 3 page spread.