The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring financial educator and author Jared Dillian has been released. Listen here.
No problem, nothing we don't already know. Couple of statements just pose more questions than anything. The admission document, investor presentation and recent interviews all point to both brands content being merged into one platform however the line in this interview regarding MelodyVR as a brand could survive another couple year really confuses me as to how and why.
The following Q&A paragraph also seems to be very vague and alludes to all sorts of potential developments depending how one reads it! Could be hinting at partnering with a hardware manufacturer, lets say TV's for example like Samsung or LG and delivering the app pre installed? White labelling their content to other streaming sites similarly like they already do on their B2B end? Almost seems like AM putting them into the shop window for a 'significant' partner, what any of those questions could mean or the answers are anyone's guess right now!
Q: Finally, do you see the company staying independent long term?
“Right now, we’re very much independent. What we’ve always looked at is, ‘Is there a way we can get great content into fans’ hands? Is there any way we can benefit the industry?’ If that means partnering with a larger organisation – whether a hardware manufacturer or a different streaming company – we’re definitely not against it. That said, some of these companies are huge and don’t move as quickly as we do. We’re in this unique position where being slightly smaller means we’re a hell of a lot more nimble and can do things that are maybe a little bit more cutting edge. But let’s not take it off the table. Today, we’re very much independent. But if we find a partner that helps us deliver on our goals, then why not?”
Part 8:
Emmy Lovell Interview:
Napster Group’s newly appointed chief strategy officer Emmy Lovell outlines her big goals for the company this year…
“This year, for me, is about a lot of work behind the scenes. Whilst many of the team are focused on delivering against our 2021 roadmap for product, my efforts are focusing in on where we are travelling in 2022 and beyond, and why artists, industry and the fans should be excited by what we’re doing.
“Napster was launched with a spirit of rebelliousness and
MelodyVR has been about an ‘anything is possible’ attitude from the start. Creating the Napster Group is an incredibly exciting opportunity to push boundaries where we can. There are, of course, expectations as to what a streaming service should look and feel like, but there’s a lot of scope to use the data we have from our users and our own vision to create a platform that’s totally unique
“Covid-19 has changed our lives and ways of interacting and it will be a priority of mine to determine what behaviours are newly formed and here to stay and what will fade away quickly. It has also accelerated people’s technological capabilities so they can stay connected, and music has played a key role across the world in bringing people together virtually.
“It feels more important than ever to ensure we are focusing on serving both people’s favourite memory-evoking tracks along with how we showcase music discovery and the livestreamed experience. It’s definitely going to be a busy 2021!”
Part 7:
Q: And what are the biggest obstacles you face in getting there?
“We’re taking something, as I said, with 20 years of history and relaunching it and we’re hopefully doing something that hasn’t been done before. There is no point giving something a quick lick of paint and saying it’s new, it has to be truly new. And anytime you do something new, you run the risk of it not being perceived in the way you intended, or maybe not being used in the way you’d hoped. Thankfully, we’ve been doing a ton of user testing, so we feel confident we’ll deliver on that, but until you open it up to five million people, you just don’t know. So there’s a certain degree of nervousness about taking a company which has such history, and then putting our spin on it. Other than that, we’re just really excited we’ve got a real opportunity to do something amazing. We have all the building blocks, now it’s about delivering.”
Q: Finally, do you see the company staying independent long term?
“Right now, we’re very much independent. What we’ve always looked at is, ‘Is there a way we can get great content into fans’ hands? Is there any way we can benefit the industry?’ If that means partnering with a larger organisation – whether a hardware manufacturer or a different streaming company – we’re definitely not against it. That said, some of these companies are huge and don’t move as quickly as we do. We’re in this unique position where being slightly smaller means we’re a hell of a lot more nimble and can do things that are maybe a little bit more cutting edge. But let’s not take it off the table. Today, we’re very much independent. But if we find a partner that helps us deliver on our goals, then why not?”
Part 6:
Q: How has the pandemic impacted your business? “It’s obviously been a challenge for everyone, especially if you’re a virtual content business.
We’ve seen a few different things. One, we’ve seen the usage of our platforms go up across the board – we’re all at home, we’re all looking for new forms of entertainment. We were all aware that livestreaming was a thing, but was it that interesting? And were artists that into it? The pandemic has shown us all that that awareness and that appetite has increased exponentially – we saw user metrics scale 20% month-on-month. People are now comfortable seeing a show with their mates at home, they’re happy to see a Liam Gallagher gig from the comfort of their sofa. It doesn’t mean they won’t go in person, but they are now comfortable and have experimented with different ways of consuming that content where, frankly, they may not have done before. That’s the biggest shift that we’ve seen.”
Q: Do you see that level of interest sustaining as in-person concerts return?
“What this pandemic has taught us all is that it’s not one or the other. It’s not a case of, ‘If I don’t go to the show, it’s not worth seeing.’ As we’re slowly getting back to being able to go to events in person, I think everyone’s nervous; I’m nervous about getting in a room with 50,000 other people, right? So digital content has definitely found its place. Our hope is that as vaccinations roll out, shows come back as quickly as possible. But what we will find now is that digital content is pretty important – and that’s where we come into play with the new platform and the Napster acquisition. Livestreams are going to be important, but so are the albums, so are the singles, so is the video, so is the documentary. Being able to weave all this stuff together is the interesting thing.”
What are your main goals for 2021?
“We’ve taken two businesses and, in essence, we’ve smashed them together. Anytime you do that with two companies there is a period of integration and differences in cultures. Napster is a business that, in my opinion, has been slightly neglected over the past few years. It hasn’t had a huge amount of resources and it hasn’t seen a lot of investment or product development – these are all things that we have been fixing over the last few weeks, literally. This year is all about product development, it’s about building a fantastic product that’s good for fans and good for artists. That means a suite of tools; that means a new platform; that means a launch across the 33 countries we’re already in, so we have our work set out ahead of us and there is a lot to achieve. But the goal is to ship something truly amazing by the end of the year that is going to be quite unlike anything that’s been seen before. We’re not changing the way people stream music, but we are hopefully giving true music fans an enhanced experience they aren’t able to get anywhere else.”
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.”
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.
If you watch the 02 video the company providing the VR (360 video with jump spots same as MelodyVR) for the festival is Mativision:
https://www.mativision.com/
Mativision have been around for years providing jump spot tech for 360 video as seen here in this super old version running on PC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXebDOwL42I&ab_channel=Slash
This video shows how the app works on iPad, as you can see you can select the camera at the bottom:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6t3z-vuS0M&ab_channel=DreamTheater
You can download the app on the app store to see for yourself but it hasn't changed for years. I stumbled across this company a few years back when researching competitors but they are really providing one off events with a technical service rather than curating a content library and platform for subscription which is the fundamental difference between them and MelodyVR. However the tech provides a similar experience to the MelodyVR content though by way of 360 video on multiple devices with selectable jump spots.
Sorry but £100k-£125k is waaayyyy off and my judgement comes from seeing first hand and helping develop software and seeing the money spent on it. They will easily be into 7 figures even with only a couple months of development. I was talking about just one piece of software for one operating system, Napster are looking to create something for multiple platforms and hardware all needing different UI’s and control. Bug testing and fixing will be a huge task for one of these let alone all hardware and the development of the apps themselves.
Londondan I agree they have failed to deliver however I would add that I don’t think any numbers and figures to date are a good judgement of their product, performance yes but certainly not the product.
They never delivered the actually finished product they intended being a subscription with all the years of content. Also a schedule of Live events which I have a feeling would have started last year if it were not for Covid.
I truly hope what I think we should have seen become available last year to materialise with the New Napster app which will ultimately be an even stronger offering overall. Going to be a while yet before we can truly analyse the performance of the company based on a product representing their work behind the scenes for the last 4 years. For reference I’ve been invested since 2017 so not been an easy ride that’s for sure!
I can't speak for someone outside of the UK as I am in the UK but the service is only £10 if you DO NOT sign up via the apple app store. It's £12.99 if you sign up via the app on an IOS device. I'm assuming probably the same on Android however I don't have an Android phone to check. The higher price on IOS is to account for the Apple app store 30% charge and assume google play store would be the same .
Name has finally changed on companies house.
What's so difficult to understand here, EVR Holdings/MelodyVR Group PLC/Napster Group PLC or whatever they want to call it... this is the holding company and MelodyVR and Napster are currently two SEPARATE subsidiaries. Yes we know the intentions are to combine the two entities into one being Napster the surviving entity but they completed the deal ONLY 41 DAYS AGO!!! The admission document clearly states this will take months to combine the businesses and release a new combined product, this isn't happening overnight. I know from my own experience of our company rebranding it took months simply to change our name and logos/info across all products and markets/countries and we weren't trying to combine two businesses too!
The Singtel deal will have been months in planning and negotiation before the RTO was completed. Yes I don't think the current MVR offering is suitable for customers staying on after their telco deal is up but this would likely have not been the situation if it weren't for COVID as I suspect the subscription and back catalogue would have been released last year having more to offer repeat customers. The timing of Napster and Singtel will have all been happening at the same time, there is no combined product yet and they are two separate entities being offered as separate products, its a simple as that... Peoples expectations here are absurd at times. I've been invested for over 3 years and had my fair share of frustration with MVR too but some of you, as evident this morning, are delusional in your time expectations.
Cheapie, I can't imagine anyone here will know any exact reason why the app is only in 15 countries so far but Liam's performance will be available nearly worldwide if watching via web browser anyway.
Just spotted this guys post, looks like MVR get a feature in the upcoming Oculus Quest 2 promo video. Might get a mention at Facebook connect reveal for the Quest 2 especially now NextVR have disappeared via Apple.
https://twitter.com/danny_brown9/status/1305447760590667776?s=21
Well not the news I were expecting but IMO a massive positive move. Think for a second at what differentiates the largest music streaming services right now... nothing other than throwing millions at artists trying to obtain platform exclusivity to drive further customers and more and more advertising.
Forget Napster's lack of prominence in many years, it’s still a well-known brand with a well-established business that can now offer something completely different to other streaming services in a combined package. The addition of MelodyVR is exactly what can revive the platforms name but also make them stand out from the crowd. The live streams alone negate the need to spend excessive amounts on marketing to gain traction against the giants like Spotify and Apple music. Music fans will have to go to Napster anyway to view the live content rekindling the brand name with many that already know of Napster but also opening up new customers to a streaming platform that now offers something additional to their usual streaming app.
MelodyVR's core mission remains, except now this merger pushes them years ahead of what they were ever going to gain in traction in the mainstream market building from scratch or slowly growing the business with an emerging technology.
There is nowhere for music streaming platforms to go on innovation in audio, streaming is the holy grail of music now, it even killed iTunes which says it all. All they can do now is start adding visual content, I wouldn't be surprised to see Spotify and Apple etc all go down this route eventually however the benefit MVR have is thousands of hours of content creating an unrivalled back catalogue and a very tasty subscription offering allowing people to get rid of their existing streaming services! No amount of money from Apple or Spotify allows them to catch up with years of recordings!
An exciting prospect for the future of digital music platforms!
Correct me if I am wrong but a day before the show I actually went throw a majority of news articles purposely looking to see if it was being promoted via YouTube as well as the MelodyVR app and from memory I couldn't find anything. He had already pushed it hard for multiple posts for a week without any mention of YouTube and it was only his last post on the day saying it was via YouTube that people will have seen. My assumption is by that point many would have already downloaded the app and watched it via that. Probably an agreement with Nelly to push it via MVR and then allowed to mention YouTube only on the final day prior to the show to give the app more exposure.