Trends - Distribution circular 4 -23

Greetings,

here are some more points of interest and concern that we would like to bring to your attention.

To begin may we wish all our partners who celebrate Christmas, a very merry one!

1 -  China. Some of our clients have asked about this territory. Your titles are listed along with all the others in our catalogue and these are made available to platforms in China to list them as they see fit. Historically this country does not have a great record on respecting intellectual rights but indications are that things are improving. The bottom line is that for the moment we earn very little from that territory.

2 - Streams. A recurring concern about the streaming business is that at the accounting level it is not very transparent.  We are completely reliant on the integrity of the disclosed figures that platforms submit. Our distribution arrangements with all our clients are based on sharing revenue actually received. In the days of physical product we had an idea of how many CDs etc. we manufactured and how many we had left after sales. 

There are turbulent times ahead for music creators when it comes to policy decisions being made by the big platforms. More on this when we know more. As always the music business has to be flexible.

3 - Names. How your artist names are listed on digital platforms is guided by the tagging we elect at the time of first release. We can not either insist or control the final decisions made by the platforms, specially after release. The main thing is that they list your music! See  my comments about verification in the last circular.

4 - Promo firms. We would like some feedback from labels who have used promo firms, specially firms specializing in Spotify promo. Please let us know how satisfied you are with this sort of marketing. We will not quote you publicly but want to respond to label requests on how effective these campaigns and firms are.

Latest from IFPI annual report

 5 - Revenue trend. Although most of the majors report growth in streaming revenue this year, it's probably due to big artist new releases, back catalogue revenue is down for the third quarter in a row. These stats are not easy to separate from new release revenue but in 2023 we identify this as a trend when viewing artists with no new releases. Moral - let us have some new songs!

Best wishes,

Patrick

 

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LTE Distribution. 

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22070 Hamburg

Deutschland

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