Welcome to Music Business Worldwide's weekly round-up, where we make sure you've seen the five most important stories from the previous seven days. Centtrip, which assists over 500 of the world's best-selling musicians in increasing their income and lowering their touring expenditures, is a sponsor of MBW's round-up.
Anyone who has been following SoundCloud's rise over the last year will be aware of how enormous that rise has been.
From the introduction of the company's "fan-powered royalties" (FPR) model to the recent announcement that it is launching a new service that will provide creative and financial resources for select indie artists (with some receiving meaningful levels of financial advances and marketing support), SoundCloud has carved out a distinct position for itself in the music industry.
Its financial results for 2020 were also not poor. This week, MBW obtained the FY 2020 fiscal report for SoundCloud Holdings GmbH, Berlin, which is now the parent company for SoundCloud and its subsidiaries around the world.
According to the research, SoundCloud earned EUR €193.5 million (USD $218.7 million) in calendar 2020, a 31 percent increase year on year.
In the same year, the company's gross profit climbed by 53% to €61.1 million ($69m), while its operational losses decreased by 41% year on year to €15.4 million ($17.4m).
Following a succession of recent catalog acquisitions by BMG, the firm announced on Wednesday (February 16) that it has reached an agreement with the estate of American blues legend John Lee Hooker.
Hooker's entire publishing catalog, co-acquired with BMG's longtime partner Fujipacific Music, his entire recorded and performance royalty income, as well as a selection of his recorded catalog spanning Alone, Vol. 1 (1980) through Black Night Is Falling (2020), acquired solely by BMG, are all included in the agreement.
Speaking of music rights investments, we learnt this week that Pophouse, a Swedish entertainment business co-founded by ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus and run by former Universal Music Sweden chief Per Sundin, is now making advances in this market.
According to a press release announcing the addition of executives from Airbnb and EQT to its board, the company, which was founded in 2014 to create unique live events that promote the ABBA brand, is "moving into IP investments, particularly music rights, through several strategic acquisitions and development projects."
In other news, Sony Music Publishing has appointed Walter Jones as its new Executive Vice President, Head of A&R, and Snoop Dogg has sold tens of millions of dollars in NFTs in less than a week.
