Exploration Weekly - Apple Music Spatial Audio Rapidly Growing / YouTube Ads Raked In $28.84B in 2021 / Billboard, MRC Data Drop International Charts

Aaron Davis -


According to Apple Music, Spatial Audio - the company’s version of Dolby Atmos Music - has seen an increase in listeners, reporting quadruple plays of Spatial Audio tracks since September. The catalog has additionally rapidly expanded, growing sevenfold since Spatial Audio became available last June.

Alphabet recently reported that YouTube made $8.63 billion from advertising in Q4 2021. Adding to the $20.21 billion from ads in the first nine months of 2021, YouTube’s total ads business across the 12 months of 2021 raked in $28.84 billion. This is nearly double the equivalent figure ($15.15 billion) that YouTube generated from ads as recently as 2019.

Billboard and MRC Data have partnered up to compile a new set of weekly “Hits of The World” charts, ranking the top 25 tracks in more than 40 countries worldwide based on streams and download sales. The new charts will be posted on Billboard’s website, with the data made available to MRC Data’s Music Connect subscribers.

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Compiled by Heidi Seo


Exploration Weekly - February 18, 2022

Apple Music’s Spatial Audio Strategy is Paying Off With More Listeners, Major Releases

Spatial Audio is rapidly growing on Apple Music. The majority of Apple Music subscribers have experienced Spatial Audio, and listeners have increased by 50% since September, the company tells Billboard. Plays of Spatial Audio tracks have also quadrupled since September, and the catalog has rapidly expanded, growing sevenfold since Spatial Audio became available. Last June, Apple Music released Spatial Audio, its version of Dolby Atmos Music, the immersive audio experience that has been billed as a successor to stereo. This push helps the company differentiate itself in a commoditized market. With every major music streaming service maintaining the same catalog of songs, an improved and easily noticeable audio experience would help the company separate itself from its competitors like Spotify. For the labels, remastering catalog music in Spatial Audio can reinvigorate streams around an album or artist and provide new artists with an additional promotional tool alongside the improved listening experience for fans.

YouTube is Making Close to $100M from Advertising Revenues Every Day

According to stats published by Alphabet last week, YouTube made $8.63 billion from advertising in Q4 2021 (ended December). That figure was up 25% compared to Q4 2020, when the platform generated revenues of $6.89 billion from ads. Interestingly, it was also a bigger quarterly revenue figure than that achieved by Netflix in the same period ($7.71 billion). Breaking down YouTube’s $8.63 billion Q4 revenues further reveals that the platform generated an average of $2.87 billion per month from advertising in the final three months of 2021 – that’s $93.8 million per day. Having generated $20.21 billion from ads in the first nine months of 2021 and $8.63 billion in Q4, YouTube’s total ads business across the 12 months of 2021 raked in a whopping $28.84 billion. It’s also nearly double the equivalent figure ($15.15bn) that YouTube generated from ads as recently as 2019. In June 2021, YouTube revealed that it paid more than $4 billion to the music industry in the prior 12 months.

Billboard and MRC Data Team Up for New International Charts

In a new partnership between Billboard and research firm MRC Data, the pair will be compiling a new set of weekly ‘Hits of The World’ charts, ranking the top 25 tracks in more than 40 countries based on streams and download sales. The new charts will be published on Billboard’s website, with the data available to MRC Data’s Music Connect subscribers to dig into in more depth. The new charts follow Billboard and MRC Data’s launch in 2020 of their Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. US charts, which draw their data from more than 200 territories globally. Now the new rankings will drill down into some of the most interesting countries in Europe, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Africa.

SoundCloud Grew Its Revenues by 31% to €193.5M in 2020

SoundCloud’s financials for 2020 were published this week, revealing that the company’s revenues grew by 31% to €193.5m (around $219.6m). “Total revenue exceeded expectations and our operating losses were lower than initially planned,” explained the company. So, it’s not yet profitable, but operating losses fell from €26.2m in 2019 to €15.4m in 2020. That’s part of a longer-term move towards operational profitability for SoundCloud. Between 2010 and 2016 its annual operating losses grew rapidly, peaking at €70.5m in 2016. That trend reversed in 2017 – the year in which a new CEO, former Vimeo exec Kerry Trainor, was appointed in August – with the losses shrinking every year since. One final note: SoundCloud is thinking about acquisitions. “Having seen several mergers and acquisitions in our industry, we also see an opportunity in the current consolidation activities within the wider industry,” is how its filing put it.

Jon Glass and Alasdair McMullan Join SoundExchange Board of Directors

Jon Glass of Warner Music Group (WMG) and Alasdair McMullan of Universal Music Group (UMG) have joined the SoundExchange Board of Directors. Glass and McMullan will lend business development expertise and legal acumen to the nonprofit, it says. Jon Glass is Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Legal Affairs at Warner Music Group (WMG). And Alasdair McMullan is Executive Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs at Universal Music Group (UMG). Current board members at SoundExchange, Jeffrey Harleston of UMG and Paul Robinson of WMG, stepped down after 13 and 19 years with the organization, respectively.


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