Beyoncé sells $400m+ of tickets; How much money is Oasis making from merch?; Spotify wants a billion subscribers; Hayley Williams surprise-releases songs; and Cardi B’s "full-on cheese experience"...

0:07Steve:Hello and welcome to The Price of Music brought to you by Music Ally, the show that's fascinated by the fun and games and finances of the music world. As explained each week by me, Steve Lemack, and him, Stuart Dredge, after our listener questions episode last week, some news to catch up on this week. Although just before we do, it turns out that both of us ended up going to see Oasis at Wembley in the past week. Not together, I should say, not even on the same night, but Stuart, you got a ticket out of the blue and went last night. We're recording this, by the way, slightly earlier in the week than we usually do on a Monday.

0:43Steve:So last night, top line, what did you make of it?

0:46Stuart:I really enjoyed it. You know, I was, before we talked about them and I said, oh, I saw them when they were rotten, you know, the later, before. It was really good. They've obviously come back fired up to make it good. And, you know, yeah. So I really enjoyed it. How about you? Did you enjoy it?

1:00Steve:Yeah, I mean, it would be churlish, wouldn't it, to in any way attempt to pull apart a night where nearly 90 ,000 people probably had their best time. So I'll tell you what was really interesting. They must have sold, I mean, thousands of pounds, millions of pounds worth of merchandise for this tour. They threw their deal with Adidas. I mean, we were chatting about this, me and some mates, before going to see Colts United's opening match of the season. Because once we've worked out who's in the team, it's the sort of thing we talk about in the beer garden before a game. But my mate Tom's mate Lee works for a high street fashion brand.

1:42Steve:I can't say which one, but we were trying to work out what sort of deal Adidas have done with Oasis. Because, I mean, obviously, I mean, a lot of fashion brands, high street stores, they quite often approach artists to buy the licence. to use the group's logo or a specific shirt design. But this feels much more like it's been a team effort. It's much more of a collaboration, I think, because, I mean, there are, I had a look last night, and there are other brands who've produced Oasis clothing for the reunion gig. I mean, Levi's have got a whole range with the Oasis logo on, but what they don't have is the tagline Live 25 or the endorsements of the Gallagher brothers in various photos or the official merch stand at the gigs, which is obviously what Adidas have.

2:34Steve:But I wonder what that cost them. I mean, whatever they paid, whatever the percentages are, I mean, it's just a huge moment for Adidas. And I mean, the range of clothes they've designed, obviously, seem to have really struck a nerve with the crowd. Because honestly, I mean, what would you say? 50 % of the audience were in official Adidas shirts, maybe more. I don't know. What was it like last night?

2:57Stuart:The other thing I noticed was on the way to the gig, a lot of fans wearing the live 25 merchandise. So when I was a kid and going to gigs, I would basically buy a T-shirt at the gig and I'd probably stuff it down my pocket or put it on over whatever I was wearing.

3:12Steve:Running to the toilets to change. That was always the one.

3:15Stuart:Yeah, but now people buy it, buy merch often before the concerts to go to. I mean, we should do something sometime if we can talk, because they've got the Adidas thing. They've got Amazon Music are doing a bunch of nostalgic merch around big moments of the past. And they've got these pop-up shops. The merch around this is this really well-organized, complimentary interlocking campaign. They must be making so much money.

3:39Steve:It's also perfect, though, isn't it? Because everyone who was an Oasis fan, all their old merch has either been thrown away or it's tatty or it doesn't fit anymore. So you've got everyone starting from scratch and the people who have never seen them probably have one Oasis logoed T-shirt, but not anything on the scale or the style of this latest range.

4:01Stuart:So, yeah.

4:02Steve:I mean, we might come back to the subject of Oasis and this week's lock-in. There's one or two other things probably to say about the gigs. But as I say, a bit of news to catch on this week, catch up on. We'll be touching on Hayley Williams and her album that isn't an album, the festival that attracted 74 million people. Take that, Glastonbury, and the biggest country tour of all time. But to start, here's Stuart's big number for this week. Give us a big figure, a massive stat from the past few days. What have you got? All right.

4:36Stuart:You're going to react badly to this initial stat, but I'll explain it. Well, the number is 12.8%, which sounds good. 12.8 % of the entire world's population.

4:46Steve:Right. What does that equate to then in a number? That is a 1 billion people. 1 billion is a better figure to start with. So 1 billion, 12.8 % of the entire world's population. How does that tie into music?

5:02Stuart:Well, this is Spotify's target for the number of people it wants to be paying for Spotify eventually. One billion. So they did their financial results last week and they had this call with analysts. And the CEO said the goal is one billion subscribers. And they currently have like 276 million. So it's a way off. But then their chief business officer, a guy called Alex Nordstrom, he said that over 3 % of the world's population subscribes to Spotify already. And I checked that out and it's correct. It's a bit more than 3%. And he said it's not implausible to imagine us reaching 10 % or even 15 % of the world's population and 1 billion people is 12.8 % so it's in the middle of those so there you have it it's kind of like a big statement of intent like we've grown this big but we want to get four times bigger with our subscribers and rule the world which obviously listeners will have varying varying

5:52Steve:views on well and where does this mean then targeting different territories I mean because the growth will be slower in markets like the UK and America which have had Spotify for a while Is this something to do with music culture or just the way they market themselves? Is it changes in local music scenes? How do they achieve this?

6:15Stuart:I think a lot of it is new parts of the world. So places like India, places like Africa, Latin, there's a lot of growth expected there. I think there's been these other reports that have come out in the industry that say, you know, in just a couple of years time, probably most of the new music subscribers will come from. I think the phrase uses the global south, which basically means everywhere outside America and Europe. So this is like a wider trend of like, this is where people see the growth coming. And yeah, but I think also it's Spotify saying, we still want to get the people who are currently free listeners to upgrade to subscribers.

6:48Stuart:We still want to get more people who aren't streaming already. And it is, I think it's one of the things we often talk about is we always talk about Spotify stats because its rivals don't really give out numbers so much.

7:01Steve:yeah this is what i was going to ask how how do how does this contrast to the other streaming services how far how far behind are apple and amazon and deezer and the like well i mean apple

7:14Stuart:and amazon don't give numbers out very often so they're big but they're more in the 100 million range right um youtube does actually give figures so in march it's at 125 million premium subscribers. So that is big, big number, but Spotify is more than double that. So it is. So I think when it talks about these figures and it then looks ahead and goes one billion, it's also a way of cementing the fact that it's the biggest and making everyone realize that. So it's like a statement. Do you remember there was one, oh, is it? It was The Social Network, that film about Facebook, when there was a moment in that when they were talking about what's bigger than one million users, one billion users.

7:55Stuart:And it's that distinction to a number that really exerts a fascination with people who run big tech companies get to a billion.

8:02Steve:And was there anything else in Spotify's latest financial results? Does it carry any other information? And when they're laying out their position, do they give anything else away about what they're planning or what they believe they're doing right or maybe wrong?

8:23Stuart:i don't know yeah well wrong actually so we're not wrong but struggling so one thing we learned was spotify is struggling with its advertising business so that the money it makes from ads um for people who are listening for free um those revenues actually went down by one percent year on year which is very unusual they've been growing and growing um and it talked about so in this earnings call they said look we're not happy with this it's not growing as we wanted it to it's not where we want it to be we're gonna and they said it's something i think it was the phrase was something like it's an execution thing not a strategic thing so they still believe they can do it but they need to be better at selling ads and making more money from the ads they sell so that's that's interesting because it ties in with i don't know if you remember labels have been grumbling in the last year about free streaming and ad supported streaming and saying it's not doing well enough it's not it's not growing enough and i think it was sony music i've said a couple of times maybe the people like spotify should charge for their for their what's currently free so instead of getting for free you might pay a small amount and have ads in it and so i think Like Spotify says, no, we can do a better job of selling ads and we can return this growth.

9:25Stuart:But if that takes longer than expected, you may see labels start to rumble again about, well, we're not happy with how this is growing. And a lot of people listen for free and you're not making enough money. But that's not a Spotify thing, only other people. But the other thing we learned, well, we didn't learn anything really, but analysts, so the analysts are the guys who kind of, you know, talk to Wall Street about how Spotify is doing. And they were asking about its plans for a super fan, more expensive, premium tier. So, you know, more expensive, And that's been talked about for a while. It's been leaked details of what's in it.

9:55Stuart:We've talked about those, haven't we? And they asked, and basically, I deflected that question and said, yeah, still coming, still very excited about it, but still no firm date. And as things happened, the very next day, Universal Music had its earnings call with analysts because it had its financial results. And they were asking Universal about this and saying, is there anything going on here? Because Spotify is saying it's not quite ready yet. Are you happy with this? sort of you know like those kind of questions that are probing pretensions and universal music's boss has actually said no we agree better not to rush this better to get it right and we're on board with this taking the time it needs to so that's the other thing going on that spotify is about to launch this thing that'll be more expensive could bring more money in um but it's taking its time to get it right and labels so far are happy with that okay uh one billion then that's

10:45Steve:your big figure for this week here's our top three news stories two of which actually um i think in a way hint at potential shifts in in music culture in the future firstly more than 74 million people watched dance festival tomorrowland via its live streams on tiktok i mean that's another big figure uh tell us more about tomorrow lands uh and how how they worked out this uh this this figure how

11:15Stuart:how do they pull this audience yeah so it's a really funny and it's a a phoenix and a flame from literally from the flame story because just before the festival this year their main stage burnt down tomorrow land and they had to rebuild a completely new main stage before which if you're tiktok and you've done this big deal to live stream it you must be thinking oh god what's happening here is there going to be a festival um but yeah so tomorrowland is a very well established dance festival and it's done live streams with tiktok before so i think a couple of years ago uh 16 million people watched live streams on tiktok and that was at the time a big figure i was like wow 16 million people watching festivals but yeah i mean it's a crazy audience isn't it if you think about it i mean the sets were live stream on tiktok and there was lots of promotion of it and i think if you opened tiktok and you had any interest that tiktok knew about in electronic music, you probably would have been sort of shown this was happening.

12:05Stuart:So it did a big happen. And we don't know how much of it they watched. You know, you may have just tuned for one set or a few minutes, but it's just, it just seems to be part of a really fascinating trend where these big festivals are saying, right, we can sell out or we can broadly sell out, but there's this huge global audience we can reach. And so you have YouTube does the Coachella Festival and they do live stream. That's been going for a while. Amazon Music is the Stagecoach Festival, which is a big thing in the US. Obviously, the BBC does Glastonbury here,

12:34Steve:which is well-established.

12:36Stuart:And tell me what you think about this. I was thinking, I wonder what this means if you're a big festival and you know that you're going to have this huge audience watching on a vertically aligned smartphone. Does that change the way you design the stages? Does it change who you book? Do you try and book more people who kind of get appealed to a TikTok audience? What does it mean for how those festivals are that they know they have this huge online audience? I'm kind of fascinated by that.

13:05Steve:Well, does TikTok pay for the rights of being able to broadcast from the festival? Because what it will come down to is how much do we need the financial investment? And then how much are we prepared to compromise to the people who are going to be screening it?

13:27Stuart:I think.

13:28Steve:I mean, it wouldn't be entirely dignified, I don't think, for major established festivals to then start modifying their sites

13:39Stuart:or their stages, I don't think, just to take the dollar. I think there would be some kickback against that.

13:45Steve:But the other thing I'm thinking is, and I know when this first started, and it might have been around Coachella, but obviously there's a difficulty now in if you are basically selling these broadcasting rights to a company how does that affect the artist's contract because the artist has to give well that's the thing if you can only play i mean it doesn't happen at glass and we don't think there are festivals around the world where you can only play if you basically sign up or sign away your rights your tv rights and so you don't you don't want uh to lose you know the basically the rights to a live performance because you might be wanting to do something with that yourself i mean in snippets on tiktok it's possibly uh less of a problem but you know if whole live sets may you know end up living online then um are you compensated for that in your fee from the

14:43Stuart:festival just i wonder if that's i wonder if that's where live streams kind of can help you wiggle out of that because with tiktok it was live stream but i don't think they're archiving there'll be clips clips only now yeah but it's a but it is interesting like you say i think because i think there are still festival live streams where a big act won't be streamed live because they said they don't want it to be yeah um because neil young nearly did that from glastonbury didn't he and then he relented i think i said no you can't stream it um but it is i think it's it's The other thing I've been thinking about, and this is very much, I've got no evidence of this happening yet, but these are all the big festivals doing this.

15:16Stuart:Obviously, you know, Tomorrowland, Glastonbury, Coachella, huge brands anyway. But I do wonder if there are people who are happy to watch festival sets on their phone if they can't go. Is there something here that could be done with the smaller events that have been struggling? Obviously, there's a trade-off there. They might worry about ticket sales. But I wonder if there are partnerships to be done between people like TikTok and YouTube and the smaller festivals that can help those festivals build their brands, reach people and make some more money in a different way. That would be quite positive, I think.

15:49Stuart:I hope it's not just the biggest, biggest events that are streamed.

15:52Steve:It would be interesting. If anyone listening is involved in a festival, drop us a line and let us know what you think, whether this is a good trend or a bad trend. Story two this week. And now we've seen, I mean, we've seen various artists adapting to how they make or release their music in the streaming era. This is another interesting one, tells us a lot about the times we live in. Last week, Hayley Williams, Paramore's Hayley Williams, Surprise released 17 new songs. But there's two notable things about this. One, the streaming services didn't get them first. the first people to hear these tracks uh well she she made the tracks available to fans who had bought her branded hair dye they got 24 hours of free listening to these tracks on her website ahead of the songs going on the streaming services and secondly the 17 tracks didn't come as one pack it didn't come as an album they were all released individually as 17 separate singles let's get the hair dye out of the way first um what were the what were the terms do we know how much it cost uh no actually no is the hair dye any good have you tested it i just bought it without

17:10Stuart:looking at the price sadly so well you know actually it's one of those things where you think this is this seems very apt like you know she she her image is famously yeah and i think this is this is one of those ways you go okay who are my super fans well they're the ones who bought my own hair dye so i kind of get the that strategy yeah um and yeah and it's it's i guess it's 2025 isn't it like artists have their own stuff like in a way i'm oasis didn't do any of this because i think liam's fashion brand has he still got it pretty i'm not sure yeah i don't i don't i'm