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Apple (AAPL) Leads $50M Investment Round for UnitedMasters
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Apple (AAPL - Free Report) recently led a $50-million fundraising round for UnitedMasters, an artist-services startup that helps musicians distribute and market their music while allowing them to keep their copyrights, per Bloomberg Report.
The series B funding round, which was also backed by Alphabet and venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, is expected to support UnitedMasters in enabling artists to maintain full ownership over their work while expanding their opportunities to reach a larger fan base.
United Masters currently has more than 1 million artists on its platform and has inked deals with the NBA, ESPN, Tiktok and Twitch. The platform allows artists to release music directly to streaming services via Android or Apple. It takes a 10% revenue share, or artists can retain all revenues if they pay a $5 monthly subscription fee.
The move also marks another step from Apple in the independent artist space, following the acquisition of prominent artist services, A&R and distribution company Platoon, in 2018. Streaming services, including Apple, are increasingly cutting more favorable deals with artists who attract users to platforms in an effort to gain subscribers.
The latest move bodes well for the company’s growing efforts in the music-streaming space, which is expected to generate $23.1 billion revenues in 2021 and the figure is likely to hit $33.4 billion by 2025, witnessing a CAGR of 9.7%, per Statista. Additionally, user penetration rate in the market is likely to hit 8.3% in 2021. The figure is expected to reach 11.6% by 2025.
Recently, Apple seeded developers and public testers with the sixth beta for macOS 11.3 that features autoplay function for Apple Music.
Last week, Warner Music (WMG - Free Report) and Accenture Interactive launched Saylists, new playlists exclusive to Apple Music that are designed to augment speech therapy experience for users with speech and sound disorders through the power of music and technology. The new feature uses embedded algorithm to find song lyrics that repeat challenging sounds. The algorithm has analysed song lyrics of 70 million tracks in the Apple Music catalogue and chose some songs that have challenging sounds repeated most often.
We believe all these endeavors are expected to strengthen the company’s competitive position against incumbents such as Spotify (SPOT - Free Report) and other players like Amazon’s Music services, Alphabet’s YouTube Music, ByteDance, Deezer, iHeartMedia, and SiriusXM, which have intensified competition in the rapidly growing music streaming space (subscription as well as ad-based).
Moreover, Square (SQ - Free Report) is making a foray into the booming music-streaming space through the latest definitive agreement to acquire a majority stake in Jay-Z’s music-streaming service called Tidal. The deal is expected to be completed in second-quarter 2021.
Recently, Amazon integrated artist merchandise into the Amazon Music app to deliver an enhanced experience to music listeners and the artist fan base. The integration will allow subscribers of the app to shop artist merchandise, while streaming music, accessing live streams and watching music videos on the app.
Apple is focusing on services such as Apple Music, which debuted in 2015 at $9.99/month, to bolster sales with paid monthly and/or yearly subscriptions. Notably, Services (14.1% of sales) revenues grew 24% from the year-ago quarter to $15.7 billion for first-quarter fiscal 2021.
The Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company has expanded the Apple Music platform reach to 115 countries with more than 60 million subscribers, trailing market leader Spotify, which has 345 million users, including 155 million subscribers across 178 markets. You can seethe complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Apple Music offers more than 60 million songs on-demand and live radio stations. The streaming service costs $10 per month. In comparison, Spotify has 70 million songs in its library and offers subscriptions for $10 a month, ad-free.
In October 2020, Apple launched Apple Music TV, a 24-hour live stream of popular music videos. In addition to exclusive new music videos and premiers, Music TV includes special curated music video blocks, live shows, fan events, chart countdowns and guest appearances.
Moreover, Apple relaunched the Apple Music beta website to add a Listen Now feature that replaces the For You tab from the standard Apple Music website. The interface allows subscribers to stream their favorite music from their Internet browser rather than installing iTunes or the separate Apple Music app.
More Stock News: This Is Bigger than the iPhone!
It could become the mother of all technological revolutions. Apple sold a mere 1 billion iPhones in 10 years but a new breakthrough is expected to generate more than 77 billion devices by 2025, creating a $1.3 trillion market.
Zacks has just released a Special Report that spotlights this fast-emerging phenomenon and 4 tickers for taking advantage of it. If you don't buy now, you may kick yourself in 2022.
Image: Bigstock
Apple (AAPL) Leads $50M Investment Round for UnitedMasters
Apple (AAPL - Free Report) recently led a $50-million fundraising round for UnitedMasters, an artist-services startup that helps musicians distribute and market their music while allowing them to keep their copyrights, per Bloomberg Report.
The series B funding round, which was also backed by Alphabet and venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, is expected to support UnitedMasters in enabling artists to maintain full ownership over their work while expanding their opportunities to reach a larger fan base.
United Masters currently has more than 1 million artists on its platform and has inked deals with the NBA, ESPN, Tiktok and Twitch. The platform allows artists to release music directly to streaming services via Android or Apple. It takes a 10% revenue share, or artists can retain all revenues if they pay a $5 monthly subscription fee.
The move also marks another step from Apple in the independent artist space, following the acquisition of prominent artist services, A&R and distribution company Platoon, in 2018. Streaming services, including Apple, are increasingly cutting more favorable deals with artists who attract users to platforms in an effort to gain subscribers.
Apple Inc. Price and Consensus
Apple Inc. price-consensus-chart | Apple Inc. Quote
Music Streaming Growth Prospects Aplenty
The latest move bodes well for the company’s growing efforts in the music-streaming space, which is expected to generate $23.1 billion revenues in 2021 and the figure is likely to hit $33.4 billion by 2025, witnessing a CAGR of 9.7%, per Statista. Additionally, user penetration rate in the market is likely to hit 8.3% in 2021. The figure is expected to reach 11.6% by 2025.
Recently, Apple seeded developers and public testers with the sixth beta for macOS 11.3 that features autoplay function for Apple Music.
Last week, Warner Music (WMG - Free Report) and Accenture Interactive launched Saylists, new playlists exclusive to Apple Music that are designed to augment speech therapy experience for users with speech and sound disorders through the power of music and technology. The new feature uses embedded algorithm to find song lyrics that repeat challenging sounds. The algorithm has analysed song lyrics of 70 million tracks in the Apple Music catalogue and chose some songs that have challenging sounds repeated most often.
We believe all these endeavors are expected to strengthen the company’s competitive position against incumbents such as Spotify (SPOT - Free Report) and other players like Amazon’s Music services, Alphabet’s YouTube Music, ByteDance, Deezer, iHeartMedia, and SiriusXM, which have intensified competition in the rapidly growing music streaming space (subscription as well as ad-based).
Moreover, Square (SQ - Free Report) is making a foray into the booming music-streaming space through the latest definitive agreement to acquire a majority stake in Jay-Z’s music-streaming service called Tidal. The deal is expected to be completed in second-quarter 2021.
Recently, Amazon integrated artist merchandise into the Amazon Music app to deliver an enhanced experience to music listeners and the artist fan base. The integration will allow subscribers of the app to shop artist merchandise, while streaming music, accessing live streams and watching music videos on the app.
Apple is focusing on services such as Apple Music, which debuted in 2015 at $9.99/month, to bolster sales with paid monthly and/or yearly subscriptions. Notably, Services (14.1% of sales) revenues grew 24% from the year-ago quarter to $15.7 billion for first-quarter fiscal 2021.
The Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company has expanded the Apple Music platform reach to 115 countries with more than 60 million subscribers, trailing market leader Spotify, which has 345 million users, including 155 million subscribers across 178 markets. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Apple Music offers more than 60 million songs on-demand and live radio stations. The streaming service costs $10 per month. In comparison, Spotify has 70 million songs in its library and offers subscriptions for $10 a month, ad-free.
In October 2020, Apple launched Apple Music TV, a 24-hour live stream of popular music videos. In addition to exclusive new music videos and premiers, Music TV includes special curated music video blocks, live shows, fan events, chart countdowns and guest appearances.
Moreover, Apple relaunched the Apple Music beta website to add a Listen Now feature that replaces the For You tab from the standard Apple Music website. The interface allows subscribers to stream their favorite music from their Internet browser rather than installing iTunes or the separate Apple Music app.
More Stock News: This Is Bigger than the iPhone!
It could become the mother of all technological revolutions. Apple sold a mere 1 billion iPhones in 10 years but a new breakthrough is expected to generate more than 77 billion devices by 2025, creating a $1.3 trillion market.
Zacks has just released a Special Report that spotlights this fast-emerging phenomenon and 4 tickers for taking advantage of it. If you don't buy now, you may kick yourself in 2022.
Click here for the 4 trades >>