Music

Spotify has announced its latest financial results, and despite its paid (premium) subscribers rising to 155 million compared to the year before, the music streaming media company reported that its losses had tripled during the same period.

Relief funding was designed to cover cancellations in the first quarter – but most musicians in South Africa hadn’t confirmed all their bookings by then. And from April onwards, during the lockdown, there have been minimal earnings.

Many content creators, curators, musicians, artists, and influencers have invested in new ways to adapt to this new reality by leveraging technology to capture high-quality shareable content for their fans on social media channels and platforms via podcasting and vlogging.

REVOLT TV, the a Hip Hop culture digital platform owned by Sean "Diddy" Combs, has announced the launch of "What's Good Africa", a new half-hour unscripted series exploring all aspects of Hip Hop culture in Africa.

The history of recorded music has been marked by endless artistic and technological changes. While music labels persist, digital technology has profoundly altered why they exist and how they work.

Hundreds of thousands of songs have been recorded and uploaded to music production apps and websites; the ability to monetize this could disrupt the pop music industry.

A story of predators and prey – and is not unique to the music industry. Once the appearance of new technology leads to the extinction of the previous one, it can be interesting to look at what existed before.