IFPI reports trade revenues from streaming rose 10% in 2023 to reach $19.3 billion, and we estimate Spotify contributed about $7 billion. Spotify also rewarded music publishers with about $2 billion in royalties. 

Spotify’s Loud & Clear data on royalties paid to the 225,000 professional and aspiring artists served to its 600 million users reveals a bulge in the middle part of the distribution in favour of Spanish language artists as the service expands in Latin America.

The top 1,000 earners are mainly artists at the top of the charts in the US and UK markets, which together contribute half of Spotify’s revenues and thus royalties. Top earner and top all-time streamed artist Taylor Swift earned over $100 million in 2023. 

Streaming profitability beckons, but owes much to the profitable services folded into companies’ DTC segments alongside the headline streamers.

There is a broader move towards bundling and price rises. The former bolsters subscriber additions and lifetime value but is ARPU-dilutive, while price rises will bump up both ARPU and churn.

2024 marks the first year with multiple players at scale in the ad space, as Prime Video entered the market. Other streamers with high CPMs and lower scale may be forced to re-examine their offerings.

Direct greenhouse gas emissions from the UK telecoms sector equate to around 0.1-0.3% of the UK total. Most operators have set targets to reach net zero across their direct emissions in the next 10-20 years, with the move to electric vehicles an obvious win.

Network upgrades to 5G and fibre have the potential to cut emissions from electricity by a factor of 10, and consolidation offers further decarbonisation upside.

The industry could enable emissions savings in other sectors equivalent up to 30x its own by averting the need to travel and through IoT applications, with the latter requiring careful commercial assessment given the financial constraints in the industry.

VMO2 ended 2023 with strong ARPU and EBITDA growth, meeting its (revised) guidance for the full year, but saw receding subscriber momentum across both fixed and mobile.

2024 will be much tougher across the industry and for VMO2 in particular, with its revenue expected to be flat at best, and waning boosts from price rises and synergies coupled with a series of technical factors shrinking EBITDA.

The company has promised new commercial initiatives in 2024, and thereafter we see strong potential in it maximizing the use of its network and retail arms via breaking the long-standing lock between them, although the formation of NetCo is neither a necessary nor sufficient step for this.

Sony PlayStation’s next CEO will have hard decisions to make: compete against a resurgent multiplatform Microsoft, or retreat and defend an increasingly rickety PlayStation console model.

New gaming hardware will have an outsize influence in the year ahead, giving gamers unprecedented choice, starting with XR headsets and continuing to a likely new Nintendo Switch.

YouTube’s foray into browser-based games will be the service to watch in 2024. If successful, streaming services, including Netflix, will be on track to become heavyweight game platforms.

Public service broadcasters are in a position to plan for the long term with commercial licences renewed for ten years, an updated prominence regime via the Media Bill and a government broadly supportive of the BBC.

With the Premier League and EFL rights secure to the end of the decade, Sky can plan for the future from a position of strength.

Relationships between Sky and the PSBs have improved markedly recently, and as all can now plan for the long-term, this should provide further opportunities to cement relationships for the benefit of the broadcasting ecosystem and viewers.

As Phase 1 digital shift from broadcast analogue to digital nears completion, individual platform growth trends have almost flattened out

The most likely area of change in platform trends over the next ten years concerns basic only subscription pay-TV, where we anticipate an overall increase in the total pay-TV base and change in platform balance arising from the introduction of low price basic packages

Phase 2 digital convergence between TV and the internet promises to take many years to reach maturity, and many questions need to be addressed in order to be able to assess its potential impact on the current broadcast TV marketplace over the next ten years.

In this presentation we show our analysis of trends in UK broadband and telephony to September 2011, together with our latest projections for residential broadband subscribers and market shares to 2016. Highlights for the 2011 September quarter include accelerating growth in the number of subscribers to high speed broadband, and the continuing increase in market share of BT Retail and BSkyB at the expense of virtually all other players. This quarter’s edition includes a look at high speed broadband pricing, and our take on the new guidelines on broadband advertising.

Although we continue to expect broadband subscriber growth to drop, we expect growth to be supported by increasing adoption among older and/or lower income householders, who are becoming more aware of the benefits of going online. We have also increased our residential market share projection for BT Retail, which has gained real momentum over the past year, with brand strength among late adopters and effective marketing of high speed broadband both having an impact.

Spotify has just passed the 2 million subscriber mark in Europe and the US, and could reach 2.5 million by the end of 2011

Smartphone adoption and partnerships with MNOs and ISPs have proven a key driver of subscription in Europe for Spotify, which lacks a telecoms partner in the US. We think subscription is profitable

Spotify’s lower usage caps on the freemium tier will help compress total losses in 2011 in relation to the £25 million reported in 2010, despite the US launch

Q3 results were contradictory, with accelerating demand for enhanced services and resilient revenue, but high churn and weak growth in fundamental cash flow

Cost increases struck us as justifiable in the longer term and were in some cases temporary. We share management’s confidence that there is better news to come, particularly at Virgin Media Business

Nonetheless, we remain of the view that future cash flow growth is likely to be significantly lower than that seen over the past two years, particularly given the deteriorating economic outlook