As Spotify wavers around the breakeven point, the deal with UMG is good news for royalty costs and thus for the likely advent of the IPO rumoured for autumn 2017
Royalty costs will reduce if Spotify reaches the subscriber growth targets that have been agreed – these have not been disclosed, so are hard to track
Question marks persist over whether a two-week optional windowing of new releases on the premium tier will significantly drive upgrades from the free tier
Snap is going public: its filing shows widening losses and slowing user growth, calling into question its ability to reach profitability and justify the ~$20 billion valuation it is seeking
Long term, the company hopes to capture the large brand advertising budgets it expects will leave TV as linear viewing declines. But how it plans to do so is unclear, as it has shown little interest in connected TVs, and the ad model for augmented reality – Snap’s focus – is a long way off
Most of all, investors are being asked to trust in the ability of Snap’s founders – who will retain full control of the company – to continually innovate products which will attract users and advertisers
Enterprise cloud computing democratises access to IT capacity ranging from specialised software to platforms to infrastructure, transforming cost structures in sectors like media and retail
Cloud enables unprecedented scalability of bandwidth for digital media services like Pokémon Go and Netflix, while also hosting the back-end for advertisers and retailers
As the industry consolidates quickly, intense competition among Amazon, Microsoft and Google is delivering value to customers and boosting adoption
Streaming is now mainstream and we predict 113% growth in expenditure on subscriptions for 2015-18 in the top four markets (US, UK, Germany and France)
Free vs paid-for streaming is the central question for the music ecosystem: free yields fractions of pennies, making subscription the only credible business model
Market leader Spotify is facing competition from tech giants Amazon, Apple and Google, with deep pockets, for whom content is a pawn in a larger game