Spotify's acquisition last week of the music licensing start-up Loudr helps the streaming service to better manage its costs so that it can focus on attracting new subscribers for its premium service, said a digital media investment banker who helped Loudr close the deal.
Loudr's services are intended to make it easier for content creators and digital music services to identify, track, and pay royalties to music publishers more efficiently. Royalties are, of course, part of Spotify's recurring costs.
"It makes sense for Spotify, which is the largest music streaming service in terms of paid users, to take control of this important piece," said Sun Jen Yung, a partner and the head of digital media at Nfluence Partners.
Loudr makes the complex process of paying royalties easier through automation, she said Wednesday in an interview on Cheddar.
This week, Spotify announced it will update its mobile app soon in an effort to make it easier to use.
"To the extent that they can attract more users, that can hopefully help them upgrade to a premium service," said Yung.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/inside-spotifys-acquisition-of-loudr).
Microsoft has announced that it's hired Sam Altman and another co-founder of ChatGPT maker OpenAI after they unexpectedly departed the company days earlier in a corporate shakeup that shocked the artificial intelligence world.
Many factors lie behind the disconnect, but economists increasingly point to one in particular: The lingering financial and psychological effects of the worst bout of inflation in four decades.
Advertisers are fleeing social media platform X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content, hate speech on the site in general or billionaire owner Elon Musk’s own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Big Business This Week is a guided tour through the biggest market stories of the week, from winning stocks to brutal dips to the facts and forecasts generating buzz on Wall Street.
The board of ChatGPT-maker Open AI said Friday it has pushed out its co-founder and CEO Sam Altman after a review found he was “not consistently candid in his communications” with the board.
