| Spotify been talking about introducing a new, more expensive version of its popular audio streaming service since at least 2023. But after two years of negotiating with music companies, management still hasn’t announced any details. The company initially hoped to introduce its super-premium plan in late 2023. Then it was late 2024. While Spotify hasn’t abandoned the effort, its executives can’t say when the product will be ready. “As long as I've been here, which is now, I think, close to 15 years, we’ve had very high value standards around what and when to release product,” Alex Norstrom, Spotify’s co-president and chief business officer, said on a call with analysts last month. “We're working towards these very high value standards and we're making progress for sure, but it's taking time.” After helping to popularize paid music streaming, Spotify has been looking for ways to capitalize on artists’ most-ardent fans. While the average Spotify user pays $5 a month, fans have demonstrated they will pay up for access to merchandise and exclusive content from their favorite acts. The average superfan spends 80% more on live music than the normal music listener, according to Luminate, a market researcher. Yet Spotify has been unable to settle on the features that should be in such a plan, according to people familiar with the matter. It’s not clear what will entice people to pay. The company must also come to terms with its partners in the music business, including record labels and concert promoters, over the right to offer features such as early access to new music and concert presales, said the people, who asked not to be identified because such discussions are confidential and the plans aren’t settled. Norstrom acknowledged these challenges on the same call. “In music, of course, we're reliant on our partners to a certain degree,” he said. A Spotify spokesperson said the company is working on “building something great for superfans,” before adding, “We cannot comment on anonymized and often incorrect speculation about potential future features.” Major record labels have been pushing Spotify to both raise prices and create premium plans for superfans. Music sales have grown for a decade, but the pace has slowed from the early days of the streaming boom. Labels are largely subject to the whims of tech companies that decide whether and when to charge more. Spotify and its peers have begun to raise prices and explore creating a wider range of plans. Spotify customers, for example, pay up for more time listening to audiobooks. When it comes to superfans, executives look to Asia as a model. Tencent Music has fused streaming with social media in the form of virtual gifts and live programming. South Korea’s largest music company, Hybe Co., has created an app, Weverse, for fans to interact with groups like BTS. Music companies in the West have had a harder time. Warner Music has been developing a superfan app that has yet to be released to the public. Weverse has struggled to sign up many major Western acts. Spotify’s stalled pursuit of a super-premium tier underscores these challenges. The company has been working on plans for high-fidelity audio since 2021. Major competitors Apple and Amazon already offer this feature, and Apple does so at no extra cost. Spotify is also investing in tools for creators and music nerds to blend their music together, akin to many products SoundCloud that has already introduced. Most industry experts believe both hi-fi audio and creator tools appeal to a small pool of potential users. Major record labels have been pushing Spotify to explore premium prices for early access to new music from major artists. Some podcasters and YouTube creators already do so. Yet the music industry already whiffed on the chance to try this. Back in 2017, record labels convinced Spotify to let them withhold new releases from its free tier for two weeks to drive people to pay. Artists didn’t want to withhold their new work from new fans. “The music industry is significantly under-monetizing the superfans today,”Divyaunsh Divatia, an analyst at Janus Henderson Investors, said in an email. While there is an opportunity to innovate with new products and experiences, “The question remains which features a Superfan tier comes with and whether they’re enough to move the needle to drive adoption,” he said. While streaming services and record labels will continue to explore new ways to serve fans, artists don’t exactly lack for options. They already sell concert tickets, merchandise and vinyl. They interact with fans on social media services like Instagram and TikTok and release music on dozens of streaming services, including YouTube and Spotify. While it might be nice for fans to find all that material in one place, that would require a high degree of collaboration between companies with little incentive to give up their foothold in the market. After a couple years of developing the super-premium concept, Spotify appears to have modified its strategy. The company is introducing some of the features it once contemplated for the super premium plan to users of its existing paid service. Just this week, it began testing an audio-mixing feature that lets users create their own transitions between songs. Spotify has also discussed offering early access to concert tickets to presales to anyone who pays for a regular Spotify plan, as opposed to a super-premium plan, according to a person familiar with the matter. Spotify already offers some presales and has spoken with major concert promoters and ticket sellers about expanding that plan to become a bigger player like American Express. Spotify would pay a large upfront sum for access to a presale and recoup the money by coaxing more people signing up for its service. Rather than create a product for a few million people, these initiatives are designed to convince the hundreds of millions of people who use a free version of Spotify to start paying. Including more features in its subscription plan will allow Spotify to keep raising prices a la Netflix and also gives the company even more time to figure out what super premium and superfans really mean. The best of Screentime (and other stuff) | Sports breaks out of the bundle | ESPN just introduced a revamped primary app that it hopes will be the first place for sports fans to find scores, watch live games and check their fantasy teams. It’s the first time ESPN has offered all of its programming outside the cable bundle. We covered its development and the stakes for parent Walt Disney a couple weeks ago. Fox Corp. also introduced a new app that will feature all of its live sports, as well as news and entertainment. Fox has been very open about its goals. It expects to sign up a few million customers in the first few years of the new service, which costs $20 a month. Disney is being more ambitious. Its new product is for diehard fans who will pay $30 a month just for some sports. That is why it secured the rights to the NFL Red Zone and NFL Network. It’s also why ESPN is in talks to get MLB.TV. As the regional sports network business collapses, Disney would like to acquire as many local rights as possible to ensure fans come to ESPN to watch their favorite teams. The biggest baseball franchises, like those in Los Angeles and New York, won’t play ball. But ESPN is going to try. The Weeknd’s $1 billion dreamThe Weeknd is seeking $1 billion (or more) for a large bundle of his music rights. He is shopping his half of his publishing catalog as well as his share of his master recordings, according to people familiar with the matter. The pop star, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, has been shopping a version of this deal for a while now. His previous asking price was $1.3 billion. The Weeknd is deep in talks with Lyric Capital Group, a New York-based private equity group that is arranging about $750 million in debt to do the deal. A summer streaming updateStreaming accounted for nearly half of TV viewing in July, per The Gauge report from Nielsen. Roku Channel accounted for 2.8% of all TV viewing, its largest share yet. It is now almost as big as Peacock and HBO Max combined. The No. 1 movie in the world is…KPop Demon Hunters, again? Netflix released the movie in theaters this weekend, and it topped the box office in the US. That is pretty insane for a movie that has been out for almost two months. It speaks to the affection for the film that fans would want to go see the movie in theaters and sing along as they did for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Netflix critics will say this is further proof the company should release movies in theaters. Netflix will say the movie didn’t need to be in theaters to be a cultural phenomenon. Rinse, repeat. Deals, deals, deals - Netflix is ramping up production in Thailand. It will release nine original programs in the Southeast Asian country this year. For context, Paramount is releasing just 11 movies in total this year.
- Video-game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. gutted the studio behind its popular BioShock game.
- Nexstar agreed to buy Tegna for $3.5 billion, a major test of the FCC’s limits on local TV station ownership.
- The FTC sued a ticket reseller that used 49 different accounts to buy 273 tickets for a Taylor Swift concert. The limit was six tickets.
- Apple is raising the price of its TV+ streaming service (again).
Thanks to readers/follows who submit recommendations last week. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed listening to playwright/screenwriter/actor on Tracy Letts on Roger Deakins’ podcast. | 
