News - 27/08/2014

It's all over for Songl, Major-backed Australian music streaming service

It's all over for Songl, Major-backed Australian music streaming service


Australian music streaming service Songl has announced that it will cease operations on September 25th, 2014.

Songl was a joint venture between Sony Music, Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) and Universal Music. SCA issued a statement on Mumbrella reading: "Songl was a consumer-facing music streaming service we have jointly been committed to for the past two years. However, all stakeholders have moved their focus from this service into other music and content-based commitments that will enable each stakeholder to diversify their offering."

The Australian music market is facing a challenging phase. Over a dozen streaming services have launched in the territory over the past 18 months, leading to a sharp drop in CD sales but also a dilution of the market. Streaming services notoriously need scale in order to work, but can any one of these services truly scale given a population of just 22 million? Deezer for example decided to call it quits in February 2014 and leave the Australian market. The decision was certainly not made lightly since Deezer prides itself in being the most widely available service internationally.

The closure of Songl echoes a piece published on Adnews in February where Rdio's Colin Blake stated that the Australian market cannot possibly support all the streaming services that are currently available. He predicted that there would be considerable consolidation and that only around half of the players currently available will survive.


(Andrea Leonelli)

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