Peloton becoming an ‘antidote to Spotify’ for the music industry, analysts say

Music is an incredible part of the Peloton experience, and a report from The Telegraph this month offers an interesting look at how Peloton is becoming a larger player in the music industry as a whole.

The report explains that while Spotify focuses on quantity, Peloton’s interest in music is very curated and hand-picked, something that has attracted interest from the music industry.

Music analyst Mark Mulligan, the managing director of MIDiA Research, is quoted in the report:

“Peloton’s importance is a reflection of the fact that the music landscape has become pretty stodgy,. There isn’t anything new out there and the streaming services have become pretty ossified in terms of market share. Spotify and co’s focus is on getting as much content as possible in front of people and basically turning it into sonic wallpaper.”

The report also includes an interesting tidbit of information from Hipgnosis, which is a company that buys back catalogs of content and treats them as assets, designed to be “bought, grown, or sold.” Hipgnosis has acquired songs by artists such as Neil Young and Blondie.

In the last two years, Hipgnosis has received millions in revenue from Peloton alone, Merck Mercuriadis, Hipgnosis’s founder, told The Telegraph.

Hipgnosis has received almost $2 million (£1.43 million) in revenue from Peloton over the last two years from a standing start of zero, with plenty more expected. The number one song in its catalogue has been Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey – it alone has generated over $350,000 (£250,000) in income from Peloton, Mercuriadis says. Extrapolate that out over Hipgnosis’s 60,000 songs and you can see the potential.

Peloton’s newfound role in the music industry, playing an increasingly important part of the business, comes after the company was engaged in a bitter $300 million lawsuit from the music industry over unlicensed use of songs from artists such as Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars.

Since then, Peloton has been forced to remove those classes from its library, but it’s also focused on rebuilding its relationship with the music industry as a whole. We’ve seen this manifest through curated classes such as Beyonce and other artists, with many more to come in the future.

Check out the full report from The Telegraph for more.