Eric Levin: Thank you. Ben, good talking to you. So I would talk to our release schedule a little bit. So as we said, our fiscal Q1 release schedule in the U.S. was a little bit of a softer schedule that could have roll in and have some impact on Q2 as well this year. We have a second half fiscal ’23 as second-half oriented release schedule or the strength of our release schedule tends to be more oriented this year towards the second-half and we think that will have a positive impact on streaming. If we just look back one quarter ago, our subscription streaming growth was in the teens, in the low-teens area. So release schedule does have a couple point impact. So we do think this has a fair amount to do with release schedule timing.
Benjamin Swinburne: Thank you, both.
Eric Levin: Thanks, Ben.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Rich Greenfield from LightShed Partners. Your line is open.
Rich Greenfield: Hi, thanks for taking the question. Robert, it’s great to have you on this call, I love sort of your perspective on how important you think music is, as TikTok’s core product. And then sort of a related question. When you are at YouTube, I remember had the label, including Warner, pushed very aggressively for you to launch a subscription product in addition to sort of the marketing aspect of what YouTube did for music. I’m curious, if you think the same thing in terms of the push for subscription product will happen with TikTok?
Robert Kyncl: Thank you, Richard. It’s great to hear from you. So one, having lived through that. We made the decision to launch subscription at YouTube, because we were looking at the industry holistically and we had a fast-growing advertising business with free content to users, while at the same time subscription was somewhat nascent for the industry. And the industry really wanted us to invest into converting that large free user base into a paying user base. Obviously, you don’t do it with all 2 billion users, you do at some fraction of it and great audience segmentation strategy and that’s exactly what we did. So we decided that music is important to us forever, and therefore we should invest into it holistically. And obviously, that’s also followed a further expansion into shortage later on.
So the platform has done an incredible job, delivering multiple formats, super short format, with music videos, user uploaded content, track and upload, copyrighted track, properly remunerated and subscription as well as life. So when you look at that from the point of view of content owner and content provider, it’s a phenomenal partnership and phenomenal platform, that’s exactly what we decided to do. I think for TikTok, to go to the beginning of your question. Well, let me also say, we’ve looked at this question very closely and we decided that it was important to us and that’s why we did it. TikTok needs to do that, it’s the right decision for them to evaluate. And you can see from YouTube’s execution, what the results of the findings was for us, but again speak to what TikTok obviously finds.
Sorry, I’m losing my voice. But my answer is, holistic relationship is what we’re looking for.
Rich Greenfield: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question will come from Matthew Thornton from Truist Securities. Your line is open.
Matthew Thornton: Hi, good morning. Robert, welcome on-board and Eric, hope you’re well. Maybe two if I could and related. First one, Eric, any update on emerging streaming and kind of how that trended in the quarter? And then relatedly, as you think about fiscal ’23, is there any way to think about or handicap, whether we could get movements on the emerging streaming side, i.e., a new deal that would actually material to kind of pushing that business up higher. And/or continued price increase momentum this year that could be material to the subscription streaming side of the business? Any way to think about that impact or potential impact in ’23 would be very helpful. Thanks guys.
Eric Levin: Sure, good to hear from you and appreciate the questions. This is Eric, I will — let me tackle these more financially oriented. So in this quarter, there were no, but say significant renewals to note, sequentially emerging streaming was roughly flat, it’s up about 20%, 20 some odd percent year-on year. So up substantially year on year. But generally, we have fixed fee deals, so it moves up as we renew deals with the current deal structures in place. Any movement on renewals, so the second question. So we don’t specifically talk about individual deals and deal timing. What we have said is that, we had a series of deals we did in the 2021 timeframe and most of our deals in emerging streaming tend to be two to three years in length.
Meaning that within fiscal 2023, there certainly will be discussions about new deals, when exactly those close and what form, whether there continues to be fixed fee or portions of them are variable as to be seeing. So we will keep you guys apprised as deals are renewed and the impact the category, but that is something where there’ll be discussions ongoing throughout the year with some of our partners. On subscription price increases. So there have been some meaningful players and partners that have announced price increases and increased prices already. Apple, Amazon, Deezer, where we use to see that. Again we don’t talk about individual deals, but generally we say with our largest subscription partners are deals tend to be variable and those will have — those will obviously price increases will have a positive impact on growth.
So in future quarters, those will be rolling through the subscription revenue numbers and we expect that to be a positive to the subscription growth kind of story this year. Thank you, Matthew. I appreciate it.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Michael Morris from Guggenheim Partners. Your line is open.
Michael Morris: Thank you. Good morning, guys. I have two questions, I think for Robert. My first is your comments about technology and innovation, new use cases and these appointments that you’ve made. It seems that, that element of the growth has largely been dependent on innovation from outside of the company and your participation there. Do you see areas to incrementally invest on the technology side and maybe bring any of those growth drivers in-house? I’d be curious what you think on that. My second question is about streaming share. Spotify reported their annual results recently and indicated that the share of streams attributed to major labels head again declined by another couple of 100 basis-points. And I’m curious, how you view that information? Whether you see that is sort of pervasive across your DSP partner relationships? What do you think it means and how do you address that going-forward? Thank you.
