No one wants their song ripped off without credit, but songwriters will tell you that coming up with something totally original is getting harder and harder. That’s because Western music is limited to a 12 note scale, which makes the note combinations, especially the ones that we find pleasing, somewhat limited. No matter which side […]
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The Stories feature is a big hit on multiple social networks and it looks like Spotify is now rolling out its own version. In what is acknowledged as a test, the company unveiled a Christmas Hits story (see the image above) featuring a slew of Holiday songs. If Stories are fully rolled out in the […]
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Get ready for some great behind-the-scenes music business stories as my guest on the podcast this week is Miles Copeland, who formerly managed The Police and created IRS Records. IRS was at the forefront of punk and New Wave as the home of bands like REM, The Bangles, Dead Kennedys, The Go Gos, and many others. He also […]
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To all my friends and readers, I wish you a happy holiday. I truly appreciate your support and I am humbled and honored that you take the time out of your busy day to read my musings. It’s a good day to take some time off, eat a nice meal, have a cocktail and watch some […]
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Snapchat recently introduced a new feature called Spotlight in 11 countries, including the United States and Canada specifically designed to accommodate the type of short, music-driven videos that have become a staple of TikTok. While Snapchat users always posted short videos, they were relegated to their circle of friends on the app. That meant that […]
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There is no shortage of tools to help you get your marketing job done online, but a new generation of smart tools can help you do it even better. These 4 tools, courtesy of Social Media Today, are worth looking into, especially if there’s even a chance they can help you increase your reach to […]
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My guest on the podcast this week is engineer Robert Martin, who was a long-time member of Frank Zappa’s band, the musical director for Bette Midler, and toured or performed with Paul McCartney, Michael McDonald, Stevie Nicks, Boz Scaggs, Etta James, Patti LaBelle, Bonnie Raitt, Kenny Loggins and many others. Robert also recorded with Prince, the Moody Blues, Lyle […]
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Many young artists believe that the end-all-be-all of their career is getting a record deal. If you’ve been in the music industry for a bit you know that’s far from the truth. The problem is, how to really evaluate a deal if and when it’s offered to you. Yes, you should have a music attorney […]
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My guest on the podcast this week is engineer John Cuniberti, who began his music career as the drummer in Eddie Money’s first band, transitioned to mixing monitors for Stevie Wonder, and eventually became chief engineer at San Francisco’s famed Hyde Street Studios. It was there John engineered a long line of seminal records for Bay artists like […]
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We all want our pages to rank high in Google searches, but that’s led to a number of techniques that can actually be counter-productive when it comes to page optimization. The Google search algorithm is pretty quick to catch on to web creators when they try to game the system, but people still keep trying […]
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Record Store Day continues to be a big draw for vinyl buyers even in the midst of a pandemic. The event was broken down into 3 separate weekends this year because of Covid, but that didn’t quell the enthusiasm of buyers, who wound up purchasing almost 2 million albums. Artists and labels have certainly helped […]
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My guest on the podcast this week is mixing engineer Billy Decker, who’s mixed hits for Kenny Chesney, Darius Rucker, Jason Aldean. Jaime Lynne Spears, George Jones and Sam Hunt, among others, that have sold over 25 million albums. Billy is different from most other mixers in that he’s able to mix extremely fast thanks to his templates […]
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We all know we need to watch the metrics of every social platform that we use in order to understand how effective it is for promotion. That said, sometimes we’re not exactly sure of what each metric means, especially when it comes to YouTube. Here’s an excerpt from social distributor Hootsuite’s blog that explains both […]
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Social video network TikTok doesn’t look like it will be shutting down any time soon thanks to an injunction brought about by some of the platform’s biggest U.S. stars. A filing lodged by TikTok creators Douglas Marland, Alec Chambers and Cosette Rinab successfully argued that taking down the app would rob them of their livelihoods. The […]
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YouTube is the poster child for skimping on royalties when it comes to paying artists and songwriters. It takes 45% of the ad revenue generated from a monetized video, when all other streaming services are around the 30% or less range per stream. That said, the company sure is making a lot of money, with […]
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