Music Industry News Roundup For The Week Of 5/26/17

Music Industry News Roundup Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup for the week ending on May 26th, 2017. There’s a lot of social media news this week, but some on Pandora too (and it’s not too good). Let’s get into it.

Pandora is suffering from “fake listener syndrome.” Two-thirds of its listeners do so at home, and they’re frequently not even in the room when it’s playing,

Pandora is also getting sued by Paypal. It’s new logo looks too much like Paypal’s, so it’s suing for infringement.

Former Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr thinks that streaming will make music more popular than ever. Of course, he’s been pretty wrong before in his stints with both MCA, Polygram and Warners.

Spotify acquired a machine learning company. That’s its 4th acquisition in the last 3 months. It’s trying everything to stay in front of the competition.

Facebook admits another measurement mistake. It’s the 10th so far. If you can’t trust the measurements, why bother to use it for promotion or pay for the ads?

Who was the most popular artist in the UK last year?  David Bowie. He’s a legend and all, but it’s a little sad to see how little traction newer artists are getting.

Merch sales grew by almost 10% last year. Most of that came from brand licensing, so it wasn’t concert merch sales driving the increase.

But the relationship between artists and brands needs to evolve. In most cases, the approach is outdated, but is it still “selling out?”

Social media can be more addictive than cigarettes or alcohol. And children that spend more than 3 hours behind the screen are at a higher risk for diabetes 2! That’s no good, but we’re okay with long exposure times as long as a much of it is spent listening to music.

Instagram is the social network that does the most damage to your health. But it affects mostly young women, who lower their self-esteem from the looking at the content. YouTube was the most positive.

That’s the Music News Roundup of what went on in the music industry last week. Have a great week ahead!

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