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Get Ready For The Amazon Streaming Music Disruption
With the battle over streaming music leadership raging on between Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube, there’s one major company that’s been lying silently in the weeds waiting for the right time to pounce on an industry increasingly ripe for the picking. Don’t look now, but it may be Amazon that may soon be the one […]
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What If Google Had Bought Michael Jackson’s Half Of Sony/ATV?
Word came out over the weekend that Google was a clandestine bidder for Michael Jackson’s half of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, and the news had the music business wiping its collective brow in relief. Had that purchase happened, we might be looking at a very different industry landscape today. To recap, last March a buy-sell clause […]
Continue readingMastering Engineer Ian Shepherd On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast
If you take notice I have a lot of mastering engineer’s on my Inner Circle Podcast, and that’s because they’re pretty overlooked, usually keep a low profile, and what they do is generally misunderstood. That said, as you’ve probably heard by now if you listen to the show a lot, they all have great stories […]
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7 Social Media Marketing Secrets No One Tells You
Social media marketing is the lifeblood of artists and bands everywhere since, except for live performances, that’s where your audience is. The problem is that it’s easy to fall for a number of misconceptions about what it can do for you, but that soon becomes very apparent after you’ve spent some time actually doing the work […]
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The Music Industry’s Big Data Problem
One of the hopes that digital music brought was for a faster and more accurate way for everyone in the food chain to get paid. That sounds good on paper, but unfortunately hasn’t quite panned out the way anyone in the industry expected. While it’s true that it’s easy to count online sales and downloads in the digital […]
Continue readingElectronic Dance Music Still Has Room For Growth Despite Predictions
It wasn’t that long ago when it looked like electronic dance music, or EDM, might be the savior of the music business, thanks to an impressive growth rate of 54% over the course of just three years. With overall CD and download sales slowing down, and streaming paid subscribers not increasing as fast as the […]
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The Seamy Side Of The Music Business Circa 1980
I just returned from speaking at Nimbus School of Recording and Media in Vancouver (one of the best recording schools anywhere – thanks Mike, Rob and Brandon), and one of the questions that I received from the students was if the music business is more difficult now than it was in the past. Actually, getting into […]
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5 Tips For Increasing YouTube Engagement
Even though Facebook is catching up, YouTube engagement is still a primary concern for every artist. Information is power, and some brand new data about viewership on YouTube help to maximize its usefulness as a promotional tool. For instance, video length is one of the biggest deciding factors for engagement. Videos under one minute are […]
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Making Sense of Streaming Income
In Part 3 on my series on streaming music royalties, we try to make sense of streaming income as we look at why it varies so much and why the sales parameters we set in the days of vinyl and CDs no longer apply in the digital age. Once again, this is an excerpt from […]
Continue readingPirate Radio Stations On The Rise Again
Once upon a time pirate radio stations were big business and a big influence, with Radio Caroline, Radio Luxembourg and XERF all helping birth the modern radio and music industries. Most pirate stations have been long closed, and it was thought that they’d be gone for good thanks to the Internet. Surprisingly, pirate radio is […]
Continue readingPandora’s Largest Investor Worried About Its Future
Pandora’s largest investor is so concerned about its future that it sent a letter to the company’s CEO and board members asking them to reconsider its strategy and explore the possibility of a sale. According to a report in Music Business Worldwide, Corvex Management LP, the investor that sent the letter, owns 8.3% of Pandora and is fed up […]
Continue readingFlipagram’s John Bolton On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast
On this week’s edition of my Inner Circle Podcast I’m happy to have digital music veteran John Bolton as my guest. John is the head of music at Flipagram, and prior to that he held a similar position at Muve Music, which is one of the larger streaming music services. We’ll discuss what it’s […]
Continue readingTwitter Won’t Count Photos And Links In 140 Character Limit
If you use Twitter for promotion you know that while the 140 character limit seems like plenty, it can decrease rapidly with the addition of a photo or link. Those days may soon be over as the company will soon stop counting photos and links as part of its 140 character limit. Currently links take up […]
Continue readingFacebook’s New Slideshow Feature Just For Music Videos
It’s obvious that Facebook has been gunning for YouTube for some time now, and the service now claims that it now has more video viewers (although that’s debatable). That’s not enough though, as Facebook will soon introduce a feature called Slideshow that will allow users to create their own soundtracks from a list of licensed popular songs. Although only […]
Continue readingThe Streaming Performance Royalty Rate Explained
Artists and songwriters, even some publishers, very often misunderstand how streaming income and royalty rates and payments are determined because it’s a immensely complex subject. One of the things that I’ve done in my new Music 4.1 book is provide an overview of how streaming royalties work and are paid, in many cases following the revenue stream down […]
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