Bobby Owsinski

Author Archives: Bobby Owsinski

Facebook’s New Slideshow Feature Just For Music Videos

Facebook watching

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 […]

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The 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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Steve Miller’s Rock n’ Roll Hall Of Fame Rant

Steve Miller 2010

I’ve been no fan of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, as you probably know if you read this blog. I don’t believe there should be such an institution, since there’s really no way to quantify who should be in it, unlike a sports HOF where there are plenty of statistics to gauge someone’s […]

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YouTube Adopts A New Tool For Faster Royalty Payments

Digital Sales Report Flat File

One of the things that bugs artists, songwriters and labels about YouTube is that it’s pretty difficult to get precise information about views and payments. In many cases, views aren’t counted and in other cases payments take too long to arrive. YouTube is hoping to alleviate those problems by implementing a new tool based on the […]

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Universal Music Makes Nearly $4 Million A Day From Streaming

Universal Music

Who says that there’s no money in streaming? It seems that all of those micro-payments add up after all as Universal Music Group is making about $3.9 million per day just from streaming music, according to its parent Vivendi’s first quarter earnings statement. In fact, UMG’s streaming revenue was up almost 60% over the previous quarter, […]

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A Streaming Music Royalty Primer

Music 4.1 cover

Streaming music royalty rates are such a morass of different percentages and possibilities that few people on the planet totally understand everything, and the ones who do are attorneys working in that narrow end of the music business. Even label and publishing execs who have been in the business for 20 or more years can […]

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Spotify To Launch 12 Original Video Shows

Spotify_HQ

Spotify recently announced that it was getting into the original content business by launching 12 new shows, and guess what? They’ll all be on video. According to the company, the video shows will be “centered around three main themes – music performances, music profiles and music culture,” and the episodes will be up to fifteen minutes long. The foray […]

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Amazon Launches YouTube Rival With Amazon Video Direct

Amazon Video Direct

User generated videos must be a really big business because another huge online player just jumped into the arena with YouTube and Facebook. Yesterday Amazon announced the launch of its new video posting service, called Amazon Video Direct, in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Japan. The launch partners include Conde Nast Entertainment, HowStuffWorks, Samuel Goldwyn […]

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May 10, 2016

4 Best Practices For Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing

If you’re trying to boost your fan base or engagement online, then you’re probably doing at least a little social media marketing whether you like it or not. The problem is that the best practices do change over time as social media and user trends evolve, so in order to get the most out of […]

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Apple Music To Get A Facelift Soon

Apple Music Facelift

While Apple Music has garnered 16 million paid subscribers rather quickly since its launch last year, the service hasn’t been without criticism, especially about its ease of use. Despite being a huge company, Apple does listen to its customers though, and as a result, it’s been reported that Apple Music is about to receive a needed […]

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Virtual Reality Concerts To Begin This Summer

VR concerts

I’m a big proponent of virtual reality, especially when the audio is done well, and many have predicted that the technology will eventually be a boon to concerts. We’re going to see soon enough as virtual reality concerts will actually begin to roll out this summer. NextVR, which has been a leader in VR broadcasting […]

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Radiohead Erases Its Online Presence

Radiohead erased online

Radiohead has always been groundbreaking when it comes to their online presence (the “pay what you want” campaign for In Rainbows being a prime example), but now it’s entered some new territory by slowly but effectively erasing its entire online presence. Yes, that’s right. It’s pretty hard to find any trace of Radiohead online right […]

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