There’s More Behind Spotify’s Artist Direct Upload Strategy Than Meets The Eye
In a surprise announcement, Spotify will now allow indie artists to bypass distributors like CD Baby and TuneCore and directly upload their songs to the platform. Best of all, there will be no charge to do so, relieving artists from paying the nominal fees that distributors charge for the service. The upload feature will be available via the […]
Continue readingTicketmaster Wants You To Buy From The Secondary Ticket Market
We all love to go to concerts but a lot of us don’t go as much as we’d like to primarily because of the prices. While the face value of a concert ticket might be reasonable, the fact of the matter is that we usually can’t find good tickets available as they’re purchased before we […]
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3 Steps To Prove Your Song Was Plagiarized
Many songwriters live with a paranoia of their songs being stolen. This is usually more of concern for beginning songwriters, and all content creators for that matter, than for those with some experience. The fact of the matter is that intentional copying of one’s work is actually more difficult than you think, as is what […]
Continue readingMusic Modernization Act Passage Averts An Artist Boycott Of Sirius XM
The Music Modernization Act overhaul of music copyright passed the Senate unanimously yesterday, following the House of Representatives previous unanimous vote as well. While this is excellent news for the industry, the bill must now go back to the House for approval since it was changed quite a bit from the original bill, then go to […]
Continue readingAll About Music Metadata With Veva Sound’s Drew Waters On My Latest Podcast
If you’ve ever wondered why musical metadata is so important you’re about to find out in this excellent conversation with this week’s podcast guest. Drew Waters has gone from high school dropout to PhD all in the name of music. Starting out as a working electric bass player as a teenager, he switched to upright […]
Continue readingAmazon Music Making More Of Its Own Exclusive Recordings
Amazon Music has introduced a new series of exclusive recordings called “Produced By…” with the first batch coming from Grammy-winning artists that include Al Green, John Prine and Margo Price. The twist is that Amazon doesn’t actually own these recordings, as the original label retains all the rights. The premise of the “Produced By..” series […]
Continue readingThis Huge Online Platform Isn’t Paying Any Music Royalties
The music industry constantly beats up YouTube because of its puny royalty stream, but it consistently overlooks another huge service that isn’t paying anything – Twitch. The Amazon-owned platform has 2.2 million broadcasters and 15 million daily active users who are all consuming music, but unfortunately, artists, songwriters, labels and publishers aren’t seeing a dime […]
Continue readingHow The European Union Copyright Reform Could Change The Music Business For The Worse
As much as artists, managers, labels and publishers rail against YouTube, there’s no denying that it’s been beneficial to the industry in at least two ways. First, it’s the foremost place for new music discovery, and secondly, it provides an additional revenue stream. The major complaint against YouTube has always been about the royalty amount […]
Continue readingSpotify And Nielsen Deal Could Mean More Money For Artists
One of the things that’s most valuable to artists, management and labels is the demographic information of exactly who is listening. In these days of targeted advertising, the more we know about an audience the better we can serve them. While artists really need this info, the fact of the matter is that advertisers might […]
Continue readingSweetwater’s Mitch Gallagher, Spotify Video War, And Neumann Logo Badge Color On My Latest Podcast
My guest this week on Episode #230 of my Inner Circle Podcast is Sweetwater’s editorial director Mitch Gallagher, who started his career as a guitarist/vocalist with various rock and country bands while earning a degree in music from Moorhead State University and studying with various classical guitar masters. After making his living as a touring […]
Continue readingA Glimpse Of The Future? It’s Hard To Post Classical Music Online Without A Copyright Violation
Back, Bartok, Schubert, Puccini and Wagner wrote their compositions hundreds of years ago before the idea of copyright was even a glint in an intellectual property attorney’s eye, so they’re in the public domain. But are they? It turns out it’s getting tougher and tougher to post the music of the classical greats by a performer […]
Continue readingWill This Company Be The Last CD Distributor?
The CD is fading away, not as quickly as was predicted, but the long slow decline is occurring nonetheless. Streaming is the root cause, of course, and the decline of the importance of the album too, but for the most part, our attention is now elsewhere instead of on a round piece of plastic. That […]
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How To Pick The Best Font For Your Musical Brand
Everyone in the music business is ultimately a brand, and the ones that develop theirs are ultimately the most successful. Artists, bands, musicians, producers, even indie record labels, have a tough time discovering their brand though, and in some cases they don’t know where to start. In the second edition of my Social Media Promotion […]
Continue readingThe Family Plan Comes Back To Bite The Streaming Platforms
At one point in time the Family Plan tier with multiple users on one monthly bill seemed like a great way to get more people on board with music streaming, especially when it was new. This strategy actually turned out to work too well though, as so many users are now on Family Plans that […]
Continue readingTaxi’s Michael Laskow, US Radio Decline, And The 5 Saddest Songs On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast
Michael Laskow started Taxi in 1992 with the idea of helping songwriters, artists, bands, and composers get their music heard initially by record labels, and later by publishers and music supervisors. The company now has members in over 90 countries and features a host of placements with virtually every major television channel and film studio. […]
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