There’s a lot of money in music once you reach the top 1%, so it’s always interesting to see who made what and how they did it. Billboard took a look at the top 50 money makers of 2016 and found some interesting results. Here’s the top 10. 1. Beyonce – $62.1 million. Most of this […]
Continue readingMost songwriters try to be as inventive as possible but more often than not they fall into repeating patterns that were previously successful. This is demonstrated in a new study from Zippia that analyzed the counts from the musiXmatch Dataset, an official collection of lyrics from the Million Song Dataset. The company, which helps recent college grads […]
Continue readingMost of us don’t like to admit it, but we do listen to a lot of radio. Granted, it’s mostly in your car these days, but we tend to spend a lot of our lives there, so for at lest some of the time, radio is what we listen to. All of us complain about […]
Continue readingWith the status of SoundCloud up in the air, artists everywhere are wondering what’s going to happen to their files if the whole thing blows up. The good news is that about 150 volunteer programmers calling themselves the Archive Team are taking action to make sure that none of the precious files are lost. The organization […]
Continue readingMichael Bishop has been recording orchestras all over the world for a long time, first as chief engineer for the famed Telarc label, and now with his own Five Four Productions. Along the way he’s won 10 Grammy’s as well as a slew of other awards for his excellence. Michael’s my guest on this week’s […]
Continue readingIf you’re an indie artist with your music distributed by TuneCore and you always wanted to be part of a major label, it looks like that’s now the case. Last week Sony Music sealed the deal to buy the French company Believe Distribution, owner of TuneCore, for a price between $355 and $444 million, according […]
Continue readingThe continuing saga of SoundCloud gets uglier and uglier. After laying off 40% of its work staff and closing offices in San Francisco and London (as well as laying off many in New York as well) last week, it announced to its remaining staff that the company only has enough money to carry it to […]
Continue readingYouTube royalty payments can be a sore spot with artists and labels, and with good reason. The rate it pays isn’t all that great, but there are actually more variables on when and how you get paid than you might realize. Here’s an excerpt from my Music 4.1 Internet Music Guidebook that outlines how it works. […]
Continue readingThere’s been a lot in the news over the last week about Spotify making its own albums under fake artists names, then placing the music on popular playlists. This news actually came out about a year ago but has bubbled to the surface again. Why would the company do that? To make more money, of […]
Continue readingDusty Wakeman has had a great career as a bass player, producer, engineer and studio owner, and we discussed all that with him way back on Episode #9. He’s now the president of condenser mic maker Mojave Audio, and on the latest episode (#169) we had a nice discussion about not only how the company […]
Continue readingIf you listen to the radio much you might think that Pop music is by far the most listened to music by U.S. music consumers. That supposition is wrong, however, according to the latest figures by BuzzAngle, a relatively new metrics company that is quietly been surpassing the standard Nielsen Music thanks to its more […]
Continue readingEveryone knew that SoundCloud was deep in financial trouble and that trouble would come to a head sometime this year. It looks like that time is finally here as the company closed both its San Francisco and London offices yesterday. While 173 people lost their jobs as a result, it’s the people that depend on […]
Continue readingMusic 4.1 is totally dependent upon the development, care, and feeding of your fanbase. This audience can be broken down into the following two categories: your casual fans and your core fans. Your core audience fans are your most passionate fans. They’ll buy whatever you have to sell, work for free, recruit other fans, and […]
Continue readingIt wasn’t that long ago that we were impressed by any song that received 100 million views or streams, but in the age of streaming that number is ancient history. These days, a billion streams is well within reach for a hit, and more and more songs are even hitting the once unthinkable 2 billion […]
Continue readingMy guest today is engineer Gary Noble, who has won 3 Grammys and been nominated 18 times for his mixing and recording work. Gary’s credits include Amy Winehouse, Jesse J, Nas, Josh Stone, Fugees, Wyclef Jon and many more. Gary will share his tips about making electronic tracks sound real, getting the best sound from […]
Continue reading