Performing live is only one ingredient of the recipe for artist or band to make money. Merchandise (other terms include swag or merch) is a significant component in supplementing your income. It’s always been an important portion of the income of an artist, but until recently was considered just an ancillary revenue stream. Today it’s […]
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If ever there was a sign that radio is a promotional thing of the past when it comes to breaking a record, Pink recently visited every Spotify office and Apple Music headquarters in order to muster support for her latest release. This seems to be a growing trend, where artists are ignoring terrestrial radio in […]
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Recently Harman International decided to close its AKG Vienna operation, which was a real shame after 70 years of being an industry leader in microphone and headphone technology (I bet you have at least 1 AKG product in your audio toolbox). Usually a closure like that means that a lot of good people and industrial […]
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Music venues all over the world have been having a tough go of it for a while now, as gentrification of neighborhoods has brought much higher rents, increased taxes and insurance requirements, and new noise control laws. London has been particularly hard hit, losing 35 percent of its grassroots music venues between 2007 and 2015, when […]
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By now we’ve been conditioned to the fact that most music consumers, especially the youngest ones, have totally converted to streaming and wouldn’t even think of purchasing a download or CD. If you believe that then you’re wrong. A new report from the IFPI entitled Music Consumer Report 2017 outlines how people around the world […]
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This blog is mostly about getting along in the new music world without a record label, but there does come a time when having a label is worth considering if you want to jump to the next level as an artist. Record labels are not intrinsically bad, it’s just that you have to weigh the […]
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Determining the position of a song or album on the Billboard charts used to be so easy when it was based strictly on sales, but not anymore. Those days are now long gone as music is consumed on a dizzying array of platforms with sales playing less and less of a factor. To its credit, […]
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My guest today is Daryl Friedman, who’s the chief government and member relations officer for the Recording Academy. Daryl joined the Recording Academy in 1997 and established the organization’s Washington, D.C., office, where he created The Academy’s GRAMMYs on the Hill initiatives. . There are some major copyright and royalty issues facing artists and songwriters […]
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Even though Deezer has been available in North America for well over a year, not that many consumers are familiar with the streaming service. In France, where the service is based, Deezer is Spotify’s main competition with almost 50% of the market share. Now comes word that financier Len Blavatnk’s Access Industries has taken control […]
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One of the things that has vexed artists and labels in the digital age is how to excite a fanbase before a song or album is released. Sure, you can promote it, but our digital attention span is pretty limited so any pre-release promotion can fall by the wayside before the release actually happens. Show.co, […]
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It’s amazing that so many brands (which includes artists and bands as well as companies) don’t have a proper “Press” section on their website that contains all the information that a journalist or blogger might need when writing a story. I speak from personal experience as a writer in that I’m always surprised with what I can’t find […]
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Music piracy isn’t what it once was, but it’s still alive and well and the RIAA is trying to do something about it. In a  to Elizabeth Kendall, the acting assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Innovation and Intellectual Property, the industry organization outlined a number of “notorious” platforms that it claims infringes on its member’s IP. These are […]
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My guest on my latest podcast is television composer and author Rich Tozzoli. Rich has written an incredible 16,000 music cues that have been used on more than 10,000 cue sheets on 714 television series! Rich is not only a great composer but he’s also a talented engineer as well, and the author of several […]
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It doesn’t matter whether you know who Avenged Sevenfold is or not, the Huntington Beach, CA metal band is attempting something pretty rare in the music business that could end up changing how record label contracts are forever written. The band is challenging what’s known as the “7 year rule” that labels have employed in […]
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Back in the days of physical sales, the actual number of albums sold was as big deal as they are today with streams and views. The problem was that you could never get an exact count of how many were really sold, so there were always a lot of numbers thrown around that sounded good […]
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