It hasn’t been widely known, but Apple Music’s licensing deal with the major labels ran out in June. Since then things have been chugging along as if they still were in contract while a new one was negotiated. The first of those three deals, this one with Warner Music, has just been announced, with Sony […]
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One of the problems with the process of developing an artist brand is that by being such an obvious goal, it can feel like a sell-out. That very well may be true in some cases were the branding is created more to manipulate an artist to fit into a trend rather than as a promotional […]
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I guess that the vinyl comeback is here to stay, as another new pressing plant is about to come on line, this one in Austin. When band manager Caren Kelleher found that she couldn’t get timely vinyl delivery for the bands she manages, she decided that it was time for a vinyl plant that specialized in […]
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Mixing monitors may be the hardest job in show business in that you have to keep so many people happy at the same time. Mark Frink, my guest on this week’s podcast, is so good at his job that he’s been trusted by some of music’s biggest celebrities, including Tony Bennett, The Three Tenors, the […]
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Goldman Sachs raised some eyebrows recently with it’s latest Music In The Air report that predicted the streaming music market alone would increase to $28 billion per year by the year 2030. Sounds great, but considering that the industry’s greatest revenue year to date brought in $27.4 billion (in 1996 during the height of the […]
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For 20 years Edison Research has been conducting its Infinite Dial study that measures media and technology consumption in the United States. As always, the latest edition has a number of interesting discoveries, but it also identifies the new trends that may be in front of us, yet we find difficult to see. Here are […]
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Facebook video is one of the hottest features on the platform. The company is in a war with YouTube for video supremacy and as a result, it pushes video content into the News Feed far more often than normal posts. That said, this applies only to native videos that are directly uploaded to Facebook, not […]
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Let’s face it, concert ticket prices for major acts are astronomical for anything but the nosebleed section of the venue, as the secondary market gets their hands on already high-priced tickets and increases the price. If that wasn’t bad enough, a new scheme hatched between Taylor Swift and Ticketmaster may bring the ultimate price of […]
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You’ve most likely heard of Harrision Consoles, which were a mainstay in music recording studios in the 80s and 90s and still dominate in film studios today. You might not be aware that the company also has an excellent DAW with its Mixbus and Mixbus 32C, and Ben Loftis is my guest on this week’s […]
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Spotify just bounded over it’s last major roadblock to going public with its new licensing agreement with Warner Music, and now it’s final hurdle is convincing the SEC that its direct listing is on the up and up. This means that the company looks to meet its goal of being listed on the New York […]
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Things have a way of coming full circle, when something old becomes new again. Hit songs come back around, old commercials and marketing come back (Coke), audio formats (8-track and cassette tapes), and even products become hot again (witness the MacDonald’s Schezwan sauce thanks to a Rick And Morty episode). Probably the last thing that […]
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Everyone would love for their video to be like Whiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” and go viral with millions of views overnight, but that rarely happens. That said, here’s an excerpt from my just released Social Media Promotion For Musicians Second Edition that provides a number of generally accepted principles for creating a video that […]
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If you’ve read this blog for any length of time then you know that SoundCloud is in some trouble, and even though it just received yet another bailout and changed CEO’s, it’s future is up in the air. No one really knows the direction that the service will take, and that’s the problem. Will it […]
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We all like really great audio gear, but many of us (especially when you’re first starting out) can’t afford it. One saving grace is that there are now many companies that provide kits so you can build the analog gear you need, and one of these is DIY Recording Equipment. This week I have the […]
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There’s a lifespan in the entertainment business where something is small and hip than not many people know about, then it’s discovered by the press as more people flock to it, then it’s homogenized by large corporations wanting to get in on the trend, then it ends up pricing out the very people that started […]
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