Music Video Production May Be A Thing Of The Past With AI-Generated Videos From Rotor Videos

Music video production can be a tedious and expensive task, and one that many artists consider a necessary evil. For some artists, the fun is in making music not in trying to translate it to picture. That task could be a thing of the past thanks to artificial intelligence and the AI-generated videos from companies […]

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If You Post A Lot To YouTube, You’ll Like These Upcoming New Creator Features

One thing that YouTube does well is listen to its users. Sometimes it takes them a while to respond, but they usually will add a feature or two that everyone really wants. If YouTube is one of your main social media tools, then you’re really going to like these new upcoming Creator features that will […]

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The New Era Of High-Fidelity Music Finally Begins With Apple Spatial Audio

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I’ve been predicting Apple would release its long-awaited high-fidelity music tier any time now. Of course, I’ve been predicting this for the past 5+ years, but with today’s announcement of the launch of its Spatial Audio service that prediction will finally come […]

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No Wonder Indie Artists Can’t Get Traction – Distrokid Uploads A Million Tracks A Month

Indie artists are getting more and more depressed about the fact that the competition is so fierce that it’s difficult for their music to get any traction. This fact was brought home again recently when online distributor Distrokid revealed its upload numbers at around a million tracks per month, which shows just how much competition […]

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The Top 10 YouTube Video Presenter Greeting

If you’re shooting anything other than music video then you’re probably going to want to greet your audience in some way. YouTube did a study to find what was the most popular presenter greeting and came up with the top 10. This came from a data set of over 1 million videos with a minimum […]

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Songwriters Aren’t Being Paid Enough From Streaming And This Report Outlines Why

Songwriting was always a way that a musician could make a good or even great living without having to be a performer. The problem is that most of the rules for how songwriters get paid were written back in the days of physical media. In our streaming economy things are tilted more towards the performer […]

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The 5 Steps To YouTube Video Optimization In 2021

Just putting a video up on YouTube is not enough these days. If your video isn’t optimized properly then the YouTube algorithm won’t drive traffic to it, so it doesn’t do you much good at that point regardless of its quality. Luckily, optimizing a video isn’t that difficult, it just takes a little extra time […]

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Will SXSW Change Now That A Big Corporation Is A Part-Owner?

Music conferences come and go over the years, but one that not only keeps going but continues to with gravitas is South By Southwest. SXSW has always been thought of as not only the king of the hill for these types of gatherings, but remains respected for not being strictly a money-grab (although there’s plenty […]

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Meddling CEO Travis Rosenblatt, Latest Social Trends, And Cleaning Microphones On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Travis Rosenblatt, who used his experience in A&R for Warner Bros and 300 Entertainment to create Medding, a subscription-based service which offers real time data on global music markets, as well as track capabilities, analytics and communications tools. Meddling is used by record labels, music publishers, artist management, law […]

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Spotify’s Car Thing Is Now A Real Thing

Spotify has made overtures about getting into the hardware business before, but now it’s for real with the introduction of its new “Car Thing,” a smart speaker designed specifically for the automobile. The device is now in limited release in the United States for a select number of Spotify subscribers. Car Thing comes with three […]

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Guitarist Jennifer Batten, Payola For Streaming, And Supercharged Hard Drives On My Latest Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Jennifer Batten, who played lead and rhythm guitar on Michael Jackson’s Bad, Dangerous and HIStory world tours. She’s also appeared on 2 Jeff Beck albums and was a member of his touring band for 3 years. Jennifer continues to give clinics and master classes all over the world, and […]

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YouTube Checks Now Warns Of Copyright Problems Before You Post

If you post on YouTube a lot you’ve probably run into a copyright problem before. Maybe you’ve used a piece of a song by someone else, or a piece of video, or even a graphic. Maybe you’ve received a copyright warning over your own music, which is the ultimate insult. The problem is that these […]

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3 Reasons Why Spotify Playlist Promoters Might Not Be The Answer

We’ve all seen how just one placement on the right Spotify playlist can take an unknown track and boost its streams into the millions. As a result, there’s now an entire business built around helping artists get placed on playlists. Officially, Spotify says that there’s no way that any of these playlist promoters are influential […]

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Here’s Why Surprise Releases Aren’t A Good Idea For Indie Artists

It’s easy to look at surprise releases from superstars like Drake and Taylor Swift and believe that’s the way music will be dropped on the public in the future, but it might be wise to re-think that strategy if you’re an indie artist. As with so much in the industry, the rules that apply to […]

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The Last Major Country To Embrace Streaming Is Finally Doing It

What if I told you that there was a country where music sales are huge yet it never really got that much into streaming? Would you guess that country was in South America, or maybe Africa? Believe it or not, that country is Japan, and it’s been the second largest music market in the world […]

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