Radio Loses Another Battle Over Royalties, Which May Be A Look Into Its Future

Royalty payouts have been tilted in radio’s favor over artists and songwriters for a long time, but the tide may be starting to turn. Recently the US Department of Justice sided with Irving Azoff’s Global Music Rights (GMR) in its lawsuit against the Radio Music Licensing Committee (RMLC) filed in Federal Court in 2016 for antitrust violations. […]

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Vinyl’s Big Sales Week, Dolby’s New Deal, And Industry Writer Ari Herstand On My Latest Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Ari Herstand, who parlayed his experiences as an indie artist into a secondary career as a music industry blogger and author. Ari’s music business blog Ari’s Take has been a staple for helping musicians build a career without the help of a record label, and his book How To Make It In The […]

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The Upcoming Problems For YouTube Creators

If you depend on YouTube for all of your social interaction and audience outreach, things might get a lot tougher in 2020. There are three things that the service is getting tough on creators that could cause you to lose some sleep soon. Let’s go through them. Accounts Are Being Deleted YouTube announced recently that […]

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The Latest Guide To Social Media Posts

Posts on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are evolving, and what worked last year won’t get you the same engagement now. A new social media content study of over 100 million posts by Planable and Socialinsider discovered what really works today. If you want the highest engagement rate, choose Instagram. The engagement rate per post is […]

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An Infographic Guide To Music Licensing

Music licensing can be a confusing morass of legal slings and arrows that most artists and songwriters can’t quite get their arms around. It’s not rocket science, but it’s not easy to navigate either. The following infographic from attorney Joy Butler does a great job at simplifying the process as much as possible. Joy is […]

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Could AR Be The Music Release Format Of The Future?

Streaming subscription rates seem to be leveling off despite Goldman Sach’s prediction of it bringing in some $40 billion by the end of the next decade. That begs the question as to what comes next. Everyone on the supply side of music, from artists to record labels, would love to see a new music release […]

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Inactive Social Accounts, Plugin Evolution, And Engineer Kevin Killen On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Kevin Killen, who’s a multi-Grammy award winning engineer who’s worked with luminaries like David Bowie, U2, Peter Gabriel, Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Sugarland, Shakira and so many more. Besides engineering and mixing what many consider seminal albums like Peter Gabriel’s So and U2’s Unforgettable Fire, Kevin […]

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Will Apple Music For Business Bring The Music You Hate To Your Favorite Retailer?

You may or may not be old enough to remember the horrible music that invaded your ears in department stores and office building elevators. In fact, the not-so-respectful term “elevator music” was applied to the syrupy cover versions of popular hits that you’d regularly hear in those places back then. There was some science involved […]

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Black Friday Sale On 101 Mixing Tricks

101 Mixing Tricks has become the premier way to learn the techniques of the A-list mixers. It’s hardly ever on sale, but today not only is it discounted, but there’s an extra special discount when you use BLACK as a coupon code during checkout. That’s right – for today only the price isn’t the regular […]

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Amazon Expands Its Free Music Tier To Everyone

Amazon has stepped up its streaming game with a new free music tier that appears to be taking on the likes Spotify. Although the company launched a free version of its music service for Alexa users on its Echo devices in April, this version will be open to users of Amazon’s smartphone app. Distribution has […]

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Bytedance Streaming Service, Archiving On Glass, And Waves Product Manager Yoni Zlotkin On My Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Yoni Zlotkin, who turned some ambisonics and binaural college projects into a job as product manager for what has now become Waves NX. He is now also a product manager for Waves revolutionary Abbey Road Studio 3 plugin. During the interview we spoke about the development of Studio 3, the […]

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SoundCloud Now Lets Your Pay To Promote Your Music (Yes, It’s Advertising)

I guess it was inevitable that this would happen. First Spotify launched a pay-to-promote feature, and now SoundCloud has done it as well with its new Promote tool. Promote allows an artist or record label to pay to boost their tracks to the top of listener feeds and mobile homepages. Basically, it’s paid advertising of […]

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How Color Affects An Artist’s Brand

I always advise artists to pick a color as the first step to discovering their brand, but deciding which one may not be as easy as it seems. You can pick one that you have an affinity for, but all colors carry a psychological undertone that most people aren’t aware of, at least on a […]

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Don’t Look Now But Spotify Is Profitable

Spotify unexpectedly showed a profit, and a handsome one at that, as it reported a figure of more the $60 million in its recent Q3 return. This was more than 30 times more than it had predicted as a highpoint, so as you can imagine, company execs and Wall Street are pretty happy that it’s […]

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Rush Seating, Rosewood Rules Relaxed, And Mastering Engineer/AES President Jonathan Wyner On My Latest Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Jonathan Wyner, chief mastering engineer and president of M Works Mastering in Cambridge, MA. Jonathan began his career as a mastering engineer in 1985 as the compact disc was becoming a reality, and he studied digital mastering with one of the pioneers in the field for 5 years prior to establishing […]

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