Category Archives for "Music Industry News"
July 3, 2019
Spotify Doesn’t Want To Be A Music Distributor After All
Last year Spotify announced that it purchased a portion of music distributor DistroKid, and that would mean that its users would soon be able to distribute their music to platforms other than Spotify. The company has apparently thought better of the move, however, and announced that it’s closing its Upload Beta Program for independent artists. […]
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July 2, 2019
New Billboard Charts, Smuggling With Speaker Cabinets, And Smart Studio’s Jim Dunne On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast
My guest on the podcast this week is Jim Dunne, founder and senior acoustic consultant of the ground-breaking Smart Studio, which completely disrupts how recording studios and dubbing theaters have been built. Smart Studio supplies a modular system that provides not only isolation but excellent acoustic design. Jim has over 30 years experience in the acoustics and noise control […]
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July 1, 2019
Vivendi Feeling The Heat Over UMG Music Vault Fire As Shares Tumble
Despite a valiant effort to brush off the UMG music vault fire as just “noise,” parent company Vivendi is feeling the effects of the story as shares dropped 2.8% today on fears that the company’s plans for a partial sale of the major record label are in jeopardy. Universal Music Group (UMG) had been valued […]
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June 28, 2019
Amoeba Music In Hollywood To Be Torn Down And Redeveloped
It looks like it’s really happening. After a few years of persistent rumors, word now comes that Amoeba Music and its iconic Sunset Boulevard location will be redeveloped into a new complex with 200 residential units and retail space. The Los Angeles City Council approved changes to the zoning for the spot earlier in the […]
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June 27, 2019
7 Steps To Planning Your Music Release Campaign
You’re in the studio hard at work on your next group of songs and it’s been taking up all of your time. That’s all well and good but the problem is that if you don’t begin to plan your release strategy in advance you may be caught with a bunch of songs with no idea […]
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June 26, 2019
Merlin Collected Almost $900 Million For Indie Labels In 12 Months
Probably more than ever before, being on an indie label is actually good for an artist. Where in the past an indie label was looked on as the only alternative after being turned down by a major label, today an indie can have as much clout as a major, thanks to Merlin – the organization […]
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June 25, 2019
Music Publishing Revenue, Universal Vault Fire, And Female Musician’s Academy’s Bree Noble On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast
My guest on the podcast this week is Bree Noble, who is a champion for women in music thanks to her Female Entrepreneur Musician Podcast and Female Musician Academy. Bree quit her corporate job as a Director of Finance at a top opera company to pursue a successful run as a touring singer/songwriter where she won several songwriting and artist awards […]
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June 24, 2019
Spotify Claims That It Overpaid Songwriters And Wants The Money Back
It’s not enough that songwriters and publishers make about 1/6th of what artists make per stream on Spotify, or that the company is opposing an impending songwriter royalty increase, now the company claims that it overpaid songwriters and publishers in 2018 and wants that money back. The Copyright Royalty Board has ruled that songwriters would […]
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June 21, 2019
If An Artist Doesn’t Hit #1 Should They Sue?
When an artist sells a lot of product these days, they expect to be compensated for it via a high Billboard chart position, especially if that number is north of 100,000 units. But it really depends how the albums were sold, and that’s what led to a dispute by DJ Khaled and Billboard that might […]
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June 20, 2019
The Latest Best Practices For Instagram Hashtags
Hashtags are an essential part of Instagram, but the rules of how they’re best used has changed over the last year or so. What worked in the recent past may now be ancient history, so dig in as we look over the latest data and make some suggestions. First of all, its best to understand […]
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June 19, 2019
AI Finishes Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, But Who Owns The Copyright?
Whenever a new technology comes into play it may solve problems suffered by previous generations, but it also usually opens up new legal territory as well. Such is the case with artificial intelligence being used to help complete Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, which the composer abandoned in 1822 after writing the first two movements. […]
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June 18, 2019
Spotify vs. Radio, Playlists Replace The Album, And Rocketsongs Jonathan Stone On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast
My guest on the podcast this week is Jonathan Stone has had a long career as a director of creative services in music publishing at heavyweight companies like ATV Music, MCA Music, Quincy Jones Qwest Music Publishing, and Windswept. He now runs the disruptive music service Rocketsongs, that not only helps artists to find and license songs, but […]
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June 17, 2019
Universal Music Vault Fire Story May Change The Company’s Valuation
Last week a bombshell of a story from New York Times contributor Jody Rosen revealed that a 2008 media storage vault fire on the Universal Studios Hollywood lot resulted in well over 100,000 music master tapes being lost forever. This included music from some of the greatest artists of all time across all modern eras, […]
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June 14, 2019
The Days Of The Viral YouTube Video Appear To Be Over
It wasn’t that long ago when a YouTube video that caught fire and went viral seemed like an almost every day occurrence. Those days appear to be over though and the analytics firm Pex has the data to prove it. According to the latest Pex report, only 0.64% of all videos posted on YouTube ever […]
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June 13, 2019
An Artist’s Guide To Pandora AMP
It used to be that in order to have your songs posted on a major streaming network then you had to use a distributor like TuneCore or CD Baby, but no more. Many of the major services now allow an artist to directly post on its network, and while it may take more time to […]
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