Social Media May Not Be Killing Teenager’s Brains After All

We all assume that teenagers and people under the age of 25 in general are doing massive harm to themselves due to all the screen time they give to social media. That may not be the case, as a team from Oxford University studied 12,000 adolescents and discovered that social media actually had very little […]

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Why Every Musician Should Have A SoundCloud Account

SoundCloud is the streaming service that gets no love. It’s not a big draw for music consumers, and many artists feel they don’t make enough money from it. If you’re a musician (and you don’t have to be an artist), neither of those are good enough reasons not to have an account though, and here’s […]

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Facebook Changes How It Ranks Videos

In a move that’s probably better for everyone but a select few, Facebook is tweaking its algorithm when it comes to videos. The move penalizes subscribers that use repurposed content and rewards video producers whose videos have both repeat viewers and longer watch times. There are 3 factors that will now determine how videos will […]

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The Most Musical Cities, Netflix Audio Upgrade, And Music Technologist David Frangioni On The Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is David Frangioni, who started his music career as a drummer, but soon became a pioneer in MIDI technology. This led him into the studio as an engineer and producer for dozens of top artists including The Stones, Ringo Starr, Aerosmith, Elton John, Sting, Carl Palmer, Journey, Styx, KISS, […]

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TuneCore Collecting $1 Million Per Day For Its Indie Artists

If you’re an indie artist, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re making at least some money from your recordings these days. The fact that TuneCore now has about $1 million a day being earned by its indie artists speaks volumes about how far the DIY musician has come in the last 5 years. Indie […]

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Game Of Thrones Helps Break Shazam Usage Record

When Apple acquired Shazam last year for a reported $400 million, it was using the song identifying platform as a way to push new users to its streaming service. It probably didn’t realize at the time that a cable show would be the catalyst for the the highest number of inquiries about a song ever. […]

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Spotify Has A Lot Of Users, And Almost Half Of Them Pay

Spotify just released its latest user numbers, and although the company still has a hard time turning a profit, it’s growing at a pretty fast rate. The company stated that it now has 217 million worldwide users, and over 100 million of them are paying Premium tier members. The company becomes the first music streaming […]

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Here’s How To Promote Your Music On Social Media

If you’re like most musicians, artists, songwriters or producers, you’re probably using Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, but find that it’s not really helping you promote yourself or your music as much as you know it can. That’s because just being on a social network as a typical user isn’t the same as using it like […]

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Black Box Money, Background Music, And Michael Abbott On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Michael Abbott, who started in television audio doing front-of-house sound for projects like the Olympics ceremonies and the Academy Awards, to working for the major television networks as a staff mixer on a variety of shows. Michael now heads the sound design, engineering and consulting company All Ears, where he […]

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Will Amazon Beat Apple To The Hi-Res Music Streaming Punch?

I’ve been predicting for some time that one of the major streaming services would begin to offer higher resolution music, if for no other reason than for brand differentiation. Who would’ve thought that the service to make the first move would be Amazon? A recent post from Music Business Worldwide states that Amazon is in active talks with record labels for license […]

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How Americans Use Twitter

Twitter use seems to have plateaued at 22% of Americans, and a new study from Pew Research tells us exactly how those people use the platform. According to the study: Twitter is dominated by a small share of tweeters. The top 10% of posters are responsible for 80% of all tweets created by U.S. adults. […]

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The Reality Of The 1,000 True Fan Theory

The “1,000 True Fans Theory” was proposed by Wired magazine’s “senior maverick” Kevin Kelly back in 2008 and states that all an artist needs is 1,000 true fans to maintain a fruitful, if unspectacular, career, thereby relieving the artist of the need for some of the nastier things in life as a regular job. True […]

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These 3 Music Streaming Services Offer Emerging Artists Programs

It’s always been hard to be a music artist, but it might be more difficult today than at any other time in recent history. The reason is that the competition is so fierce because there are fewer natural gatekeepers than ever before. Artists, even those with a buzz, really need a powerful helping hand to […]

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Digital Audio Bad For Environment, String Player – Royal Opera Lawsuit, And Music Registry’s Ritch Esra On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Ritch Esra, who is the former promotion coordinator for A&M Records and director of A&R for Arista Records, where he worked extensively with the publishing and songwriting communities for material for Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Melissa Manchester, Tanya Tucker, Jennifer Warnes and Jermaine Jackson, and various […]

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You’ll Be Surprised At Some Of The Top 10 Global Recording Artists

The IFPI is the association for the recording industry all over the world, and every year it puts out an interesting report on the state of the business. The RIAA does that too, but it only focuses on the U.S., so the IFPI Global Music Report really tells us what’s happening everywhere. Thanks to digital […]

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