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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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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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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Music Superstars Aren’t Getting Streamed As Much Anymore

The music streaming services have provided what seems to be unfair payouts for some time, with superstar acts reaping all the benefits due their oversized track counts. That may still the case, but the tables may have turned a bit as music superstars are no longer getting as many streams as they once have in […]

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YouTube Copyright Mistakes, Losing 50 Million Songs, And Producer Zubin Gadhoke On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Zubin Gadhoke, who’s a co-founder and producer for Olympus Projects, which is a management and consulting agency that provides artists with help in the day-to-day operations and development of their businesses. In the interview we talked about artist branding, building social authority, creating a new industry sound, the power of […]

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Ticketmaster SafeTix Digitally Encrypted Tickets About To Launch

Today’s concert-goers dislike real paper tickets and many have wondered why digital tickets on your phone or print-at-home aren’t the norm. The industry has more or less shunned anything digital over piracy concerns, but now the new Ticketmaster SafeTix is ready to launch. This next generation digital ticket program promises to make the whole ticket […]

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Sofar Sounds Raises A Ton Of Money But Artists Don’t See Much Of It

What if you played a gig and lot of people showed up, paid good money to get in, yet you received nothing? How about if you received what amounted to minimum wage? Yeah, that’s happened to us all, and it’s okay when you’re starting out and just getting your performing chops together, but when you’ve […]

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Copyright Office About To Make Album Registration Easier

For many years the Copyright Office was behind the times, but it seems to be catching up. For instance, online copyright registration of your song is much easier and faster than the old paper/snail mail way. The Office is now trying to bring album registration into the 21st century as well. As you may or […]

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2 Quick Streaming Video Updates

Not everyone has a YouTube channel and not everyone has an Instagram account, but most everyone has one of the two. Here are a couple of small streaming video updates, and chances are yo’ll find at least one that’s interesting. YouTube First of all, in August YouTube will no longer show exact subscriber counts to […]

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The 50 States Of Music, Vintage Synth Acid Trip, And Music Consultant Rick Goetz On My Latest Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Rick Goetz, who has been a a major label A&R exec, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a bass player, and record label owner.  His label stints include Lava/Atlantic, Elektra, and EMI, where he’s worked with artists that include Kid Rock, Matchbox 20 and Sarah Brightman, and on television shows […]

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Amazon Becoming A Mobile Carrier Would Boost Its Music Interests

The latest rumors swirling around the wonderful world of Amazon this week is that it’s interested in acquiring Boost Mobile from T-Mobile and Sprint after their merger. There are loads of implications here, but one of the most overlooked is how an acquisition like this might affect Amazon’s music streaming service. Let’s explore the concept. […]

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Streaming Music Trigger Cities

When we think of cities that might have an influence on streaming music counts and trends we usually think of the large music towns of New York City, London, Nashville and Los Angeles. Nothing can be further from the truth however, as a number of “trigger cities” from places around the world you wouldn’t expect […]

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Warner Bros Has A New Name And Logo

Warners the record label has been referred to by many names over the years and it’s been hard to keep up. Warner Bros Records, Warner Music, Warner Music Group, WMG – we all knew who it was but the official name could be confusing. Plus, was the company related to Warner Pictures? When someone said […]

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Tik Tok, Singing While Playing, And Reverb.com Founder David Kalt On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is David Kalt, who launched the super popular gear site Reverb.com in  2013 after growing frustrated with the process of buying and selling guitars on eBay.  To get it started, David raised more than $47 million in funding from investors ranging from Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen and country star Brad Paisley […]

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Tencent Music Makes You Pay To Stream Current Music – Will This Catch On?

Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) owns the largest digital music platforms in China in QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music, which are all doing very well at the moment according to its latest financial statement. While Western streaming services rely on paid subscriptions, Tencent is still trying to upgrade its free customers to paid tiers […]

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