It’s Not A Major Label World Anymore

If you thought that you needed to sign with a major record label or publisher in order to have success, that’s no longer true and there’s a lot of data to prove it. No metric is more valuable in seeing this picture as market share. Indies have made great strides in this area in recent […]

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The Biggest Streaming Earners In 2019 So Far

It’s really easy to think that even the big music star streaming earners aren’t making that much, but they’re making more than you might think. That said, everything now is on a different scale than in the music business of yesterday. For one thing, a million streams or views no longer means much. You need […]

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5 Crowdfunding Myths Busted

Many artists and bands see crowdfunding as a major avenue to their musical success. As we saw from the recent Pledge Music debacle, that’s not always the case. But even failing platforms aside, crowdfunding is a lot more difficult than you might think. My friend Ariel Hyatt from CyberPR recently posted an excellent article busting […]

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Rolling Stone To Launch Music Charts To Compete With Billboard

Ever since the beginning of the new music business, the Billboard charts have been the bible of the industry. Artists and labels vied for a #1 on almost any chart that the company presented, not only for bragging rights, but as a way to prove a product’s worthiness for a retailer to stock. Those days […]

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Microphone Builder Dave Pearlman On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Dave Pearlman, who after years as a touring pedal steel guitarist with everyone from Dan Fogelberg and Phil Everly to Pat Boone and Bobby Womack, opened his Rotund Rascal Studio in North Hollywood in 1979.  To save money on outside techs, Dave began to do repairs and modifications on classic […]

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Millennials Prefer Yesterday’s Hits To Todays

You hear a lot of complaints about music today being too computerized, repetitious, lyrically vapid, and/or lacking melody. I’ve always believed that each era has its own music that garners the same complaints (except for the computer “on-the-grid” part). It gets criticized when it’s new and revered when it becomes a golden oldie. That said, […]

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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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