Streaming Revenue Is Impressive, But Will It Ever Make Up For Physical Product Losses?

The 3 major record labels are all reveling in their good fortune, as streaming numbers and revenue are way up over the previous year. Indeed, Music Business Worldwide (MBW) estimates that it’s up more than $1.5 billion for the majors just from streaming. That may be all well and good, but physical product is still […]

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Tidal Creates Program To Support Emerging Artists

The streaming music service Tidal announced that it’s launching a new program called Tidal Unplugged intended to support emerging artists. The program is funded by a donation from venture capitalists and philanthropists Mark Lampert and Robert Nelsen in the amount of $1 million, and will kick off March 1st in Detroit. If selected, the Tidal […]

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The Top 10 All Time Most Viewed YouTube Videos

It used to be that we were amazed when a video reached a billion views on YouTube, but did you know that there’s been 154 videos that have reached that mark already? In fact, more than 30 videos have reached 2 billion, and one is just shy of 6 billion views! The interesting thing is […]

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SoundCloud Now Lets You Upload To Other Music Platforms

In what may be a game changer for the platform, SoundCloud has released that allows a user to share music with other online services like Spotify and Apple Music as well. The new feature is part of an upgrade to its SoundCloud Premier program. SoundCloud Pro and Pro Unlimited subscribers can now gain access to […]

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Beatchain CEO Ben Mendoza, Apple Buys Label Services Company, And Hit Songs Keys And Tempos On My Latest Podcast

My guest on the podcast today is Ben Mendoza, who created UK-based Beatchain along with co-founder and musician Steve Jones to accelerate artist growth by using data science and automation.  Ben has spent almost 25 years using software to improve decision making and automate time-consuming processes with leading expense management company MDSL, which Beatchain now brings to the music […]

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Universal Music Had More Than $7 Billion In Revenue Last Year

Who says that the major record labels are dying? Far from it, if the latest revenue figures from Universal Music Group (UMG) is any indication. The company brought in more than $7.1 billion last year, and much of its growth was attributed to streaming music income. Profits come from having hits and Universal certainly had […]

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EU Copyright Directive Text Is Approved And Goes Towards Final Vote

The European Union’s Article 13 Copyright Directive which holds platforms like YouTube accountable for the infringement of user uploaded content is finally moving towards a final vote after some revision of text that now seems to appease all voting parties. YouTube has been lobbying heavily for the text to not contain user generated content (UGC) […]

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The Mystery Of The 25 Year Old Rock Song Hitting The Top Of The Japanese Charts

Last week there was a lot of press around why a 25 year old Dinosaur Jr. song called “Over Your Shoulder” appeared out of the blue at #18 on the Japanese Billboard charts. As far as anyone could tell, there was no reason for this song to appear on any chart since it wasn’t part […]

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AEG And SMG Merge To Become The World’s Largest Venue Company

LiveNation has been almost an overwhelming force in the concert business over the last decade, with smaller competitors like AEG and SMG nipping at its heals. Those days may be over however, as AEG and SMG owner private equity firm Onex have agreed to merge. The new company, dubbed ASM Global, will now control over […]

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The Marshmello Concert On Fortnite May Show The Next Realm For Artists

For a music artist, playing in front of thousands represents at the very least, a minor success. While superstars regularly play to tens of thousands and festivals can top that by a factor of 10, how does appearing before millions sound? No, I’m not referring to the Super Bowl halftime show but the recent in-game […]

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Amuse To Use Machine Learning To Determine Royalty Advances

Getting an advance on your royalties is always a wild guess about what you’re worth. The label or publisher wants to keep it low, and the artist/songwriter wants it as high as possible in case it’s the last money he or she ever sees. The future of royalty advances may lie with artificial intelligence and […]

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5 Artists Sue Sony And Universal Music For Copyright Infringement

Record labels have always done whatever they could to keep as much money as possible and limit what they paid to artists. Back in the day of the music entrepreneur/label owner this was expected, but as the music business is fairly corporate now, you’d think those days would be over. Not so, according to 5 […]

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Streaming Music Revenue Is Up, But The Per Song Rates May Have Fallen

How steaming music royalties are derived is such a complex subject that even few within the industry know how it works completely, so it’s easy to get a skewed viewpoint based on limited information that we’re sometimes fed. That said, most data is relevant in some way as long as it’s put into context. One […]

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There’s At Least One Music Genre That Still Favors CDs – Classical

Sales for CDs keep on falling, but predictions of the format’s total demise are still premature as it continues to hang around. While download sales have fallen off the cliff, the CD sales decline has been a lot more gradual. In fact, there’s still at least one music genre where followers still prefer the round […]

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It Looks Like SoundCloud Is Getting Healthier

Artists and bands everywhere have been worried for a while about whether SoundCloud would change drastically in order to survive, thanks to the ever growing losses that the company was experiencing. The platform is the main window to the outside world for many indie act’s music, and for many the thought of finding a new […]

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