Category Archives for "Music Industry News"
March 8, 2019
You Might Not Be Ready For It, But K-Pop Looks Like It’s Here To Stay
A few years ago it seemed inconceivable that Korean Pop music, known as K-Pop, would ever break in the U.S. Many had tried but most seemed to fizzle, but that all changed this year with boy band BTS having not one but two Billboard 200 #1 albums in the last year, and 6 other acts […]
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March 6, 2019
Pandora Launches Its Own Version Of Stories
You have to hand it to Pandora – the company is still trying new things to differentiate itself from the competition. The latest feature is its version of Stories, a new format which marries music tracks to podcasts in a single playlist. Artists can use the feature as well by making a playlist of their […]
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March 5, 2019
Radio Royalties, MI Business Health, And CD Baby’s Heli Del Moral On My Latest Podcast
My guest on the podcast today is CD Baby’s VP of international development, Heli Del Moral. Before coming to the company Heli worked in television as international director of marketing for ESPN and Univision where he won 3 Emmy awards, and numerous Telly, Promax and other honors for his creative efforts. In the interview we talked about the strength […]
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March 4, 2019
India Is A Prize For Spotify, But This Week Shows It Won’t Be Easily Won
Over the last week Spotify has been in the news again regarding its contentious entry into the Indian market as publisher Warner/Chappell Music (WCM) tried its best to block the launch. This has turned what would have been almost a back-burner story into front page business news, but many don’t understand the significance for all […]
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March 1, 2019
Artists Rejecting Record Deals More And More
If you speak with record executives, they’ll tell you privately that one of their biggest concerns is the fact that many artists are no longer interested in signing a recording contract. Thanks to the current DIY nature of the business and the fact that labels are more and more only considering “finished products,” artists no […]
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February 27, 2019
Pledge Music Leaves More Artists Unpaid
Recently I posted about a group called Fastball having a difficult time collecting from the crowdfunding site Pledge Music. There appears to be many more that fall into that category as artists from Queensryche to Blacktop Mojo have since posted apologies on their social media pages because of Pledge Music-related payment and delivery issues. Variety […]
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February 26, 2019
Amphion’s Anssi Hyvonen, Facebook’s Lasso, And Modern Recording’s Start On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast
Amphion loudspeakers have become a favorite of award-winning mixing engineers the world over, and founder and CEO Anssi Hyvonen is my guest on the podcast today. Anssi spent most of his life as a hi-fi enthusiast, but he got into building speakers sort of by accident. His speakers are very well respected by that community, but acceptance […]
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February 25, 2019
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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February 22, 2019
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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February 21, 2019
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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February 20, 2019
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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February 19, 2019
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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February 18, 2019
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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February 15, 2019
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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February 14, 2019
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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