Category Archives for "Music Industry News"
January 25, 2019
YouTube May Come Out On Top As Article 13 Flounders
The music industry had great hopes that it would finally deal a blow to YouTube if Article 13 of the European Union’s new copyright law were to pass. After a massive marketing campaign against it, it looks like YouTube might have won the war, as the controversial bill is taking on water fast. In a […]
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January 24, 2019
Some Pledge Music Artists Having Trouble Collecting
As if being an artist isn’t hard enough already. Imagine that you go to the trouble of designing and marketing your crowdfunding campaign, and through your hard work it successfully reaches its goal or beyond. Then you find that you can’t get your hands on the funds in order to fulfill your promised product to […]
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January 23, 2019
Cassettes Are Dead? Nope, Sales Up 23%
It’s funny how music formats long left for dead keep reappearing with new-found sales vigor. That’s the case with the lowly cassette, a format that was often denigrated even when it was hot. Believe it or not, sales last year actually grew by 23%, and not from indie bands selling their wares in clubs. These […]
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January 21, 2019
Latest Nielsen Music Report Shows How Healthy The Music Industry Really Is
It used to be that you’d have to wait for the music industry reports from the previous year to be released in late February or early March, but our wonderful new digital music world has turned that around. Nielsen Music’s latest annual report is now available, and it helps us gauge the health of the […]
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January 18, 2019
Tidal Being Investigated For Fake Streams
Last year the Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Næringsliv posted a story about receiving information that the streaming platform Tidal inflated the play counts for 2 huge albums from 2016, Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo, by as many as several hundred million. The same publication is now reporting that Norway’s Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime division […]
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January 17, 2019
3 Steps To YouTube Tags
One of the things that many people overlook when they post their videos to YouTube is the tag feature. Often there’s not much thought given to creating them, but you’d be surprised how helpful a few good tags can be, especially when it comes to organic search (YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet). […]
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January 16, 2019
Latest Billboard #1 Album Sells Just 823 Copies
It’s a known fact that physical sales are in decline, but what does it mean when you can get a #1 album on the Billboard 200 chart by selling only 823 copies? A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie‘s latest project, HOODIE SZN, reached that dubious mark, which should put the importance of the CD or album into the proper […]
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January 14, 2019
SiriusXM Subscribers Increase, But What About Autonomous Cars?
With news that SiriusXM added around 1.3 million new subscribers last year, things are looking up for the satellite broadcast service. Sirius now has a total of 34 million paid subscribers, and there’s hardly a new auto that doesn’t come with it as an option. All this makes the future look pretty rosy for the […]
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January 11, 2019
It Looks Like You Need 9.1 Songwriters To Write A Hit Song These Days
When it comes to writing top 10 hits, it appears that the more songwriters you have, the better. That’s because the average number of songwriters for the top 10 streaming hits of 2018 in the U.S. was a whopping 9.1, according to research done by Music Business Weekly based on information stored in the ASCAP and/or […]
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January 10, 2019
Indie Artists Have More Of A Chance To Be Heard Than Ever Via Streaming
We live in a world where a big hit regularly sees hundreds of millions and even over a billion streams or views. Even at a fraction of a cent each, that many plays generates some serious money. But what if you’re an indie artist with little hope of garnering hundreds of millions of streams without […]
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January 9, 2019
Get Set For A New Type Of Spotify Ad
We all hate commercials of any type, but they’re a necessary evil when you’re consuming media content for free, especially the free tiers of streaming services. Spotify is looking for new ways to monetize its free tier and it thinks it’s come up with something new – sponsored ads on its extremely popular Discover Weekly […]
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January 7, 2019
What We Listen To In Our Cars Is Changing
Despite the rise of streaming, most recent studies have found that our automobile listening habits have been surprisingly consistent with the past. That now appears to be changing as found by a new study by Edison Research, which found that we’re now much less reliant on our AM/FM radios in our cars these days. Interestingly, […]
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January 4, 2019
Hip-Hop Dominated Streaming In The U.S. Last Year, But Not Physical Sales
According to the latest stats from market analyst BuzzAngle, hip-hop dominated US streaming last year with just over 25% of the total, up from 22% the year before. That figure was even higher when it came to Spotify and Apple Music, as the genre came there in at 26.9%. That domination carried over to video […]
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January 2, 2019
New Titles In The Public Domain
January 1st was Public Domain Day 2019, the first day that a host of titles originally published in 1923 are now available to use for free and without permission. These include literary works, music and movies. Originally the works from 1923 were set to go into the public domain in 1999 after a 75-year copyright […]
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December 31, 2018
10 Music Business Predictions For 2019
Predictions can be a tricky thing, but if we look at the trends in the music business over the last year we can see where things might be going. Here are 10 predictions for how the industry will fare in 2019. 1. Apple Music Nearly Catches Spotify Spotify is still the king of the hill […]
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