Spotify’s Personalized Playlists Could Affect Where Your Music Appears

Every artist wants to appear on one of Spotify’s playlists since it adds instant credibility and streams as new people find you. It’s never been easy to crack one of these playlists, and the service is about it make it a little harder with the new “personalized playlists” that it will be rolling out soon. […]

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People Are Really Getting Upset With Streaming Subscriptions

It’s a pretty fair statement to say that we all hate our cable company, so much so that many of us have already cut the cord and gone with one of the various online streaming options. The problem is that the video streaming services available to us may be leading us back to the thing we […]

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Producer Michael Beinhorn, CD Baby’s Sale, And The Audio Interface Survey On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is producer Michael Beinhorn, who has produced a wide range of artists including Herbie Hancock, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith and Soundgarden, among many others. He is the author of the book Unlocking Creativity, and is an outspoken advocate of the importance of artist development and pre-production […]

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Content Creators May Have Won The Battle But Lost The War With EU Copyright Directive Passage

The European Parliament finally is about to finally pass its long-contested Copyright Directive that was so widely opposed by the large tech companies but heavily supported by the content creation industry. Especially important in the Directive was Article 13 (now renamed Article 17 after a number of modifications) which makes platforms such as YouTube liable for […]

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5th Anniversary Podcast Tribute To Geoff Emerick, Algorithm Gets A Record Deal, And Fake Gear Ring Busted

Welcome to the 5th anniversary of the podcast on this week’s episode. Thank you all for your support over these last 257 shows! Recently I had a conversation with engineer Bill Smith about the late great Geoff Emerick and realized that there was a lot that we didn’t know about this audio giant even though he […]

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YouTube Copyright Claim Changes May Affect You

YouTube is rolling out a couple of new provisions revolving around its Content ID feature that may affect your videos in the future. The company will soon be limiting the number of manual copyright claims and requiring content owners to provide timestamps indicating exactly where their copyrighted content is located in creator’s videos. Content ID […]

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Taking Your Music Brand To The Next Level With Brand Positioning

One of the most important processes for an artist, band, engineer, producer or record label to undertake is discovering their brand, which I’ve covered extensively in previous posts. Once that process is complete there’s another step however, and it may be the most critical one of all for success – brand positioning. Brand positioning can […]

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Surf Guitar Legend Bob Berryhill, Social Media Usage, And Skip Rate On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast today is surf rock legend Bob Berryhill. Bob is a founding member of The Surfaris, and every guitar player since 1963 has learned to play the band’s big hit “Wipeout” sometime early in their career. The song, which Bob recorded when he was 15, sold over a million copies and rose to […]

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Spotify Rails Against Apple’s “App Tax,” But Could It Be A Cover For A Price Increase?

Spotify is unhappy with the 30% revenue sharing royalty that Apple charges developers to be part of its App Store, and has gone as far as to file an anti-trust complaint with the European Commission against the company. The so-called “tax” is nothing new however, and one has to wonder why this is just coming […]

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Help Decide The Future Of This Blog

I hope that you enjoy reading this blog and I certainly enjoy bringing it to you. That said, I’ve been writing the Music 3.0 Blog for almost 10 years now and it currently consists of almost 3,000 posts. I think it’s time to change things up a bit, but I want you to be happy […]

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The Black Box Income That Artists And Songwriters Don’t Know About

One of the pieces of advice that artists and songwriters hear pretty constantly from indie vets is to get your metadata in order. The reason why is that in order to get paid, organizations that collect the money have to know who you are and how to get hold of you first. That’s why collection […]

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Composer Doug DeAngelis, RIAA Numbers, And USB 3.2 On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

Composer, producer and music supervisor Doug DeAngelis is my guest on the podcast today. Doug hit paydirt early in his career when he recorded the Nine Inch Nails hit “Head Like A Hole.” In 1989, he embarked on a world tour with the Detroit Techno crossover dance artist Inner City, but after that he moved on […]

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Streaming Services Fight Back Against New Songwriter Royalty Increases

The recent Copyright Royalty Board ruling that increased songwriter’s royalties by 44% was met with great satisfaction by both writers and publishers alike. The streaming services are not so happy though, as Spotify, Google, Pandora and Amazon have all teamed up to appeal the decision. While each organization filed a separate appeal, Apple Music has […]

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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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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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