Category Archives for "Music Industry News"

Pandora And Smart Speakers Are The Surprises In The Infinite Dial Study

Infinite Dial

For 20 years Edison Research has been conducting its Infinite Dial study that measures media and technology consumption in the United States. As always, the latest edition has a number of interesting discoveries, but it also identifies the new trends that may be in front of us, yet we find difficult to see. Here are […]

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Taylor Swift Goes Overboard With New Concert Ticket Scheme

Taylor Swift

Let’s face it, concert ticket prices for major acts are astronomical for anything but the nosebleed section of the venue, as the secondary market gets their hands on already high-priced tickets and increases the price. If that wasn’t bad enough, a new scheme hatched between Taylor Swift and Ticketmaster may bring the ultimate price of […]

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Spotify Needs To Follow Apple’s Example To Survive

Spotify Direct Listing

Spotify just bounded over it’s last major roadblock to going public with its new licensing agreement with Warner Music, and now it’s final hurdle is convincing the SEC that its direct listing is on the up and up. This means that the company looks to meet its goal of being listed on the New York […]

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Snail Mail Is Making A Comeback For Contacting Fans

Snail mail invite from The XX

Things have a way of coming full circle, when something old becomes new again. Hit songs come back around, old commercials and marketing come back (Coke), audio formats (8-track and cassette tapes), and even products become hot again (witness the MacDonald’s Schezwan sauce thanks to a Rick And Morty episode). Probably the last thing that […]

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This Crowdcasting App Lets You Fill Your Gigs, But They Won’t Be Fans

crowdcasting

Artists and bands that are just getting started or playing in a new location always have the same fret: Will anyone show up? Unless you’ve already received some sort of visibility either through your music or social media, the answer is usually that there won’t be as many people as you’d like, and that could […]

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Why Make An Album When Nobody’s Buying Them?

Album dying

We now live in a singles world, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the recent Nielsen Music Half-Year Report. Album consumption has taken a dramatic turn for the worse, as even superstar artists aren’t seeing anything near the numbers of the past. For instance, here’s the top 10 (for the U.S.): 1 Ed […]

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How To Get In On Spotify’s $40 Million Songwriter Settlement

Spotify Settlement

If you haven’t been paying attention, Spotify recently settled a lawsuit over unpaid mechanical royalties to songwriters. The suit maintained that the company didn’t have the license to play some of the music available, while Spotify claimed that it didn’t have the information to adequately disburse the payments. Instead of fighting the lawsuit in court, […]

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Warner Music Has Best Quarter In 14 Years

It wasn’t that long ago that the recorded music industry was completely in the doldrums, knocked down to less than half its peak business by a failing physical recording business that showed no signs of being replaced by downloads. Everyone predicted the worst  as there was absolutely no faith that the fledgling streaming services could […]

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Facebook Acquires Source3 To Take Another Step Towards Music

Source3 acquired by Facebook

Music hasn’t been a huge priority on the Facebook platform until now, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes to make you think that it will be in the future. The latest move in that direction involves Facebook acquiring rights management startup Source3, which specializes in analyzing branded intellectual property in user-generated content. But […]

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Spotify Passes 60 Million Paid Subscribers

Spotify paid subscribers

Remember back a few years ago when many in the music industry thought that we’d never get over the 100 million total paid streaming subscriber benchmark? Remember when they predicted that Spotify had plateaued at 30 million? Remember when they opined that streaming revenue would never make up for physical product and downloads? All those […]

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Radio Faces A Big Test In Pennsylvania That Will Affect The Country

radio

Having grown up in Pennsylvania and returning there frequently to visit family, I can tell you with some certainty that the state isn’t exactly on the bleeding edge of radio. In fact, I’m always struck by the fact that it seems stuck in the 1970s, because you hear songs predominantly from that era most any […]

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