Category Archives for "Music Industry News"
June 11, 2018
Spotify Looks At Unveiling A Long-Term Strategy The Music Industry Won’t Like
A new report suggests that Spotify is embarking on a new strategy that may ultimately alienate the very partners it needs to stay in business. A recent Billboard article outlined Spotify’s currently unannounced program of offering advances to a select number of indie artists for a direct licensing deal with the service. If you’re an artist or […]
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June 8, 2018
New ACCESS Bill In Senate May Stall Passage Of Music Modernization Act
Virtually everyone in the music business breathed a sigh of relief when the Music Modernization Act sailed through the House of Representatives recently. Finally it looked like we were making some headway towards changing at least a few outdated copyright laws. When it comes to Washington however, nothing is as easy as it seems as […]
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June 4, 2018
A New Radio Royalty Rate Decision Could Soon Change Songwriters Incomes
Songwriters have always made a good amount of performance royalties from radio airplay, and many still do under the right circumstances (meaning, a big hit). That said, there’s a constant battle between the performance rights organizations (PROs – ASCAP and BMI) and the RMLC (Radio Music Licensing Committee) to raise and lower the rates every […]
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June 1, 2018
- in Music Industry News , Tips by Bobby Owsinski
The 3 Reasons Why New Music Is Released On Friday
You might have noticed that all new music released by record labels always comes on a Friday and wondered why. After all, Friday generally isn’t a great day for communication online (especially via email) as people are especially frantic before the weekend. And if you remember back to before 2015, Tuesday used to be release […]
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May 30, 2018
Pandora Finally Launches A Family Plan
When it comes to paid subscribers, Pandora has taken a back seat to all the other major services with only around 6 million. One of the reasons is that the company hasn’t been very creative with its tiers, but that posture may have changed with reports of the company launching a new family plan at […]
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May 28, 2018
Music Video Distribution Won’t Change Much As Vevo Finally Succumbs To YouTube
I wonder how many times YouTube viewers watched an “official” music video from their favorite artist and saw the Vevo logo on the video or in the song’s description. I wonder how many actually thought to themselves, “What the heck is a Vevo?” That, my friends, was the main problem of the major record labels’ […]
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May 25, 2018
Amuse To Go Up Against CD Baby And TuneCore
If you’ve been using a music aggregator like CD Baby or TunCore to get your music out to a wider audience, it looks like there’s a new alternative available that has a unique twist. Swedish startup Amuse (amuse.io) was founded by a team of industry heavyweights, and they’ve just received $15.5 million in funding to expand […]
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May 24, 2018
Sony Buys 60% Of EMI Publishing
In a case of the rich getting richer, Sony Corporation of America has entered into a deal to purchase an additional 60% of EMI Music Publishing. That would give the company 90% of EMI Publishing, with the Michael Jackson estate owning the final 10%. The deal seems to put to rest the idea that music […]
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May 23, 2018
Why Record Labels Hate Free Streaming Tiers So Much
If you were to poll record label execs off-the-record on which music streaming service they like the most in a strictly business-sense, chances are that Apple Music would end up as the clear winner. Why? Apple has steadfastly refused to institute a free ad-driven tier. Even though labels, artists, songwriters and publishers realize revenue from […]
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May 21, 2018
YouTube Music To Finally Launch, Along With Full Artist Credits
After much speculation on features and timing, YouTube Music is slated for a soft launch tomorrow. The service will replace its YouTube Red service with with two tiers and a lot of features that users should like. YouTube Music’s tiers will include YouTube Music at the industry standard $9.99 per month that features mostly audio-only […]
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May 18, 2018
Music Discovery Trends Of 2018
Music discovery is the holy grail of the music business, as it develops a new fan base for artists and bands with the exposure. At one point in time, most discovery came mostly from radio, with a little bit of print advertising aimed at both consumers and retailers thrown in. In today’s digital age, radio […]
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May 16, 2018
The Billboard Charts Will Be Measuring Streams Differently
Many artists and industry execs may think that the Billboard charts are less relevant than they’ve ever been, but they’re still used as a measurement of success no matter how you look at it. That’s why it’s long been argued that the way that the charts count streams is insufficient. It appears that’s changing soon […]
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May 14, 2018
Pandora Learns That More Ads Doesn’t Equal More Subscribers
The streaming music service Pandora has been in financial difficulty for quite a while now, and it really needs to generate more revenue to stay afloat. One of the things that it tried was to increase the number of ads served up to free users, but it looks like that strategy has backfired. Everyone hates […]
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May 11, 2018
Online Radio Has A Data Problem That Few Are Talking About
Streaming my be the future for distributing music, but radio is still a big player in making hits. While so much about how music radio works seems dated, the fact is that people still listen, and advertisers still support it. Surprisingly, that’s not so much the case with online radio, and it all revolves around […]
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May 9, 2018
Sweden May Be Telling Us About Streaming’s Future
The latest IFPI annual study on last year’s global music sales has posted and there’s a wealth of data there, although no surprises. There is one piece of data that Mark Mulligan of the Midea research group dug out that may give us a look at the future of streaming. Mark noted that IFPI’s report showed […]
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