Category Archives for "Music Industry News"
November 17, 2017
UnitedMasters Aims To Be A Record Label Alternative
If you’re an artist, there’s less and less of a need to be with a record label today, since so much of what a label once provided can now be accomplished on a DIY basis. What record labels are really good at though, is turning an artist into a superstar, since the infrastructure required for […]
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November 15, 2017
LyricMerch Allows Fans To Print Their Favorite Lyrics On Merch
Here’s an idea that makes you wonder why it took so long to come about. A new company called LyricMerch allows you to print your favorite song lyrics on a range of products that include coffee mugs, T-shirts and even shower curtains. The company is a subsidiary of LyricFind, a lyric licensing company with a […]
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November 13, 2017
Can A Lip-Syncing Site Be Worth $800 Million?
If you’re a musician then you probably aren’t aware of lip-synching site Musical.ly. After all, why pretend to create music when you’re able to do it for real? That’s said, there are millions of people everywhere who find doing short clips of themselves lip-syncing to hit songs is a lot of fun – 200 million of […]
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November 10, 2017
The Main Studio Rule And How It Affects Local Radio Stations
In 1934 the FCC instituted a rule that a radio station had to have a main studio within its transmission area that also had to be accompanied by a full-time staff during business hours. While this rule might have been a boon to local radio for much of the last century, it’s been somewhat of a […]
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November 8, 2017
Could Your Next Album Release Be On Floppy Disk?
Releasing albums on long outdated formats has gone from novelty to trendy, with cassettes being the latest so-called “dead” format to make a comeback. That said, there are still old formats out there that have yet to be mined, and one that almost 100% of people everywhere (especially the ones that used them) never expected […]
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November 6, 2017
If An Election Can Be Influenced, How About A Music Award?
There seems to be no doubt that recent elections in a number of countries have been influenced by outside sources. Given the enormous scale and difficulty of doing that, it seems like something as inconsequential as a music award would be easy to affect. It looks like that actually happened in the 2017 Mnet Asian […]
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November 3, 2017
Indie Labels Now Make Up 38% Of The Music Business
If you thought that there are only three major labels working in the music industry today, then you’re wrong. A new study has found that indie labels generated more than $6 billion last year, which is good enough for 38% of the market, making them essentially a fourth major label. The study came from Worldwide […]
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November 1, 2017
Artist Visits To Streaming Services Show Why Radio Feels Old
If ever there was a sign that radio is a promotional thing of the past when it comes to breaking a record, Pink recently visited every Spotify office and Apple Music headquarters in order to muster support for her latest release. This seems to be a growing trend, where artists are ignoring terrestrial radio in […]
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October 31, 2017
Austrian Audio Founders On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast
Recently Harman International decided to close its AKG Vienna operation, which was a real shame after 70 years of being an industry leader in microphone and headphone technology (I bet you have at least 1 AKG product in your audio toolbox). Usually a closure like that means that a lot of good people and industrial […]
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October 29, 2017
Sony Music Pledges Money To Save London Music Venues
Music venues all over the world have been having a tough go of it for a while now, as gentrification of neighborhoods has brought much higher rents, increased taxes and insurance requirements, and new noise control laws. London has been particularly hard hit, losing 35 percent of its grassroots music venues between 2007 and 2015, when […]
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October 27, 2017
Young Music Consumers Still Buy Music
By now we’ve been conditioned to the fact that most music consumers, especially the youngest ones, have totally converted to streaming and wouldn’t even think of purchasing a download or CD. If you believe that then you’re wrong. A new report from the IFPI entitled Music Consumer Report 2017 outlines how people around the world […]
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October 25, 2017
Can The Billboard Charts Be Valid Without Including YouTube?
Determining the position of a song or album on the Billboard charts used to be so easy when it was based strictly on sales, but not anymore. Those days are now long gone as music is consumed on a dizzying array of platforms with sales playing less and less of a factor. To its credit, […]
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October 23, 2017
Warner Music Owner Takes Control Of Deezer
Even though Deezer has been available in North America for well over a year, not that many consumers are familiar with the streaming service. In France, where the service is based, Deezer is Spotify’s main competition with almost 50% of the market share. Now comes word that financier Len Blavatnk’s Access Industries has taken control […]
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October 20, 2017
Show.co Releases Pre-Save Me Tool To Encourage Fans To Pre-Save Upcoming Releases
One of the things that has vexed artists and labels in the digital age is how to excite a fanbase before a song or album is released. Sure, you can promote it, but our digital attention span is pretty limited so any pre-release promotion can fall by the wayside before the release actually happens. Show.co, […]
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October 18, 2017
RIAA Goes After A Long List Of Music Piracy Sites
Music piracy isn’t what it once was, but it’s still alive and well and the RIAA is trying to do something about it. In a  to Elizabeth Kendall, the acting assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Innovation and Intellectual Property, the industry organization outlined a number of “notorious” platforms that it claims infringes on its member’s IP. These are […]
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