Category Archives for "Music Industry News"
November 21, 2016
Metallica Reverses Course And Uploads Its New Album For Free On YouTube
Well, this may seem odd. Metallica has uploaded all 10 songs of its latest album Hardwired….To Self-Destruct to its YouTube channel. That means that fans can get the album online for free. Wasn’t Metallica the band that lead the charge against Napster way back when, making a case against free online music? And isn’t the band’s management, Q-Prime, […]
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November 17, 2016
Music Industry Wants To Ban Concert Ticket Buying Bots
Has this happened to you? You’re one of the first in line to buy a ticket to a concert by your favorite artist only to find that all the choice seats are already gone, or you go online at the exact second that the sale for the concert opens up only to find that all […]
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November 16, 2016
Do Playlists Make It Harder To Break An Artist?
A record label would love to break an artist after one release or album, but that’s getting more and more difficult these days according to One Direction’s manager Will Bloomfield. One of the reasons is that the industry is breaking songs now, and not artists at all, almost without even realizing it. This is thanks to […]
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November 14, 2016
$1 Million Gets A Bad Tour With Motley Crue
I know that you’ve gone to a concert to see your favorite artist and wondered why or how the opening act was chosen. The fact of the matter is that most times, they’re not chosen at all – they buy their way onto the tour, which has become known as a “buy-on.” Whether a buy-on is worth […]
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November 9, 2016
Why Does A Big Arms Dealer Own A Piece Of Pandora?
It’s safe to say that if you’re involved in music, the last thing you think about is making war. That’s why it comes as a great surprise to discover that the world’s largest arms dealer, Lockheed-Martin, owns 184,000 shares of Pandora worth almost $2 million. To be sure, this is a drop in the bucket […]
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November 7, 2016
Neil Young Gives In And Puts Music Back On Streaming Services
Neil Young pulled his music off of every streaming service in 2015 because of the poor sound quality in favor of his own Pono service, but in a reversal, now he’s back. Although last May his music was made available on Tidal, now it can be found on both Spotify and Apple Music. Pono was […]
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November 2, 2016
Packaging Band Member Remains A New Way To Sell Albums
Sales of physical product are declining year after year yet record labels, artists and bands continue to release them. As formats that you can hold in your hand become much less desirable, it’s more difficult to get the public interested in purchasing them. The experimental San Francisco band Negativland has found a way to go beyond the usual value-adds included […]
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October 31, 2016
Avenged Sevenfold And Warner Music Test The 7 Year Rule
California has an interesting law on the books called the “7 Year Rule” that releases employees from a personal services contract, like a record deal, after 7 years. Th was actually part of a law that was enacted way back in 1872 as a way to protect the then burgeoning entertainment industry and helped to […]
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October 26, 2016
Will We See Higher Royalty Rates From SiriusXM Soon?
Low royalty rates are something that concerns every artist, label, songwriter and publisher. The good news is that they’re gradually rising, and since there are more paying subscribers to streaming services every year, the revenue pie is also getting larger. This may take an even better turn if the proposed new rate increase that SoundExchange wants from SiriusXM […]
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October 25, 2016
Dirk Ulrich From Brainworx And Plugin Alliance On Episode #132 Of My Latest Inner Circle Podcast
Dirk Ulrich is the founder of 2 great music plugin companies, Brainworx and Plugin Alliance, but his journey into software development involved an extensive stint as a studio owner and producer first. In this interview, we talk about some of the company’s very cool plugins, Dirk’s outlook on the future of plugins, as well as […]
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October 24, 2016
11 Popular Artists Still Not Streaming
Billboard recently posted a very interesting article about 11 artists, some major, that still can’t be be found on a streaming network. While you have to admire that they stand for their principles, it does seem to be a somewhat dated view, since streaming has not only become a major source of income for previous […]
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October 19, 2016
Amazon’s Actually Losing Money From It’s New Music Service
The major record labels are adamant about keeping the price of a music streaming subscription at $9.99 per month, regardless of the platform, so it was a great surprise last week when Amazon announced that its new Amazon Music Unlimited service was priced at $7.99 per month for Amazon Prime members. It turns out that the […]
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October 13, 2016
Don’t Be Fooled By Amazon Music Unlimited’s Price
Amazon has finally launched it’s long awaited stand-alone streaming music service and it’s called Amazon Music Unlimited. On the surface it has a number of interesting features that differentiate it from the other major streaming services, but one has to wonder whether potential users will find them compelling enough to subscribe. Perhaps the service’s biggest […]
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October 12, 2016
There’s A New Sound Recording Metadata Standard
Many artists, bands and musicians don’t think much about metadata when creating a song but record labels take it very seriously. It’s a major way to be able to track a song to make sure that all the stakeholders get paid. That said, metadata isn’t standardized and is sometimes filled out incorrectly, defeating its purpose. […]
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October 10, 2016
Spotify’s Paid Over A Billion Dollars To Record Labels This Year
The major record labels seem to have it out for Spotify, but the platform is contributing mightily to their bottom lines. It’s been reported that the company has already paid $1.2 billion dollars in royalties to the music industry this year, and over $5 billion lifetime. The platform is paying out around $133 million per […]
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