Category Archives for "Music Industry News"
August 30, 2017
Taylor Swift Goes Overboard With New Concert Ticket Scheme
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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August 28, 2017
Spotify Needs To Follow Apple’s Example To Survive
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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August 25, 2017
Snail Mail Is Making A Comeback For Contacting Fans
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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August 21, 2017
Which Of These 5 Spots Will Take Over From Ibiza
There’s a lifespan in the entertainment business where something is small and hip than not many people know about, then it’s discovered by the press as more people flock to it, then it’s homogenized by large corporations wanting to get in on the trend, then it ends up pricing out the very people that started […]
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August 18, 2017
This Crowdcasting App Lets You Fill Your Gigs, But They Won’t Be Fans
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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August 17, 2017
- in Music Industry News , Tips by Bobby Owsinski
5 Ways To Get Fans To Buy Your Physical Product
Even though most of us have changed to listening to music via online streams, physical product is never going away. People still buy CDs and vinyl is a very hot commodity, even though the sales number aren’t what they once were. So what does it take to get people to actually buy your product? Nick […]
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August 16, 2017
A Track Of Nothing But Silence May Top The iTunes Charts
We keep hearing about the trickery taking place on both Spotify and Apple Music where artists are trying to game the system by posting album length songs of silence that repeat over and over in order to boost royalties. Thankfully, most streaming services are now on the lookout for these fakes, but there is one […]
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August 11, 2017
Why Make An Album When Nobody’s Buying Them?
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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August 10, 2017
- in Music Industry News , Tips by Bobby Owsinski
How To Get In On Spotify’s $40 Million Songwriter 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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August 9, 2017
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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August 7, 2017
The Most Popular Artist In Every State
If you were to pick who the most popular artist was for your State, you’d probably be wrong if you’re over 25 or so. Business Insider wanted to find out about the most popular artist in each State so they looked at the Pandora Radio for a list of the artists whose Pandora “artist stations” […]
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August 4, 2017
Facebook Acquires Source3 To Take Another Step Towards Music
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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August 2, 2017
Spotify Passes 60 Million 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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July 31, 2017
Radio Faces A Big Test In Pennsylvania That Will Affect The Country
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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July 28, 2017
ASCAP And BMI Create A Joint Song Database
A big problem for songwriters and publishers is that there’s no one place to go to find out who owns the all rights to a song and who the songwriters are. With some digging around the ASCAP and BMI sites will usually lead to the needed info, it becomes a lot tougher to do that outside of […]
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