Michael Bishop has been recording orchestras all over the world for a long time, first as chief engineer for the famed Telarc label, and now with his own Five Four Productions. Along the way he’s won 10 Grammy’s as well as a slew of other awards for his excellence. Michael’s my guest on this week’s […]
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If you’re an indie artist with your music distributed by TuneCore and you always wanted to be part of a major label, it looks like that’s now the case. Last week Sony Music sealed the deal to buy the French company Believe Distribution, owner of TuneCore, for a price between $355 and $444 million, according […]
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The continuing saga of SoundCloud gets uglier and uglier. After laying off 40% of its work staff and closing offices in San Francisco and London (as well as laying off many in New York as well) last week, it announced to its remaining staff that the company only has enough money to carry it to […]
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YouTube royalty payments can be a sore spot with artists and labels, and with good reason. The rate it pays isn’t all that great, but there are actually more variables on when and how you get paid than you might realize. Here’s an excerpt from my Music 4.1 Internet Music Guidebook that outlines how it works. […]
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There’s been a lot in the news over the last week about Spotify making its own albums under fake artists names, then placing the music on popular playlists. This news actually came out about a year ago but has bubbled to the surface again. Why would the company do that? To make more money, of […]
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Dusty Wakeman has had a great career as a bass player, producer, engineer and studio owner, and we discussed all that with him way back on Episode #9. He’s now the president of condenser mic maker Mojave Audio, and on the latest episode (#169) we had a nice discussion about not only how the company […]
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If you listen to the radio much you might think that Pop music is by far the most listened to music by U.S. music consumers. That supposition is wrong, however, according to the latest figures by BuzzAngle, a relatively new metrics company that is quietly been surpassing the standard Nielsen Music thanks to its more […]
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Everyone knew that SoundCloud was deep in financial trouble and that trouble would come to a head sometime this year. It looks like that time is finally here as the company closed both its San Francisco and London offices yesterday. While 173 people lost their jobs as a result, it’s the people that depend on […]
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Music 4.1 is totally dependent upon the development, care, and feeding of your fanbase. This audience can be broken down into the following two categories: your casual fans and your core fans. Your core audience fans are your most passionate fans. They’ll buy whatever you have to sell, work for free, recruit other fans, and […]
Continue readingIt wasn’t that long ago that we were impressed by any song that received 100 million views or streams, but in the age of streaming that number is ancient history. These days, a billion streams is well within reach for a hit, and more and more songs are even hitting the once unthinkable 2 billion […]
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My guest today is engineer Gary Noble, who has won 3 Grammys and been nominated 18 times for his mixing and recording work. Gary’s credits include Amy Winehouse, Jesse J, Nas, Josh Stone, Fugees, Wyclef Jon and many more. Gary will share his tips about making electronic tracks sound real, getting the best sound from […]
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All the signs have pointed to YouTube’s dominance in music delivery having peaked in the last 6 months, and now it looks like we have some confirmation. Midea Research did a deep dive into the technology and media trends of Gen Z (kids age 16 to 19) in the UK, and came up with some […]
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Every few months there seems to be a new post or article regarding how much Facebook is slipping in one demographic or another. The cries that millennials, Gen X and Gen Yers were abandoning the platform for something new have scared many artists and bands from using it, or made them reluctant to give the […]
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One of the great things for an artist about being online is that there are so many options for promotion. A great one is launching a contest. Here’s an excerpt from my Social Media Promotion For Musicians book that outlines general contest basics. “Artists, bands and musicians are always looking for ways to increase their fan engagement […]
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One of the reasons that management pulled the Taylor Swift catalog from all streaming services in 2014 was that the revenue from streaming wasn’t sufficient to warrant it being there. Swift was the biggest artist in the world at the time and didn’t need the additional exposure, and she was still selling CDs, so other […]
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