It looks like everything that was old is new again. It may seem hard to believe, but cassette tape, that once reviled music delivery system of the 1970s, really is making a comeback. There’s a new coolness factor in the format for artists, bands and fans that no one could have predicted. Reports about the […]
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Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup for the week of January 13th, 2017. Everyone is back from holiday vacation and the year is starting to get busy. Let’s see what’s in the news. Pandora lays off 7% of its workforce. Things are getting tough in streaming land as the company tries to overcome a cash crunch. Deezer’s […]
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I’ve been predicting for over a year that the streaming world would eventually move to high-resolution audio, and a recent announcement from a group of large industry players makes it look like things are finally moving in the right direction. All 3 major labels, Pandora, Rhapsody/Napster, HD Trax and the RIAA announced their support for […]
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Content creators have been complaining about the fact that there’s no way to monetize their content on Facebook the way you can on YouTube. Those days look to be coming to an end, however, as industry insiders now say that Facebook will start testing mid-video ads soon. As with YouTube, the revenue from the ads will be […]
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Stevie Blacke is a multi-instrumentalist known around Hollywood as the “strings guy” because he’s often called upon to record full string sections of violin, viola, cello and double-bass (up to 40 tracks!) all by himself. He’s much more than just an orchestral string player though, as he also does sessions on mandolin, dobro, sitar and […]
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Albums just aren’t selling like they used to, and that goes for physical and digital. The end-of-the-year Nielsen numbers are out and they show that only 4 albums made it to platinum-level last year, which is sales of 1 million or more. If you add in sales of digital albums, you get 3 more, which is […]
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Happy New Year, and here’s the first Music Industry News Roundup of the year for the week of January 6th, 2017. We’re just coming off a major holiday and things are slowly ramping back up. Let’s see what happened. The Blackstone Group acquires SESAC. Just think about that for a second. A big investment group now owns a […]
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It’s been no secret that SoundCloud has been up for sale for some time. Both Twitter and Spotify reportedly looked into acquiring the service and decided against it over the last few years. Now the latest rumor has Google acquiring SoundCloud for around $500 million, which is about half of what it was going for […]
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When we think online audience engagement, we usually think of views or streams. There’s a lot more to it than that though, as this infographic from Statista shows how industry insiders evaluate true engagement. As you can see, Shares are the #1 most valuable engagement element, closely followed by the actual amount of time users dwell on […]
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Grammy-winning engineer Tim Latham has worked with a wide variety of artists across many musical genres, including the Black Eyed Peas, Kid Rock, Lou Reed, Erykah Badu, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots, Britney Spears and many more, and he’s the guest on Episode #142 of my Inner Circle Podcast. Tim has […]
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Out of all the music streaming networks, Tidal seems to get more than its fair share of publicity. No doubt that’s because it’s owned by a music celebrity (Jay-Z), but for a relatively small player in the streaming game, Tidal manages to punch above its weight. The company recently released some interesting numbers that covered […]
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Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup for the week of December 30th, 2016, the last week of the year. As expected, there hasn’t been much in the way of blockbuster news, but there have been some interesting pieces. Mozart was not #1 in album sales. A story made the rounds that a box set by the […]
Continue readingIt looks like you can expect a lot more from Facebook in 2017 in more ways than one. The company is advertising for an in-house composer to add to its in-house sound design team. According to the advert: The in-house Music Composer role requires 10+ years of professional experience in the music industry, plus experience […]
Continue readingIf you look closely, streaming is teaching us all some marketing lessons, according to analytics service Next Big Sound (now owned by Pandora), a company that looks at social, streaming and event data as well as the interaction between an artist and a fan. While many look at it as just a way to get their […]
Continue readingEpisode 141 of my Inner Circle Podcast features my annual year end review as well as a look ahead to what might happen in the music business in 2017. So much went down last year that was eventful, and some of it was completely under the radar, so you’ll want to listen to this episode for […]
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