The Winter NAMM show is always the one exhibition of the year to look forward to. Not only are some manufacturers now skipping AES in favor of NAMM, but it’s so much more fun and colorful, as musical celebs seem to be everywhere. Here’s a report from the show, from the big picture point of […]
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Frustrated with the long wait in to get records pressed, Jack White’s new Third Man Records pressing plant is scheduled to open in February in his native Detroit. The company has installed 8 new energy efficient presses capable of outputting up to 5,000 discs every 8 hours. The company also hopes to add 50 jobs […]
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Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup for the week of January 20th, 2017. We’re back in the swing of things as everyone hits the ground running in the new year. Here are some of the news highlights for the week. There’s speculation that Sony Japan is tiring of the entertainment business and might now want to sell […]
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Payola has always been part of the music business and many insiders feel that it’s the reason that some artists become stars, and some stars become superstars. Without money or favors changing hands between the record label and the radio station/streaming service, a song might never gain the visibility it needs to become a hit. […]
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For the most part, performance rights organizations use an antiquated system to determine the payouts to their members. For radio, it all depends on a survey at certain times of the year that looks at a cross-section of what stations are playing in order to determine the royalties. For streaming, it depends on the data they […]
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iZotope’s Neutron is one of the new generation of DAW plugins that analyze the program audio and then make some pretty good suggestions as to the EQ and compression that will work for the track. Many engineers find this somewhat disconcerting, and are maybe a little intimidated by it, while others embrace it as just […]
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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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