Don’t Look Now But YouTube Music Is Up To 20 Million Subscribers

YouTube has been the most widely used platform for music consumption for at least a decade now, and you’d think that it would be easy for the company to turn all those users into subscribers. It turns out that’s happening slowly but surely as Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai revealed on the company’s latest earnings call that […]

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Ghost Songs, Illegal Tribute Bands, And Music Strategy Consultant Jay Gilbert On My Latest Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Jay Gilbert, who’s love of taking concert photographs eventually translated into being on the cutting edge of digital sales and marketing as an executive with Universal, Sony and Warner Music Groups. Jay has created and executed unique online marketing plans for a wide variety of artists, including Elton John, KISS, […]

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There’s A Lot To Learn From Amazon’s Email Template

One of the thing that artists, musicians and even labels constantly struggle with is how an email blast or press release should be formatted for best engagement. There are many different ways to do this, but if you’ve ever received anything from Amazon you know that what they do is particularly effective. It seems that […]

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It’s A Shame, But Vinyl Manufacturer Rainbo Records Has Closed

Artists, record labels, and music trends come and go, but an unseen backbone of the music industry since 1939 has closed – vinyl manufacturer Rainbo Records. Rainbo has been the place to go for indies since there was such a thing. This was not only for artists trying to get their initial break like Husker […]

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Discovery Networks Relents And Will Pay Composers What They’re Worth

There was a huge amount of outrage from the television composer community last month when Discovery Networks announced that it would no longer be paying composers for their back work, and everything going forward would be a buyout. The backlash was more than the channel group, which controls 20 popular cable channels including the Travel […]

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Extra Tracks Strategy, USC Diversity Study, And Groove U Founder Dwight Heckelman On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Dwight Heckelman who, after a stint at Berklee College of Music, felt that music higher education needed to be held to a higher standard and would be a lot better if it were apprenticeship-based and relationship-driven.  He called on his experience as a graduate of Belmont University, at major and […]

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All The Attention Is On Spotify, But Amazon Music Is Coming On Strong

While Spotify is still seen as the 800 pound gorilla of the streaming world, its competitors are quietly catching up. Apple Music, for instance, now has more paying subscribers in the U.S. than Spotify, and Amazon Music recently announced that it passed 55 million paying customers as well. “Amazon Music kicks off 2020 by revealing […]

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How To Add Your Lyrics To Facebook And Instagram

If you’re not already aware, both Facebook and Instagram offer the ability for users to add your song lyrics to their Facebook and Instagram Stories. While I’ve never considered that essential for music exposure (especially for an artist that isn’t adept at lyric writing yet), it can help in many cases so the feature shouldn’t […]

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Artificial Intelligence Shift Puts 50 DJs Out Of A Job At iHeart Radio

Unlike disruptions of the past that no one (especially the people most likely to be affected) saw coming, anyone who reads the news knows that artificial intelligence is affecting them now and will be even more so in the future. That become all too apparent for 57 humans who are now out on the streets […]

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Winter NAMM 2020 Overview On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

This week on the podcast I take a quick look at the recent Winter NAMM 2020 exhibition that just finished in Anaheim. NAMM was certainly different this year as it felt renewed and actually had its first buzz-worthy product in a long time. During this week’s episode I’ll take a look at: the mood of the show […]

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Some 2020 YouTube Stats That You Should Know

Despite the naysayers, YouTube is not only holding its own these days but actually managing to grow. In fact, some of its numbers are pretty astounding. Let’s take a look at the latest YouTube stats as they come from the social distributor Hootsuite. YouTube has over 2 billion monthly users. Yep, it’s grown in the […]

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5 Tips On How To Address Negative Comments On Your Music

In the highly social online world that we live in, one thing’s for sure – at some point we’re going to receive negative comments on something. It’s bad enough when it’s about something we’ve posted but especially hurtful when it’s about our music. How you address those comments is extremely important if you don’t want […]

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Over 100 Artists Affected By Recording Theft

112 artists have been confirmed to have had their recordings directly stolen and then repurposed on fake artist accounts on various streaming services. The recording theft includes at least 831 total songs, of which 673 the website Saving Country Music has been able to identify. The stolen songs on the fake accounts have received more […]

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Streaming Slows, 13 Musical Emotions, And Engineer Dennis Moody On The 300th Episode Of My Inner Circle Podcast

Yes, it’s podcast #300! I never dreamed that it would go this long yet here we are, and it’s all thanks to listeners like you. I’ve said this many times and I really mean it – THANK YOU KINDLY for your support! My guest on the 300th podcast this week is Dennis Moody who’s the engineer of choice for […]

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Album Sales Were Really Down Last Year

The year-end report from Alpha Data, the data analytics platform formerly known as BuzzAngle that powers the Rolling Stone Charts, shows that album sales continue to fall at an alarming rate. Streaming has taken its toll on the venerable format, as its sales dropped by 23% from the previous year to just 93 million. To illustrate the […]

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