Live Nation Is In Trouble With The Justice Department And What That Means For Concert Ticketing

The huge concert promoter Live Nation owns Ticketmaster and 80% of the concert business, and that can lead to some unsavory practices. That’s apparently the conclusion of the U.S. Justice Department as it prepares to take action against the company for practices that ultimately have meant higher ticket prices for consumers. When the company purchased […]

Continue reading

How Many Streams For Minimum Wage, Pulitzer For Audio, And Studio Designer John Storyk On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is architect and acoustician John Storyk, who over the course of his 50 years in the business has designed more than 3,500 audio and video production facilities, recording studios, radio stations, corporate media and conference rooms, educational and, entertainment facilities, clubs, stadiums and theaters around the world.  John and his company Walters-Storyk Design […]

Continue reading

Life Is Going To Get A Lot Tougher For Composers Soon

If you’re a composer, your lifeblood is the back-end performance royalties you receive when your music is aired on a television show. At one time you could expect a nice up front fee for your services as well, but those days are now mostly in the past. Now thanks to new policies put forth by […]

Continue reading

Test Your Music Promotion Knowledge

It’s fairly easy to promote your music these days, but being efficient and getting results require you to do more than take a shotgun approach. The following questions are designed to test how much you know about today’s music promotion. Ready? Let’s begin. 1. The three parts to promotion are: A. communicating, interacting, measuring B. […]

Continue reading

Radio Loses Another Battle Over Royalties, Which May Be A Look Into Its Future

Royalty payouts have been tilted in radio’s favor over artists and songwriters for a long time, but the tide may be starting to turn. Recently the US Department of Justice sided with Irving Azoff’s Global Music Rights (GMR) in its lawsuit against the Radio Music Licensing Committee (RMLC) filed in Federal Court in 2016 for antitrust violations. […]

Continue reading

Vinyl’s Big Sales Week, Dolby’s New Deal, And Industry Writer Ari Herstand On My Latest Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Ari Herstand, who parlayed his experiences as an indie artist into a secondary career as a music industry blogger and author. Ari’s music business blog Ari’s Take has been a staple for helping musicians build a career without the help of a record label, and his book How To Make It In The […]

Continue reading

The Upcoming Problems For YouTube Creators

If you depend on YouTube for all of your social interaction and audience outreach, things might get a lot tougher in 2020. There are three things that the service is getting tough on creators that could cause you to lose some sleep soon. Let’s go through them. Accounts Are Being Deleted YouTube announced recently that […]

Continue reading

The Latest Guide To Social Media Posts

Posts on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are evolving, and what worked last year won’t get you the same engagement now. A new social media content study of over 100 million posts by Planable and Socialinsider discovered what really works today. If you want the highest engagement rate, choose Instagram. The engagement rate per post is […]

Continue reading

An Infographic Guide To Music Licensing

Music licensing can be a confusing morass of legal slings and arrows that most artists and songwriters can’t quite get their arms around. It’s not rocket science, but it’s not easy to navigate either. The following infographic from attorney Joy Butler does a great job at simplifying the process as much as possible. Joy is […]

Continue reading

Could AR Be The Music Release Format Of The Future?

Streaming subscription rates seem to be leveling off despite Goldman Sach’s prediction of it bringing in some $40 billion by the end of the next decade. That begs the question as to what comes next. Everyone on the supply side of music, from artists to record labels, would love to see a new music release […]

Continue reading

Inactive Social Accounts, Plugin Evolution, And Engineer Kevin Killen On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Kevin Killen, who’s a multi-Grammy award winning engineer who’s worked with luminaries like David Bowie, U2, Peter Gabriel, Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Sugarland, Shakira and so many more. Besides engineering and mixing what many consider seminal albums like Peter Gabriel’s So and U2’s Unforgettable Fire, Kevin […]

Continue reading

Will Apple Music For Business Bring The Music You Hate To Your Favorite Retailer?

You may or may not be old enough to remember the horrible music that invaded your ears in department stores and office building elevators. In fact, the not-so-respectful term “elevator music” was applied to the syrupy cover versions of popular hits that you’d regularly hear in those places back then. There was some science involved […]

Continue reading

Black Friday Sale On 101 Mixing Tricks

101 Mixing Tricks has become the premier way to learn the techniques of the A-list mixers. It’s hardly ever on sale, but today not only is it discounted, but there’s an extra special discount when you use BLACK as a coupon code during checkout. That’s right – for today only the price isn’t the regular […]

Continue reading

Happy Thanksgiving And Thanks For Reading!

To all my friends and readers, I wish you a happy holiday. I truly appreciate your support and I am humbled and honored that you take the time out of your busy day to read my musings. It’s a good day to take some time off, eat a nice meal, have a cocktail and watch some […]

Continue reading

Amazon Expands Its Free Music Tier To Everyone

Amazon has stepped up its streaming game with a new free music tier that appears to be taking on the likes Spotify. Although the company launched a free version of its music service for Alexa users on its Echo devices in April, this version will be open to users of Amazon’s smartphone app. Distribution has […]

Continue reading