I’ve been no fan of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, as you probably know if you read this blog. I don’t believe there should be such an institution, since there’s really no way to quantify who should be in it, unlike a sports HOF where there are plenty of statistics to gauge someone’s […]
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One of the things that bugs artists, songwriters and labels about YouTube is that it’s pretty difficult to get precise information about views and payments. In many cases, views aren’t counted and in other cases payments take too long to arrive. YouTube is hoping to alleviate those problems by implementing a new tool based on the […]
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Who says that there’s no money in streaming? It seems that all of those micro-payments add up after all as Universal Music Group is making about $3.9 million per day just from streaming music, according to its parent Vivendi’s first quarter earnings statement. In fact, UMG’s streaming revenue was up almost 60% over the previous quarter, […]
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Streaming music royalty rates are such a morass of different percentages and possibilities that few people on the planet totally understand everything, and the ones who do are attorneys working in that narrow end of the music business. Even label and publishing execs who have been in the business for 20 or more years can […]
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Spotify recently announced that it was getting into the original content business by launching 12 new shows, and guess what? They’ll all be on video. According to the company, the video shows will be “centered around three main themes – music performances, music profiles and music culture,” and the episodes will be up to fifteen minutes long. The foray […]
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User generated videos must be a really big business because another huge online player just jumped into the arena with YouTube and Facebook. Yesterday Amazon announced the launch of its new video posting service, called Amazon Video Direct, in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Japan. The launch partners include Conde Nast Entertainment, HowStuffWorks, Samuel Goldwyn […]
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If you’re trying to boost your fan base or engagement online, then you’re probably doing at least a little social media marketing whether you like it or not. The problem is that the best practices do change over time as social media and user trends evolve, so in order to get the most out of […]
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While Apple Music has garnered 16 million paid subscribers rather quickly since its launch last year, the service hasn’t been without criticism, especially about its ease of use. Despite being a huge company, Apple does listen to its customers though, and as a result, it’s been reported that Apple Music is about to receive a needed […]
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I’m a big proponent of virtual reality, especially when the audio is done well, and many have predicted that the technology will eventually be a boon to concerts. We’re going to see soon enough as virtual reality concerts will actually begin to roll out this summer. NextVR, which has been a leader in VR broadcasting […]
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If you were to listen to a week of nothing but radio, you’d think that all we listen to in the U.S. is pop and country music. If you were to read a week’s worth of the music news, you might think that dance/electronic/EDM was close to the top of the heap in what we […]
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Since 2008, Record Store Day every April has been a huge hit. In fact, many in the music industry feel that it’s been a big reason for vinyl’s resurgence, calling attention to a side of the business that had been essential dead and buried and has now returned to a level of surprising growth. Even […]
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Radiohead has always been groundbreaking when it comes to their online presence (the “pay what you want” campaign for In Rainbows being a prime example), but now it’s entered some new territory by slowly but effectively erasing its entire online presence. Yes, that’s right. It’s pretty hard to find any trace of Radiohead online right […]
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Nielsen’s latest music report is out and, as always, it’s very revealing about what we listen to in the U.S. Perhaps it’s biggest revelation is that, for the first time, old music (known as catalog sales) outsold new music in 2015. Catalog is defined as a music release that’s more than 18 months old. Of […]
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Doing a great cover version of a hit song has been a successful tactic in helping to raise the visibility of an artist or band for some time, but that practice may soon come to an end thanks to new efforts by iTunes, Spotify and other streaming services. More and more, digital streaming services are […]
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It looks like all the naysayers were wrong. Apple reported on its recent earnings call that its Apple Music streaming service was now up to 13 million paid subscribers and still growing. Much of that growth has come recently in fact, as it was reported that 2 million subscribers signed up since February alone. The present growth looks to […]
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