One of the pieces of advice that artists and songwriters hear pretty constantly from indie vets is to get your metadata in order. The reason why is that in order to get paid, organizations that collect the money have to know who you are and how to get hold of you first. That’s why collection […]
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Composer, producer and music supervisor Doug DeAngelis is my guest on the podcast today. Doug hit paydirt early in his career when he recorded the Nine Inch Nails hit “Head Like A Hole.” In 1989, he embarked on a world tour with the Detroit Techno crossover dance artist Inner City, but after that he moved on […]
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The recent Copyright Royalty Board ruling that increased songwriter’s royalties by 44% was met with great satisfaction by both writers and publishers alike. The streaming services are not so happy though, as Spotify, Google, Pandora and Amazon have all teamed up to appeal the decision. While each organization filed a separate appeal, Apple Music has […]
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A few years ago it seemed inconceivable that Korean Pop music, known as K-Pop, would ever break in the U.S. Many had tried but most seemed to fizzle, but that all changed this year with boy band BTS having not one but two Billboard 200 #1 albums in the last year, and 6 other acts […]
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Facebook Live is a boon to artists and bands everywhere who want to reach their Facebook fans. That said, there are some best practices in using the platform, according to Facebook’s Media Blog. Here’s what they suggest: 1. Alert friends and followers in advance about plans to broadcast live, in order to build up anticipation. 2. Ensure […]
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You have to hand it to Pandora – the company is still trying new things to differentiate itself from the competition. The latest feature is its version of Stories, a new format which marries music tracks to podcasts in a single playlist. Artists can use the feature as well by making a playlist of their […]
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My guest on the podcast today is CD Baby’s VP of international development, Heli Del Moral. Before coming to the company Heli worked in television as international director of marketing for ESPN and Univision where he won 3 Emmy awards, and numerous Telly, Promax and other honors for his creative efforts. In the interview we talked about the strength […]
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Over the last week Spotify has been in the news again regarding its contentious entry into the Indian market as publisher Warner/Chappell Music (WCM) tried its best to block the launch. This has turned what would have been almost a back-burner story into front page business news, but many don’t understand the significance for all […]
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If you speak with record executives, they’ll tell you privately that one of their biggest concerns is the fact that many artists are no longer interested in signing a recording contract. Thanks to the current DIY nature of the business and the fact that labels are more and more only considering “finished products,” artists no […]
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We’ve gone through a mighty change in the music business over the last 10 years, and it keeps on morphing and evolving every day. Since these changes are constant, many of the old school rules pertaining to success in the music business no longer apply. Here’s an excerpt from the latest edition of my Music […]
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Recently I posted about a group called Fastball having a difficult time collecting from the crowdfunding site Pledge Music. There appears to be many more that fall into that category as artists from Queensryche to Blacktop Mojo have since posted apologies on their social media pages because of Pledge Music-related payment and delivery issues. Variety […]
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Amphion loudspeakers have become a favorite of award-winning mixing engineers the world over, and founder and CEO Anssi Hyvonen is my guest on the podcast today. Anssi spent most of his life as a hi-fi enthusiast, but he got into building speakers sort of by accident. His speakers are very well respected by that community, but acceptance […]
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The 3 major record labels are all reveling in their good fortune, as streaming numbers and revenue are way up over the previous year. Indeed, Music Business Worldwide (MBW) estimates that it’s up more than $1.5 billion for the majors just from streaming. That may be all well and good, but physical product is still […]
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The streaming music service Tidal announced that it’s launching a new program called Tidal Unplugged intended to support emerging artists. The program is funded by a donation from venture capitalists and philanthropists Mark Lampert and Robert Nelsen in the amount of $1 million, and will kick off March 1st in Detroit. If selected, the Tidal […]
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It used to be that we were amazed when a video reached a billion views on YouTube, but did you know that there’s been 154 videos that have reached that mark already? In fact, more than 30 videos have reached 2 billion, and one is just shy of 6 billion views! The interesting thing is […]
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