Grammy-winning engineer Mark Linett certainly has an interesting background. From stints at the famed Sunset Sound and Warner Bros Amigo Studios, to work with Brian Wilson, Rikki Lee Jones, Los Lobos, Michael McDonald and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, he’s seen it all. But that’s only the start. Mark owns one of the coolest studios […]
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I know that you’ve gone to a concert to see your favorite artist and wondered why or how the opening act was chosen. The fact of the matter is that most times, they’re not chosen at all – they buy their way onto the tour, which has become known as a “buy-on.” Whether a buy-on is worth […]
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Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup for the week of November 11th, 2016. The news was rather slow this week, probably due to the election. That said, there’s still plenty of news, especially on the record label front. Let’s get into it. Universal Music’s streaming revenue has topped $1 billion this year already. And streaming is just getting […]
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Your place in our current music world is totally dependent upon the development, care, and feeding of your fanbase, and this excerpt from my Music 4.1 Internet Music Guidebook will help you better understand your audience so you can grow it. First of all, understand that your core fans or “tribe” is only a piece of […]
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It’s safe to say that if you’re involved in music, the last thing you think about is making war. That’s why it comes as a great surprise to discover that the world’s largest arms dealer, Lockheed-Martin, owns 184,000 shares of Pandora worth almost $2 million. To be sure, this is a drop in the bucket […]
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If you’re lucky enough to have worked on a variety of music projects, you’re no doubt aware that many times you don’t receive the necessary credit. Even worse, sometimes everything from IMDB to Wikipedia gets your credits wrong. Something has to be done to make sure that the information is correct and thorough. That’s why […]
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Neil Young pulled his music off of every streaming service in 2015 because of the poor sound quality in favor of his own Pono service, but in a reversal, now he’s back. Although last May his music was made available on Tidal, now it can be found on both Spotify and Apple Music. Pono was […]
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Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup for the week of November 4rth, 2016. We’re coming to the end of the year, and as a result, starting to see a number of year-end stories. And it looks like the piracy argument will never die. Check it out. YouTube Red is a bomb. It only managed to sign up […]
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Rarely does one chart say so much about how an industry goes as does this one from Fortune. It’s the revenue generated by the recorded music business over the last 40+ years, and it shows the staggering loses that it suffered with the onset of digital music, as well as how the industry has responded to […]
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Sales of physical product are declining year after year yet record labels, artists and bands continue to release them. As formats that you can hold in your hand become much less desirable, it’s more difficult to get the public interested in purchasing them. The experimental San Francisco band Negativland has found a way to go beyond the usual value-adds included […]
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Most mastering engineers start in recording before they transition into mastering, but Gene Grimaldi took a different route, beginning his career at Sony’s New Jersey CD pressing plant instead. But Los Angeles called and Gene’s mastering journey began at the venerable Future Disc, from there eventually working his way up to chief engineer at Oasis Mastering. […]
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California has an interesting law on the books called the “7 Year Rule” that releases employees from a personal services contract, like a record deal, after 7 years. Th was actually part of a law that was enacted way back in 1872 as a way to protect the then burgeoning entertainment industry and helped to […]
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Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup from the week of October 28th, 2016. As always, it’s a mixed bag of different industry items that caught my eye. Let’s do it. Pandora lost a lot of money and listeners in the last year. The company may be transitioning to a full interactive platform, but it could be […]
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If you’ve released some music recently and are surprised at how low the stream or view counts are, there are a lot of things that you can blame, but probably most of them aren’t at fault. Before you can fix the problem, you have to look inward first. Here are 3 reasons why your music […]
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Low royalty rates are something that concerns every artist, label, songwriter and publisher. The good news is that they’re gradually rising, and since there are more paying subscribers to streaming services every year, the revenue pie is also getting larger. This may take an even better turn if the proposed new rate increase that SoundExchange wants from SiriusXM […]
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