Packaging Band Member Remains A New Way To Sell Albums

Negativland Don Joyce remains

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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November 1, 2016

Mastering Engineer Gene Grimaldi On Episode #133 Of My Inner Circle Podcast

Gene Grimaldi

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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October 31, 2016

Avenged Sevenfold And Warner Music Test The 7 Year Rule

Avenged Sevenfold 7 Year Rule

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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Music Industry News Roundup For The Week Of 10/28/16

Music Industry News Roundup

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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October 26, 2016

Will We See Higher Royalty Rates From SiriusXM Soon?

siriusxm

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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Dirk Ulrich From Brainworx And Plugin Alliance On Episode #132 Of My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

Dirk Ulrich

Dirk Ulrich is the founder of 2 great music plugin companies, Brainworx and Plugin Alliance, but his journey into software development involved an extensive stint as a studio owner and producer first. In this interview, we talk about some of the company’s very cool plugins, Dirk’s outlook on the future of plugins, as well as […]

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October 24, 2016

11 Popular Artists Still Not Streaming

Bob Seger 2013

Billboard recently posted a very interesting article about 11 artists, some major, that still can’t be be found on a streaming network. While you have to admire that they stand for their principles, it does seem to be a somewhat dated view, since streaming has not only become a major source of income for previous […]

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Music Industry News Roundup For The Week Of 10/21/16

Music Industry News Roundup

Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup from the week of October 21th, 2016. It’s some pretty good news for the recorded music industry, more on music subscriptions and some interesting lawsuits. Let’s get to it. The music business has seen a lot of growth this year. Up 3.2% globally and more than 8% in the […]

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How Fan’s Video Copies Sold Adele’s “Hello”

Hello video copies

We all know how powerful video can be when it comes to having a hit, but a recent analysis of Adele’s “Hello” by Pexeso really drives the point home that video copies play a huge part in fan awareness. The site tracked the hit song over a period of 101 days, starting on its October 22nd release […]

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Amazon’s Actually Losing Money From It’s New Music Service

amazon-losing-money

The major record labels are adamant about keeping the price of a music streaming subscription at $9.99 per month, regardless of the platform, so it was a great surprise last week when Amazon announced that its new Amazon Music Unlimited service was priced at $7.99 per month for Amazon Prime members. It turns out that the […]

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October 18, 2016

Mike Dias From Ultimate Ears On Episode #131 Of My Inner Circle Podcast

Mike Dias

If you’re like me, you don’t have a huge amount of experience with in-ear monitors. I’d just gotten fitted for a set, and thought it would be a great idea to find out as much as I could about them, so I asked Ultimate Ears sales director Mike Dias to come on this week’s podcast […]

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How Video Views On Various Platforms Are Counted

video views

Video views are an important measurement for not only artists and bands, but record labels, advertisers and sponsors. A high number of views can lead to not only to label and sponsor interest, but also has a snowball effect of more viewers wanting to watch as well. When it comes to monetizing video views though, the problem […]

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Music Industry News Roundup For The Week Of 10/14/16

Music Industry News Roundup

Here’s the Music Industry News Roundup from the week of October 14th, 2016. Streaming is back in the news this week as Amazon and Pandora both launched new services. There’s so much more though that you could easily have missed. Let’s get to it. Amazon finally launched its stand-alone streaming service. But is the company […]

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Don’t Be Fooled By Amazon Music Unlimited’s Price

amazon music unlimited

Amazon has finally launched it’s long awaited stand-alone streaming music service and it’s called Amazon Music Unlimited. On the surface it has a number of interesting features that differentiate it from the other major streaming services, but one has to wonder whether potential users will find them compelling enough to subscribe. Perhaps the service’s biggest […]

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