Of the litany of things you can buy for $10 — a sandwich, a box of pens, and a print magazine among them — unlimited access to a catalog of 50 million songs is one of the most bang-for-your-buck options out there. But that’s how much music-streaming subscriptions have cost …
Read More »Future 25: Brooke Michael Kain, Chief Digital Officer at AEG Presents
Brooke Michael Kain spends a lot of time thinking about what annoys people in crowds the most. What do they find frustrating? Ineffective? Ridiculous? She then preaches the same question over and over to her team: How can we take these things away? “Did you stand in line for a …
Read More »Deezer Launches Initiative for 'User-Centric' Approach to Distribute Royalties
Deezer, a Paris, France-based music streaming service, has launched a new initiative to illustrate how it hopes to pay artists in the near future. The company asserts its “user-centric payment system” (UCPS) “would make the industry fairer for artists all over the world,” according to a statement. To inform users …
Read More »Audiomack Announces Official Partnership With Warner Music Group
The streaming service Audiomack announced its first partnership with a major label, Warner Music Group, on Thursday. In an interview, Audiomack co-founders Dave Macli and David Ponte said the partnership reflected shared priorities: Both the streaming service and WMG are interested in identifying talent early and helping it reach a …
Read More »The $1 Billion Waiting For Artists Who Know Where to Look
Before touching down in Austin to perform at the annual South by Southwest music bacchanal this year, folk-pop duo Lily & Madeleine received a curious email from their manager. It said that, while at the festival, the two artists should make sure to go talk to a small industry group …
Read More »Album Sales Are Dying as Fast as Streaming Services Are Rising
In 2018, Best Buy decided to stop selling CDs, with the change partly brought on by record labels’ increasing reluctance to even issue them.Both choices are symptoms as well as causes of a seemingly inevitable trend:Buying music is now going out of style nearly as fast as streaming music is …
Read More »Sony's New Concert Venue Is Also a DIY Recording Studio
Sony has set up shop on Mulberry Street in New York’s Soho neighborhood this winter — not with a store, but a pop-up concert venue that doubles as a immersive recording studio offering “multi-dimensional audio technology” for people to create their own songs for free. For the third installment of …
Read More »Rap Is Leading the Music Industry's Resurgence
Here’s music to everybody’s ears: The U.S. record industry – which is only just beginning to recover from a dismal two-decade slide – continues to be on the upswing. In the first half of 2018, total consumption in both streams and sales grew 18 percent, according toNielsen’smid-year reportreleased Friday morning. …
Read More »Spotify Admits Its R. Kelly Ban Was 'Rolled Out Wrong'
It took Spotify only two weeks to backtrack on its tendencious new policy around hateful speech and conduct. In hindsight, CEO Daniel Ek now concedes that the streaming service “rolled this out wrong and we could have done a much better job.” On May 10th, Spotify, under new rules around …
Read More »As Spotify Prepares to Go Public, Music Industry Divided on Royalties
Spotify‘s plan to go public, filed last week, could generate $23 billion and make the world’s biggest record labels hundreds of millions of dollars richer — but the Swedish streaming giant has yet to soothe grumbling and litigious artists and songwriters who say its royalty payments are unfairly low. “They …
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