November is almost gone, and with it go memories of turkeys, pumpkin pie, and annoying family members. The last week of November was packed with notable industry news, like a German court’s anti-piracy ruling, or The Guardian’s look at Adele, Drake, and the one-album-per-year model. Also in this week’s Monday Reading List, a blog post about new music that sounds old, Nonesuch Records gets a new co-president, and SeatGeek launches a new marketplace.
On November 26th, Germany’s Federal Court of Justice upheld a legal ruling that states that Internet service providers must block access to copyright infringing websites. Dr. Haralk Heker, CEO of German collection society GEMA praised the ruling:
“Finally we have legal clarity on the permissibility of blocking access to websites illegally offering copyrighted music works on a massive scale. This is a major step forward in the fight against Internet piracy.”
Over at The Guardian, Derrick Rossingol has penned a great essay on the one-album-per-year tradition, and how Drake proves that perhaps no one but Adele should still be following that model. The basic idea is that artists need to keep a more constant interaction with their fanbases than they did before, and only the upper crust of established artists can safely step back from that cycle without sacrificing potential sales and fan engagement.
In a blog post for New Slang Media, Chris Price takes a dive into the inherent troubles of music discovery when the music you’re trying to discover sounds like “old music” — artists like Leon Bridges and other “old souls.” Chris Price outlines the way different services make recommendations and highlights the way that they are ill-designed to pick up and recommend these types of artists.
http://www.newslangmedia.com/solving-the-discovery-problem-new-music-that-sounds-like-old-music/
David Bither, long-time senior vice president of Nonesuch Records, has been named co-president of the label, effective January 1st 2016. Bither has been responsible for the signings the Black Keys, Emmylou Harris, Wilco, Laurie Anderson, Rhiannon Giddens and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Youssou N’Dour and Robert Plant. Label president Bob Hurwitz announced in September that he would be moving away from the day-to-day operations of the label.
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/6770215/david-bither-named-co-president-of-nonesuch-records
SeatGeek was already a great way to purchase tickets, but now it’s a great way to sell them as well. SeatGeek has relaunched their marketplace, and now users have the ability to list and sell tickets they already have. Perhaps the days of sketchy Craigslist ticket scalping are finally numbered.