Today we released the second installment of our two-part series on the state of the summer music festival, “Summer Festival Fever Spreads From Newport to Tennessee — The Summer Music Festival Part 2”
Continue reading “Summer Festival Fever Spreads from Newport to Tennessee – The Summer Music Festival Part 2”
In the first half of a two episode series on the business evolution of summer music festivals, Larry Miller interviews George Wein, founder of the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals. On the 50th anniversary of when Bob Dylan “went electric” and the 60th anniversary of Miles Davis’ debut, 90-year old impresario George Wein shares vivid memories and insights on Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan — along with musical moments and a discussion on the business influence of his summer music festivals. The Newport Folk Festival is this weekend, July 24-26. The Newport Jazz Festival is the weekend of July 31-August 2.
It’s a truly special interview with one of the most influential music programmers of the 20th century, and we hope you enjoy it.
Continue reading “George Wein and the Newport Legacy – The Summer Music Festival Part 1”
Episode four is here, and it’s just in time for the launch of Apple’s new music streaming service, Apple Music.
Apple Music launches Tuesday, and we’re taking a deep dive into what the app will mean for the industry. We look back at Apple’s prosperous relationship with music, from the first iPod ad through to last month’s WWDC keynote and launch announcement. We’ve got a ton of great guests. Josh Friedlander of the RIAA chats with us about the emergence of the streaming industry, and artist manager Emily White gives us a view into Apple’s relationship with artists. Dick Huey of the Toolshed marketing agency sheds light on what stats to watch in the wake of Apple Music’s launch, and David Pakman sits down for an insightful chat about what success will look like for Apple Music.
Continue reading “Apple, Music, and the Launch of Apple Music”
Taylor Swift is more powerful than we could have imagined.
Sunday, Swift penned an open letter to Apple, condemning the Cupertino company’s decision not to pay artists royalties for music streamed during Apple Music’s 3-month free trial. She ended the letter with a firm charge for Apple’s decision-makers: “Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.”
Continue reading “Apple’s Swift Turnaround: Episode 4 is On The Way”
Apple’s announcement of Apple Music, as anticipated, sent tremors of excitement, curiosity, and fear across the music industry. With the service set to launch in just 11 days, the lines of support and discontent are being drawn in predictable places.
I’m sure you’ve heard the news. A few days ago at WWDC in San Francisco, Apple finally announced a streaming service that might actually be a competitor. After years of research, posturing, acquisitions, and rumors, the Cupertino tech leader will launch Apple Music.
Continue reading “Apple’s Streaming Service Finally Unveiled, Promptly Under Investigation”
Episode 3, “What’s a Mixtape Anyway?” is now live!
On this episode we look at the economy of the mixtape in hip-hop. The mixtape has been a staple in the hip hop world since the dawn of breakbeats — but how has it’s role in the music ecosystem changed since those early days? To figure it out, we take a look back at how the mixtape was born and what it has evolved into. Alyse Howard of The Urban Coin brings us a special report on how Nipsey Hussle and the Wu-Tang Clan and have used artificial scarcity to create demand and drive pricing. And Larry Miller chats with Billboard Senior Editor Gail Mitchell about what it means to release a mixtape in today’s music economy.
Tech website The Verge last week leaked a 41-page licensing agreement from 2011 between Sony and Spotify that shed light on some of the ways that Sony keeps their Spotify revenue growing, and some of their strategies have been met with a less-than-cordial reception by a number of artists and the International Music Managers Forum. But that was just the start to what’s turning out to be a bad week for the the second-largest record company in the world.
Continue reading “SoundCloud Strategy & Leaked Licensing Contract is a PR Problem for Sony, Spotify”
Yesterday Pandora announced the acquisition of Next Big Sound (NBS), a company that specializes in monitoring the popularity of music on social media and the internet at large. It’s a big move for Pandora, as they follow suit with Apple and Spotify, who both acquired similar companies last year.
For anyone watching the music analytics space and here at Musonomics, this is a big deal. What does this mean for Pandora? Data, and improved music recommendations for Pandora’s 79 million users. Information is invaluable to streaming services and what started as a side project for founder Alex White and his partners while they were at Northwestern has quickly turned into one of the industry leaders in music analytics. More important is what it might mean for NBS’s many clients throughout the music industry. Although a Pandora representative said that there would be “no immediate changes” in how NBS works with its existing clients, after Spotify acquired the Echo Nest last year, Rdio and many other EchoNest clients who compete with Spotify immediately dropped the Echo Nest from their roster of data providers.
The biggest surprise of all is who the buyer wasn’t — Nielsen, a company that has enjoyed a virtual monopoly on US music sales data since its acquisition of SoundScan, and has been growing its arsenal of complementary data services on music sales and downloads, radio listening and music broadcast on radio.
In his New York Times story on the acquisition of NBS, Ben Sisario mentioned Pandora’s frosty relationship with the music industry over the rates it pays for music. It is unclear how NBS will help on that front. But it won’t hurt.
Grooveshark, the Florida-based illegal music streaming site, was officially shuttered in April following a lengthy litigation process resulting in a federal court ruling against them for massive, willful copyright infringement. As part of their settlement with the major labels, Grooveshark agreed to cease operations, wipe clean all of the record companies’ copyrighted works, and hand over ownership of the Grooveshark.com domain, mobile app and intellectual property, including all patents and copyrights. It was a terminal blow for Grooveshark.com, but since that site came down a number of clones have popped up across the web