In the the spring of 2009, iLike had 45 million registered users and was the #1 music application on Facebook. "Is There An iLike Effect?", we asked then; and the answer was yes. The #1 and #2 albums on iTunes were Keith Urban's "Defying Gravity" and "Gavin Degraw's "Free" - two releases with nothing in common except that both debuted exclusively on iLike. Today the social music network officially closed, with the url redirected to MySpace.

Continue reading “Remember iLike? The Social Music Network Officially Died Today” »

Music industry pundits often declare that radio is dead. In fact, its just evolving, as it has for more than 120 years. The team at wireless hi-fi manufacturer Sonos understand that. In fact, they're powering part of  radio's latest incarnation. So they've created an infographic that illustrates radio's evolution from 1892 through social radio phenomenon Turntable.FM.

Continue reading “Radio: From Tesla To Turntable.fm [INFOGRAPHIC]” »

The Hypebot Music Industry Jobs & Internships Board is attracting a growing number of music companies with great jobs and internships. For just $29 for 30 days industry leaders like Sonos and MTV are featured on Hypebot and related sites across the Simply Hired network.

FEATURED MTV JOB:

Continue reading “On Hypebot’s Job Board: Executive Ass’t @ MTV” »

Guest post by Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

We know, sleevefacing is sort of five minutes ago, but it remains a meme of note. The basic idea behind sleevefacing is to create a photograph that picks up where an album cover leaves off by adding surrounding elements from the real world. It's not easy to explain, but one look at the photo to the left should clear things up.

Continue reading “Sleevefacing: There’s an App for That” »

Let me admit up front that what follows is not serious investigative journalism. It's just that anyone who has been in the music business longer than Mark Zukerberg's been a billionaire knows that Scott Ambrose Reilly (aka Bullethead) throws a heck of a convention party.  (I dare you to play all night poker with him at SXSW.) So when Billboard wrote about companies cutting back on Midem parties and used a photo of an empty room at Scott's X5 Music party as the poster child, I did some digging.

Continue reading “Does This Midem Party Look Like A Failure To You?” »

A two-year legal battle between the Radio Music License Committee and ASCAP re: royalties paid on an annual basis has been settled. The new agreement scales back payments by 3%, which will lighten ASCAP's coffers by $8OM in 2012.

Continue reading “The Week In Music Publishing 2.3.12” »

Sister Sledge Files Class Action Against Warner Music Over Digital Royalties. (Hollywood Reporter)  Band members and actress-songwriter Ronee Blakley are lead plaintiffs in a suit alleging potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue from digital download sales.

Continue reading “News Brief: Digital Music Class Action vs. WMG, ReDigi + Google, Sony Slumps, Rhapsody & More” »

http://mashable.com/2012/02/01/pinterest-traffic-study/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

 

Continue reading “Pinterest” »

Adding another social network to your day can feel like the straw that broke the camel's back.  But more and more stats are suggesting that you ignore Google+ at your peril. It took Facebook almost a year to reach a million users and 4 years to reach 100 million. But according to Business Insider, it took Google+ just 2 weeks to reach 10 million, and less than 1 year to reach 100 million. The Chart:

Continue reading “Not On Google+? It’s Growing Faster Than Early Facebook Did [CHART]” »

In the modern music industry, songwriters are finding less money from album sales and more from the collection of all sorts of royalties. Bands like the Black Keys, who spent over a decade trying to break through to the mainstream, finally did so with the help of placement of their songs in commercials for TV and film. Continue reading “Top 30 Sources Of Songrwiter Royalties & Fees” »

The annual Global Economic Survey released by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), shows gross royalty collections growing 5.5% in 2010 over the previous year. The uptick stands in stark contrast to some sectors of the entertainment industry and the overall global economy. Key figures for global collections:

Continue reading “Global Royalty Collections Climb 5.5% Despite Economic Downturn” »

TuneCore informed its clients today that AmazonMP3 had pulled all of their recordings from sale in the UK and European Union. "Amazon removed your recordings as a result of an issue regarding royalty payments by Amazon to TuneCore customers," according to the flat fee digital music distributor.

Continue reading “AmazonMP3 Pulls All TuneCore Tracks In EU & UK, Distributor Alleges Payment Issues” »

Spotify and other streaming services were the talk of the Midem conference which just wrapped up in Cannes. During the gathering, U2 manager Paul McGuiness labeled Spotify as nothing more than a “promotional medium”, while Sony’s Denis Kooker claimed that streaming services “do not cannibalize sales”. 2011 saw Spotify's reach widen and it subscriber base increase considerably, but how does this affect independent artists?

Continue reading “Spotify’s Royalty Rate For Indie Artists Up Just $0.001 In 2011, Despite Big Subscriber Growth” »

On his last day as Chairman of Warner Music Group, Edgar Bronfman Jr. sat down for an interview with Peter Kafka at the D: Dive Into Media conference. During the session Bronfman promised that WMG would fight Universal's purchase of EMI "tooth and nail". On Apple, Bronfman admitted "it was a great deal for Apple...and not a great deal for music," but he saved some of his strongest words for Google.

Continue reading “On Last Day As WMG Chair, Bronfman Takes On Apple & Google, Promises EMI Battle [VIDEO]” »