Round-up of music industry and music tech news June-July 2019

#MusicBiz #MusicIndustry #MusicNews

Could The Beatles Survive In Today’s Music Industry? Here’s What Yesterday’s Cast Says

In Yesterday, the question of what the world would be like without the music of The Beatles takes a sort of backseat to the notion of what it might be like if those classic songs were debuting in a modern context. Through the eyes of the film’s main character Jack Malik, played in his feature film debut by Himesh Patel, we see how the world of 2019 reacts to the music of The Beatles for the very first time.

The Bowie Theory and the music business: Alan B. Krueger’s Rockonomics

Few industries are beset with urban myths like popular music. People who are actively involved devote an inordinate amount of brain power to the question of how to make a crust in the biz – those fortunate enough to make a living need to have hawk-like vigilance to keep the good times rollin’.

So when voice speaks with such authority, and is so piercing with clarity, it’s best to pay heed. The voice belongs to the late Alan B. Krueger. He was a Princeton professor and leading economic adviser to Barack Obama. Rockonomics is his analysis of economic trends in the music industry and how they’re reflected in the wider financial landscape.

It cuts through some of the more opaque elements of the modern music industry, dispels tall tales and presents us with some genuinely surprising statistics.

iTunes shutting down: when and why it’s happening
Essentially, iTunes is splitting up its responsibilities amongst three children apps, and they’ll continue on its legacy in a hopefully easier-to-use fashion. And Apple, the “it just works” company, seems intent on making sure that this transition causes no undue burden on Mac users as they get used to shifting to new kinds of media apps.

Apple has published a support document that answers many of the lingering questions from the WWDC reveal, including what each app will do and how your existing iTunes content will be handled by those new apps. Unsurprisingly, just about everything should happen automatically.

The Music Industry Successfully Shuts Down Convert2MP3

The music industry continues to score victories in its fight against major music pirates.

Starting a major offensive against music piracy several months ago, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has managed to shut down numerous popular websites.

8 Music Industry Jobs Your Band Needs To Understand

So, throughout my work as a music industry marketer and educator, I’ve found that there’s often a lot of confusion surrounding the various terms for different roles in the music business. It’s really tricky to find concrete info for this – especially in the metal space

The Music Industry Signs a Pledge Against Fake Streams

Spotify, Amazon, Sony, Warner, Universal and other major players in the music business jointly condemn streaming manipulation
Streaming manipulation – the practice of artificially inflating stream counts to produce false listening data – is the music industry’s hot-button issue at the moment. On Thursday, an assortment of music publishers, record labels, royalty-collection societies and other groups signed a code of conduct condemning fake streams and pledging to work together to eradicate them, marking the industry’s first collective agreement on the issue.

10 Tips for Making it in Today’s Music Industry

Dear Indie Musician, You’re Not Going to Make It Well, there is ONE secret…

It’s harsh, it’s brutal, but it’s also true. As an independent musician, you’re not going to “make it.” What do I mean by “make it?” Like, playing arenas, living in a mansion, and owning your own plane? Nope, those days are long gone, even for many signed artists. I mean, can you “make it” by simply running a band, recording albums, touring, paying your rent, maybe buying a house, having a kid, all while earning money through artist music? No, it’s over. What’s worse is that it’s largely not by accident.

The Gig Economy is Burning Out the Music Industry

In May, Record Union released the 73% Report, so named for the 73% of surveyed musicians who reported suffering from “…negative emotions such as stress, anxiety and/or depression in relation to…music creation.”

Though this number would set off alarm bells in any other industry, it does not register the same shock in the music world. Sure, we grieve the untimely passing of artists like Scott Hutchinson, Chris Cornell, and Mac Miller, but these tragedies are never wholly unexpected. Such is the nature of the limelight, recalibrating otherwise grim realities into idealized, widely-circulated stereotypes: instability is seen as freedom, substance abuse is fuel for an energetic performance, melancholia marauds as creative fodder, recklessness is just misplaced passion.

Tips for making it big in the music industry

If you’re a young music-maker hoping to take the pop world by storm, this is the best of times and the worst of times to make your bid for glory.

The music industry has undergone a convulsion in recent times as CD sales have slumped and streaming services have risen in popularity.

That has created new challenges, but also new opportunities.

First, the bad news: a lot of other people have the same ambition.

“There are 20,000 tracks being uploaded to Spotify every day,” says Amelie Bonvalot, head of digital at Domino Recording Company.

20 of the most Prolific Music Producers

Behind all our favourite songs are the music producers – the masterminds that bring the songs to life. But who are the best of the best?

We’ve looked at 20 of the most prolific music producers of all time, tracking their impressive careers over the years. Between them they’ve worked on thousands of records, helping produce some of the most beloved hits of the past 60 years.

How Wikimedia UK is working with the music industry to improve Wikipedia

Why should the music industry engage with Wikipedia? Firstly, they already do, but often they don’t do it very well, and get content deleted which they add to artists’ pages because they don’t follow the site’s guidelines. Second, a Wikipedia page is important in that it gives legitimacy to especially smaller artists, helps them get booked, and gives their fans a quick way to find out about them. Wikipedia biographies are also used by sites like BBC Music and Spotify, where artists can choose to link their artist page to their Wikipedia page.

Sky Ferreira calls out ‘gaslighting’ music industry execs on Instagram

‘The entertainment industry is filled with underqualified bullies and morons with way too much power for their own good’

Sky Ferreira has taken to social media to express her disappointment in the music industry. On Instagram, she wrote: “I signed contracts when I was 15 and I’m still paying the consequences for it. Every contract I have ever signed has always been set up to take advantage of me/my work in some way.”

She continues: “I have been mentally abused countless times. Gaslighting is a go-to tactic. Suffering isn’t currency for having the opportunity to do what you love for a living.”

As Piracy Significantly Declines, Italy’s Music Industry Association Reveals the True Problem — Spotify and YouTube

“The main issue here isn’t piracy. It’s how to convert people from free YouTube and Spotify accounts to premium services.”

He explained that Italy is a country where the ‘culture of free’ remains firmly planted in users’ minds.

Nearly 90% of music consumers in Italy use YouTube alone to stream their favorite songs. This leads to lower conversions – and thus lower payouts for labels, publishers, songwriters, and artists, among many other parties

Why Independent Musicians Are Becoming The Future Of The Music Industry

Stereotypes of professional musicians tend to stick to one pole or another — they’re either a world-famous, arena-touring troubadour with a luxurious lifestyle, or they’re down on their luck playing in a dive while forgoing a “normal job.”

Take a look at reality and you’ll find plenty who are something in between: the independent artist who aims to make their living off of their music and finds a variety of ways to do so.

No, Streaming Is Not Saving the Music Industry

A decade after losing half of it’s revenues due to piracy, record labels are now only getting back up to half of what the peak business was in 1999. Digital Downloads will account for less than 10% of recorded music revenues by the end of the yearThe fundamental problem remains that all that revenue falling out though the bottom leads to advertising funded piracy and YouTube. Many have suggested that YouTube is effectively the largest ad supported piracy platform.

We’ve been hearing an alarming narrative that “record labels are making more money than ever from streaming, but they’re just not paying musicians”. To be clear, we certainly have our issues with major labels, however we also need facts and to be truthful.

The truth is, that a decade after losing half of it’s revenues due to piracy as reported by CNN (click here), record labels are now only getting back up to half of what the peak business was in 1999. Half of where we were in 1999, twenty years later. Let that sink in. As unpopular as he was twenty years ago, Lars Ulrich was right.

What Every Musician Should Do Before Releasing an Album or Single
In the Ultimate Album Release Checklist will find information about digital and physical distribution methods. How to get artists profiles on Spotify, iTunes and YouTube. How to sign up for a PRO, get copyrights and collect royalties. Learn about sales tracking and Billboard music charts. How to set up preorders and the new Spotify Pre-saves and Apple Music Pre-adds. Tips on how to get a musician’s Knowledge Graph panel on Google’s search engine results page. And, some cool new growth hacking tools for musicians.