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Here’s your monthly dose of what we at DigitalRadioTracker.com are finding interesting this month as Spring is finally happening. Hope these articles help you improve your music industry life and your life in the world as a whole. And remember, DigitalRadioTracker.com can help you see where any song is being played, worldwide, at digital (internet) radio...and some terrestrial stations too, as an added plus! Did we mention Worldwide?? Woo hoo!!
The Odds Of An Artist Becoming A 'Top Tier' Earner On Spotify Today? Less Than 1%. Daniel Ek wants Spotify to flatten the ‘gatekeepers’ of the traditional music business. In doing so, he says, the platform will grossly improve the amount of money that a great swathe of artists are making from their craft. Ek offered some revolutionary patter at Spotify’s Investor Day in New York earlier this month, where he boldly informed his audience that his service “doesn’t believe in gatekeepers” – before laying down a thrilling, scene-stealing proclamation: “Our mission is to enable one million artists to live off their work.” [continued...click here] https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/the-odds-of-an-artist-becoming-a-top-tier-earner-on-spotify-today-less-than-1/
How The Sound Of Country Music Changed Evolution follows a familiar pattern in plenty of popular music genres. Fearless newcomers or agile established stars with credibility to burn veer from the dominant aesthetic, adopting approaches to music-making that come off as savvy correctives to what everyone's used to hearing. And if what they're doing really begins to catch on, bits and pieces are absorbed into the mainstream, subtly or significantly shifting the genre's center, before something completely different comes along to catch the public's ear. Just think of how many hip-hop trends, from the street-hardened fatalism and stark beats of trap music to the punchy, triplet flow spawned by Migos' experimentalism, have bubbled up from the underground, and eventually even altered the feel of mainstream pop. [continued...click here] https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/03/20/594037569/how-the-sound-of-country-music-changed
Inside The Booming Black Market For Spotify Playlists Tommie King could be the next rapper to breakout from Atlanta. He’s well-connected, has obvious swagger, and he’s been quietly building a successful collection of singles on Spotify. His latest, " Eastside (featuring Cyhi The Prynce)" has already clocked more than 110,000 streams, driven largely by its placement on 14 independent playlists. [continued...click here] https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/spotify-playlist-black-market/
SoundExchange Passes $5 Billion Mark in Streaming Royalty Distributions With its December 2017 distribution, SoundExchange passed the $5 billion mark in cumulative digital royalty distributions since the company was founded in 2003. The company distributes royalties for the digital performance of sound recordings to more than 155,000 recording artists, rights owners, session musicians and background vocalists. Last year it diversified its offerings to include services for the music-publishing community in addition to its core business managing digital sound recording performance royalties. [continued...click here] http://variety.com/2018/music/news/soundexchange-passes-5-billion-mark-in-streaming-royalty-distributions-1202728206/
The Spotify Numbers You Won't Have Seen One of the core values that we deliver to our clients at MIDiA Research is finding the ‘third number’— the data point that wasn’t reported by a company but that can be arrived at through a process of modelling and triangulation. Next week, we will publish a report that does just this for the numbers presented in Spotify’s F1 filing. The metrics we arrive at help create a more complete picture of Spotify’s performance for investors and rights holders, as well as the impact of core metrics upon other parts of Spotify’s business. In advance of its publication, here are just a few highlights. [continued...click here] http://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/the-spotify-numbers-you-wont-have-seen/
How a Group of Journalists Turned Hip-Hop Into a Literary Movement Greg Tate is bundled up in a peaked beanie, bright yellow scarf, and plenty of padded layers. His threads offer protection from the chill setting down on the Harlem streets outside, streets that have offered a home to a galaxy of Black American icons—from Duke Ellington to Cam’ron—across the last century. When a little-known mixtape track by local rapper Vado starts to pour out of the speakers, Tate breaks from his salmon salad to shake from side to side. At 60, one of the most influential hip-hop writers to ever strut these curbs still keeps his ears wide open. https://pitchfork.com/features/article/how-a-group-of-journalists-turned-hip-hop-into-a-literary-movement/
Why It Matters Where and How Gen Z Girls Listen to Music With a lot of focus on the millennial generation (roughly 18- to 34-year-olds) now getting into buying big-ticket items like houses and cars, it’s probably time someone took a look at what the next generation is up to. That would be Gen Z, comprised of children up to age 18 or 19 (the definitions are fluid). http://247wallst.com/media/2018/03/09/why-it-matters-where-and-how-gen-z-girls-listen-to-music/
Pandora Doubles Down On Ad Tech With Acquisition Of AdsWizz For $145 Million Pandora announced this morning it’s acquiring digital audio ad technology firm AdsWizz for $145 million, as a combination of at least 50 percent cash, with the remaining paid in either cash or stock at Pandora’s discretion. The company, whose technology will be used to upgrade Pandora’s own ad tech capabilities, will continue as a subsidiary headed by CEO Alexis Van De Wyer. https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/21/pandora-doubles-down-on-ad-tech-with-acquisition-of-adswizz-for-145-million/
Music Junkie? Here Are The 25 Best Music Apps For Consuming And Creating Tunes If you lump them all together, there are probably no fewer than a zillion different music apps between Google Play and the App Store. Those aren’t exact figures, but based on our independent research, we estimate that the number is somewhere between a zillion and a jillion. So as a smartphone user, you have access to just about any type of music program imaginable, from internet radio and streaming apps, to guitar tuners and portable DJ stations. https://www.yahoo.com/news/music-junkie-25-best-music-114806526.html?
Music Royalties 101 Listen closely to the next song you hear and you might be able to pick out a sound that’s part of neither the written music nor the performance. If you listen just right, what you’ll hear is the sweet ka- ching of music royalties being paid to those who bring us the melodies and lyrics. But, like a club DJ’s crossfade, music royalties are in transition, sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the better. As some distribution channels fade in importance, others increase in value and acceptance. Those changes present challenges for all stakeholders, including lawyers, advisors, producers, lenders, investors and, of course, creators and music publishers — the entities that generally administer song catalogs. https://www.aimp.org/UserFiles/USC%20SPOTLIGHT%20-%20INAUGURAL%20ISSUE%20edit(1).pdf
Everything In Its Right Place: How Blockchain Technology Will Lead To A More Transparent Music Industry I’ve now written two columns focusing on crypto currency (dominantly Bitcoin) and its potential utilization in the arts generally, and music specifically, to engender better tracking and transparency. These articles have generated conversation, but I’m left with a strong sense that—while many people (a lot of whom profess to be experts) have very strong ideas and opinions about the relative merits and possibilities of crypto currency—there are depressingly few direct examples of the utilization of this technology affecting change with respect to transparency or accounting in art/music. https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/03/exclusive-excerpt-everything-in-its-right-place-ho.html?
Thanks for tuning in to this month’s DRT feeding of your mind! Remember, DigitalRadioTracker.com is the leading broadcast monitoring company in the world that monitors Internet Radio stations streaming in cars, smart TV’s, smart refrigerators, airplanes, cell phones, tablets and other electronic devices such as smart speakers like Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod, & Google Home.
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