Category: Music Industry

Some sharp comments from a great guitar player…

Internet radio tuning in

Who says people aren’t passionate about radio? I think the comments to this article are absolutely great! People want a sense of integrity and diversity from broadcasters and one of the places they’re finding it is online.

Two very nice posts by Andrew Goodrich over at Artists House Music:

Are Music Industry Stats Relevant to You?

More On Music Industry Stats and Relevance

Be sure to check out the link to the Neilson’s 2009 presentation at NARM.  There are some very interesting numbers in their report…

Trent Reznor recently posted this to his blog and I think he’s absolutely right on with most of his points! Everything he says makes sense to me… but speaking as an independent artist myself, I feel that his suggestions, as good as they are, are hugely time consuming. I spend an enormous amount of time (in my opinion TOO much time) in front of a computer.

Still, I suppose we’re lucky as independents to have sites like ReverbNation and BandCamp that can help lessen the amount of grunt work we have to do and can at least do some of what Reznor was talking about. Maybe this is simply the reality that artists have to deal with today — loads of computer work… On a side note, Derek Sivers (CD Baby founder) has started a new company (MuckWork) to deal with this exact issue. I hope he can make the company fly…

Okay maybe this isn’t really “news” anymore, but still it’s interesting to see the kind of money some artists are making playing corporate gigs.

All rock stars have a price, even Mick Jagger

http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/player-dest.swf

This is embarrassing on so many levels. It’s embarrassing that the record industry pursued this case this hard. It’s embarrassing that the jury awarded $1.92 million in damages. But mostly, it’s embarrassing that instead of talking about an exciting, new record, the focus is still on file sharing.

“This really is high stakes, if this can’t work then what will,” he (Jupiter analyst Mark Mulligan) said.

Yes, this truly is high stakes. For $16.30-$24.50 (US) per month, Virgin Media broadband customers will be able to stream and download an unlimited number of tracks. Right now the service only has the Universal catalogue, but apparently they’re hoping to add more labels by the time the service is launched.

Of course, for something like this to work there are a lot of ifs, but it’s certainly something that has some real potential. At the very least, it shows creative thinking and an interest in risk taking from Universal and Virgin.

I can’t say I agree with everything U2’s manager Paul McGuinness says in this interview, but his comments sure garnered a lot of response.

Irving Azoff And The “De-Monetization” Of The Music Industry

I think a better title would have been: “Irving Azoff And The “De-Monetization” Of The Record Industry”. Still it’s a good article and Azoff made some interesting comments. Two that stick out to me are:

• “Recorded music is more a marketing tool than a revenue source”
• “Recorded music is down to less than 6% of major musical acts’ revenues.”

The first comment I’ve heard many times before, but the second one is new to me. I have no way of knowing if his 6% number is correct or not, but even if he’s under by 100%, recorded music is clearly not making up a very large percentage of “name” acts’ income.