Copyright and publishing law is complex enough, but once remixed enter into the equation, the amount of gray area can often double. Here Chris Robley details some of the complications that exist, and what steps you should take to make sure a remixer is compensated appropriately.
The shift from brands and advertising to pipes and subscriptions is inevitable — and well underway. Want proof? Look to Disney.
Source: Laying the Pipes of a Post-Advertising World – NewCo Shift – Medium
We were once responsible for describing our own tastes, which meant we sometimes lied about them. At the very least, we had strategically selective memories.
But streaming services have put an end to that. Each year-end now brings massive number dumps from the likes of Spotify and Netflix, as if to remind us exactly how much personal information they can hoover up through users’ relationship to entertainment. Perversely enough — and to a strange acclaim in the world of creative marketing — these two digital giants have used their extensive findings to roast their outlying customers.
Source: How Brands Turned Trolling Into a Marketing Strategy
As subscription based services begin to occupy an increasingly large section of the market, artists are wondering how they can better get in on the action. Here we look at why a subscriber base would be so valuable to artists, and some of the challenges in creating an artist-specific subscription base.
Source: Why Subscriptions Matter To Musicians [Jack Udell] – hypebot
Songs are getting shorter. The average length of a song on the Billboard Hot 100 fell from 3 minutes and 50 seconds to about 3 minutes and 30 seconds between 2013 and 2018.
6% percent of Hot 100 songs were 2 minutes 30 seconds or shorter in 2018, up from 1% in 2013, according to an analysis published by Quartz. From Drake and Kanye West to country superstars Eric Church and jason Aldean, songs are getting shorter.
Source: Songs Are Getting Shorter and Streaming Is To Blame – hypebot
As the world’s biggest consumer tech show wraps up, here’s what Apple, Google, and other giants who made news tell us about tech in 2019.
- Google and Amazon continued duking it out for title of most virtual assistants listening to the most people on the most devices. It’s been a multi-year battle, once led by Amazon, quickly matched by Google, and now escalating between these two companies like a new cold war.
- The biggest news is that Apple–fresh off devastating quarterly earnings that showed iPhone growth has tanked–is making a bigger effort to be interoperable with third-party products, and make its services accessible without using Apple devices themselves.
- When I took a ride in Waymo’s first driverless taxi last year, I noticed something interesting: The app interface doesn’t show your route–it just shows the start point and end point. I joked to one of Waymo’s product developers that it had already designed its interface for flying cars. They laughed, but only a little. Perhaps because that’s exactly the kind of thinking that the mobility industry is doing, now that self-driving technologies are maturing and digital ride hailing has been figured out. The way we move is only going to keep changing.
Source: The 3 biggest trends at CES 2019
Having established itself as a top streaming service with now over 200 million users, Spotify this year is preparing to focus more of its attention on podcasts. The company plans bring its personalization technology to podcasts in order to make better recommendations, update its app’s interface so people can access podcasts more easily, and broker […]
Source: Spotify’s increased focus on podcasts in 2019 includes selling its own ads | TechCrunch
Garrett Hardin’s Science article “The Tragedy of the Commons” 50 years ago focused on a physical world where common goods are finite and rivalrous. By contrast, this paper explores the digital commons, calling for better understanding of its long-term impact and for government policies supporting benefits while mitigating costs.
From TVs you can roll up like a poster to 5G networks that are finally getting real, these are the biggest trends we expect to see at CES 2019.
Pandora is considered the world’s most powerful music discovery platform, using algorithms to determine which music to play to a subscriber at any given time. The question is how do they do it so successfully?
We already know Alexa had a good Christmas — the app shot to the top of the App Store over the holidays, and the Alexa service even briefly crashed from all the new users. But Alexa, along with other smart speaker devices like Google Home, didn’t just have a good holiday — they had a great year, too. The smart speaker market reached critical mass in 2018, with around 41 percent of U.S. consumers now owning a voice-activated speaker, up from 21.5 percent in 2017.
Source: Smart speakers hit critical mass in 2018 | TechCrunch
What to expect from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more
Radio streaming service Pandora and popular photo sharing platform Snapchat recently unveiled an exciting new partnership where users of both platforms will be able to share their Pandora listening habits over Snapchat, all in hopes of increasing engagement.
Spotify turns 10 years old this Sunday October 7th. On that day, T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” was the #1 song, Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” the #1 album and a Scandinavian startup had just launched a service that would change music and the music industry forever.
One of the most valuable types of data for artists and labels is demographic information on exactly who is listening to their music. This is why a new deal being struck between Spotify and Nielsen Research could have implications for not just advertisers, but also artists.
Source: Spotify, Nielsen Deal May Mean More Money For Artists – hypebot
Political and technological destabilization have fed off each other since the nation’s founding. Now they are dangerously out of whack.
Source: Opinion | The Hacking of America – The New York Times
The spoofing could erode the veracity of widely respected Billboard chart metrics, especially since the fan campaigns appear to be getting more sophisticated.
Source: Fans Are Spoofing Spotify With “Fake Plays,” And That’s A Problem For Music Charts
The streaming era has arrived in the music business, but the music business has not yet fully arrived in the streaming era. Labels, publishers, artists, songwriters and managers are all feeling – to differing degrees – the revenue impact of a booming streaming sector. However, few of these streaming migrants are fundamentally reinventing their approach to meet the demands of the new world. A new rule book is needed, and for that we need to know which of today’s trends are the markers for the future. This sort of future gazing requires us to avoid the temptation of looking at the player with the ball, but instead look for who the ball is going to be passed to.
Source: How Streaming Is Changing Shape of Music [Mark Mulligan] Part 1 – hypebot
The streaming service has been making deals with independent artists. Could it change the music industry as we know it?
Source: A New Spotify Initiative Makes the Big Record Labels Nervous – The New York Times
Pop singer? YouTube star? Cult leader? Whoever she is, Poppy is taking over the internet.
Source: Welcome to Poppy’s World | WIRED
