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NEWS BRIEF: Eminem Sues Facebook, Sony Explores Spinoff, RIAA Cuts, Interlude +$16M, OK Go & More

WEDNESDAY 5.22.2013

Music Business News & Views From Around The Web

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1 Month After Launch, Twitter #Music App Is Officially A Flop

Just a month after launch, Twitter's entry into the music space appears to have fallen flat.  As if today, the app languishes as the 113th most popular free iOS music app.  To provide perspective as to how poorly that means #Music is doing, several years after launch Spotify and Pandora remain #1 and #2; and something called Sing! Karaoke is the 9th most popular free music apps.

Could Flickr Become The Next Big Social Network For Musicians?

Yesterday's news that Yahoo is buying Tumblr is certainly big for musicians given the widespread usage of Tumblr for music blogs often as an adjunct to an official website. But it also overshadowed Yahoo's relaunch of Flickr, a fading giant making a comeback at a time that might be ideal for musicians who've taken to services like Instagram and/or who see the possiblities in content marketing via Creative Commons licensing.

Please Find Lost Music And Return It Via The Web

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

The Legendary 'Disco Indian Stories' tape is not online and nobody seems to know where it is.

It’s easy to get the impression these days that everything under the sun is now just a few clicks away on the internet — that is, until you look for something that’s not there.

New Report: Making Freemium Music Services Pay

A new free report from MIDiA Consulting by Mark Mulligan takes a look at some of the challenges facing freemium web services including Pandora, Spotify and Deezer. From "free being too good" to customer churn, "Making Freemium Add Up" is well worth a read to see how freemium businesses are responding to the challenge of making free pay. The report itself is available for free to subscribers of Mark Mulligan's Music Industry Blog.

Pandora Launches Premieres: Full New Album Previews

Pandora today announced the launch of Pandora Premieres, free stations that stream full upcoming album releases up to a week prior to going on sale. Pandora Premieres are updated weekly and will feature previews from both established and emerging artists across multiple genres.

As of this morning, only two albums were featured:

The 4 Places You Should Be Entering All Of Your Concert Dates To Increase Concert Attendance

Wondering how to get connected in the live music scene? Not sure where you should be focusing your promotion efforts? Jesse Cannon lists and exposits four resources you should know about on Music Think Tank.

Spotify Adds Most Viral & Played Charts, Track Counts

The rollout began several days ago, but now it's official: Spotify has added song play counts to every artist's top tracks, showing their total number of global plays since October 2008. Initially rolling out for the desktop client, play counts will be added for all Spotify users in the coming weeks. Alongside the track counts, the music streamer has also launched two Spotify Charts.

Spotify's 50 Most Played & Shared Tracks [U.S. & UK]

Spotify launched two new charts this week in each of the 28 markets that it serves.  Macklemore & Ryan top this week's most played track in the U.S., but Five Finger Death tops the most shared songs. In the UK , Daft Punk tops the most played chart, and Hoodie Allen has the most shared track. The Charts:

NEWS BRIEF: XBox Launches, Last.fm Adds Videos,BeatDecks Launches Free Analytics & More

TUESDAY 5.21.2013

Music Business News & Views From Around The Web

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Lively Launches Concert Recording & Sales App

Launching today, concert recording and sales app Lively offers a simple way to record and sell live recordings immediately after the show. Available for Android and iOS, Lively is led by startup veteran Dean Graziano.

When Is The Best Time To Post On Social Media? [INFOGRAPHIC]

You spend hours every week to craft the right tweets and Facebook posts.  You're even pinning photos and graphics. But you're not getting results.  One reason may be the time of day that you post.  Every social media outlets has it's optimal posting times. Nothing replaces your own testing, but this infographic offers a great place to start. 

Potential Of Direct-To-Fan Realized By Few Bands

By Kyle Bylin (@sidewinderfm), founder and editor of sidewinder.fm, a music and tech think tank.

Direct-to-fan marketing tools and services continue to hold a lot of promise. They enable artists to connect with their fan base and sell their products directly to them. But has the full potential of these tools and services been realized? Who is realizing it? What part of this potential has yet to be fulfilled? In this interview panel on direct-to-fan marketing, four influential executives in the music and tech industry weigh in on the potential of direct-to-fan.

Tips From A Start-Up Guide For Musicians

The Unsigned Guide's newly released "A Start-Up Guide" includes tips on "sending your demos out successfully, how to get your music & videos featured on blogs and the basics on music publishing and how you could be earning money from it." The three short articles in Part 1 of this free digital zine cover some solid basics and make for a quick interesting read.

The Pros And The Cons Of Google Play Music All Access Subscription

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

I set out this morning to built a chart listing the various features of the major music subscription services: Rdio, Rhapsody, Spotify, and we assume the recently-launched Google Play Music All Access, although it remains to be seen whether it will succeed on the level of those standalone music services — or whether it will become an also-ran from a company whose main business is something else (like Microsoft XBox Live Music, Sony Music Unlimited, or “MOG by Beats“).

10 Great Tips For Home & DIY Recordings

Are you looking to develop your own recording space, upgrade your current equipment, or simply want to get the most out of what you already have? Rajiv Agarwal outlines 10 helpful hints for maximizing the quality of your recordings on Music Think Tank.

Soundhalo Turns Live Concert Videos Into Impulse Buys During The Show

Soundhalo is a brand new service for taking live concert video recordings and transforming them into mixed single song videos for immediate sale. It's an interesting hybrid that's currently being offered as an Android app that allows purchases during the live show. DRM-free concert files are then available for viewing on any device. Sounds like a potential winner on impulse buys if Soundhalo can pull off some formidable challenges.

Spotify Adapts Audio Formats To Listening Platforms

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

Recently, CNET reported on an extension for Google’s Chrome web browser that let people scrape songs off of Spotify’s web player, for free, and save the music as MP3 files. This was obviously fairly problematic and possibly illegal, as far as browser extensions go, so Google hastily deleted the app from its Chrome app store in short order, and then Spotify closed the loophole.

NEWS BRIEF: Yahoo! Buys Tumblr + Reaction, iRadio Stalls, Bloom.fm Innovates, Kobalt Inks Prince & More

MONDAY 5.20.2013

Music Business News & Views From Around The Web

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The Week In Music Commentary

• David Hahn Explains Why The Internet Is A Bad Place To Discover Music
• Kyle Bylin Asks Can Pandora Find A Business Model That Works?
• Extremely Decent Video: A Comedic (And Sadly True) 'Real Life' Look At A Facebook Updates
• Upward Spiral Podcast #23: 10 Years of iTunes With Solveig Whittle [Part 2]
• Clyde Smith Maintains Music Leads The Way In Return To Analog
• Kyle Bylin Considers the Perils of Conflating Music Listeners and Music Fans

 

Getting It Done: The Week In D.I.Y. & Indie Music

• Prediction: Major Label Will Aquire DIY Distributor
• Music Crowdfunding: Sam Tsui Kickstarts Debut, Songkick Detour Expands, JOBS Act For Labels
• The Tools of Music Fan Engagement [Part 2]: Newsletters

Direct-to-Fan

• The Early Beginnings of Direct-To-Fan: How Grateful Dead and Phish Made It Happen
• 3 Bottlenecks Holding Direct-To-Fan Marketing Back
• Direct-To-Fan Campaigns Don’t Diminish Album Release

MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: Who Needs A Record Label?, 3 Simple Ways To Cut Through The Noise & More

• Cut Through the Noise: 3 Simple And Effective Ways for Musicians to Get Noticed
• Who Needs a Record Label?
• The Rise of the Musicpreneur (Part 3/3)

REWIND: The New Music Industry's Week In Review

• Does iTunes' Daft Punk Album Premier Demonstrate Its Marketing Strength?
• Infographic: How We Discover And Consume Music
• Music Sponsorships Top $1.28 Billion In 2013
• With Murder For Hire Charges Looming, As I Lay Dying Cancels Tour
• Google Takes On Spotify & Pandora With New Streaming Music Service
• Kyle Bylin Releases Divergent Streams: Reflections and Explorations of the Modern Music Industry

Vote In The O Music Awards: From Digital Geniuses To Favorite Musical Cats

Voting has begun for the O Music Awards with the opportunity to nominate wild card contenders for the Awards' cutting edge mix of categories. Open nominations continue through May 21st with a 24-hour livestreamed awards ceremony and party taking place June 19th.

The O Music Awards offer a typically eclectic array of contenders. Some nominations still have room for nominees and you can vote for those through Tuesday using a complicated system of hashtags and hand gestures.

Direct-To-Fan Campaigns Don’t Diminish Album Release

By Benji Rogers (@BenjiKRogers) founder and CEO of the direct-to-fan company PledgeMusic.

Direct-to-fan tools can — when used to maximum effect — become the thinnest skin between the artist and fan. The full potential is possible and exists; but only a fraction of the artists and labels out there use it.