Hit-making songwriters and producers reveal the ways they are tailoring tracks to fit a musical landscape dominated by streaming.   A romantic guitar unfurls a tender melody. Male voices bark shout-outs and then croon like they’re auditioning for “American Idol.” There’s an electronic whoosh. A rat-a-tat vocal phrase. And that’s all before “Despacito” even really starts….

To understand the power Instagram holds for the music industry, look no further than Beyoncé’s baby bump. If you were anywhere near the internet on February 1 of this year, you likely saw the now famous photo of the pregnant diva looking out behind a green veil. But the viral photograph wasn’t clandestinely shot for…

Have DJs finally found a way to create new mixes from high-quality stems? For years, DJs, producers, and remixers have had to rely on non-legal stems to create mixes of popular songs.  Now, music creators may finally have a legal way to create and legally distribute remixes. Following a landmark deal with Sony Music, Nashville-based…

Though YouTube wasn’t created to be a streaming music service, the Google-owned platform remains the single most-used website in the world to listen to music legally. While competitors like Spotify and Apple Music are growing by leaps and bounds, the majority of music lovers all around the world still prefer to head to YouTube to…

We are facing a firehose. Data spews at us from all angles, inundating us with ideas, culture, and creativity. We produce terabytes of information a year, changing the world as we know it. We are the most culturally aware generations in existence. Or are we? An interesting recent post on Marginal Revolution post gives lie…

I wasn’t always sold on Cardi B. But in 2014, when she came through my Instagram feed with her viral clip “a hoe never gets cold,” it made me snicker; no one wants to pay for coat check at the club. A year later, when Cardi joined the cast of “Love & Hip Hop,” I…

Whenever a musician or fledgling recording engineer decides to create his or her own studio, the journey seems to begin by poring over gear catalogues to choose the sexiest mics, preamps, compressors and EQs. It’s a common tendency to want to outfit one’s studio with the most glamorous and coveted gear because everyone knows that…

The first big music event at your venue will introduce you to the ins and outs of everything that can and likely will go wrong with hosting this type of event. While it will be important to take many notes on how your venue could do things better, it is not impossible to get a…

Performances are slated to kick off later this year with more to follow in 2018 Nearly 25 years after his death, Frank Zappa will return to the stage as a hologram for a series of concerts with his former sidemen. The first concerts – produced by Eyellusion, which previously created a touring Ronnie James Dio…

In September 1997, Capitol Records made history by releasing Duran Duran’s “Electric Barbarella” as the internet’s first-ever digital single for sale, heralding a massive shift in how the music industry operates Twenty years ago this month, in September of 1997, Capitol Records became the first major label to sell and digitally distribute a single from…