In 2012, I wrote a piece for this website breaking down the payments my first band, Galaxie 500, was receiving from streaming services, which were just starting to become a dominant force in the music industry. Spotify had sent songwriting royalties of $1.05 for the 5,960 times our single “Tugboat” was played that quarter—split between…

In little over 12 months’ time, Spotify will be out of contract with all three major record companies. Universal, Sony and Warner all inked 24-month deals with the streaming platform last spring/summer, MBW understands – with Warner the last to put pen to paper in August. One of Spotify’s biggest victories during these 2017 negotiations…

EMT 140 Plate Reverb The EMT 140 plate reverb was a game changer. Before its arrival, you needed a big studio to record in or a plastered room with a speaker and a mic(s) in it to generate artificial reverb after the fact. These days, reverb is a contemporary music production essential available at the…

Radiohead has been so good for so long that it is almost obnoxious to make this argument in public. (I’m sorry.) Depending on how you define its peak—say, from 1995’s The Bends to 2007’s In Rainbows—Radiohead remained the consensus pick for largest and best band on the planet longer than any other claimants to the…

Spotify will be the default music service on all future Samsung devices Spotify has announced a new “long-term” partnership with electronics manufacturer Samsung, making the streaming platform the “go-to music provider” across all Samsung devices going forward. The partnership includes the brand’s newly announced Galaxy S9 smartphones, as well as the Galaxy Home smart speaker,…

It’s a truism as old – and as bankable – as the pop business itself: getting signed to a record company does not mean you’ve ‘made it’. In fact, the odds of doing so after you ink that contract are greatly stacked against you. In the annals of labels around the globe, you’ll find plenty…

The LP fan base may make a lot of noise, but digital will eventually kill analog once and for all. Someday. An audio buddy recently asked me, “When will the LP bubble burst?” and I was at a total loss for words. The thought had never crossed my mind. Back in the early 1980s it…

A new piece of research reveals that playing piano for six months can noticeably improve a child’s language skills. The study, published on 25 June by PNAS, found that some areas of a child’s brain can benefit from early musical training. Compared to children who read, those who learned to play piano were much more…

It’s the question that drives music companies crazy every day: how do you grab the attention of young people… and then actually make them care about your artists? One answer, of course, is to hammer streaming playlists, YouTube channels and online media with as much promotional and marketing ammunition as you can afford. Another answer,…

We live in the era of branded partnership and sponsored content. With Google and Facebook reaping the lion’s share of online ads, media companies have scrambled to partner with major corporations to buoy their bottom lines. It’s a reality that can be often grotesque, as brands and media entities often maintain starkly clashing ideas about…