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…

Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” is eternal. Anyone born after its release in 1967 might assume the song had existed since the Big Bang; it’s the kind of music that you cannot pinpoint hearing for the first time because it sounds like it’s always been there. But if you were alive and listening to the radio the…

Because nothing says, “Fuck yeah, metal!” like meticulously curated data analytics, Spotify reported to shareholders this week that rock mainstays Metallica have apparently been using the service’s info to help plan its tours. According to the company’s CEO, Daniel Ek, the once-internet-hostile band has been using data from the service’s streaming info to figure out…

Sony’s recorded music revenues hit $1.93bn in the first six months of calendar 2018 – up $200m (or 11.3%) on the $1.73bn posted in the same period of 2017. That’s according to MBW’s calculations based on Sony Corp’s newly-published results for its fiscal Q1 (calendar Q2) ended June 2018, converted into USD at constant currency….

It’s all there in the syncopation, the cryptic words, the dark vibes: ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was Paul McCartney’s art song masterpiece. The lyrics: So, where did most composers of art songs and Lieder get their lyrical ideas from? Literature, mythology, yes… but mostly it came from life experience. Emotions, artistic extrapolations of the self, that kind…

It’s been a couple of months, and I still can’t talk to Alexa. My Amazon Echo Dot, the hockey puck-shaped smart speaker that emits a pale blue glow when asked a question or given an order, sits dormant in my office. It’s not because I dislike talking to machines. I’m a dictation expert on my…