TuneCore Acquired By Believe Digital

Digital music aggregator Tuncore, one of the pioneers in that area of the music business, has been acquired by Believe Digital for an undisclosed amount. Believe is the French version of Tunecore only larger, operating in 29 countries.

Both companies will reportedly retain their current staffs and continue operating as normal, but will now be owned by a new corporate entity called Tunecore & Believe Digital Services.

The new company is now a heavyweight in music aggregation, reportedly responsible for 25 to 30% of all uploads to iTunes every day.

This merger may turn out to be a significant upgrade for artists currently signed to Tunecore.

Tunecore company stresses services more for the DIY artist who does everything for himself, while Believe is known for its artist hand-holding. The company features departments for marketing, radio promotions, and project management - all the services usually provided by a record label.

Of course, those services are all for hire, but just the fact that they're available is a step in the right direction for many artists that don't have a clue what to do after they finish recording and uploading their songs.

Usually mergers and acquisitions like this are to the detriment of the end users. This time it may turn out to be a giant positive for artists and bands everywhere.

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10 Ideas Of What Digital Music Will Look Like

The famous J.Walter Thompson advertising agency recently created a report called "Things To Watch: Music Edition" that outlines what to expect in the music space during the next decade. Here are a few of the things that they determined:

1. Access Over Ownership: The tide has turned on subscription music and we will all soon prefer to stream our music from a subscription service rather than buy it and download it.

2. Capturing Over Collecting: Instead of collecting records, CDs and digital downloads of our favorite music as we did in the past, we'll now capture where we can find the music online instead.

3. The Celestial Jukebox Is Here: Services like Spotify and MOG have captured our musical imaginations thanks to instant access to millions of songs and a new way to discover new music.

4. The Battle Of Personalized Radio: We're at a tipping point of how we consume music, especially via the radio. Personalization of what we listen to is the key to the future of music consumption.

5. The MP3 Player- RIP: With the massive shift to streaming subscription music, the days of the MP3 player are numbered.

6. Coming Soon To A Device Near You: Internet music access will soon be commonplace in the car and home entertainment gear.

7. Sharing Your Playlists Will Reach A Tipping Point: While personalization from a service like Pandora is getting better, it still can't beat what a human can come up with. Soon all companies will make available our playlists so that we can see what our friends are listening to.


8. The Facebook Effect: Listeners connected via Facebook have initially been found to be a lot more engaged, therefore Facebook can actually amplify the effects and popularity of a song or artist, becoming a new avenue for breaking an artist or for promo.

9. They'll Be A New Set Of Influencers: Bloggers have held sway over the popularity of an artist or blog until now, but that influence will be decreased thanks to a new set of music experts, thanks in part to Google's new "Magnifier."

10. Aggregators Help Music Discovery: New aggregator services like WeAreHunted.com or TheHypeMachine.com will collect data from around the web to help consumers discover what's new.

These are only about half of the insights for the future of music that the report sited. You can check out the entire slide show on Slideshare.

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