Friday, March 4, 2016

Facebook's Still Growing

Facebook logoRecently there have been reports that not only has Twitter use peaked, but it's even beginning to fall, with active users dropping from 330 million down close to 200 million.

That's a good example of what typically happens with social networks, where they're hot for a few years and then replaced with something newer and hipper.

The exception so far is Facebook, which continues to grow despite predictions that its use plateaued long ago. Indeed, it's active users are now up to 1.59 billion, and incredibly, still growing.

Facebook shared the following statistics regarding it's growth (especially in advertising) in an email to SocialTimes:
  • There are more than 43 billion connections between people and businesses on the social network.
  • Southeast Asia is the fastest-growing region, and the top five countries in terms of year-over-year growth were the U.S., Brazil, the U.K., Italy and Australia.
  • 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook per day.
  • There are 1 billion users on Facebook Groups.
  • 80 million users on Facebook Lite.
  • 500 million users on Events and 123 million events were created in 2015.
  • More than 1 million advertisers on Facebook are creating ads via mobile devices.
  • More than 20 million active pages are using the social network’s Pages application.
  • More than 70 percent of Facebook’s 3 million-plus advertisers are outside of the U.S.
  • More than 50 million small and midsized businesses are currently using Facebook pages, and more than 80 percent of the social network’s users in the U.S. are connected to SMBs. More than 2.5 billion comments are posted on those pages each month.
  • The top three verticals building Facebook pages are services, local commerce and e-commerce.
You may find that more of your fans are currently on other platforms, but ignore Facebook at your own peril.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Your Music Won't Be Played In China Anytime Soon

No Western MusicChina is one of the most populated countries in the world with over 1.3 billion people, 75% of which listen to music regularly.

That said, the revenue generated by music is stunningly small (see the chart composed of data from the IFPI) and it looks like it's not going to increase anytime soon, at least for Western artists.


Only 10% of the population currently listens to non-Chinese music and that's going to drop, thanks to the government's recent declaration that any kind of content from foreign media companies will be blocked starting March 10th.

Companies like Apple and the New York Times who have invested millions in China just may be out of luck, and if your music or content was aimed that way, so will you. The big windfall that China promised may never take place after all, thanks to the protectionist policies of the Chinese government.

Then again, if the video below is what they consider hip, then maybe we're not missing anything anyway. It's a communist corruption rap featuring president Xi JinPing.


Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Tidal's In Big Trouble

Tidal Music StreamingWhen Jay-Z bought the music streaming service Tidal last year the purchase was met with a lot of hope and controversy.

Hope because he was an artist and successful businessman who could steer the company in the right direction. Controversy because of the initial tone-deaf press conference where a who's who of artists were trotted out, all saying that they'd finally be getting their financial due now that Tidal was here.

Since then it's been all downhill. Just in the last 30 days:
  • Tidal exclusively released Kanye West's latest album The Life of Pablo, which gained no traction on the Billboard charts since Tidal refused to release any of the user data to Nielsen. A total embarrassment for all.
  • Yesterday Tidal was served with a class-action lawsuit for $5 million for failing to register and pay mechanical royalties to an artist in the U.S. This is exactly the same type of lawsuit currently pending with Spotify, and one that an "artist's company" would be expected to avoid.
  • Today it's being reported that Tidal fired both its COO and CFO, after having fired it's CEO late last year. At this point, the company is left without any experienced leadership.
Jay-Z has reportedly been in talks with Samsung to buy Tidal, but one wonders why that company would even want it, since it already has a failing music service in Milk Music.

Tidal could have been an innovator and leader in the streaming sector, but instead it's just a mess. It's lead in hi-res music streaming was never exploited and even acknowledged once Jay-Z took over, and every month there's a new mis-step. Maybe Jay-Z isn't the businessman he's cracked up to be after all.


Tuesday, March 1, 2016

MP3Skull Owes The RIAA $22 Million

MP3SkullWhen it thinks that there's copyright infringement going against its major label clients, the RIAA shows no qualms about slapping a lawsuit on the service, and it usually wins.

That was the case recently when the association won $22.2 million in damages from the filesharing site MP3Skull, a site that supplies download links to songs by popular artists.

The damages were determined by multiplying the 148 songs submitted as evidence by $150k each.

In this case though, the RIAA might not collect a dime since the identities of the owners is totally unknown.

MP3Skull now operates from the MP3Skull.yoga domain, and it has moved from .com and .to domains when they have been blocked via previous court orders in the UK.

Although the ruling allows the RIAA to size the domain, it can't get at the assets if it doesn't know where they are and who they belong to.

Here's the thing though - with streaming just about everywhere these days where a user can listen to any song at any time, why would anyone be bothered with downloading a pirated song?

The lawsuit may end being a moot point, but at least it shows that the RIAA is doing something to warrant the big bag of money that its clients put into it.


Monday, February 29, 2016

YouTube Now Lets You Selectively Blur The Screen

YouTube custom blurring imageYouTube videos are so incredibly powerful that every artist and band has to do them in order to both engage their current fan base and also to expand it as well. That said, many artists shoot randomly and never think of the consequences of not getting releases from people and places in the video.

There are times that people and venues want money for using their name and likeness. That used to require a reshoot, which wasn't always possible, until now. YouTube now gives you the tools to selectively blur any part of your video for maximum anonymity.

Way back in 2012 YouTube launched a face blurring tool, but the current update allows other things to be blurred out in the video like license plates, phone numbers, wardrobe malfunctions, disturbing imagery, etc.

You draw a box on top of the part of the video that you wish to blur, and then the feature will track the object as it moves throughout the video. You can also choose when the blurring begins and ends.

This update is only available on the desktop version of YouTube at the moment, but they promise that the mobile version update will follow soon.

Here's a video that shows how to do it.




Friday, February 26, 2016

Volvo Adds Phone-Free Spotify

Almost all new cars are blue-tooth enabled so you can stream music from your smartphone, but any driver who's tried this knows how clunky it can be while driving, let alone dangerous.

Volvo is making music streaming a lot easier by integrating Spotify directly into its new XC 90 SUB, S90 sedan and V90 wagon this spring.

All you need is a Spotify premium account to get going, and as the video below explains, it's pretty easy to use and doesn't require a smartphone to use. Is this the way of the future for car audio?

Read more about it here.



Thursday, February 25, 2016

Maybe Piracy Hasn't Gone Away After All

Just when you thought music piracy was over comes this study from Music Watch which claims that there are more people stealing music than ever.

Most studies contradict this notion (which is what I believe myself), but the following infographic takes an interesting look at the situation. It's short on data, but this article does give a lot more detail.

Note that it was also published a year ago, and the streaming world has certainly gone up a notch since then.




Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Rock Still Isn't Dead According To A New Study

Music genresWe keep on hearing that rock is dead as a music genre, but that's not the case at all, according to a study by Nielsen Music. Surprising, rock came out on top when it comes to genres of music that people consumed in the US during 2015.

If you listen to the radio, pop music dominates, but it's only #3 when it comes to favorite music. Also surprising was the fact that country and dance/EDM scored lower than other genres.

Here's what the study found.

   Rock 29%
   R&B/Hip Hop 17.2%
   Pop 14.9%
   Country 11.2%
   Dance / EDM 3.4%
   Christian Gospel 3.1%
   Holiday / Seasonal 2.6%
   Latin 2.6%
   Jazz 1.4%
   Classical 1.4%
   Children 1%

It just goes to show that in these days of music consumption online, it's more difficult than ever to determine what's really hot and what's really not.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Will Music "Windowing" Become The Norm?

Music Windowing imageWhen Adele released her latest album 25, it wasn't officially available on most streaming services, which certainly helped her attain some healthy sales. Now nearing 20 million sales worldwide, many label execs have taken notice and want to institute the same policy with other artists as well.

Known as "windowing," the strategy has been used in the movie industry for some time. That's where a film is released on in the theaters for a period of time, and only allowed to go to rental and television only after it's finished its theater run.

The music version of windowing would have a superstar album release be only available via CD or download for a period of time before being released to the streaming services.

While that sounds all well and good on the surface, it also sounds like an industry pulling at straws in hopes of peeling back the flow of time. It won't work for a few reasons:

1. Consumers have now adapted to streaming and they're not going back. They expect to be able to find the music they want on their platform of choice right now and if your latest release isn't there they'll just move on.

2. Adele is a special case, with sales propped up mostly by soccer moms and baby boomer women (Sony did a study) who are predisposed to buy a CD or download.

Windowing is a bad idea, and while I don't think it will ultimately get any traction, it's only pushing back the inevitable. Streaming is here to stay until the next new technology is upon us, so let's all get used to it and maybe even enjoy it.


Monday, February 22, 2016

MySpace Purchased by Time, Sort Of

MySpace Sold Again imageMySpace is back in the news again, this time because it's just a small piece of a bigger deal where its parent company has been purchased by big media player Time Inc.

The company was just one of the companies owned by Viant, which is a big player in online ads. Viant also owns the Specific Media ad network and what it calls an "advertising cloud" that's said to connect to more than 1 billion registered users.

There's no word yet on what Time intends to do with MySpace, but despite its long fall from social grace, it still racks up 10's of millions of viewers each month.

If you recall, MySpace was bought by at its peak as a music site for $580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp back in 2005, after which it shed users by the millions. Viant and Justin Timberlake (among other investors) purchased the company in 2011 for a mere $35 million, and tried to revitalize the site, but it never gained traction again.

The platform also proved to be a cautionary tale regarding trusting your user data to a social site, when users woke up one morning in June of 2013 to find their followers reset to 0 after the MySpace relaunch.


Friday, February 19, 2016

Spotify Up To 28 Million Paid Subscribers

Spotify imageThe music industry received some good news recently when Spotify announced that it had surpassed 28 million paid subscribers at the end of 2015. In June it announced that it was up to 20 million, so a jump that steep in only 6 months shows that consumers are indeed onboard with paying to have their music streamed.

Last week Apple also announced that it was up to 11 million paid subscribers, which means that the industry has recently made great strides towards the 100 million goal that so many industry experts perceive as the point where streaming music begins to overtake the erosion of revenue from falling CD and download sales.

One of the reasons that Spotify's numbers have increased may be because of its educational tier, which charges students just $4.95 per month instead of the normal $9.95.

Many in the industry have long thought that $5 was the magic price point for consumers, but the major record labels have been reluctant to allow that during their licensing negotiations.

Regardless of the price, it's good to hear that paid streaming is finally catching on in a big way. This can be nothing but good for artists and songwriters in the long run, even though it might seem that the payouts are low now.

And by the way, streaming has just about totally killed piracy, which again, is a giant plus for the industry.


Thursday, February 18, 2016

Google's Hangouts Changes To P2P

Google Hangout P2P imageMany artists and bands use Google's Hangouts On Air to engage with their fans. This includes everything from mini-concerts to online meet and greets (I use it as part of Webinarjam for my webinars), and while it was reliable, there was always a question with its audio quality, especially when it came to music.

Google has now rolled out Hangouts 7.0, and while it has a number of cool features, the main upgrade is that it now uses a peer-to-peer connection, or P2P, between Hangout users who are on the call.

The reason is to make the calls more efficient, and as a result, take the audio and video quality up a notch to generally improve the experience.

Previously, the call would go through Google's servers, and while the company has what many consider one of the most robust backbone's in the world, the connection was always as solid as you'd expect, hence the move to P2P.

One of the potential downsides of using the P2P connection though is that each user's IP address is revealed, which means their location could be discovered and their privacy compromised as a result.

There's talk that the P2P feature may be selectively disabled in the future, but that's not the case at the moment.

So if you're a Hangouts users, enjoy the new features and increased quality. If you live in an area where you'd like to protect your IP address and privacy, maybe it's better to use another platform for the time being.


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