Your Cover Songs May Not Be Streamed

Doing a great cover version of a hit song has been a successful tactic in helping to raise the visibility of an artist or band for some time, but that practice may soon come to an end thanks to new efforts by iTunes, Spotify and other streaming services.

More and more, digital streaming services are either hiding or removing cover songs, sound-alikes, re-recorded songs and live performances in an effort to simply their catalogs and make it easier for users to find the song they really want.

And they have a point. Searching for a popular song sometimes turns up more than 50 choices, making it difficult to find the original that you're looking for.

The problem is that there are many unintended policies that come with this editorial decision.

For instance, it's been reported by Billboard that one service's "blacklist" of recordings that include 400 artists that range from B.B. King, Frank Sinatra, John Coltrane and Pete Seeger.

Re-records, the practice of an artist or band re-recording one of their hits so they own the recording instead of the record label, are also frequently marginalized as well, although many fans aren't all that unhappy as most prefer the original versions.

So beware if you're recording a cover song in the hopes of gaining some extra streams. While the practice may still work on YouTube, chances are your cover won't see the light of day on the other streaming services from now on.

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Apple Music Up To 13 Million Subscribers

It looks like all the naysayers were wrong. Apple reported on its recent earnings call that its Apple Music streaming service was now up to 13 million paid subscribers and still growing.

Much of that growth has come recently in fact, as it was reported that 2 million subscribers signed up since February alone.

The present growth looks to be at around 1 million a month, which means that the tech giant should be battling Spotify for the top space in the streaming industry by the end of year.

Spotify claims to have 20 million current subscribers, but many are on a "student discount" tier at half the $9.99 monthly price.

One advantage that Apple Music has over Spotify is that it's available in 58 more countries than Spotify, including Russia, China and Japan. All in all, the service is available in a total of 113 countries, leaving Spotify to play catch-up.

One reason for AM's growth spurt has been albums from Drake, Coldplay, The 1975 and Gwen Stefani, where were releases to AM for a period before Spotify. Having an advert with Taylor Swift was also a big help.

Despite the recent hype around Tidal, it's Apple Music that seems to be making the most headway.

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The Beatles A Bigger Hit On Spotify Than Current Artists

After all these years, it's surprising how popular The Beatles music still is, and the band's presence on Spotify proves it. The Fab 4 have been on the streaming service for a mere 100 days, yet the it's been one of the most popular, even more so than current artists like Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande and 5 Second of Summer.

The band has averaged 6.5 million listeners a month, with 67% of them being under the age of 35. All told it's been estimated that the several hundred million plays add up to more than 24 million hours of listening.

Surprisingly enough, Beatlemania is strongest in Mexico City, followed by London, Santiago, Chile and Los Angeles, and Thursday at 5PM is the peak time for listening. The top 4 countries that listen are the USA, UK, Mexico and Sweden.

The 4 most popular songs globally are "Here Comes The Sun," followed by "Come Together," "Let It Be," and "Yesterday," while the most popular albums are 1, Abbey Road, The White Album and Let It Be. The band's songs also now appear on 4.2 million playlists.

It's pretty amazing that the music from any single artist could be so enduring and popular.

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$38 Script Let's You Set Up A Spotify-Like Site

It seems that pirate music sites are getting easier and easier to set up these days.

Apparently there's a script that you can buy for just $38 that will let you set up your own cross between Spotify and YouTube. It's illegal, of course, and will get shut down in no time (especially if you live in the United States), but if you're really into it, it is possible to launch your own instant music site.

The script is called YouTubify and allows almost anyone to set up their own music service without breaking too much of a sweat. For now, it's available on one of the biggest coding sites frequented by hackers.

Wefre was a fee music distribution site that recently popped up using the script, and although users loved the look and feel of it, it was forced to shut down shortly after launch.

And fortunately for artists, publishers and labels everywhere, this is what's going to happen in most of these cases. Just because you can easily launch a music distribution site, it doesn't mean you should.

Sites like Spotify, Pandora, Tidal, Apple Music and every other music streaming site that you can list have all paid millions of dollars in licensing fees and pay monthly royalties to artists, labels and publishers. Even if the music is offered for free by one of these hacker sites, it still violates copyright laws (it's a form of piracy, after all).

Reportedly there are dozens of sites using this script that yet to be shut down, but luckily, none have received much attention or gotten traction.

It's tough enough trying to make money in the streaming music business without a plethora of free sites popping up everywhere.

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Facebook Integrates Spotify Into Messenger

Facebook and Spotify are trying to make it easier for fans to share your songs. The latest version of Facebook Messenger now incorporates a button so you can quickly jump to Spotify to choose a song and then share it in the message.

While on the surface this seems like a great idea, the problem is that the integration isn't as seamless as expected.

It's a bit clunky to get to Spotify, although once there it's pretty easy to select the song you want. The real problem is for the person receiving the message, since the tiny "Open" button beneath the image isn't totally obvious. Once clicked, it then sends you to the Spotify app so you can listen to the song there.

Both companies are quick to point out that this is only an early version and the implementation will be refined over time.

Any time a social platform can be combined with streaming music distribution it's a good thing for both consumers and artists. Word of mouth is still one of the most popular music discovery methods, and anything that extends that is most welcome when it comes to social media.

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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.

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Spotify Up To 28 Million Paid Subscribers

The 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.

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Patrick Mahoney From Manhead Merch On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

If you're in the music business you've heard how increasingly important merchandise is to the revenue stream of an artist.

My guest on this week's Inner Circle Podcast is Patrick Mahoney of Manhead Merch, who's going to tell use about how merch licensing deals work, as well as what the hot merch is these days.

In the intro I'll discuss how Warner Music and Sony Music plan to give back at least some of the profits to their artists if and when Spotify goes public. I'll also give some tips for setting up that cool mastering compressor plugin that you probably have but were afraid to use.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes, Stitcher and now on Mixcloud and Google Play.

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Apple Music Now In Far More Countries Than Spotify

Apple has done a great job making Apple Music available throughout the world. As a matter of fact, Music Business Worldwide notes that the service is now in 59 more countries than Spotify.

While we haven't received any info lately as to the number of subscribers that's translated into (the last figure was 10 million after 6 months, half that of Spotify), it does give Apple Music a huge leg up over the the competition. It's true that many of the countries have small populations, but it all ads up when the number is as large as it is.

Here's the list of countries where Apple Music has a presence, but Spotify does not.

1. Anguilla
2. Antigua
3. Armenia
4. Azerbaijan
5. Bahrain
6. Barbados
7. Belarus
8. Belize
9. Botswana
10. British Virgin Islands
11. Cambodia
12. Cape Verde
13. Cayman Islands
14. China
15. Dominica
16. Egypt
17. Fiji
18. Gambia
19. Ghana
20. Grenada
21. Guinea-Bissau
22. India
23. Indonesia
24. Japan
25. Jordan
26. Kazakhstan
27. Kenya
28. Kyrgyzstan
29. Laos
30. Lebanon
31. Macau
32. Mauritius
33. Micronesia
34. Moldova
35. Mongolia
36. Nepal
37. Niger
38. Nigeria
39. Oman
40. Papa New Guinea
41. Romania
42. Russia
43. St Kitts & Nevis
44. Saudi Arabia
45. Slovenia
46. South Africa
47. Sri Lanka
48. Swaziland
49. Tajikistan
50. Thailand
51. Trinidad & Tobago
52. Turkmenistan
53. Uganda
54. Ukraine
55. UAE
56. Uzbekistan
57. Venezuela
58. Vietnam
59. Zimbabwe

This is good news if you're an artist, since Apple Music is more likely to get a paying subscriber than just about any other service, thanks to the fact that they already have credit cards on file.

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Warner Music May Give Spotify Windfall Back To Artists

Major record labels aren't known for being particularly generous to their artists, but in at least one case, that might change a little. Warner Music has made it known that should it ever sell its stake in Spotify, at least some of the proceeds will go to its artists, according to a post on Music Business Worldwide. WMG CEO Stephen Cooper made the announcement when speaking to investors yesterday.

This is an unprecedented step as any income from these types of equity sales have traditionally made their way directly to the label's bottom line in the past, bypassing the artists.

The major labels own around 15% of Spotify, which came as part of the company's negotiations for licensing rights to the major label's catalog. It's estimated that WMG owns between 2 to 3% of Spotify, which at its current $8 billion valuation, is worth around $200 million.

Spotify has signaled its intention for an IPO (Initial Public Offering - where shares of the company are offered to the public for the first time) this year, which would mean a windfall for its shareholders, including the major labels.

Knowing the potential blowback from artists should they not see any money from the sale of the company they helped build, WMG decided to get on the right side of the situation instead of having to react to it after the fact.

Any resulting bad publicity from a Spotify IPO could harm the streaming side of the music business, which has grown into a major source of revenue for the industry as is quickly replacing physical sales.

As a result of this story, Sony Music announced that it would also give back a piece of the proceeds from any sale (no word on exactly how big a piece). The question now remains, will Universal Music feel compelled to follow?

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Artist Management Consultant Mike Gormley On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on this week's Inner Circle Podcast is artist management consultant Mike Gormley.

Mike was head of PR for Mercury and A&M Records before he headed into management, where he worked with acts like The Bangles, Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo and Danny Elfman, and now heads up LA Personal Development.

We'll discuss the differences between PR and management from the classic days of the 80s and 90s to today, and you'll hear some good war stories as well.

In the intro I'll discuss how Spotify will now stream video but not for the reasons you might think, the latest music streaming platform called Cur Music, and the latest in the labor dispute between Guitar Center and its employees.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes, Stitcher and now on Mixcloud and Google Play.

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Spotify To Begin Streaming Videos

Spotify is introducing streaming video to its users, first on the Android platform and shortly followed by iOS. What's interesting is that the videos look to have more to do with advertising than music.

The company's various video partners include ESPN, Conde Nast, Comedy Central, BBC, NBC, Harper Collins and Vice Media, and the videos will all be short and curated at first, which sure sounds like commercials. In addition, Spotify will also launch podcasts from Radiolab, American Public Media and WNYC.

Adding video commercials is a way for the company to increase its advertising revenue while maintaining its current user base. Video adverts are acknowledged to be the most lucrative form on online advertising.

The videos will be rolled out only in the US, the UK, Germany and Sweden as part of the beta test.

Spotify admits that it doesn't quite know what to do with video yet (besides advertising), so the beta test will help identify usage and demand patterns.

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Finally, A Streaming Service At A Reasonable Price

The major record labels have been largely responsible for the $9.95 per month prices being charged by the streaming services, even though most industry experts see that as a barrier to entry, meaning that it's just too high. Ideally you want more people paying a monthly charge, even if the price is lower, since it will ultimately mean more revenue at the end of the day.

There's at least one new music service that's managed to keep the prices low though. The new Cur Music has two low priced tiers that break the $9.95 mold.

The first Cur tier is called "Octo" for $2.99 per month, and the higher priced "Inked" tier is $6.99 per month. Both tiers are ad-free, with the only difference being that Inked lets you listen offline.

Cur has a library of 10 million tracks, and emphasizes playlists and radio rather than on-demand streaming, so it's competition is more Pandora than Spotify. It also has an internal messaging system that lets users attach photos or videos to songs before sharing them.

There's a free trial that you can check out here.

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Spotify Launches A New Backstory Feature

Spotify has teamed up with a company called Genius in an effort to try to take using the platform to the next level.

G enius provides annotated song lyrics, backstory and commentary that pops up as you stream a track via special "Behind The Lyrics" playlists.

The commentary comes from the artists and is not crowd-sourced or user generated. This allows artists to stay more connected with their audience without having the work required of a social platform.

The feature is just being rolled out, with the "Behind The Lyrics (Hip Hop)" as the first playlist.

What's especially interesting is that the feature will be available to both free and premium users, which seems to show that Spotify is a bit insecure with its current top position in the streaming world.

With Apple Music's recent leak about its 10 million paid users and Pandora's pending purchase of Rdio's infrastructure out of bankruptcy, this seems to be a pre-emptive strike to either keep its current users from thinking about another platform, or lure some new users away from the others. Either way, Spotify wants to keep as many eyeballs, free or paid, glued to the service as possible, and the connection with Genius is another step in doing so.

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Apple Music Has 10 Million Subscribers

It looks like Apple Music has beaten the predictions by making it to 10 million subscribers much faster than anticipated. Although no official announcement has been made, the Financial Times has confirmed that Apple has achieved that number, proving that the 90 day trial period for the service appears to have worked.

In contrast, it took Spotify 6 years to get to that number, although that was well before streaming became a common practice.

Speaking of Spotify, rumors are that its paid subscriber numbers have risen to 25 million users as well.

All this spells great news for artists, bands, labels and publishers. Just from those 2 services, there are more than 15 million more paid subscribers than last year at this time, which would be about a 30% increase.

Of course, we've yet to hear about YouTube Red's subscriber numbers yet, the $9.95 per month service that eliminates adverts from your videos. That could also give those subscriber numbers a boost, although the feeling is that if the numbers were actually that good the company would be boasting about it already.

Regardless, it looks like streaming has at least turned a small corner as more and more people are finding value in paying for their music than getting it for free.

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5 Bold Music Business Predictions For 2016

The new year is upon us, which means it’s time to look into the crystal ball to foresee what might happen in the music business in 2016. Here are 5 predictions that may not be very popular, but might end coming to pass.

Prediction #1: Pandora goes global
One of the most significant and generally overlooked moves of 2015 was Pandora’s bid on some of Rdio’s streaming assets out of bankruptcy. While this move is still contingent on the court, acquiring this infrastructure will allow Pandora to become an interactive service like Spotify, and allow it to begin servicing other markets besides the United States as a result. With a solid 80 million user base in the US alone (which is what Spotify has globally), setting up shop worldwide will allow Pandora to become a true rival to Spotify.

Prediction #2: Vinyl shows its last big growth spurt
Vinyl sales have seen double digit growth for about 5 years and that will continue in 2016 as well, thanks to increased pressing plant capacity brought about by newly manufactured presses (the first in over 30 years) and widespread availability of turntables so buyers can actually listen to their purchases. Although sales will continue to increase beyond 2016, they’ll be much more modest as the number of new buyers diminishes due to saturation of the market. 2016 will be the last year of the true vinyl “revival.”

Prediction #3: Amazon Prime Music makes a move
Amazon Prime Music has been a minor add-on to a Prime subscription until now, but that doesn’t mean that Amazon isn’t taking music streaming seriously. The company has  all the infrastructure it needs to launch a mainstream music-only service, and 2016 will be the year it does so. Amazon has also been dipping its toe in the water of becoming a full-fledged record label with its occasional offerings from Amazon Acoustics, which could potentially signal what might be a major part of the service and could be a differentiator in a crowded market. Read more on Forbes.

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Spotify Hit With A $150 Million Class Action Lawsuit

A lot of artists, bands, indie labels and publishers have a problem with the payout from Spotify, but most feel that at least they're being paid something. What could be worse is if your songs are being played by the service and you're receiving no royalty at all.

That's the basis for a $150 million class action lawsuit brought against Spotify by Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker leader David Lowery.

Lowery claims that Spotify has failed to get the proper licenses to distribute certain copyrighted songs, and then failed to pay the copyright holders and publishers the proper royalties.

Spotify is currently in negotiations with the National Music Publishers Association about this very issue, and has reportedly set aside of fund of $25 million to pay the royalties for any improper song use.

There's been allegations of non-payment for some time, and Spotify has even admitted there was a problem, but blamed much of it on the lack of tracking data that was supposed to be supplied when the song was uploaded.

Incorrect metadata is a problem for almost every online service that deals with copyrighted material. Each platform has its own set of required data, and much of the time supplying that data falls to an intern or untrained employee of the label or publisher, so it's upload improperly or incomplete.

To qualify as a class action lawsuit, there needs to be a number of plaintiffs besides Lowery, and while not named, the Lowery suit claims that there will be more than 100.

If nothing else, this lawsuit should give us further insight into how Spotify matches songs to metadata and determines royalty payments.

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Beatles Songs Stream 50 Million Times In 48 Hours

The Beatles were one of the final major holdouts to streaming, and many thought that they waited far too long to be able to take advantage of the medium. That view seems to be unfounded as Beatles songs were streamed more than 50 million times in just 48 hours since they went live on Christmas eve.

What's most interesting about all the streams is demographic that's listening the most. According to Spotify, 65% of listeners are age 34 or younger. Beatles tracks were also added to more than 673,000 playlists during that time.

There's also been a lot of buzz around the Fab 4 coming to streaming, as Brandwatch found that there were 46,000 mentions of "the Beatles streaming" in the hours after launch. 87% of those were positive.

So what Beatles songs were listened to the most? Here's the top 10 worldwide.

1. Come Together
2. Let It Be
3. Hey Jude
4. Love Me Do
5. Yesterday
6. Here Comes The Sun
7. Help!
8. All You Need Is Love
9. I Want To Hold Your Hand
10. Twist And Shout

We should have a better idea of the impact The Beatles catalog has on streaming in a few months, but for now its off to a great start.

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The Beatles Finally Coming To Streaming

All signs are pointing to one of the last major remaining holdouts, The Beatles, finally coming to a streaming network near you. Billboard, MBW, and Hits Daily Double all report that the Fab 4 will finally be available on either Apple Music or Spotify (or both) on Christmas Eve.

There's also some speculation that The Beatles music might be the first available only on Spotify's Premium tier. Last month CEO and founder Daniel Eck seemed to indicate that the company was softening its stance on making certain superstar artists available only on the paid tier and not on the free one.

This seems like a good strategy that may not only get more people to upgrade their accounts (which pay much higher royalties to artists, publishers and labels), but to appease the music industry as well.

The music business has long been railing against giving away music for free, although money is still generated via advertising, just at a lower rate.

The Beatles haven't been absent from streaming altogether though. They've been on Pandora for some time because of a more encompassing license for the non-interactive format.

Just as a point of reference, the band has sold 178 million albums in the US to date, according to the , and their music has been available on iTunes since 2008.

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Spotify Still Leads In Paid Streaming Customers

It looks like Spotify is still in the lead in terms of paying customers, if this chart from Statista is any indication.

The chart shows that Spotify has a handy lead over Apple Music at the moment, although it's yet to be seen just how many people buy into the YouTube's new Red service, which could change the balance of power here.

A couple things to keep in mind when looking at this chart.

1. There are only a bit more than 40 million paying customers for streaming at the moment, so there's a lot of room for growth.

2. The chart only looks at Western services, and doesn't include any from Asia, where people have been used to paying for music for some time.

You will find more statistics at Statista

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