How Apple’s CarPlay Can Tip The Balance In Music And Radio

Apple’s new CarPlay iOS-in-the-car program looks to be coming to a new auto near you soon. In a much anticipated announcement, the company has partnered with Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo to head up the new joint initiative, with support from vehicles from BMW, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Peugeot Citroën, Subaru, Suzuki and Toyota in the future.

CarPlay allows one to access the features of a current iPhone with a Lightning connector from a touch screen display in the center of the dashboard of the vehicle, or by using voice commands through Siri. This will allow drivers to make calls, use Maps (at last, a navigation system that works), access voicemail, and many of the other features that a driver can’t normally access.

Of interest to the music industry is that not only is iTunes now just a touch or voice command away, but third party apps like Spotify and iHeartRadio as well. This takes us one step closer to the always-connected car, which in turn, can tip the balance of the music industry in many ways.

First of all, remember that radio is still widely listened to in all age groups, but most adults listen heavily on their commutes to and from work. Add to that the fact that radio is still the number one place where music consumers discover new music and you see that despite the inroads from the many forms of online delivery, the relationship of radio to the listener hasn’t changed all that much over time. It may be old technology, but it’s one that we gladly live with. Read more on Forbes.

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Who Are The Most Covered Artists?

One of the goals of a songwriter is to write a song that is covered by many artists. This is the ultimate stamp of approval, in that the song is considered so good that singers want to sing it, and artists feel compelled to record their own versions.

Whosampled.com did a study to determine the most covered artists of all time. Not surprisingly, The Beatles lead by a wide margin, with Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra, and other musical icons in the mix.

When it comes to the most covered songs, The Beatles have no less than 6 out of the top 20, and are the only artists to appear on the chart more than once, a fitting tribute to their writing abilities.

While the artist covers chart seemed about right, the song cover chart has a few entries that are head scratchers, but still is very interesting.

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50 Cent The Latest To Exploit The Music Industry’s Newest Business Model

It was announced recently that rapper 50 Cent is leaving his previous record label Shady/Interscope for a new home with Caroline, the label services division of Universal Music Group. The artist and his G-Unit imprint joins a number other artists like Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Korn, Peter Gabriel, and Prince who chose to leave the comfort of a traditional major label (Shady/Interscope is a subsidiary of the giant Universal Music Group) record deal behind in favor of going independent, but with a new twist. Now the label’s once exclusive services are for hire instead of available only as a byproduct of a traditional recording agreement.

What we may be witnessing is the dawn of a new age in the music business as all the major labels have set up separate divisions to be able to offer their services and expertise on an a la carte basis. Need physical distribution, radio promotion, digital strategy or product development? If you’ve got the money or the audience, you can hire their expertise for these services plus a lot more. Where once upon a time, an artist signed exclusively with a record label for a number of albums, the new label services deals can be for a single album at a time, with none of the traditional multi-record contractual strings attached.

Although some were faster into the space than others, all the majors are now represented. Sony Music has its Red Associated Labels unit, Warner Music Group has Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA), while Universal Music owns Caroline. In addition, there’s also BMG, which began the trend in 2008 when it sold its traditional record business to Sony to concentrate on artist rights management, as well as the independent Kobalt Label Services and in the UK, Cooking Vinyl.

The reasons why an artist might want to consider such an arrangement are many. First of all, there’s the issue of artistic control. In a traditional record deal, the artist and the record label are in a partnership, with the label as the senior partner. The stories about clashes on creative direction between the artist and label execs are legendary, but all this is alleviated when the artist is independent and hires the label services on a “as needed” basis. The artist is now the boss when it comes to product creation, but the responsibility for making it or breaking it are on his shoulders alone. Read more on Forbes.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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Artist Management According to Flo & Eddie

If you ever wondered how ruthless the music business can be, just listen to this story about the business dealings of The Turtles ("Happy Together" among other 60s hits) told by frontmen professor Mark Volman (now teaching at Belmont College) and Howard Kaylan. The two then went on to a successful solo career as Flo & Eddie, and even sang background vocals for Frank Zappa for a time.

The video is humorous because they can laugh about it now, but you can see how this could cause many sleepless nights. To say the least, kids, don't try this at home.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

The Top 10 YouTube Brands

I'm a big proponent of discovering and developing your brand, whether it be for yourself, your studio, your band, or your entertainment company. In fact, there's quite a lot about how to do that in both my Social Media Promotion for Musicians book and my Lynda.com social media videos. That said, it's always best to look at the top brands to see what they're doing in order to gain some tips and tricks.

According to econsultancy.com, these are the top 10 YouTube brands at the moment:

1. Google

2. Red Bull

3. Marvel Entertainment

4. Barbie

5. GoPro

6. Playstation

7. Old Spice

8. Blendtec

9. EA

10. Evian

What's surprising here is who is not on the list, like Coke, Pepsi, beauty product companies, car manufacturers, and consumer product companies like Apple and Samsung.

If you want to know why the above companies are in the top 10, you'll find a few commonalities:

• They don't use pre-roll advertising, which is universally hated.
• They create video content just for their YouTube audiences.
• They publish content regularly.
• They treat YouTube as a social network and engage the audience via their comments.

You don't have to be a big brand to take advantage of these tips, although you might want to make some money by ignoring the first one and monetizing your videos. That said, you'll probably lose some viewers in the process.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

YouTube Tags: The Key To People Finding Your Videos

One of the things that many people overlook when they post their videos to YouTube are the tags. Often there's not much thought given to them, but you'd be surprised how helpful a few good tags can be, especially when it comes to organic search. Not only that, once someone finds one of your videos, the right tags will make sure that more of your videos show up on the right hand sidebar of related videos. Here's what to do.

1. Make sure that you have at least one tag that's directly related to you. This would mean your name and other variations of it. For instance:

Joe Bloe
JoeBloe
Joebloe.com

Or if you're a band:

The Unsigned
TheUnsigned
TheUnsigned.com

Make sure you tag everyone that's in the video, and add them to the description as well.

2. The second thing you should always think about doing is adding a tag that indicates the mood of the song. If the tune is a sad song, make sure that you add a tag that says "sad song." It's surprising how many people just search for "happy" or "sad" or "melancholy."

These two tips can not only help new viewers find you, but increase the chances that they'll find more of your videos after they've found the first one.

For more YouTube tips like these, check out the Social Media Promotion For Musicians book. You can read some excerpts on the excerpts section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Young Users Fleeing "Dead and Buried" Facebook

There's been empirical evidence that teens have been fleeing Facebook for some time, but a new study by London's University College now confirms that teens "feel embarrassed even to be associated with it." In fact, to many older teens, Facebook is "not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried," according to the report.

The Global Social Media Impact Study observed the social networking of 16 to 18 year olds in 8 countries over the course of 15 months. The study found that for that age group, Facebook activity was being replaced by WhatsApp and Snapchat. Of course, Facebook recently purchased WhatsApp for a reported $19 billion in cash and stock, and one has to wonder if this study played a part.

The interesting thing is that teens still maintain Facebook accounts at the insistence of their families in order for them to stay in touch with older relatives, the study pointed out. This is somewhat ironic in that it wasn't that long ago when parents were increasingly concerned about their kids spending time on the network.

Another interesting point was that most teens acknowledged that Facebook is actually better than anything else at things like scheduling parties and observing people's relationships, but opted for the other networks anyway. This proves that slicker doesn't always equal better.

If Facebook is to integrate WhatsApp into its network, it can bring that age group back into the fold, guaranteeing a sustained user base at least for the short term. Say what you want about the service, in this case it seems to have made a strategic move at just the right time.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Why It's Important To Verify Your Spotify Artist Account

Many artists have their music on Spotify, but not many know how important it use their artist account as a promotional tool. The first thing you should do is verify your account. How to do that and why it's so important is laid out in this excellent excerpt from Nicholas David's post called The Complete Musician's Guide To Spotify on his Sunshine Promotion website. Here's just one of the promotional tips.

"In addition to being able to have a pretty blue check mark next to your artist name (see below), there are a few perks to being verified. Whenever you release new music, create a new playlist, or announce an upcoming concert in your listener’s area, followers of your music on Spotify will be notified. If notifying your listeners that you’re playing a show near them isn’t reason enough to get verified, I don’t know what is. Getting verified is easy. Having the patience to wait for their reply may not be…

1. First, you’re going to have to set up a regular-old Spotify “listening” profile for yourself. You can get a free account on this page if you don’t already have one. Create Spotify profile

2. Next, you have to submit your artist profile for verification here: Spotify Verification Request Form 

• This process involves marrying a Spotify artist page with a personal Spotify account. The two will remain separate after registration (meaning you’ll have an artist page that you have control over, as well as a standard listening account). Spotify needs to verify that you, a personal listener, are also allowed to modify an artist’s page either because you are the artist or you legally represent the artist.

Make sure you have your

• Artist URI link (which can be found by right clicking on the artist name within Spotify),
• The username for your personal Spotify profile,
• A 300×300 pixel JPG image (and they say that it shouldn’t be more than 500kb),
• A display name in mind for the profile (meaning your artist name),
• A Twitter account.
• Profiles will be approved and verified in a couple of weeks.

Since there are lots of artists trying to make it onto Spotify right now, verification may take longer than usual. I’ve seen it take anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks. Patience in this step is necessary."

Check out more about Spotify for artists at Sunshine Promotion.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

James Brown's Heirs Should Thank Technology

Whosampled.com recently did a survey of over 200,000 songs and found that James Brown was the most sampled artist by more than two times the nearest artist (Public Enemy). While the Godfather of Soul was the godfather before sampling technology came into being, it certainly gave his career a boost towards the end, and now that he's gone, continues to help his publishing royalties.

As you can see from the list of the top 20 most sampled songs, Mr. Brown is the the only artist to have more than one song appear. Many of the artists and songs are a bit of a surprise.

Once again, the beauty of publishing is that it can provide a continued income stream that could revive many times over during the course of a career and beyond. Long after you're gone, the possibility exists that your heirs could still see a check in the mail, with some luck.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Radio Reaches An Unexpected Audience

We've heard the claims over and over that Millennials are so wrapped up in new technology online that they don't have time for anything old like television and especially radio. A new survey by Nielsen finds that mostly untrue, at least when it comes to radio.

In fact, it found that 65 million Millennials (age 18 to 34) listen to radio each week, which is about half the people in the age group. That amounts to around 11 1/2 hours of listening per week, which is still behind Gen X at 14 hours and Baby Boomers at 14.5, but it's still far more than was generally thought.

An even bigger surprise is that country is the #1 format that Millennials listen to, followed by contemporary pop and contemporary hits. They're much more mainstream that previously thought.

In general, radio is doing fine and is in no danger of going the way of other older technologies. 9 out of 10 people age 10 and up still tune in per week in some way, which amounts to 242 million people!

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Music And Games Make Friends Again

Music and games - what a great combination. Or that’s what seemed to be the case during the Guitar Hero/Rock Band days of a few years ago. At it’s peak, artists, bands, labels and songwriters saw an unexpected and, for a time, significant income stream that promised to hold up a flagging music industry for a little while, only to have it go the way most that trends do and die almost overnight. After a short fling with gaming, music had struck out.

But gaming insiders knew that the recent experience was only the tip of the iceberg and that music would someday experience a boom in gaming again, only in a different form. As Thom Kozik, then Vice-President of Online Gaming at Atari (and now COO of the Omnia Media multi channel network) forecasted in the second edition of my book Music 3.0: A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age:

“There was a model that showed up in a few games about a decade ago where the player was offered an option on the music. Because the licensing models were what they were at the time, that didn’t work as well as hoped. Now all these decisions about taste that you can express in an online game puts the control in the consumer’s hands instead of the game studio or publisher. We’ll see the return of the “choose your own soundtrack” model, with direct, immediate payment by the consumer at the time they hit play.”

That prediction looks like it may have come to pass thanks to the recent announcement of a new service by Valve Software called Steam Music, which allows gamers to listen to songs from their digital libraries on their computer while playing a game. Read more on Forbes.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

A Look At Today's Digital Music Consumer

Today's digital music consumer looks a lot like yesterday's digital music consumer, according to a recent report by industry pundit Mark Mulligan's MIDiA Consulting. The infographic below points out a number interesting issues:

• Even after 10 years of paid digital music distribution, people still consume most of their music from radio and CD.

• Already, more people consume music from streaming sources than downloads.

• Music subscription is a force in the music business, but still only has 4% penetration.

The study goes on to show that 55% of digital music buyers and 45% of subscribers still purchase CDs monthly.

The study illustrates that the more things change, the more they stay the same. New technologies have made an impact on the music business and will always continue to do so, but the old technologies don't fade away as quickly as we might think.

Check out the entire report on the Music Industry Blog.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.