Monstercat, Sansar Partner For Virtual Reality Concerts In Second Life

Social virtual reality company Sansar and EDM label Monstercat have partnered to launch Monstercat: Call of the Wild, a collaboration that is expected to create VR concerts, meet-and-greets and giveaways. The experience officially launches July 12 with an “epic virtual bash” to celebrate Monstercat’s eight-year anniversary. Free and premium tickets…

Rolling Stone Launches Music Charts That Are Updated Daily

Rolling Stone has launched five music charts powered by analytics firm Alpha Data, formerly known as BuzzAngle Music, which the magazine acquired last year. The debut comes almost two months later than originally planned. Taking a stab at the iconic Billboard charts that its hopes to dethrone, Rolling Stone says…

Downtown Music’s Roberto Neri To Chair UK Publishers Assoc.

Robert Neri, the Executive VP of Downtown Music Publishing, has been named chair of UK trade organization the Music Publishers Association. Neri, who has been a director on the MPA board since 2015, will replace Universal Music Group executive Jackie Alway, who served as chair for four years and will…

Spotify Is Shutting Down Direct Distribution: What Artists Need To Know Now

Spotify announced yesterday that it is closing down its free direct upload system after less than a year, and forcing all artists to find an outside distributors within 30 days if they want their music available on the top streaming service. Here’s what artists need to know to avoid problems…

You Shouldn’t Go On Tour Unless You’ve Done These 3 Things

While the prospect of touring is hugely exciting for new bands, they may be unaware of the grueling realities of life on the road. That said, if you’re determined to hit the pavement and bestow your music on the masses, at least make sure you’ve first done these three things….

Chartmetrics: Artist Cross-Platform Performance, Ranks, Scores

Here we look at a detailed breakdown of how to do an instantaneous side-by-side comparison of bands and artists’ general performance through the utilization of Chartmetric’s massive data warehouse. ______________________________ Guest post by Josh Hayes of Chartmetric Update as of 2019/06/22: Cross-Platform Performance now also includes Apple Music as a…

Halsey Steps In to Defend Taylor Swift — “She Deserves to Own the Painstaking Labor of Her Heart”

After the surprise announcement that Big Machine was sold for $300 million to Scooter Braun, Taylor Swift went nuclear. The singer released a statement via Tumblr condemning the sale while assassinating the characters of Big Machine founder Scott Borch…

How To Write and Produce Music To Get The ‘Spotify Sound’ [VIDEO]

Spotify and other streaming services are changing more than the way we listen to music – they are changing the way music is written and produced. Here the Sound Field team uncovers techniques used to create successful streaming tracks and talk to James Sunderland and Brett Hite of Frenship about…

Spotify Ends Free Direct Distribution

Spotify has decided that it doesn’t want to be in the music distribution business, after all. Eleven months ago, the streamer launched a beta program that allowed artists to upload new music to the platform at no cost. Now, it has informed artists that will be shutting down. To keep…