For the DJs and bloggers who have to deal with your MP3s professionally, few things are more frustrating than having an artist provide music which is unlabeled and contains no meta-tag. Correctly labeling your music is, as luck would have it, actually not that hard, and here we walk through…
Category archives: streaming
SoundCloud Now Has 5X As Many Tracks As Spotify
SoundCloud has officially passed 200 million tracks uploaded. The milestone makes the streamer’s catalog four to five times larger than its competitors with Apple Music and Spotify estimated to have catalogs in the 40 million range. As the world’s largest open audio platform, SoundCloud hosts such diverse audio as Chance…
Qobuz Launches Hybrid Hi-Res Music Service In US
Qobuz is launching its hi-res streaming music service in the U.S. today. Unlike other music streamers, Qobuz offers download sales alongside streaming. Downloads are said to account for 30% of the company’s revenue. Subscriptions to Qobuz range from $9.99 for mp3 quality up to $24.99 for 24 bit FLAC to…
How Has Playlist Culture Affected Our Listening Choices? An Experiment
In an age where playlist culture reigns supreme in our consumption of music, one curious music blogger from NYC took some time to investigate what today’s music consumers are listening to, on what platform, and most of all how they’re discovering it. ___________________________ Guest post by Noor Kalouti of Soundfly’s…
How To Use Affordable Ads On Spotify To Promote Music
With such a large number of Spotify subscribers still operating on the free tier, this streaming platform presents a huge opportunity for artists to advertise their music. Here we look at the basics of getting an ad on Spotify, and how to target it at a specific audience. ___________________________ Guest…
Streaming Music Revenue Up, But Per Song Rates May Have Dropped In 2018
In this piece, Bobby Owsinski breaks down some complex recent streaming data, which highlights the disparity between the royalty rates paid out by major streamers (with YouTube coming up particularly short) as well as the contextual challenge of drawing accurate information from these kinds of data sets. __________________________ Guest post…
Creating Better Spotify Playlists: Best Practices
Like it or not, music consumers and the industry as whole are all neck deep in playlist culture by this point. The good news is, building playlists is a skill like any other, and skills can be honed. In this piece we look at some of the best practices for…
Music Streaming Rates 2018: Per Stream Rates Drop and YouTube’s Value Gap Is Very Real
[UPDATED] 2018 saw music streaming come into its own as the dominant source of recording music revenue. But as streaming volumes swelled, the YouTube value gap and its pitifully small payout percentage became even more apparent. _________________________________ Guest post by David Lowery of The Trichordist Here we go again. To…
Spotify’s Podcast Play Not A Sure Winner says MIDiA Analyst Mark Mulligan
Spotify declared itself an "audio-first’ streaming service on Wednesday with a $500 million push into podcasting led by the acquisition of Gimlet Media and Anchor, with other deals in the wings. But Spotify’s major podcast play is far from a sure bet, says top industry analyst Mark Mulligan of MIDiA….
NMPA Warns Spotify May ‘Declare War’ On Songwriters Over 44% Royalty Rate Increase
The NMPA and its member music publishers are reminding songwriters and other publishers that Spotify and other digital music streamers thus far "won’t say" if they plan to appeal the 44% increase over five year in mechanical royalties to songwriters made official by the US Copyright Royalty Board this week….