While Kanye West has certainly had a knack for staying in the news of late, one item that didn’t see a lot of air time was the controversial hip hop figure’s popularization of the "Medium Play" or MP album format. Here we examine what the state of "Ye" means for…
Category archives: streaming
Spotify Is Now 10 – How Has It Impacted Music?
Although the Swedish streaming service couldn’t have been introduced to the market at worse time, Spotify has managed to not only endure but grow. Now ten years in, we look at both the good and the bad brought about by the platform’s presence in the music industry. ____________________________ Guest post…
Music’s $20M A Month Man: Spotify’s Daniel Ek Shows Tim Westergren How It’s Done
The industry gave a collective gasp of horror when founder Tim Westergren was pulling down $1,000,000 by selling of Pandora stock while simultaneously fighting artists with royalty loopholes. Chris Castle writes that Spotify’s Daniel Ek is leaving Westergren in the financial dust with a monthly windfall of $20 million. __________________________…
Spotify + DistroKid On Road To A Two Sided Marketplace
With news that Spotify had invested in DistroKid and offer it as a distribution conduit to other music services, came speculation as to the music streamer’s greater motives. MIDiA analyst Mark Mulligan sees the move as part of Spotify’s strategy to work way up music’s value chain by "a) removing…
Evaride Talks Hustling Their Way To A Debut Streaming Hit [INTERVIEW]
Although already experienced musicians in some unusual ways, the band Evaride here sat down to talk with AWAL about their music and how they managed to hustle their way into debuting a streaming hit. ______________________________ Guest post from AWAL Resumes have never been a hallmark of the artist life (if…
SoundCloud Makes DJ’s Lives Easier with Native Instruments, Serato, Virtual DJ, DEX3, Mixvibes, Hercules Integrations
SoundCloud has partnered with Native Instruments, Serato, Virtual DJ, DEX3, Mixvibes and Hercules, to connect its music catalog with these popular DJ performance software platforms. This smart set of integrations could cement Soundcloud’s status as a top destination for performing DJ’s who can now stream and mix this massive catalog…
Merlin Makes Key London, New York Appointments
Underscoring the growing importance of independent music and labels, indie global rights agency Merlin has announced several significant new appointments. Merlin membership includes tens of thousands of independent labels in 57 countries. Based in Merlin’s London office, Emma Robinson joins the team as member services manager. Robinson was previously a…
SoundCloud Adds Lossless Music Streaming To $9.99 Tier
SoundCloud has upgraded the audio on its Go + $10 per month premium music streaming service. Dubbed HQ streaming, SoundCloud’s new Hiqh Quality streaming format is encoded in 256kbps AAC. That’s roughly the equivalent of an mp3 encoded in 320kbps. On Spotify, the usual streaming quality is 160 kbps. When…
Hospital Creates Spotify Playlist Perfect For CPR
A Spotify playlist created by NewYork – Presbyterian Hospital, contains only songs with 100 and 120 beats per minute, the perfect rate to perform CPR to. The diverse playlist includes wonderfully appropriate songs like the Bee Gees’ "Stayin’ Alive" and "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor, and some so, like…
Spotify Announces DistroKid Investment, Integration
Spotify is strengthening ties to DistroKid with an investment and announcement of an integration that allows artists using Spotify For Artists’ new free upload service to then seamlessly distribute their music to other platforms through DistroKid. As part of this partnership, Spotify has also made "a passive minority investment" in…