"Paul Lamere is the director of developer platform for The Echo Nest, a group that calls itself a "music intelligence company" for major music firms.
In his latest study, Lamere calculated the relative number of streams for a given artist for all 50 states, using a database of his clients' users."
"The Songwriter Equity Act was introduced to Congress by Representative Douglas Collins on Tuesday, February 25th. The purpose of the bill is to update Section 114 and 115 of the Copyright Act that was written in 1909. This would allow songwriters, composers and publishers to receive fair compensation for their works in today's market place. An estimated two-thirds of a songwriter’s income today is heavily regulated by copyright law and consent decrees. This bill will help today’s songwriters and publishers get their fair share of mechanical and performance royalties. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and NMPA have all publicly praised this new bill."
"Kelly Holland, who fronted southern rock band Cry Of Love for their 1993 debut album Brother, has died at the age of 52. He stayed with the North Carolina band for only the one album, but his vocal abilities took them close to the big time for a brief period, resulting in three hit singles: Peace Pipe, Bad Thing and Too Cold In The Winter. Holland struggled with life on the road as Cry Of Love toured with Aerosmith and Robert Plant, and was eventually fired and replaced by Robert Mason, later of Warrant. Cry Of Love split in 1997, with guitarist Audley Freed going on to join the Black Crowes and bassist Robert Kearns going to Lynyrd Skynyrd."
"Warner Music Group (WMG) and Shazam® today announced an innovative strategic alliance that will discover new acts and sign them to a Shazam branded label under WMG, and that will collaborate in enhanced marketing across WMG's roster of artists. The global partnership will create a ground-breaking connection between music fans, emerging artists, and WMG's A&R teams. The Shazam label imprint will identify unsigned artists for support and development by combining WMG's global A&R expertise with Shazam's proprietary fan activity data. At the same time, the app's unique promotional channels will empower artists to directly engage with fans who Shazamed them, enabling fans to continue to champion the artist they helped discover.
"By partnering with Shazam, a brand which is synonymous with music discovery for fans all around the world, we have forged a potent proposition: the first crowd-sourced, big data record label," said Rob Wiesenthal, COO/Corporate, Warner Music Group. "While data and crowd sourced analyses will never be a substitute for the expertise and instincts of our A&R professionals, we do believe the information we obtain for this new label will provide very useful signals that will bolster our ability to find the stars of tomorrow.""
"The Detroit Music Awards Foundation is a Michigan 501(c) 3 non-profit corporation, whose mission is to recognize Detroit area musicians working on a national, regional and local level. Its purpose is also to support and nurture the musical community in the Detroit metropolitan area, and to create a network for musicians that cuts across genres and styles.
The DMAF was chartered in 1988 by a distinguished group of Detroit music and media professionals. The fledgling group held its first award show in 1992 at Detroit's Music Hall, and moved to the State Theatre, its present location, in 1993. In 1998, the organization merged with the Metro Times-sponsored Detroit Music Awards. Now, the Detroit Music Awards Foundation is a single entity presenting the Detroit Music Awards each spring. In 2005, the ceremony was the opening event for the debut of the Motor City Music Conference (MC2)"
"It may sound discouraging, but to be successful you need to compete with the several million musicians worldwide who are online vying for the attention, loyalty, and money of music fans. And I do mean millions – right now, Reverbnation alone has a community of over three million musicians registered to their platform. To make it more complicated, you need to attract the right kind of fans: Super Fans. Fans fall into three categories: Passive Fans, Active Fans, and Super Fan – and most fall into the first two. The Super Fans, those dedicated nearly to the point of evangelism; those willing to spend money on your CDs, product releases, web streams, ticket sales, and merch; the ones who want to stay connected to you; these are the minority. They are also the fans you want to nurture so that they continue to support you over the long-term."
"Devo guitarist Bob Casale died Monday, his brother and band mate announced Tuesday. Casale was 61. He was known by fans as "Bob 2" since he played alongside guitarist Bob Mothersbaugh, the brother of Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh. "As an original member of Devo, Bob Casale was there in the trenches with me from the beginning," his brother Gerald Casale said in a Facebook posting. "He was my level-headed brother, a solid performer and talented audio engineer, always giving more than he got.""Read all by clicking HERE.
"Apple today announced its first ever U.S. iTunes Festival to be held in Austin during SXSW March 11-15. Concerts will be held at ACL Live at the Moody Theater, home of Austin City Limits, and will feature Coldplay, Imagine Dragons, Pitbull, Keith Urban, ZEDD with more tba. All five nights will be available free as a live and on-demand stream via the iTunes Store and an iTunes Festival app."Here's the entire post.
"Allow me a brief reminiscence. In September 1975, during the golden age of the album, I saved up £2.99 in pocket money and excitedly went to buy Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here on the day of its release. Discovering that Electrip Records (now defunct: such foreshadowing!) was charging £3.50, I was, to use a term not then invented, gutted. Of course, as the album age progressed, the price of albums was to soar to a fiver and then a tenner, where it settled for years. The 21st century has sent the skittles flying; a paradigm shift has occurred, offering many benefits and many disturbances. Most new albums can now be downloaded for a fiver or so, and if you don’t want all of it you can usually cherry-pick your favourite tracks for 99p or less each. It’s the new – dread phrase – business model. If only the manager of Electrip Records had let me buy three quarters of Wish You Were Here, I wouldn’t have trudged home disconsolate and been excluded from the hot topic of discussion in the schoolyard the next Monday."Read this story by clicking HERE.
"My feelings and my ambivalence about the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame hasn’t changed any. Their attitude is elitist and it doesn’t reflect the public. It reflects a small group who dictate who meets the criteria that they set up as ‘rock and roll’. I’ve always felt the spirit of rock and roll meant not only ignoring your critics, but ignoring your peers and going your own way. I think we’ve done that pretty much with few exceptions for forty years. So that same criteria that kept us out has not gotten us in. I scratch my head a little and I also take issue with a certain arrogance within that group. Nonetheless I look at some of the inductees and any club that has Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and The Who and the Beatles and the Stones is company I don’t mind being in and my feelings have nothing to do with any of them, it purely has to do with a system which I think is tainted, corrupted and distorted."Here is the whole story.
Structure and organization is exactly the foundation that’s necessary to allow talented musicians to succeed though. So as an artist manager, the first thing I do when working with a new artists, is lay down that foundation that allows professional work. Because if you work professionally, everything goes smoother and more efficient, increasing your odds at making it big. In this four-part-series I have laid out simple steps and tips that you can use to streamline your operations and get you working on a professional level. Whether you’re a producer, solo guitar player or five man band, there’s practical information in here for all of you.Click HERE to read this. Be sure to check Reverbnation blog for the rest of this series as it becomes available.
"Welcome to the music industry! Fake it until you make it! The internet means that anyone can do this! By the way, everyone is out to steal all of your rights! Ahem. Or not so much. You see, there are a lot of misconceptions about the music industry out there. There is even a good chance that some well-meaning friends or family members have passed a few of these nuggets of wisdom on to you when they learned about your music business ambitions."Read more of this article HERE.
"The fact that CBS is throwing a 50th anniversary party Sunday for the Beatles, commemorating their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” underscores one of the Fab Four’s greatest gifts to contemporary popular culture. They showed the entertainment industry how to think big, how to market this heretofore slightly disreputable and embarrassing animal called “rock ’n’ roll.”"Read this story HERE.
"Never Leave The Bridge If you have a song that’s doing its normal verse and chorus thing, one option to change it up is to simply get to the bridge and stay there. Don’t think of the bridge section as a momentary change, only to come back into the hook or the chorus. But rather the bridge is the next chapter in the song and the outro. Once you get there, you never leave. In fact, I’ve taken this approach with one of my new songs. It has a simple verse, chorus, verse, chorus that builds into (hopefully) an epic bridge. And really the bridge is the release, from all the tension prior. Lyrically it’s what sums up everything else I’ve sung before. It’s the apex of the song, the climax. So I hang there and end there. No need to come back."Read this insightful article HERE.
"1998, American singer and guitarist Carl Wilson from The Beach Boys died aged 51 after a long battle with lung cancer, (Wilson was diagnosed with brain and lung cancer in early 1997). He sang lead vocal on 'God Only Knows', 'Good Vibrations,' and 'I Can Hear Music.' Wilson sang backing vocals on Elton John's 'Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me.'"Read more about what happened on this day.
"It would be nice if being in a band was all about making music - and it can be, as long as you never want anyone to hear what you're playing. However, if you want to get out there and show off your skills, there is a business side of making music that you'll eventually need to tend to. As things progress in your music career, that side will likely become too much to carry, and you'll want a real, life artist manager on the case. Before then, you'll need to get the job done on your own."HERE is the rest of this great post.
"Music Licensing can be quite confusing, and while there are different types of licenses, I’d like to focus the three I feel are most vital to us as composers, producers, and artists: blanket license, sync license, and master license. Terms to pay attention to throughout this post: Licensee – person/client in need of music or who work is licensed to. Licensor – creator, rights holder of the music/work. Tracks – music, cues, composition, material."Read this informative essay by clicking HERE.
"1966, Bob Dylan and The Band played at the Convention Center in Louisville, Kentucky. This was the first date on a world tour which would become noted as Dylan's first that used electric instruments, after he had �gone electric� at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival."Read other events marked on this date HERE.
"ADA, the indie label distribution and services arm of Warner Music Group (WMG), is expanding its artist & label services team. Brandon Squar has been promoted to SVP Digital Strategy and Revenue and Tatia Adams Fox has been named SVP Marketing, ADA. Both are based in New York. Squar previously served as Vice President, Digital Sales & Marketing, ADA. A 17-year music industry veteran, Squar has held various roles—with an emphasis on digital strategy, strategic marketing and sales—at companies including Universal Music Group, Island Def Jam Records, Live Nation, and Warner Music Group."
"1959, 22 year old Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, aged 17, died in a crash shortly after take-off from Clear Lake, Iowa, the pilot of the single-engined Beechcraft Bonanza plane was also killed. Holly hired the plane after heating problems developed on his tour bus. All three were travelling to Fargo, North Dakota, for the next show on their Winter Dance Party Tour which Holly had set - covering 24 cities in three weeks, to make money after the break-up of his band, The Crickets, last year."Read MORE.
"Two years after Gibson factories in Tennessee were raided by government agents, the venerable guitar manufacturer has released a special Government Series II Les Paul. As the press release explains:The entire report can be found HERE.
Great Gibson electric guitars have long been a means of fighting the establishment, so when the powers that be confiscated stocks of tonewoods from the Gibson factory in Nashville—only to return them once there was a resolution and the investigation ended—it was an event worth celebrating. Introducing the Government Series II Les Paul, a striking new guitar from Gibson USA for 2014 that suitably marks this infamous time in Gibson’s history. ...Each Government Series II Les Paul also includes a genuine piece of Gibson USA history in its solid rosewood fingerboard, which is made from wood returned to Gibson by the US government after the resolution."
"Detroit — Anna Gordy Gaye, who was married to musical great Marvin Gaye and whose brother founded Motown Records, has died. A statement released by the family says Gordy Gaye died at her Los Angeles home Friday while surrounded by family, including her son, Marvin Gaye III. She was 92. Her brother, Berry Gordy, founded Motown Records in Detroit in 1959. He named one label subsidiary after his sister."Read this story HERE.
