Apple’s iTunes is officially ten years old and has sold well over 25 billion songs since its creation. Check out what Eddy Cue, the overseer of iTunes, had to say about the anniversary below.
Related Stories:
Apple Have Sold Over 25 Billion Songs On iTunes
Apple has confirmed that they have sold over 25 billion songs via iTunes. Check out a press release from Apple below by clicking “Read More.”
Jesse Cannon, the man behind Cannon Found Soundation Recording Studios (Man Overboard, The Menzingers, Transit, Lifetime) and Musformation, is back with a great new Industry feature in our ongoing series. In this week’s feature, Jesse dives into some positives with a 18 year old French producer getting a big break, SongKick releasing a new service, Apple jumping into online radio, Xbox Music, Trent Reznor giving up on DIY, and Taylor Swift. Check it all out below!
Wanna talk about cool things happening in the music business? 18 year old, French dance producer who has made his way to popularity releasing his own music and pushing it out to the Internet has gotten so big from his own talent (watch this if you doubt me) and songwriting (he also made what I would call the first pop punk electro track with Ellie Goulding) he is now #24 on the dance chart and Lady GaGa choose him to open her upcoming tour.
Whenever anyone tells you that the music business sucks today, remind them a teenager from France can rise up the charts on his own talent and that a musician like Skrillex can be one of the biggest musicians on earth without ever having released an LP. The music world today allows you to get huge if people like you. Whether you like either musicians or not, this proves music fans actually like are making musicians popular, not the labels that back them for huge profits.
SongKick is doing some real cool stuff with a service they call Detour. Fans in areas where a musician may not usually tour can now request musicians to tour their city through SongKick and the musician can see if they get enough requests to make a tour financially viable Indie rock nerds like Hot Chip and Andrew Bird are already taking care of this awesome technology. In a world where you never know if you are going to make money on a tour to a strange land, this helps take away some of the risk.
OK back to totally uncool things going on in the music business as usual. If you told someone in 1980 that making up rumors on a computer could send stocks crashing, they would laugh their face off. In no laughing matter the very troubled Pandora (troubled mostly, from being stupid enough to bribe one of the most corrupt members of congress to make them a bill that would take money away from musicians and put it in Pandora’s pocket) had its stock sink as more definitive rumors spread that Apple will release a free music streaming service in early 2013. If this rumor is true, Pandora, Spotify and Rdio all may be in for a world of pain.
Speaking of new rivals to Spotify, Xbox Music has launched as a direct competitor to Spotify and Rdio. The service is available on Xbox, every Windows based computer and Windows based tablet or phone. This means that your grandma and Bob from Accounting aka the last two people who are big enough losers to use Windows, can now stream that Barry Manilow and Creed CDs from the crappy technology they purchased. It also means that we can look forward to laughing at Microsoft when this becomes the new Zune. Let’s just hope no one gets a tatoo of any silly logo they make.
Jesse Cannon, the man behind Cannon Found Soundation Recording Studios (Man Overboard, The Menzingers, Transit, Lifetime) and Musformation, is back to open up a new season of Industry features on PropertyOfZack. In this week’s feature, Jesse digs into Amanda Palmer once again, VMA viewership plummeting, Ping, iTunes vs Pandora, and much more. Check it all out below!
The big music industry controversy of the week is that million-fan-dollar-funded, Amanda Palmer, is not paying some guest musicians on her upcoming tour. In short, a lot of musicians feel disrespected by her not sharing the money and getting musicians to play with her for free. A lot has been said about this issue. Everyone from fans, to Lefsetz, to Albini has weighed in, including Ms. Palmer, but I think there is a more interesting to question to ask.
Do fans and the world you ask to fund you have the right to dictate how you spend your fan-funding money? I think it is totally awesome that the world will fund musicians endeavors instead of a bunch of out of touch morons at a record label but does fan-funding your project then mean that all of your business choices are going to be up for public debate? For example, I have seen a bunch of musicians with children crowdfund their records. When they get $30k and obviously spent no more than $10k on the recording (if that), should they have to tell their fans how much of that money went to diapers and healthcare for their family? Is this really a can of worms musicians and fans want to open.
Do we really want to nitpick every move and budgeting expense a musician we funded makes? I sure don’t. There is a simple answer to all of this. Fan funding is a lot like when we used to buy CDs and we hadn’t heard them yet. We would often buy them because the last record by the musician was great and we trusted them to make another record we enjoy. If they broke your trust by making a crappy record, you would think twice about buying their next record. Another analogy would be an election, if you elect someone you are stuck with this person’s decisions until it is time for re-election. If the fans don’t think Amanda Palmer spent their money properly, don’t fund her next project aka when she is up for re-election. It’s that simple, if you don’t like the way they spend your money, don’t fund the next project.
Ok now that I have wasted one and a half columns on Amanda Palmer, who I would rather jam a pencil in my ear than listen to her music, let’s move on…
So the VMAs viewership is down 50% and Twitter is saying this is because MTV is awful, the music industry is dead, Nick Minaj is crazy and that Green Day performed two of the worst song in the history of “punk”. Why is everyone neglecting the fact that they were up against a speech by our Vice President and liberal superstar (and our president in 2016) Lizzy Warren? Oh wait, its because music fans love pretending whatever they are angry about is the cause of all of their problems.
In news no one will notice: Apple killed their iTunes powered social network Ping. Funny, there was no chapter in the Steve Jobs bio about how genius a move Ping was?
Bruce Willis’ wife has now debunked a rumor circulating that Willis was planning on suing Apple over the ownership of his music. Check out a tweet from Willis’ wife below by clicking “Read More.”
Related Stories:
Bruce Willis Considering Suing Apple Over Music Ownership
Reports have come in throughout the day stating that actor Bruce Willis may be suing Apple over an ownership issue with his music rights. Willis is claiming that when he passes away he will not be able to pass along the ownership of his digital music to his daughters, even though he purchased the music in legal ways. Check out out a summary of the report below by clicking “Read More.”
It looks like Apple may be interesting in launching an “on-demand streaming service” similar to Spotify and Rdio that would tie together iCloud and iMatch. You can read a report about the possibility below and make sure to let us know your thoughts!
The Wonder Years
Greatest Generation
The Front Bottoms
Talon Of The Hawk
Man Overboard
Heart Attack
Misser
Distancing
| Copyright
