Music Business

Liv Buli’s Weekend Reading List: Snapchat Makes It Rain, Spotify Turns 10, And The Album Drop As You Know It Is Gone

Liv-Buli_avatar_1457109562-400x400Liv Buli has the unique title of Data Journalist at Pandora owned analytics provider Next Big Sound. With one eye on the data and the other on the cultural zeitgeist, she often uncovers what matters most before the rest of us. So, we're proud and happy that she's agreed to share what's caught her eye (almost) every Friday.

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First things first, if you’ve had more than a 35 second conversation with me in the last two months, you’ll know that I am going to see Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden tonight (or follow me on Twitter where I have lost a significant amount of followers thanks to my daily reminders).

My first ever concert was The Beach Boys, I once challenged Neil Young to “take it off” (he didn’t), I saw The Stones on probably their 400th reunion/final tour and also their 422nd, and my parents have taken me to pretty much every Bob Dylan (and Bruce Springsteen) concert ever held in Norway (which is a surprising amount). Tonight, finally, I am about to round out my list of must-see legends with a solid two hour session of singing along at the top of my lungs to Billy Joel.

Tonight I peak.

Me on my way to MSG this evening.

In actual news though I have some links to share before riding off into the sunset with my piano man. Billboard’s Steve Knopper took a look at how album releases have evolved spurred by the shift in ownership versus access, and the impact is has on artists, platforms, and consumers. Definitely worth the read.

And can we talk about the mind-boggling amount of money that Snapchat just raised?

This was a pretty harsh headline I have to say. Not to mention an overall rough assessment for Twitter.

 My buddy Stuart Dredge over at Music Ally published an extensive report on Spotify as they celebrate their 10th anniversary.

TLDR? Some good stuff, some bad stuff.

Our friends at Polygraph just published another epic interactive, this time celebrating Miles Davis on what would have been his 90th birthday. Using Wikipedia (not just his page, but scraping every article that makes mention of him), Matt Daniels and team are able to document his influence (in a beautiful way).

 Lately I have been punishing myself with Artist to Watch lists for festivals I can’t go to and feeling some intense FOMO. This week we’re heading Northwest for Sasquatch! (which is supposed to be amazing).

And even though I don’t particularly like the “song of summer” concept (and learned that no one agrees with me when I wrote a dead-in-the-water article about that fact last year), I of course had to do a data-driven round up of the ten songs you are going to be totally over by September.

 These are the three most exciting ones from that list if you ask me:

The Chainsmokers & G-Eazy have been around for a while, but Desiigner, Daya, and Grace are all pretty new to the scene, and it’s cool to watch them steadily rise to the top.

And finally, I had to share this article on Bieber/Skrillex’s copyright woes. Not so much for the story, but mainly because I kept cracking up every time I read “Skrillrex.” Nailed it Newsweek, nailed it.

With that I hope you have a marvelous, mythical, even magical Memorial Day Weekend!

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