hypebot

An Inside Look At The DJ Shadow, SoundCloud Remix Competition

(UPDATED) Guest post by Michael Fiebach (@mfiebach), founder of Fame House & DJ Shadow's Digital Marketing Manager, who coordinated this collaborative remix competition with DJ Shadow and SoundCloud.

Following the success of the DJ Shadow Remix Project in 2009 / 2010, DJ Shadow set out to up the ante with a Remix Contest to help promote his newest album, “The Less You Know, The Better”. The first “DJ Shadow Remix Project” in 2009 / 2010 allowed remixers to take any DJ Shadow track and add their own creative twist to it. There were numerous highlights, among them NiT GRiT’s rendition of “Midnight in a Perfect World” and Awkard’s version of “Halfway Home”.

Agile Music: Artist Creativity & Music Formats In the Age of Mass Customization

This guest post by Mark Mulligan, a respected independent music analyst who publishes the Music Industry Blog, includes the full text and main graphics of the speech he delivered at Midem's Visionary Monday earlier this week.

Today I want to talk to you about a concept called Agile Music, a framework for understanding how artist creativity, industry business models and music products must all undergo a programme of radical, transformational change. I'm going to start by outlining the catalysts for this change.

STOP COMPLAINING! Study Shows New Era Of Abundance In Music, Entertainment [INFOGRAPHIC]

A new white paper presented today a Midem, Techdirt founder Mike Masnick heralds a very different present and future for the music and entrainment industries than the doom and gloom often presented in the mainstream media. Combining statistics from a  number of sources, "The Sky Is Rising" shows that:

Programmers Unveil Cannes Hack Day Creations #MIDEM

 

(UPDATED) From Cannes by Stuart Dredge for Midem content partner Music Ally. Find them at musically.com and @musically.

 

A hearty group of programmers were been holed up overnight at Midem building apps and hacks, as part of the Music Hack Day event. This morning,  SoundCloud’s Dave Haynes and Six Two Productions’ Martyn Davies who have been overseeing it, took to the stage to show off a couple of examples to give a flavor of what’s been created.

Tom Silverman: 1st Anniversary Of The Resurrection Of The Music Business

Guest post by Tom Silverman, music industry veteran, thought leader and founder of the New Music Seminar.

As I sat and planned the program for the June 2012 New Music Seminar, it occurred to me that we are approaching the first anniversary of the music business resurrection. After ten years of decline, the music business hit bottom in the second week of February 2010 and began to rise the week of February 14th. There have been many reports of the music business comeback and many have tried to figure out what was responsible for this upturn. Some have credited Adele, others the shuttering of Limewire, still others the Walmart $5 dump bins.

Let's look at the good news.

Global Digital Music Sales Up 8% In 2011 To $5.2 Billion

Highlights Of IFPA Digital Music Report 2012:

New Musican Revenue Stream: Teach Music Online

Many musicians have made their bread and butter by teaching in order to support their music-making and performing habit. Teaching is not for everyone, particularly those who are rude, stressed, unfriendly, unhelpful or not very good at what they do. However, if you are an established teacher serving a local clientele or a musician who enjoys helping beginners learn something new, then considering online teaching as a flexible way of earning additional funds might be for you.

Artist Growth Launches Musician Career Management Platform With Mobile Tools

(UPDATED) Artist Growth, a sophisticated set of cloud-based artist management tools that also utilizes specialized apps for mobile devices, has officially launched. Created by Nashville based musicians turned entrepreneurs Matt Urmy and Jonathan Sexton, Artist Growth's proprietary technology integrates finances, calendars, inventory, contacts, social media and mentoring resources within a single cloud-interface.

The State Of Online Music [Stats & Analysis]

Next Big Sound, the music analytics website that continuously tracks the number of plays, views, fans, comments, mentions, and other key metrics across the major web properties, yesterday released their 2011 State of Online Music – and the numbers are quite staggering: 64 billion new plays, 16 billion profile views, and 3.5 billion new fan connections. 

SoundExchange Payments To Musicians, Rightsholders Up 17% Last Year

SoundExchange has announced a fourth quarter 2011 distribution of $89.5 million to more that 18,000 musicians and rightsholders. That brings the year-end estimated royalty payments to $292 million, up 17% from the prior year.  Total royalties distributed since inception total $900 million with 2010 administration rate of 6.7% percent and the 2011 rate project to be lower.

Who LiveNation Should Acquire Next

Guest post by Brenden Mulligan, technology entrepreneur and founder of Onesheet and ArtistData. Follow him on Twitter at @mulligan.

LiveNation has made some impressive moves lately. First, it bought BigChampagne and brought on its founder Eric Garland. Then, it hired Ethan Kaplan to come on and run the Product division. I know both of these execs and have a ton of respect with what they've accomplished and their vision for the industry. I think LiveNation is extremely smart to bring them in.

Music Biz Blogs Relaunches

Writing regularly at Hypebot has inspired me to relaunch Music Biz Blogs, a site designed to help folks discover and follow music business blogs. The single page site features a combined newsfeed of 45 blogs with more on the way. The list of blogs is included in the sidebar and a Google Custom Search Engine is available for searching that list. It should be a useful tool for anyone interested in the music industry whether to follow daily news or just to find some interesting blogs.

2011 TechCrunch Crunchies Finalists Include Spotify CEO Ek & Mulligan's Onesheet

The 2011 Crunchies, the annual tech awards show created by TechCrunch, takes place January 31st in San Francisco. Voting has begun to choose the winners from the list of finalists and you are encouraged to vote. Though there are no outright music or entertainment categories, music tech companies made a strong showing across categories. In addition, a number of prominent companies and products that are important to the music industry are up for awards.

Ethan Kaplan: "And I Return ...Again" [From REM To WMG To LiveNation.com]

Guest post by Ethan Kaplan, former SVP Tech at Warner Bros. Records, new VP of Product for LiveNation.com and co-founder with Eric Garland and Joe Fleischer from BigChampagne of Live Nation Labs. 

My first rock concert. October 31, 1995 I had front row seats to R.E.M. at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim. We had lined up super early for tickets nearly a year prior, and this date was rescheduled to Halloween after Bill Berry's aneurism. For the show I dressed up in some freaky glam rock outfit all purchased at thrift stores in Fullerton.

The Mainstream Music Establishment Wants You To Think You're Not Good Enough

Guest post by Charles Alexander, songwriter, founder of artist services firm Outside The Box Music, and director music marketing learning series "Rock Your Net".

This year the mainstream music establishment was preoccupied with letting the indie/DIY community know they were "Not Good Enough." In fact, some gatekeeping factions of even the DIY/Indie community seemed to reinforce this theme (more on this later).

Next Big Sound Raises $6.5 Million For Analytics

(UPDATED) Music analytics startup Next Big Sound has closed a $6.5 million Series A financing round led by IA Ventures and Foundry Group.  The Boulder, Colorado based company will use the funds to open a New York City office and expand it's team.

Musicians Name 2011's Top Music & Tech Innovations

The O Music Awards blog takes a three part look at the music and tech found most innovative by a current crop of musicians. Getting things done while being mobile is an especially important theme for these hard working artists.  Apple products sweep with an exceptionally strong showing from the iPhone and iPad.

Top Music & Tech Innovations of 2011: Part 1

Kyle Bylin: Chaos We Can Stand [Best Of Hypebot]

All week we'll be featuring the best and most popular articles that appeared on Hypebot in 2011. This one, subtitled "Attitudes Toward Technology and Their Impact on the New Digital Ecology" is by former Hypebot Editor and Billboard staffer Kyle Bylin.

I. Where Salvation Lies

Upon discovering that I had relatively poor vision in the seventh grade—difficulties seeing the whiteboard and anything from afar—it was understood that I would need to get glasses. Not just any glasses though, the specific style that I wanted were those worn by the front man of the rock group Linkin Park, Chester Bennington; they were thick-framed, black glasses, and in my mind, they looked amazing—on him. As it would turn out, the glasses looked less than stellar on me and I got a completely different pair.

Mathematicians Discover Secret Formula For Writing A Hit Song

Though math is usually used to tell you if a song was a hit based on sales, scientists from the University of Bristol believe they have "The Hit Equation." A group focused on artificial intelligence developed machine learning algorithms that mined the characteristics of top hits to develop a formula for key musical features that determine whether a song will be a hit.

Former Warner Bros. Tech SVP Ethan Kaplan Joins Big Champagne Ticketmaster

Just days after music and media data firm Big Champagne announced its acquisition by Live Nation's Ticketmaster, the company has announced that former Warner Brothers Records SVP of Technology Ethan Kaplan has joined the team.