How Does Spotify Pay Artists? An Answer That Makes Sense!

How much does Spotify pay artists? It’s the biggest mystery in music. One independant artist claims to have received a measly $0.004 per stream. There was a rumor that Lady Gaga only earned $162 from a million streams. Even indie band Grizzly Bear chimed in to express their displeasure with the alleged slave wages of Spotify declaring that they only received $0.001 per stream. Some have even taken to restricting their music from the service altogether. Is it really that bad? are the payments that low?

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The UK markets MBA for the Music Industry at Henley Business School proves to be a Key Influencer in US Job success

The UK market is known for its influence in music across the world so its no surprise that its world first MBA in the Music Industry also proves to be a real game changer and a positive effect on the US jobs market.

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Distribution

 By, Wendy Day

A very important aspect of selling your own music is getting it to the consumers via digital download sales sites and getting CDs into retail stores. Getting onto digital sites is as easy as uploading the music—it takes up no retail space, so it’s relatively easy to get accepted onto any music sales website through an aggregator.  

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Easiest Ways for Independent Artists to Stay One Step Ahead of Piracy

So your band pretty much rules. You have a killer recording that you’ve dumped your blood, sweat, and bank account into. You’ve got the look and the artwork to catch some attention. You have a Facebook and a Twitter that are pretty active, but what next … ?

Technology moves fast. Just look at how up-to-date your year old cell phone is(n’t) and it should come as no surprise. Once you check your email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Trello, Moodle, Pintrest and spend some time on Youtube you’re ready to go back to bed. And that’s just for the average Joe …

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The 5 Best Online Business Tools For Bands

A band is a business, so you should treat it like one. Whether you have a manager or not, seldom can you escape from the day to day housekeeping tasks that bands have to face, especially if you’re on the road frequently. But luckily there are a plethora of free online tools you can use to help manage those daunting tasks, from shared calendars and expense sheets to project boards and touring apps. Below are a few of our top recommendations.

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Analog vs digital in mastering

So what is best during mastering, analog or digital sonic processing? This is an old debate and the fact is a good mastering studio should be using a combination of both types of equipment. Mastering means getting the absolute best out of a piece of music before it is released this means compromise is not an option. I believe digital only mastering is a compromise. The reason being is that analog equipment excels at certain types of signal processing and without it purely digital mastering is leaving something to be desired.

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Comprehensive guide to NI Maschine software

Producertech are proud to announce the release of a new course on Native Instrument’s Maschine, which takes you through every aspect of the powerful groove production studio. The Complete Maschine Guide is a 5-hour series of tutorials, which explores all of the main stages of making music with Maschine, covering numerous production techniques in various different styles of music along the way…

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What Would You Pay for "Used" Digital Access Rights?

The major players are taking steps to make non-exclusive rights to access cloud-based digital goods feel like ownership. Since the November 2012 announcement in that the Supreme Court would hear the Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons case, both Apple and Amazon have received patents indicating they are working on technology to permit buyers of e-books and cloud-based music files to resell these products. Don’t be fooled into thinking this will give you full ownership rights.

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How Do Musicians Use the iPad? Here are 24 Ways...

Over the past few years, musicians have come up with some pretty innovative ways to use iPad - from Jordan Rudess’s epic ‘Morphwiz’ App to whole live performances done on iPads. Here’s a nice infographic showing 24 different ways that musicians can use the iPad to learn, compose, record, and perform!

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The rising appeal of the EP release (Extended Player)

The Extended Player (an EP) has often been a popular release format for musicians, bands and labels. EP’s have been released for decades as the industry knows it is a great end product for numerous reasons. It is a good show case product allowing a number of tracks for a band to express continuity between their music offerings or show diversity of style. An EP would typically span between 3-5 unique songs or musical compositions.

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6 Things You Can Do With $100 That Will Change Your Music Career

Money. Let’s face it: most artists aren’t very good with it. Most of us don’t have much to invest into our music career (relatively speaking), and when we do, we tend to throw it at some random opportunities without a larger strategy in mind.

Take, for instance, submission fees to music festivals. Each year, thousands of artists spend over $100 in application fees or subscription costs to EPK sites, in hopes of getting a show at SXSW, CMJ, Bumbershoot, or other large festivals. Personally, I think festivals are overrated in terms of importance for your career, but if you really want to get in, try reading this guide: How to Get Into SXSW.

You can easily spend $100 on strings, picks, or sticks. You could even buy a cheap electric guitar. Or, if you were riding in my tour bus, $100 almost covers the gas from Portland, OR to Seattle, WA.

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(I) Submitting materials: artist one-sheets and college radio promotion.

This is part 1 of an article written from the perspective of a program director/MD focusing on the creation and submission of materials for college radio – as a radio promotion company, and independently – though many of these points can be extrapolated and applied to areas both inside and outside of the music industry.

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Why Women Aren’t Equals In New Music Leadership and Innovation

Plenty of media attention has been piled on Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In, but in an article published this week on NewMusicBox musician Ellen McSweeney has applied its research to an analysis of how we might better approach gender disparities in the music field. This is an issue that impacts both male and female music makers, and all voices are needed if progress is to be made. We hope you’ll add yours.

New Nobility Hit Rock Band, Birth a Blue Butterfly

Australian band New Nobility have some cool news to announce today: their song “Galactic Love” is now a song option on Rock Band.com. The track is from their 2009 album Blue Butterfly (Revolution), and you can see the video below.

The group describe themselves as having a “‘breath of fresh air’ rock sound,” which makes sense given the clean, melodic lyrics, and brisk musical pace of what we’ve heard so far. Not content to just rock, however, the band’s message and push for peace has netted them a few international awards, including the Music Aid Award for “Best Band” in 2007, and the World Peace and Music Award in India. As the band explains, “[t]hey sing about fighting for global justice and peace throughout the world.”