Last week, I went on Ticketmaster to purchase a ticket to see one of my favorite artists, The Weeknd, in concert. Tickets went on sale on Thursday at 10 am. There I was on my iPad at 10am, trying unsuccessfully to process my order.  I tried for thirty minutes – on my iPad, my Blackberry, and [...]

  We’ve been able to pay to digitally download sound recordings through legitimate services for over a decade now, and these services have grown pretty rapidly in terms of both scale and profitability. So much so, that iTunes (so far the most successful of the digital distribution platforms) has sold more than 10 billion songs [...]

  Let’s start by taking a look at Grooveshark. Universal Music Group (UMG) filed a complaint in Manhattan District Court on November 18, 2011 against Escape Media and five of its executives alleging that Grooveshark engaged in a plethora of infringing conduct. According to the complaint, “Escape publically touts the fact that it has a [...]

In a world where Newt Gingrich is being sued for copyright infringement by the composers of “Eye of the Tiger”, lays the hopes and dreams of Indie music labels.  These labels have been making gains in pursuing their goals; the start of which was their “Manifesto” produced on January 29th. January 28-31, 2012 marked this [...]

The “world’s largest funding platform,” Kickstarter raised $20 million for musicians in 2011. The Kickstarter-crowdfunding model demonstrates that musicians can successfully (and directly) obtain funding for their creative projects from their fans, without record label backing- either major or independent. This all begs the question, what does Kickstarter’s $20 million mean for the future of [...]

The 2011 end of the year numbers are in! Was 2011 the year when the music industry went back to black? Well that depends on what numbers you compare and who you ask. The Nielson-Billboard 2011 Music Industry Report indicates that music sales for 2011 are up for the first time in seven years (thanks [...]

  The proposed legislation goes by many names— COICA, PIPA, SOPA—but the goal is clear: protect intellectual property and prevent online piracy. Congress has made big moves this year to push its anti-piracy agenda. Both the House and Senate have introduced bills that purport to regulate the Internet, while modernizing our criminal and civil laws [...]

  Less than two months ago, Nyasha Foy asked, “Is Music Streaming Worth The Cost?”  Well, this week, ST Holdings provided a definitive “No.”  ST Holdings, a UK-based independent music distributor of 238 indie record labels (Dub Police and Naked Lunch), withdrew all their music from Spotify and similar digital streaming services including Rhapsody, Mog, [...]

For those who don’t know, the simplest way to describe Baidu in a soundbite is “the Google of China.”  Although somewhat of a misnomer (afterall Google does operate in China), it is a fitting place to begin. Baidu is free music download service in China. The name for Baidu is inspired by a poem written more [...]

Unless you have been living in a cave the past six years, you have at least a passing understanding of the existence of social media. Social media allows its users to reach out to friends, acquaintances, or followers with what is happening. This could be in the form of a picture, event posting, or a [...]