• Neil Young Removes Music from Streaming Services, Cites Awful Audio

    Neil Young has joined performers such as Taylor Swift and Prince in removing his music from the majority of streaming services, however he cites audio quality and not financial elements for the decision. The godfather of grunge has always been an audio-obsessive, but there's a chance that this recent decision was simply to help boost use of his personal service, Pono.

  • Sony Music Defends Spotify Payout Process Amid 19 Entertainment Lawsuit

    Sony Music has defended its Spotify payout process after being sued by American Idol-affiliated outfit 19, which manages artists like Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson. Sony claims that taking equity in the streaming giant to the tune of 6 percent under its current deal and keeping some profits from artists are all within their contractual right.

  • Soundcloud Introduces 15,000 Play Limit on API Embedded Tracks

    Amidst all of the pressure from other major streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and TIDAL, Soundcloud has found itself struggling to keep up as it attempts to resolve its ability to monetize the content on its platform without alienating its users. On Tuesday, the service announced a move to cap the number of plays on a third party site like a blog using a Soundcloud customized API. The cap is at 15,000 plays over 24 hours per streamable item, which may sound like a lot, but for a select few number of sites that are able to drive a lot of traffic, this could be pretty devastating.

  • Spotify Charts Most Popular Keys in 30 Million Song Catalogue (Hint: It's Major)

    Spotify's Insights blog took to the streaming service's massive music catalogue with the intent of figuring out what keys were most popular among the 30 million tracks. Every song is based around one of 12 possible notes, as well as a mode (generally major for "happier" music and minor for "sad"). That results in nearly every piece of Western music being played in one of 24 possible keys. Jazz pianist Kenny Ning moonlights as a data analyst for Spotify and he charted the results of what he found. So what key was most popular?

  • Ultra Records CEO Patrick Moxey Backs Sony In Soundcloud Fight

    The battle between Sony and Soundcloud has turned ugly this month as the label has decided to start pull down it's artist's music from the Berlin music service. Among those who have been affected this far include Adele, Miguel, Passion Pit and in the next day or two Madeon. Sony Music recently bought dance music label Ultra Records as its U.S. electronic music branch. Ultra Records CEO Patrick Moxey was a speaker at IMS Engage in Ibiza, a conference for electronic music industry folks and he was asked about the conflict between his label parent and Soundcloud. According to Music Week, he backed Sony and spoke rather candidly about the lack of monetization opportunities found on Soundcloud at the moment - a common theme echoed among labels now.

  • Leaked Sony, Spotify Contract Reveals One-Sided Streaming Splits

    Streaming is the next frontier for music - denying it is only going to make the transition harder. The primary issue has been getting artists, songwriters and content creators paid a fair shake for their music. While most of the attention has been focused on services like Spotify and their small payouts, little has been given to the labels and their contracts with the streaming services, which have been kept secret until now. The Verge was able to obtain a copy of Sony's previous agreement with Spotify, which shines light on the splits, advances and payments that the major label was able to get from the Swedish streaming giant, as well as some outside revenue sources that have not been previously shared.

  • Spotify, Starbucks Partner Turning Baristas Into Coffee Shop DJs

    Even with the recent push back against streaming services over their per-stream royalty payments, their impact on the music industry continues to grow at a remarkable rate. The largest company of them all, Spotify, announced another massive corporate partnership today that will bring the service to a whole new swath of customers. According to a news release today, Spotify has partnered with coffee store giant, Starbucks, where it will be integrated into the Seattle-based company's 7,000 United States stores and 10M member My Starbucks Loyalty Program. The partnership will allow baristas to create playlists that will then be played at their local store.

  • Warner Music Group 2015 Q1 Earnings: Streaming Revenue Surpases Downloads

    As industry observers see the growing dominance of streaming, many have waited for the moment when it would become more important than digital downloads. Warner Music Group announced its first quarter earnings ending on March 31st and the main takeaway from their report was that streaming has at last surpassed downloads the primary source of revenue for the smallest of the three major labels.

  • Spotify Posts Biggest Revenues, Biggest Losses Ever During 2014

    Spotify continued to lose money during 2014, although financial analysts still suggest that this isn't necessarily a bad thing...yet. The Swedish streaming company had its highest revenues ever during the last financial year, yet it posted overall losses of more than $185 million. So what's the story?
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