• Spotify 25 Under 25: Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, One Direction Led Streams

    When it comes to owning Spotify's streams as a young musician, no one does it better than Ed Sheeran. Today (Aug. 18), the streaming service announced its "25 Under 25" musicians, and ahead of major pop players such as Ariana Grande, One Direction and Fifth Harmony, the title of the most-streamed young act of the year goes to none other than the "Thinking Out Loud" singer himself.

  • Barack Obama Hand Picks Summer #POTUSPlaylist on Spotify

    If you've ever given a thought to President Barack Obama's summer playlist, you're not alone and the curiousity can finally be put to rest. On Friday morning, the White House unveiled the summer #POTUSPlaylist on Spotify, complete with over 180 minutes of tunes and 40 tracks. One was crafted for the daytime and another chosen for specifically for nightfall, both hand-picked by Obama himself who's currently vacationing in Martha's Vineyard.

  • Spotify Reportedly Planning On Offering More Premium-Only Content

    Spotify is looking to expand its premium only content as it nears the final deadline to complete negotiations with the three major labels. According to a report in Digital Music News, citing anonymous sources, the streaming service is moving towards offering more content only to premium subscribers or for a very limited time to non-paying users.

  • 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.
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