When grabbing your morning cup of joe at the local Starbucks, you’ve probably noticed a small array of CDs delicately displayed in front of the cash register. Well, soak it up next time, because the ‘Bucks says it’s going to stop pushing Dave Matthews Band, Taylor Swift, holiday compilations and other artists on us while we’re looking for a caffeine boost. [More]
music
Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Unleashes Surprise New Album Via BitTorrent
By 9.26.14
Because he’s already made more money than some small nations, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke is free to experiment with new ways of distributing his music. It wasn’t that long ago that the band tried a pay-what-you-want model with its In Rainbows album. And today, Yorke announced the release of his first solo album in nearly a decade as a bundle via BitTorrent. [More]
StubHub Music App Doesn’t Play Nice With Ticketmaster
By 8.6.14
The StubHub Music app, which just launched to a national audience, aims to connect music lovers with concert tickets. And if a show isn’t sold out, the reseller will sometimes even point you to tickets you can buy from the venue — but not if those tickets are being sold by Ticketmaster. [More]
Want Those Dairy Cows To Produce More Milk? Turn On Some Slow Jams To Set The Mood
By 2.20.14
First of all, I hope you all read that word in the headline as “mooed,” because, get it? Wordplay! Anyway, if you’re a dairy farmer this probably isn’t news to you, but for the rest of us out there with no cows to milk, it’s interesting to hear that a good way to get the cows producing is to play some soft, smooth, slow jams. [More]
How Much Does A Songwriter Earn When Pandora Plays His Song 1.16 Million Times? Hint: It’s Not Much
By 6.24.13
The music industry has experienced multiple earth-shifting changes in the last 15 years. Widespread Internet use brought us the era of free-for-all sharing with Napster and LimeWire. Then Apple’s iTunes legitimized digital music downloads as a viable distribution model, but also showed that record companies are not always needed to have a hit. Streaming services like Pandora now give users free access to virtually every available song, but at what cost to both the artist and the webcaster? [More]
Google Launches Subscription Music Service, World Continues To Spin
By 5.15.13
During the keynote speech at today’s Google I/O conference, the company unveiled its latest offering — a music subscription service that appears to be intended for users of existing services like Pandora, Spotify and Rdio. [More]
When Buying Music From Amazon, It Can Sometimes Be More Expensive To Only Buy Mp3s
By 3.27.13
In most cases, it will cost you more to purchase a new CD than it would to buy that same music as an mp3 download. Which makes sense, since digital files don’t have the high manufacturing, shipping, or storage charges that physical discs do. But sometimes, you could end up on the short end of the stick if you just assume that the mp3 will be cheaper. [More]
Study Finds P2P Users Buy More Music, But Didn’t Pay For Most Of Their Tunes
By 1.21.13
Many in the music industry paint peer-to-peer file-sharers as devil’s spawn who suck the life blood out of artists. Some P2P proponents have countered that file-sharing has helped encourage the growth of many bands who would have gone unknown in the CD and cassette age. Now comes a new study that each side could point to as support. [More]
Ever Bought A CD From Amazon? It Might Be Eligible For Free MP3 Conversion
By 1.10.13
This morning, Amazon.com launched a new service called AutoRip that allows buyers of certain music CDs to automatically receive access to downloadable MP3s of the album via Amazon’s Cloud Player. But the most interesting feature is that it will convert any qualifying CD you’ve purchased on Amazon since 1998. [More]
Who Is Really Making Money When We Don’t Buy The Music We Listen To?
By 6.19.12
The new 21-year-old intern on NPR’s All Songs Considered claims to have only purchased 15 CDs in her entire life. This amounts to shocking news for some, probably because it doesn’t match our collective mental image of a true music enthusiast, especially one who works on a national radio show about music. [More]
Best Buy Music Department Cares About Your Guitar Very, Very Much
By 6.7.12
The surprising thing about this story isn’t that a reader received excellent customer service from a Best Buy store. No, we’ve seen that before. It’s that reader Cameron’s local Best Buy store has a full-service music department where you can get instruments repaired by actual professionals. When Cameron brought his guitar to his local store for restringing and repair, he expected just that: new strings and the specific adjustment he needed to the instrument’s neck. Instead, he got a fantastic restoration job on the now shiny, like-new guitar, and didn’t have to pay extra. [More]
People Are Actually Buying Music Again
By 3.6.12
Reports of the music industry’s death may be premature. According to the results of a new study, not only are more people buying music, but some are doing so after hearing the tunes for free on the Internet. [More]
Elvis Costello Tells Fans Not To Buy His Pricey New Release
By 11.29.11
Singer-songwriter Elvis Costello is apparently so bitter at the pricing of his upcoming box set that he’s telling fans not to buy it and to spend their money on Louis Armstrong’s music instead. A post on his official site calls the price of The Return Of The Spectacular Spinning Songbook “either a misprint or satire.” [More]
Citigroup Gets Out Of The Music Business
By 11.15.11
Citigroup has sold the EMI music business for $4.1 billion, with Universal Music Group picking up the record label for $1.9 billion and a team including Sony and David Geffen buying the publishing business for $2.2 billion. The sale caps a nine-month bidding war, and splits up a company that has sold and published music for over a century. [More]
Apple Will Replace First-Gen iPod Nanos For Overheating Risks
By 11.14.11
If you have an iPod nano sold between Sep ’05 and Dec ’06, you could be eligible for a replacement under a new worldwide recall issued by Apple to deal with battery heating issues. [More]
Use iTunes Feature To Get Rid Of Awful Music You Shouldn't Have Downloaded
By 9.2.11
When you’re listening to your music collection, it’s easy to get annoyed with yourself for stuffing so many terrible songs that you once liked for some inexplicable reason. Apple knows you all too well, and has provided a feature that helps you shed the chaff. [More]
Judge: Companies Can Offer Cloud Music Storage Without Label Consent
By 8.23.11
Amazon, Google and other companies that allow users to store their music on cloud servers are within the law, according to a federal judge who ruled that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 protects the business model. The judge ruled in favor of cloud storage service MP3tunes, which was sued by record label EMI. [More]
How Record Companies Spend More Than $1 Million To Manufacture Each Hit
By 8.3.11
It’s easy to imagine a famous singer-songwriter whipping up musical magic in a flurry of inspiration, then pushing it through the studio system and onto iTunes and the radio with minimum interference. But that’s not the way the pop music factory manufactures its sausage. [More]
