Some interesting numbers were gathered by Venture Harbour about music related companies on social networks.
Well, these numbers have to be taken with a pinch of salt as we all know by now that robots and fake accounts have taken over the asylum and social networks had to suppress A LOT OF fake likes and followers: Lady Gaga was recently downgraded by 66.000 but hey, she still has a few millions on the counter. So, who are those companies attracting attention and followers?
The European Commission has recently released a report ( Digital Music Consumption on the Internet: Evidence from Clickstream Data) which is generating fury from many sides of the music industry (labels, IFPI,...) as it shows numbers that don't quite match the ones we all were accustomed to: piracy, it seems, doesn't hurt much digital sales.
Years ago, I had the chance to write a song on an album that went platinum. The excellence of the artist, the magnificients songs (the others, mine wasn't. Hum, we composers we're all the same, aren't we ? ;), the marketing campaign of that album, everything made that album a gigantic hit in France and french speaking territories. It gave me the possibility to renegociate my publishing contract and get real money. I used all that money to put together a (rather comfy home) studio in my lovely attic.
I'm still not bought by what i've heard from Delta Machine. While all the elements could be interesting (analog synths, blues backbone, great songwriter, great vocalist), there's something too sketchy for me, too heterogeneous, the sounds aren't blending to my taste.
But what do i know? Martin L. Gore is a fabulous songwriter, Dave Gahan is a brilliant singer and it should work, shouldn't it ? Still, doesn't do it to me and I'm actually pushing back buying Delta Machine cos I don't want to be disappointed but I have the guts feeling I would....
Spain has a terrible record at fighting back at piracy. There are some clues "why", plus we cannot rule out the very hard times they are facing economically: while more than 50% of the spanish youth is on the dole, money is scarce but the desire to have access to cultural content doesn't of course go away . The fact that the SGAE (leading Spanish copyright management organization) is under investigation for disloyal administration and misappropriation of funds doesn't help either.
Thanx to the excellent Make It In Music for pointing us an article on CMU about Ten Tips for New Bands.
And looking at the article, we would say that those tips seem obvious from a distance, but many bands, even already established, do not take enough attention to point 4: "Write an agreement between bandmates".
It all looks great when starting a band with your pals and, honestly, it doesn't feel like anything bad can happen but when money is involved (we wish you to make some when selling your work) EVERYTHING can happen.
After posting yesterday this picture of two mugs, one with The Beatles and the other one being One Direction, the question arose to who's actually buying music, who was buying it back in the sixties, and who sends One Direction to the charts now ? Of course, Beatles video show histeric young kids at concerts but today's histeric crowds buying Beyonce and One Direction are 12, not 16 or 17 like the ol' films show...Music buying people have extended both in younger age kids and older adults classes.
After all the displays of attention on the infamous Women's International Day, and while everyone is now cruising to the next WID without caring much, let's have a look at some numbers showing exactly how disproportionate the amount of women in music really is. Frightening.
female:pressure is a support network and database of women working in the electronic music and/or digital art. They have collect numbers that show how litle women are represented in these fields and call up for a welcome change indeed.
Trent Reznor and Tom Yorke were amongst the first big artists to turn their back on the music industry as it was last decade and go rogue by selling/distributing/promoting their work by themselves, thru their own channels and for a price they would fix themselves.
