Nowadays, there is nothing preventing the independent musician from entering the music market - everyone can sell their music online, quickly and easily. The problem for music consumers is that they are being flooded with choices, so they need to find a reliable music recommendation system. Most algorithms of this type use collaborative filtering, but there are alternatives…
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Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory is one of the most popular conceptual memes of Web 2.0. Despite its prevalence and obvious appeal, a recent study of digital music sales claims that this model may not be the salvation of the industry after all…
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Yes folks, it’s yet another online music distribution platform that aims to revolutionise the way we consume and purchase music in the digital era. Accompanied by much hype in the blogosphere, Lala has introduced its latest take on this troubled industry - music in the cloud…
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Sony were due to launch a new game, LittleBigPlanet, on October 24th. However, the background music used in the game caused the release to be postponed, as it was discovered that one of the tracks contains phrases from the Koran…
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The debate regarding how royalties should be allocated for digital downloads has reared its head once more. This time, the National Music Publishers Association (in the US) called for a 66% hike in royalty rates paid to its members on downloads from sites such as iTunes. Apple declared that this would “significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss” and threatened to shut down its iTunes store if the hike was enforced…
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The iPhone has generated a huge amount of hype, but its greatest strengths lie not in what it does by default but in what it can be made to do via developer applications. Musicians have been particularly excited by the iPhone, not because it’s a phone, but because it is essentially a hand-held Mac…
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The Wilhelm Scream is probably the most famous scream in the world - after Edvard Munch’s painting of ‘The Scream’, that is. Although you may not know it, if you have watched more than a handful of movies during your lifetime, you have almost certainly heard the Wilhelm Scream at some point…
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Last.fm’s on-demand streaming service has proven to be extremely popular, with its number of unique listeners up 92% only four weeks after the service was first launched. Warner Music Group have now thrown a spanner in the works, however, as they have officially withdrawn their catalogue…
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It seems that Radiohead and the Internet are now the best of friends. After the successful release of ‘In Rainbows‘ as a discretionary payment download, the band have now set up their own social networking site and released a new single in ’stem’ format…
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The recent addition of U2 to Live Nation’s roster of megastar talent comes as little surprise to anyone, particularly since Live Nation acquired U2’s merchandise provider, Signatures, last November. This could be seen as a natural progression for the market-savvy band, who have tended to be very alert to income maximisation opportunities. But is Live Nation really showing us the next economic model for music marketing?
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