You are currently browsing articles tagged music-business.
Inspired by Jason Kottke’s awesome digging in the newly-opened NY Times archive, here are some items from the archive documenting music and recording history. The first reference to Edison’s phonograph seems to be this satirical piece from November, 1877. At least, I hope it’s satirical: There is good reason to believe that if the phonograph […]
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Ben Goldacre writes the fantastic column Bad Science, in which he takes journalists to task for reporting poorly researched conclusions. I wonder if he’d consider expanding his field to include bad audio technology writing. He might start with Lee Gomes’s article in the Wall Street Journal, Are Technology Limits In MP3s and iPods Ruining Pop […]
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Like most folk, I enjoyed the recent NY Times’ article on Rick Rubin and Columbia Records. And while the portrayal of Rubin as larger-than-life-messiah borders on caricature, the article still advances some sage thinking on Columbia’s woes: Columbia didn’t want Rubin to punch a clock. It wanted him to save the company. And just maybe […]
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David at Digital Audio Insider wrote an interesting article on using Last.fm Statistics to Quantify Audience Devotion. Audience devotion here refers to how many repeated listens a band’s tracks receive. Basically, do people keep listening to the band?: I thought it’d be fun to use Last.fm statistics to try to devise a measure of “audience […]
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While it has nothing to do with music, this story of Lego’s success with Mindstorms hints at some powerful lessons: Lego […] realized that their proprietary code was loose on the Internet and debated how best to handle the hackers… Some Lego executives worried that the hackers might cannibalize the market for future Mindstorms accessories […]
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A couple of weeks ago, Avril Lavigne found herself facing allegations that she’d plagiarized a 30 year old song. (Here’s some quick background.) It’s old news now, but worth revisiting because some aspects of the case could be important for amateur producers and home recordists. … Lavigne and her co-writer didn’t rip off The Rubinoos. […]
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Michael Dean and Chris Caulder have released a CC-licensed (and free) eBook about making music digitally: Digital Music – DIY Now! The book claims to be “for people who want to record their own compositions and get them out to the World” and “for people who want a career making music for films, TV, and […]
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Some recent articles you may have missed: … I daresay most indie artists experience a visceral glee while reading these words in Rolling Stone: Just a few years ago, many [music] industry executives thought their problems could be solved by bigger hits. “There wasn’t anything a good hit couldn’t fix for these guys,” says a […]
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Boy do I ever have a huge backlog of links to post. Here are a few stories from the last few weeks relating to indie artists and the music industry. Can Music Survive Inside the Big Box, from the Wall Street Journal, discusses the increasing power of Walmart, Best Buy, and Target over the (traditional) […]
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