Fiona Cheung

[fionas-analysis]

Youtube on Music Industry backlash:

“We give more money to creators than any platform”. 

Growing backlash from record labels and artists over music streams prompted Youtube’s head of international music partnerships, Christophe Muller, to write a column in The Guardian last Thursday. 

“Lately there’s been a chorus of music label representatives and artists accusing youtube of mistreating musicians,” Muller writes, “As the music industry shifts from a business that mainly sold albums and singles to one that earns money from subscriptions and ads, there are bound to be disagreements.” 

According to Muller, Youtube takes copyright management extremely seriously and that no platform, big or small, has given as much money back to creators across all kinds of content as Youtube has. Criticism of Youtube argue that Youtube has allowed a “flood” of unlicensed music on it’s platform, which in turn has deprived artists of their deserved revenue. However, thousands of labels and right holders have licensing agreements with Youtube that actually allows them to leave fan videos up so that they can earn revenue from them. They “see that fan-uploaded content can be a way to drive exposure and boost sales”.  

Others claim that Youtube underpays when compared to subscription services such as Spotify. However, Muller would like them to remember that Youtube and Spotify are two completely different services. Spotify is a music subscription service that costs $10 a month, versus Youtube, which gains its revenue from ad-supported videos.  In the words of Muller, “it’s like comparing what a black cab driver earns from fares to what they earn showing ads in their taxi”. Rather than comparing Youtube to Spotify, Muller argues that Youtube should be compared to Radio. Radio generates $35 billion of ad revenue a year, and pays nothing to labels and artists, but is excused because it is a good promotional tool. However, Youtube offers promotion, too, only it’s a promotion that pays. In fact, Youtube has paid out more than $3 billion to the music industry to date, and that number is growing significantly year on year. Youtube has also come out with Youtube Red, their own subscription service, so that they can drive even more revenue to musicians and songwriters.  I found this article to be very interesting because we have discussed over and over in class about piracy and why Youtube is “excused” from intellectual property suits like piracy sites. This is good insight on Youtube’s business model and how they position themselves in terms of position in the industry, and what they bring to the table. Youtube is a “radio-like” platform, and their main purpose is exposure, and exposure will eventually drive sales. 

source: http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/apr/28/youtube-no-other-platform-gives-as-much-money-back-to-creators

[fionas-analysis]

Drake Set for Career Best Sales with New Album “Views”

According to forecasters, Drake’s new album, Views, may sell more than 800,000 copies in its first week in the U.S alone. Views was released exclusively for sale through the iTunes store and for stream via Apple music on April 29. Predictions for the album’s overall equivalent album unit sum for the week could surpass 900,000. Sources at Republic Records revealed to Billboard that the album earned over 630,000 equivalent units in its first day at Apple Music and iTunes combined. If Views were to sell over 800,000 copies, it will be the 10th album to sell more than 800,000 copies in a single week in the past 10 years--- and the first by a male artist to do so since Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20  experience launched in 2013. This is a great feat for Drake, seeing as the only artists who are able to pull such numbers is Taylor Swift and Adele. And, as successful as Beyonce’s Lemonade was, Views surpassed a week over Lemonade sells in a day. 

The fact that Views was an Apple exclusive, meant that it wasn’t available on Spotify. This was a sizable risk for Drake seeing as how the rapper was Spotify’s biggest artist last year, being listened to by 46 million users on the platform across 2015. This means that approximately half of all Spotify’s active worldwide users are Drake listeners... and Drake snubbed them for Apple. 

The industry chatter around Drake’s Views has be focused on the fact that the star locked in an Apple one week exclusive release but, the album’s success is actually “much less about streaming than it is old-fashioned album downloads. Some 98% of the Views numbers (according to BuzzAngle) came from “proper” album purchases through iTunes.  

sources: http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/7350358/drake-views-sales-week-career-best

http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/drakes-spotify-gamble-is-paying-off-views-just-made-8m-in-a-day/

[fionas-analysis]

Music Industry Jumps on Aussie Piracy Site Blocking Law

The Australian parliament has passed legislation last year allowing rights holders to ask a court for a website-blocking injunction to be applied for piracy sites. Take advantage of this legislation, a group of “the world’s largest record companies have joined forces” to restrict access to torrent site ‘Kickass Torrents’. The first use of the legislation came in February this year when Foxtel and Village Roadshow put forward their case for internet service providers to block local (Australia) access to sites like “The Pirate Bay” and “SolarMovie”. 

This group has also applied to block related proxy sites, making it more difficult for Kickass Torrent operators to employ quick workarounds to restore Australian access. ARIA members Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music said that the site “exploited creativity of others and gave nothing back to artists, songwriters, record labels and music publishers who had their music stolen.”  This is a big step and potentially important step for the music industry who has seen a major decline in physical album sales. Music is already a hard business to monetize and capitalize (as opposed to other media industries) and speed + proliferation of music pirating sites has not helped the industry in any way. However, although piracy is clearly illegal, how to solve the problem is not as clear. The next issue that arises is, how do you implement a “block’, should one be implemented by the court? A rift has already emerged in implementing blocks from a technical standpoint. One case puts forward a block on a DNS (domain name system) level, while another case pushes for the blocking of IP addresses URLs. However, IP addresses change rapidly, and domain names can be easily changed.... 

source: http://www.itnews.com.au/news/foxtel-village-roadshow-want-ip-address-url-piracy-site-blocking-416899

http://www.itnews.com.au/news/music-industry-jumps-on-aussie-piracy-site-blocking-law-418328

[fionas-analysis]

Spotify Acquires CrowdAlbum

In latest Spotify news, Spotify has bridged the gap between artist and fan even more by acquiring live photo and video aggregator CrowdAlbum. CrowdAlbum was launched in 2013, and is a social media platform gathers live photos and videos taken by fans and posted online. The purpose of these digital visual albums was supposed to be a way to give artists a visual history of their tours, and to connect them with their most dedicated fans. Artists that have worked with CrowdAlbum include Diplo, Death Cab For Cutie, Lil Wayne, Fallout Boy and more. 

This acquisition is Spotify’s latest way in investing in helping artists “find and engage their audiences on and off Spotify, especially around the ever important business of touring”. Essentially, CrowdAlbum is supposed to help artists target and identify their audience data and demographic, so that they can “enhance the development of products that help artists understand, activate and monetise their audiences”. In less pretty words, CrowdAlbum is Spotify’s next business move in gaining artist loyalty, by helping artists make more money off of their fans, which in turn will let Spotify make more money off of these artists. 

This latest purchase tallies Spotify’s total purchases up to 3 this year. Spotify acquired music discovery app Soundwave and messaging platform Cord Project in January. 

Source: http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-acquires-music-concert-video-photo-business/

[fionas-analysis]

Beyonce’s Lemonade Dominates Charts

The week after Lemonade was released was huge for music sales. In one week, Lemonade debuted at No. 1 with 485,000 album sales and 115 million streams following its HBO release on April 23rd. In classic Queen Bey fashion, this album easily topped the charts, just like her past 6 albums-- a feat never accomplished before, according to Billboards.

Lemonade was released exclusively on Tidal for its premiere weekend, before spreading to other retailers for sale and download. While the album will only remain on Tidal for perpetuity, a physical album will be released for sale on May 6th. On top of its record streaming number, Individual songs from the album were purchased a number of 908,000 times for a final tally of 683,000 equivalent album units (including downloads and streams), according to Nielsen Music. 

The success of Beyonce’s album brings into conversation of music exclusivity, digital streaming and star power. Many have wondered if Lemonade was going to be a Tidal exclusive, seeing as how Tidal is owned mainly by Jay-Z and Beyonce. However, the fact that she made Lemonade available on other, competing, streaming sites shows that in the age of streaming, exclusivity might not be an option at all. However, on top of streaming, Beyonce was able to pull in millions in individual song purchases. I thought that many people, if presented with the option of having the album on streaming, would forego the individual purchase option for music/songs. However, Beyonce was able to pull in not only streaming subscriptions but also physical and digital album sales. This is quite a feat, but at the same time I think this is only a privilege designated for stars like Beyonce, Rihanna and Kanye alone. In the end, star power is going to top everything else. 

[fionas-analysis]

Turns out Millennials Have Amazing Musical Attention Spans

This blog post sparked my interest because millennials, as in the entire generation, has been accused of simply being too unfocused. Accused of having zero to no attention span-- hence, the second screen dilemma. However, according to Buckley, millennials seem to not tire of new music as quickly as their 1980s counterparts. If we use Billboard as our data for comparison and analysis, hit singles nowadays seem to have quite a run on their top charts. In the 1970s and 80s, Billboard saw a lot more “hit” singles on their top charts than in 2015. That means more songs made it to the top charts, which means more songs lost their places on the top charts. In the 1980s, out of Billboards top 100, only 18 songs on the chart made it past a double digit week run. And, as the decade went on, in 1985 and 1989, only two songs had double digit runs (Phil Collins’ Another Day in Paradise and Dionne and Friends’ That’s What Friends Are For). Fast forward to 2015, barely 50 songs made it to Billboards top 10 charts, but more of them stayed on for longer. About 30 out of the 50 songs stayed on for more than 10 weeks, 9 for more than 20 weeks, and Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” stayed for a record run of 31-weeks. 

So what does this mean? Does it mean that music isn’t as great as it was before? Or maybe, not enough music is being released?  This can’t be true, seeing as how “almost anything can be called a single these days” and, anyone can record and release an album. This means more music on the table and more options. It just means that, millennials just don’t get as sick of songs as fast as other generations. If they like a song, then they will keep listening to it. This is good in showing the proliferation of a good song in our current society. Personally, I think this means that as an artist, if you were able to get your song onto the top charts, you’ll most likely be more than a one hit wonder. If your name and your song is up and being played on the radios for months, then there is a higher chance of your name being saturated into the minds of the listeners, and thus more likely for you to gain their interest when you release a new song. I think this is a positive thing. 

Source: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/04/29/attention-spans-of-millennials/

[fionas-analysis]

Star Power is Perhaps Tidal’s Only Weapon in its Arsenal

We can all agree that the music industry is very rapidly moving towards the direction of streaming sites. Portals like Spotify has paid subscription numbers around the 30 million range, while other streaming sites like Soundcloud is preparing to launch a subscription model in the near future for their service. However, in this conversation of subscription service sites, Jay Z’s service Tidal has only 6% brand recognition, an affably sad number compared to the excitement the service generated during its release date. However, with the drop of Beyonce’s new album “Lemonade”, a currently Tidal exclusive title, many many eyeballs are now being drawn towards Tidal. According to Billboard, Beyonce’s choice in making Lemonade a Tidal exclusive may be good for drawing attention to Tidal, but at a personal preforming level, “it is likely to hurt her chart position”. We saw this in the case of Kanye’s The Life of Pablo. When Kanye’s album was a Tidal exclusive, it generated some talk over Tidal, but neither the album nor any songs on the album made it to Billboards top charts until he made it widely available on other platforms such as Spotify and Apple music. 

When Lemonade was released, Google searches for “lemonade” and “Tidal” rose 150 percent greater than the numbers seen during the release of the Life of Pablo. Beyond Tidal, Beyonce’s own social numbers also saw a dramatic increase: her Facebook page saw a 150% increase in likes, 40% increase in Youtube subscriptions, her Twitter numbers doubled and her Wikipedia page saw a 9% increase in views. However, all the attention that album is gaining is only short-term, and probably will not affect Tidal numbers in the long-run. If Lemonade remains a Tidal exclusive, Beyonce many just be losing out on personal achievements for the album, seeing as Nielsen and Billboard can’t accurately track Tidal’s numbers accurately.  When Lemonade dropped, I personally followed the crowd and was in a scramble to sign up for Tidal just to be able to hear the album. However, the moment I subscribed, I made sure to go into my settings and cancel my subscription, so that I wouldn’t be charged past my free trial period. And, I know I am not alone in this. I already have a Spotify premium subscription, and I pay a student discount rate on it, so if you were to ask me to pay $5 a month for a service that has everything but Lemonade, or $12 a month for Tidal, I’m going to always pick Spotify. 

source: 

http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7341864/tidal-exclusive-content-strategy-beyonce-lemonade

[fionas-analysis]

Beyonce Made Lemonade, and We were All Served

As we all were in the midst of mourning over the loss of beloved legend, Prince, Beyonce gifted us all with the release of her new album Lemonade. This album is full of anger, possibly (most likely) directed at her husband Jay. In this new album she accuses him of cheating, telling him in the song “Hold Up” “what a wicked way to treat the girl that loves you”. This album is filled with liners like in the song Sorry, “Today I regret the night I put that ring on”. Beyonce’s “Beyhive” have honed in on Beyonce’s anger, directing their anger at Jay Z and his alleged mistress Rachel Roy. Many of the Beyhives swarmed to Roy’s instagram post Lemonade drop and spammed her instagram photos with the Bee and Lemon emoji.  However, the discussion of Beyonce’s newest album is beyond her relationship with Jay Z. Yes, it was a big factor and a big theme of the album but when you watch her visual album accompanied with Beyonce’s reading of Warsan Shire’s poetry, you realize that this album is another discussion on the struggles of the black woman. In her short video, Beyonce quotes Malcolm X: 

"The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman."

Beyonce’s struggle is not hers alone, it is the experience of black women in America. When their trust and loyalty is met with betrayal how are they supposed to act? If they’re angry, they’re labelled as the classic angry black woman stereotype. If they don’t say a word, they are only subjected to the same cycle of abuse. In the short film, Beyonce shows many images of solidarity and independence. Black women standing up for themselves.  From another aspect, many are skeptical of the film and the songs, claiming that its all a marketing ploy to attract more listeners to subscribe to Tidal, as this album currently is a Tidal exclusive. Whether this album will be released on other streaming sites on a later date, as with Kanye’s The Life of Pablo, is uncertain. When the album dropped, many scrambled to sign up for Tidal to be one of the first to hear and watch this album. However, whether these millions of new subscribers will stay on past the free trial period is also uncertain, as the allure of this new album fades out, its hard to say how many listeners will stay loyal to the streaming site. 

sources: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/arts/music/beyonce-lemonade.html?_r=0

http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/24/beyonce-album-tidal-exclusive/

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/25/beyonce-lemonade-jay-z-infidelity-emotional-project-depths

[fionas-analysis]

Although much has been written, read and said about the decline of physical album sales in the music industry, in a unexpected but gladly welcomed plot twist, vinyl records are currently undergoing a massive “renaissance” Record collectors are in a state of Beatle Mania, trying to get their hands on original Beatles LPS. In December of 2015, Ringo Starr auctioned off his own personal copy, numbered 000001 of “The Beatles” album for a whopping $790,000. The reasoning behind these unimaginable price tags is a lot the reasoning behind investing in real estate. In the words of Jeff Gold, a leading expert on rare LPS, “When it comes to first-pressing records in really beautiful conditions, supply is very much outstripped by demand... It’s like prime real estate or other collectible fields”. For the reasoning behind Ringo Starr’s $790,000 record-- typically first pressing of records are like first edition books, and The Beatles are the most collectible there is. And, there is only one Number One White Album. The fact that this album came from a member of The Beatles themselves, on top of being in exceptional condition, and still retaining its promotional label, exponentially raised its value. In the words of Jeff Gold, this album is only going to increase in value going forward.  Another collectible artist is Elvis Presley, who’s “My Happiness” and  “That’s When Your Heartache Begins” 1953 acetate sold for $300,000 in January of 2015. 

I thought this was an interesting piece of news because we can see that although music format and the music distribution business model has changed profoundly-- submarkets still exist, trading and selling a format we all thought was dead: Vinyl Records. Of course, these whopping price tags are only attached to legendary artists, but LPs in general are seeing a rise as they are tending amongst youths as a “hipster” and “retro” way of listening to music.  http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/7326405/priciest-rare-lps-the-beatles-elvis-presley

[fionas-analysis]

I don’t want to talk about Kanye, but let’s talk about Kanye

Kanye West’s “Life of Pablo” is number one on Billboard. The release of the album itself has been a very public and publicly enjoyed wild ride. West had initially released the album exclusively on the streaming portal Tidal, claiming that the album would “never be for sale” and “never, never be on Apple”. On April 1st, the album was made available on Apple and Spotify, as well as for sale on Tidal and West’s website.

Ignoring the wild ride that the album has been through (songs added, lyrics revised on quick notice, contributors added and dropped, album title and release date changed over and over again) the Life of Pablo has proved to be a hit. Within the successive weeks of its release on Tidal, the album garnered a total of 400 million streams, including a whopping 250 million within the first 10 days. However, as these numbers were only on Tidal, and therefore unable to be verified by Nielsen, the album didn’t make it to Billboard’s chart.  However, now that the album has been released widely, it has made number one on Billboard’s chart– with he distinction of being the first album to reach the top “primarily on the strength of streaming”.  Within the first seven days of its wide availability the album was streamed 99.5 million times in the US, as well as 28,000 in album sales. The success of this album makes it West’s seventh consecutive No. 1.  So why is this relevant? Kanye has been in the news often since release of his new album (mostly due to his Twitter tirades) however, I thought it was interesting that Neilsen has come up with a way to translate the number of times a song/album is streamed into album sales. This shows that not only is the field changing (streaming has put this album on Billboard, not sales) but the way music was traditionally measured has been adapted too. According to Neilsen, 99 million streams is equivalent to about 66,000 albums sold.

Source Link: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/kanye-wests-life-of-pablo-is-no-1-on-billboard-chart-after-a-wild-ride/?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fmusic&action=click&contentCollection=music®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront

[fionas-analysis]

Spotify Expected to Sign $1 Billion Financing Deal

Spotify is expected to finalize and close billion dollar financing deal on Friday (article written March 29)-- which is double the amount the company had raised in its 10 decade lifespan.  Private equity firm TPG and investment firm Dragoneer put in $750,000 of the total $1 billion, with the rest coming from institutional investors. The money in this deal comes in the form of convertible debt, which allows Spotify’s investors to change their securities into equities at a later date. By obtaining the funds in the form of convertible debt, Spotify is able to maintain its current company valuation (the company had an equity value of $8.4 billion last year), however the debt may push to company to go public sooner. The terms of the debt also allows investors to convert equity at a discount of the initial offering price-- and the discount increases if the company waits longer than a year to go public. 

Spotify signing such a big deal is very important because when we consider the trend/path the music industry is moving towards, we see that subscription streaming sites have reigned on top as the savior of the industry and the new “way” to go. In 2013, the total US paid music subscription revenue was at a little over $600 million, but in 2015, the revenue jumped to a whopping $1.25 billion.  With Spotify closing on this huge deal, and its company on the brink of going public, I feel that the pivotal moment of the change in the music industry is upon us. People used to be very unwilling to pay for music, and of course there is the issue of music piracy, but I think the subscription model has really begun to catch on with the consumers. The question of “how do we maximize our earning potential in the music industry” still hasn’t been answered, but I feel like moves are being made toward that direction. If we consider that an average person spends annually maybe $55 on music, just 1 Spotify premium subscription alone ($120/yr) is more than what two average consumers would spend.  source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/business/dealbook/spotify-expected-to-sign-1-billion-financing-deal.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fmusic&action=click&contentCollection=music®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=21&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

[fionas-analysis]

Soundcloud finally strikes deal with Sony Music

Soundcloud and Sony music have finally reached an agreement. After being at odd with each other for the better of last year, Sony has finally agreed to terms with the streaming service (which apparently includes a percentage of stakes in the company). This is great news for Soundcloud, as they have finally reached agreements with all 3 of the big music companies (Universal, Warner and now, Sony) and can now, without impediment launch their planned subscription service for the company. The subscription model is crucial for Soundcloud, as they have yet to figure out how to monetize their huge user base--- which has grown exponentially in the past years. 

The question at hand now is what exactly this subscription model would look like and whether or not Soundcloud would be able to function as it is with this new subscription model.  I think this deal is very beneficial in terms of generating revenue in the music industry. Seeing these big companies striking deals with newer services and subscription services shows these companies are trying their best to maneuver the shifts of the industry from physical to digital. Subscription services have seen a dramatic rise in paying users in 2015, and I think if Soundcloud institutes a subscription services that doesn’t interfere too much with it’s original model, then they should be able to earn a lot. With these big companies signing deal with these services, I think the new shift for the music industry in the future is s focus on releases through such services, and perhaps a decline in marketing physical albums and releases. That is, as of 2015, the revenues of the music industry are only stable because their decline in physical albums sales had been offset by digital sales. 

source: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/142177/20160322/soundcloud-finally-strikes-deal-with-sony-music.htm

[fionas-analysis]

Music sharing apps-- a good idea, but who’s listening

We all know that streaming music on our mobile devices have become the new normal, but what about mobile sharing of music? In the past year, a “slew of personalized mobile sharing apps” have invaded the tech space. Apps such as Boomio, Rithm, Undrtone & Radeeus, just to name a few, allow users to directly send a song to their friends via text based messages (as opposed to sending a link). Last year’s IFPI report projected that mobile listening market penetration will be at 36% in 2016, up 12.9% from 2012. In the words of EVP of digital partner development at Sony Music, Ole Oberman, “That equates to two billion potential music service customers worldwide”.  The proliferation of music apps is good news for the music industry, who have been suffering from the lack of album sales in the past 5 years. As interest and popularity for music streaming platforms grows, more people will likely be willing to spend money on a monthly subscription. Although, the numbers will probably never be as high as when the music industry was at its peak with physical album sales, these subscriptions will help the industry make up for the loss of revenue that they have seen over the years.  To actively take advantage of the growing interest in music streaming, there needs to be changes and innovations made in mobile music and music apps. Music sharing apps, such as Boomio have emerged as one answer to the problem. Boomio, the snapchat of music, allows users to send one “boom” to their friends/followers. Each boom is a one-song play, which is followed with a text message that gives the option for users to purchase the song on itunes, or play it again in one’s own personal feed. The founders of Boomio say that through the app they are “teaching new behaviors”. Music was originally a communal activity, so by sharing music through boom, they are hoping that people will start enjoying music communally again.  Dove tailing off of this idea, another app, Radeeus has emerged as a a “global headphone splitter, where users can listen to music together in real time, no matter where in the world they are”.  However, as innovative, and useful/useless, depending on your view, these apps are having a hard time taking off because of the inflexibilities of consumers. Last august’s ComScore report found that in terms of app usage: an average person spends 42% of total app time on their most used app and 69% of total app time on their top 3 most used app. What this means is that people are so loyal to the apps they are used to and comfortable with that it makes it hard for them to integrate new apps into their time (even if they are better or easier to use than their current ones)-- which also means that, it is very, very difficult for upstart music messaging apps to take an uphold. 

source: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/6450341/music-sharing-apps-begin-to-proliferate-but-are-they

[fionas-analysis]

Staying relevant in music means keeping your mouth shut about abuse

As you all know, the court has rejected Ke$ha’s plea to record music without her alleged rapist Dr. Luke. In 2014, KeSha filed a lawsuit against Dr. Luke claiming that he had drugged, raped and sexually assaulted her for years. In her suit, she wanted to null her contract with Dr. Luke because all she ever wanted was to “make music without being afraid, scared or abused”.  Many stars have come out in support of Ke$ha (Taylor Swift donated $250,000 to her, Adele made a speech about her support at the Brit awards), but many stars, ones who’ve worked personally with Dr.Luke, have stayed silent.  However, whats truly interesting to me is that, although they’ve remained silent that have “silently” protested with their actions. For example:  Miley cyrus instagrammed a photo of Fiona Apple holding a  sign that said “KESHA - I AM SO ANGRY FOR YOU. THEY WERE WRONG. I'M SORRY."  Nicki Minaj unfollowed Dr. Luke on Twitter  Kelly Clarkson tweeted:  "Trying 2 not say anything since I can't say anything nice about a person... so this is me not talking about Dr. Luke." These are all big name stars who have worked with Dr. Luke in the past. If they truly felt that Dr. Luke was innocent in the KeSha case then they wouldn’t have done anything at all. However, by sending a tweet, and unfollowing and posting an instagram picture, to me, shows that they have so much to say but can’t. Maybe they signed an NDA, maybe they don’t want to jeopardize any future collaborations they might have with Dr. Luke.  Either way, I am personally disgusted with what has happened to Ke$ha. She obviously is desperately trying to get away from a man that terrifies her, but she is legally bound to work with him. He is putting pressure on her, by not giving her her due royalties because of the lawsuit and many people are not coming out to support her because they are afraid. Many female stars are probably going to have to, or already are, deal with sexual abuse and harassment so that they can maintain their celebrity status, so that other producers will work with them. This is misogyny and oppression at work.  source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/kesha-this-issue-is-bigger-than-just-about-me-20160224 source: https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/how-pop-stars-who-have-worked-with-dr-luke-reacted-to-keshas-lawsuit

[fionas-analysis]

SiriusXM Fights to Dominate Car Dashboards

SiriusXM is facing competition from connected cars in a plight to dominate the dashboards of our cars. Although there seem to be many “competitors” for SiriusXM, a multi-billion dollar company what was once flirting with bankruptcy, not many stand a chance against SiriusXM and their business model. SiriusXM’s initial and most strenuous fight was figuring out how to get their users to pay $15 a month for satellite radio when they can get terrestrial radio for free. However, thanks to their successful recruitment of Howard Stern (whom they’ve recently signed on for another 5 years) and over 175 channels of  curated radio, suiting tastes as niche as the Metropolitan Opera to NFL Football, SiriusXM has managed to successfully maintain their audience base of 30 million paying users.

However, out of the 30 million users, about 24.2 million of them pay the fee themselves, while the rest are covered through promotions with car companies. This means almost 20% of their revenue comes from their deals with car companies. With companies like Apple and Google pushing for their own car media platforms, this could mean serious competition for SiriusXM. However, the company’s chief executive, James E. Meyer, isn’t too worried because he says that even if these companies are pushing for their technology to be incorporated, car companies “makes changes to their machines very slowly”, and he predicts that the technology will probably make it into the cars by the end of the decade. 

SiriusXM is probably well deserving of their confidence in regards to their technology and their success. Unlike terrestrial radio, saddled with an over abundance of commercials, federal regulations and censorship, SiriusXM has the creative control to play the music they want and take as many risks as they want. This means that their audience not only is able to listen to music they want, but they are also introduced to new music that they otherwise would not have considered listening too-- all without the annoyance of an ad every 2 minutes. 

This is also very good beneficial on the side of new artists, and up and coming artists, who have the talent but not the influence to make it into mainstream radio. One case of this, as pointed out by the article is the song “Honey, I’m good” an ode to monogamy by singer Andy Grammar, which has sold about 2.5 million copies, making it one of the best hits of 2015, all because SiriusXM put it into heavy rotation on their Hits 1 channel.  Even in the era of cord-cutting, I think that SiriusXM will maintain its success and longevity because they have continued to develop good content, and have maintained their initial promise to their audiences of good radio with no ads. Also, because they are satellite radio, they have more freedom than traditional radio to experiment with content, so basically they can be as creative as they want without facing harsh consequences. Worst comes to worst they can just nip the channel, and start afresh. 

article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/business/media/siriusxm-fights-to-dominate-the-dashboard-of-the-connected-car.html?ref=music&_r=0

[fionas-analysis]

How Napster Saved the Music Industry

In “The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t”, a now obsolete music sharing website Napster, was believed to be the start of a creative apocalypse. Making it big in the entertainment industry, particularly, the music industry was very hard and almost impossible. But, that impossibility came with many rewards-- if you did make it big, you were guaranteed fame and fortune. However, this fortune relied heavily on album and record sales. When Napster went online and started to make available content that otherwise needed to be purchases via CD or record, many feared that this pirating would end the music business. 

However, it seems that it had an opposite effect. In 1999, the statistics for jobs in the Arts, Design Entertainment and Sports group, according to the O.E.S came in at 1.5 million supported jobs. By 2014, the number had grown to 1.8 million, which means that “the creative class modestly outperformed the rest of the economy”. Of course, this data only supports on the record jobs, but if it were possible to count all of the unlisted, self-employed artists, I’m sure this number would swell even further. The music industry is harder to capitalized off of as compared to other entertainment fields such as acting, and sports, but I think Napster was a very useful vehicle in turning the music industry to what it is today. Personally, I feel that the creativity was fostered under Napster, while the bureaucracy (of the music industry) was broken down. With websites such as Youtube, where artists can directly upload their content and have it accessible to viewers/fans, more names and more genres of talents have the opportunity and chance to bloom and become well known.

When you have an entertainment company as the mediators of talent to audience relations, there is a lot of gatekeeping and image editing involved. This in turn breaks down the authenticity of content, and makes it so that everything we hear is nothing but kid-friendly bubble-gum pop.  Now that it is possible for artists to grow their fan bases without an agency telling them how to dress, speak or preform our music industry is as wide and as diverse as ever. This I think can be very clearly seen in the absolute explosion of fame for stars like Beyonce. She was always talented and was around for a long time, but never has her fanbase been as extreme in their love for her as they are now-- and I think thats because instead of singing catchy pop songs, with themes and lines that have been repeated over and over again by all her peers, she finally has the creative control to write raunchy lines a la “Partition” and more recently, write songs that address conversations on race such as “Formation”. 

[fionas-analysis]

A 16- year old asian  pop singer made global news recently, for what many accuse, of being forced into apologizing to China (as in the entire country). Tzuyu, who was born in southern Taiwan, is currently active in Korea as a girl group member in a group called “Twice”. A couple of months ago, they released an introductory video of the members, and in this video Tzuyu was identified as of “Taiwanese” nationality, with images of a Taiwanese and Korean flag behind her. For the general public, this may seem completely normal-- I mean what’s the controversy there? However, this angered Chinese nationals so greatly that it eventually became a huge scandal in Asia.

 You probably may not know but China and Taiwan are not on the best of terms. China and the Chinese to this day still believe, adamantly, that Taiwan is not a separate country but rather a part of China. Taiwan, on the other hand says that they are an independent country. This issue has been a great source of contention between the two countries since the establishment of Taiwan in the 1900s. 

Why a Taiwanese born idol, identifying herself as Taiwanese instead of “Chinese” is such an issue, really is broken down to the issue of money, capital, sales, earnings. Korean pop music, also known as K-pop has boomed in recent years, and has become very popular across Asia. One of the biggest consumers and markets for K-pop stars is China. China, with its vast population and extravagant spending habits has become a gold mine for K-pop idols and their companies. On top of preforming their music in Korean, many bands have begun to translate their lyrics and their music into Chinese so that they can make it big in China as well.  However, breaking into the Chinese market is not so easy. Therefore music companies in Korea have adapted the method of including Chinese/ Chinese speaking members in their groups, so that they can be more easily welcomed in China. This would have been Tzuyu’s role in Twice. However, having angered practically all of China by calling herself Taiwanese, Tzuyu and her group have been blacklisted from entering and preforming in China. 

Her company (JYP entertainment) would lose a lot of money if they aren’t able to market in China, hence the production of the apology video. But of course, in a situation like this you cannot appease both sides. Because, by having Tzuyu apologize to the Chinese market, Taiwan in turn feels scorned. The Taiwanese believe that Tzuyu was forced into denouncing her own country, which have riled pro-independence supporters in Taiwan. The election of the new Taiwanese president, a leader in the pro-independence movement, into office have been credited to Tzuyu’s scandal. 

tl;dr: A 16 year old, working in Korea, has become the center of diplomatic tension between China and Taiwan, and pretty much single-handedly elected the new Taiwanese president. How’s that for news. 

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/world/asia/taiwan-china-singer-chou-tzu-yu.html?_r=0