Music Industry
New Artist Database Launched In Support of Non-Binary Creatives
In honor of this year’s Non-Binary Awareness Week, an aggregated database of the industry’s artists and creatives who identify as non-binary has been launched. The annual event has historically marked an important period for organizing around the issues of non-binary advocacy. This year artists are taking an important collective step towards ensuring equitable representation for non-binary creatives in the music industry. Developed by DJ Soyboi, the new database seeks to share the names, creative disciplines, discographies, and portfolios of non-binary creatives within the industry at large. The concept was shared by fellow artist India Jordan on Twitter. The database currently contains over 200 entries and spans several disciplines with non-binary DJs, producers, d...
New MusicCareers Platform Aims to Help Jobseekers Find Post-Pandemic Work
As the music industry continues to find its footing in the wake of the devastating economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new resource has launched with the goal of aiding both employers and jobseekers in identifying new opportunities. Entrepreneurs Budi Voogt and David Sikorski recently unveiled MusicCareers, a music industry-specific job board platform dedicated to finding work for jobseekers. Last year saw a bifurcation of the music business unlike any other period in history. According to the BBC, live music revenues fell around 85% in 2020. However, commercial music sales continued to grow substantially due to the tailwinds of an 18.5% increase in streaming subscription revenue in 2020. The result of such stark market shifts has left many workers feeling unfamiliar with the...
MC Galaxy dumps music for food business
Former singer, Innocent Udeme Udofot, more popularly known as MC Galaxy is living his dreams. After years of churning out hit singles the ‘Sekem’ dance originator seems to have dumped music for good, having not released any song for a while now. Instead he has concentrated on fulfilling his dream of owning an indigenous eatery with specialty in local cuisines. In 2019, the Uyo born artist gave his fans a sneak peek of what he has been up to since he disappeared from the music scene. Located in the highbrow area of Lekki Phase One, the restaurant has since welcomed some of his celebrity friends who support his new hustle. Not resting on his oars with his restaurant business, newsmen reliably gathered that he also has his eyes in the real estate business too which he is planning to launch af...
The Artist-Superfan’s Brave New Superstore
Primary Wave, run by long-time music executive Larry Mestel, may steal the headlines. His company uses billions to buy the music publishing and masters of mega-artists like Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks, Bob Marley, Prince, and Whitney Houston. But Twitter shaman Jack Dorsey’s recent acquisition of Jay-Z’s streaming service, Tidal, by his company, Square, is equally tantalizing. And it points to something that is bubbling up in the business right now that is still early, but ultimately will build into a huge, new movement of massively monetizing direct artist-fan connection and engagement. Dorsey’s rationale for buying Tidal is to give artists a direct path to easily transact with their fans (think merchandise, for example), much like retailers use Square to cut out the credit card middlema...
An Introductory Guide to NFTs in the Music Industry
Last week, rock band Kings of Leon became the first band to release an album as an NFT, expanding the possibilities for crypto and blockchain technology in the music industry. If that first sentence already lost you, you’ve come to the right place. NFTs are undoubtedly the buzziest new topic in music and for good reason. In February 2021 alone, NFTs earned nearly 22 million dollars in the music industry, according to data collected by Water & Music, but it’s much like explaining the Internet to someone in the ’90s who has never seen it before. NFTs are highly conceptual and unprecedented, but it makes sense once you get used to the idea. Consider this article your true introductory guide to NFTs in the music business, wherein, we will break down the most important characteristics of th...
Just Because COVID-19 Restrictions Are Lifting Doesn’t Mean Venues Are Opening
Over the past 24 hours, several states have reduced the restrictions in place to curb the spread of COVID-19. On Tuesday, both Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves abruptly decided to lift all capacity restrictions on businesses and end their states’ mask mandates starting next week. Then today, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that plays, concerts, and other performances can resume indoors at limited capacity beginning next month. Just because music venues are allowed to reopen, however, doesn’t mean they’re all jumping at the opportunity to do so. The intensity and longevity of the coronavirus pandemic has been a major burden, if not an outright death bell, for independent music venues over the past year. Despite Congress allocating $15 billion for thea...
Congress Allocates $15 Billion to Independent Theaters and Concert Venues As Part of New Relief Package
The United States Congress has agreed to a new bipartisan coronavirus relief package that allocates $15 billion in funding to independent movie theaters and concerts venues. According to USA Today’s Nicholas Wu, the relief package incorporates the Save Our Stages Act. First introduced by Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota over the summer, the act calls for six months of financial support to “keep venues afloat, pay employees, and preserve a critical economic sector for communities across America.” Under the original proposal, venues would be provided grants accounting for either 45% of a business’ operation costs from the previous year or $12 million in total — whichever is the lesser amount. Venues would then be allowed to use that money to pa...
Taylor Swift Sets Record for Shortest Gap Between No. 1 Albums
Taylor Swift has another record to her name. Her latest surprise release, evermore, debuted this week at No. 1 — just four months and 18 days after its sister album, folklore, opened atop the same list on August 8th. As Billboard notes, that’s the shortest gap between new No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 chart by a woman since they began tracking data in March 1956. Additionally, with folklore still sitting at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, Swift becomes the first female artist to have two albums concurrently in the top three since 1963. evermore marks Swift’s eighth No. 1 album of her career overall. Only two other female artists have more No. 1 albums to their name: Barbara Streisand (11) and Madonna (nine). The all-time record holder for the most No. 1 album is The Beatles (19), while JAY...
Court stops COSON from general distribution practice
A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has declared that the General Distribution which is practised by the Copyright Society of Nigeria, COSON, is illegal. The practise involves the annual distribution of the same amount of music royalties, usually about N30,000 each, to thousands of the organization’s members. This practice was challenged in court by the Music Publishers’ Association of Nigeria, MPAN, in Suit No. FHC/L/CS/1418/2019; Green Light Music Publishing Ltd, Chocolate City Music Ltd, Premier Music Publishing Company Ltd v. Copyright Society of Nigeria Ltd/Gte. The judgement which was delivered on November 25, 2020, by Justice Oguntoyinbo also ordered COSON to stop further distribution of royalties “in a manner known as ‘General Distribution’ or how so ever called which does not re...
Ticketmaster Will Require Fans to Verify COVID-19 Vaccination or Negative Test Prior to Attending Events
This week brought news that Pfizer is well on its way to developing an effective vaccine for coronavirus, which could be available to the general public by next spring or summer. At that point, live music and other entertainment industries involving mass gatherings will *finally* begin to ramp back up. Even so, Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation plan to be extra cautious by requiring attendees of its events to either prove they’ve been vaccinated or tested negative for COVID-19 prior to entry. According to Billboard, Ticketmaster is developing a verification system that uses smart phones to verify ticket-holders’ vaccination status or whether they’ve tested negative for the coronavirus within a 24 to 72 hour window. Under the current plan, ticket-holders will be asked to verif...
Spotify Offering to Boost Artists’ Algorithm Placement in Exchange for Reduced Royalties
Just days after the Musician Workers Union launched their “Justice at Spotify” campaign to demand better royalty rates, the music streamer has announced a way to take more money from artists. Spotify has begun testing a new product called “Discovery Mode” that would boost a song’s algorithmic placement in exchange for lower royalties. Spotify has a pretty decent track record of recommendation through its Autoplay and Radio features, which automatically play music it thinks listeners may like based on a number of “signals” (time of day, tempo, song length, etc). Discovery Mode adds in the element of money, giving artists a chance to give an extra push to “music that’s a priority for them.” The trade off is a “promotional” (read: reduced) royalty rate. Essentially, when an artist has a song ...
Three Crucial Issues at Stake for Musicians in the 2020 US Election
In less than 36 hours, we’ll reach the end of the strangest, sickest, most contentious election season in modern American memory. Many people reading this will have already cast their vote for the next President of the United States; data from the US Elections Project indicates that more than 95 million Americans have taken advantage of early voting options this year, just one more way in which the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the traditional sprint to Election Day. That said, there are still plenty of voters planning to cast ballots in person on Election Day (November 3rd). For those folks, we’ve put together a quick overview of where the two candidates for President stand on three major policy areas affecting the arts in 2020 and beyond: the economic impact of the pandemic on music venu...
