Unbundling The Song; What Elon Musk Got Wrong About the Music Industry

Napster and iTunes ungrouped albums into individual tracks for sale and exchange; streaming platforms like Spotify regrouped these tracks into the newly-ordered format of a playlist. In the unbundling forces underlying music's technological disruption, the song itself is next.

This week, Elon Musk weighed in on a much debated question: Are artists getting ripped off by big streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music? He says yes.

Amid all that conversation about "This Is America", which took place seemingly everywhere online and beyond, it’s a good time to ask what it might take to create a social-media app that adequately convenes and collects our conversations about one of our central obsessions, music.

The streaming wars might be fought by titans, but there is also a team in this space that puts its focus on artists, diehard fans, and users who might want to learn about music made with a bit less superficial shine.

Teenage cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason has enjoyed a massive increase in global streams after his moving performance at the royal wedding, Spotify has said.

Great Escape's talent booker explains that indie music was once in vogue, but the popularity of streaming has changed that call for genre-specific events.

A Norwegian language newspaper claims that it has data that shows that popular high-fidelity streaming service Tidal manipulated listening data for two of its biggest artists, generating bigger streaming payouts for the artists. The evidence posed, if true, is compelling, but Tidal is vehemently fighting the claims.

YouTube will split its premium service in two, creating a music-streaming service called YouTube Music and another for its original video content called YouTube Premium.

Musicians and labels have long been skeptical of Spotify's free ad-supported tier, primarily because returns a lower per stream rate than Spotify's, Apple Music's or other paid subscription tiers.

Toronto hip-hop and R&B talent pool remains as deep as ever, thanks in no small part to Drake and The Weeknd, but also many newcomers.

The Great Escape in Brighton is one of the UK’s best showcases for new artists, but it’s also a chance for the industry to discuss some of the new technologies that could have an impact on those musicians’ careers.

iHeartMedia Develops Digital-Like Analytics Suite For Broadcast Radio - 05/18/2018