Earning a fair wage was the running theme at the ASCAP “I Create Music” Expo, where the transition to streaming and digital left many songwriters feeling their legacies being blown away like so much dust in the wind. “Little by little, our names are being erased from existence,” said songwriter and producer Desmond Child, whose work has been […]
WME head of music Marc Geiger engaged music attorneys — and artist Dave Matthews — over lunch with his five point presentation on the future of the record industry. The big takeaway: yes, the music biz has bounced back thanks to paid subscription services, but the current bump is small change compared to the riches […]
Downloads are dreamy but CDs are far from dead, according to Marty Fahnke, head of marketing for specialty label Barton Publishing. Fahnke said he pumped out $10 million in sales in the 18-month period prior to Christmas, the majority of it physical media. While Barton mainly sells health books, Fahnke has carved out a music niche, targeting […]
As a longtime attorney for artists, Elliot Groffman is no stranger to taking on record labels, but to hear him recount his career highlights and assess the current state of the industry, one knows he is a conciliator, and that like every top businessman, he knows the road to a sustainable future is paved with win-wins. Groffman, […]
Duran Duran is embarking on an international litigation adventure that will have ramifications for U.K. music artists with U.S. publishing interests. The ’80s super group seeks to take advantage of a standard provision under stateside law that allows authors or their heirs to reclaim copyright after 35 years of third-party exploitation. The catch is, the group is based […]
In a company workforce of about 8,500 employees, Steve Schnur and his team of eight stand out. While about sixty percent of those thousands are artists, sound technicians and coders who create the game experience for the dozen or so titles Electronic Arts releases each year, Schnur and his staff oversee music. That includes supervising the scores for […]
Concert touring has in many ways become the lifeblood of the popular music industry, as artists seek to recalibrate earnings after the disruption of streaming. So it was no surprise that the executives onstage at the Billboard Touring Conference were able to fill the venue for “Contemporary Touring Strategies: The Agents’ Perspective,” Nov. 9 at the […]
A pop act manager’s job is “making irrational people do rational things,” SB Projects’ Scooter Braun shared in a Q&A session at the Billboard Touring Conference & Awards yesterday. As manager to Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Ariana Grande and many more, Braun – whose bio claims he has “broken more new artists than any other […]
The Utah tech-boom is expanding to include audio post in a big — some might say HUGE — way. Music conglomerate R Legacy Entertainment has assembled the pieces for a world-class sound enterprise that will be known as HUGEsound Post Production, expected to open its doors in January 2017. Earlier this month, Legacy’s Gaylen Rust […]
For the first half of 2016, strong growth in revenues from subscription streaming services more than offset declines in unit based sales of physical and digital music download products, according to the RIAA. Overall revenues at retail increased 8.1% on a year-over-year basis to $3.4 billion, the strongest industry growth since the late 1990’s. At wholesale, […]
