2012: The year of the music app
The BBC 6 Music website features an article by Sinead Garvan which looks at how the music industry might be effected by music technology in 2012. This ties in with the questions we were asking in last years industry poll, Ten in Ten, whereby we asked 1,600+ music industry professionals for their views about the futures on our industry - with some intriguing results. Stuart Dredge, tech...
Black Wednesday: SOPA protests gather support online
Today is Weds Jan 18th 2012. Many websites, inspired by Wikipedia, have 'blackened' their own websites in rallying support against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). If you're not aware of what SOPA is then you might want to read this very detailed (and long), well written blog post on Mashable. It is widely accepted that SOPA will censor the web, stifle innovation and hurt web businesses. Goog...
SOPA support is waning in the US
Support in Washington for the SOPA anti-piracy bill in Congress (and its Senate equivalent, PIPA), is waning. After weeks of mounting uproar online, Congressional leaders started backpedalling last week and the Obama Administration weighed in on Saturday in response to online petitions to stop the bills. The White House issued a clear rejection of some of the main principles of SOPA. While ...
SoundExchange is growing fast, $89m paid to artist & labels
SoundExchange is growing fast & so is the amount being paid to artists & labels. On their official blog they have just announced that in Q4 2011 they paid out $89m, here's an excerpt: "We’ve been fortunate to have seen tremendous success as both the organization and digital music services continue to grow. We have made very clear that this is also one of our greatest challenges, and not u...
Music industry torn over album download success
According to figures released by music industry body the BPI, digital album sales rose 26.6% to 26.6 million which helped balance a large drop in CD sales. Combined sales of digital and physical albums fell by 5.6% to 113.2m in 2011, with albums on CD declining 12.6% year-on-year to 86.2m in total. The BPI has been lobbying against changes that it believes could weaken copyright law, and...
