Talk to app developers, psychologists, or productivity experts, and you’ll likely hear about the concept of gamification. The goal is to offer perks for completing tasks, turning an activity that could be a chore into a fun system with rules and rewards. It’s been used for educational purposes, for changing habits, and now some enterprising folks have turned gamification theory onto music discovery. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Tech and telecoms; Twitter music exec to exit. Continue Reading
SoundCloud shared some insights about its program to help creators monetize their tracks. The On SoundCloud campaign has more than 100 people signed up as Premier Partners. Since the program launched in August, it has paid out more than $1 million in ad revenue to labels, audio partners, and artists. Continue Reading
Universal Music Group has lost two of its top digital executives this week. CEO Lucian Grainge said that UMG would “be making announcements in the coming days” in response to Wells’ exit in particular. Universal has been making some intriguing inroads into the digital space in recent months. Continue Reading
Björk has built the reputation as one of music’s more unique and innovative performers and songwriters, so it’s no surprise that many people listen up to hear her perspective on the industry today. In an interview with Fast Company, Björk addressed some of the challenges that go into releasing an album in today’s music market. She has opted to keep her new album off of Spotify over concerns about its freemium business model. Continue Reading
Flo & Eddie, representing The Turtles, have been cutting a legal swath through audio publishers of late. Most of its lawsuits have focused on Sirius XM, but Pandora was also on the receiving end of a suit seeking royalties and damages for playing songs recorded prior in 1972 when U.S. federal copyright law took effect. Continue Reading
One of the most intractable issues in music licensing is broadcast radio’s exemption from performance royalties to artists and labels for the use of recorded music. The exemption has the weight of history: It has always been so in the U.S., though not in most other countries with government-regulated music licensing. The situation’s rarity is not of concern to advocates of radio’s licensing privilege, who assert that radio’s traditional role in driving awareness, success, and sales of music performers is as vital today as ever. Continue Reading
Spotify began rolling out a new update to its desktop listening platform this week. The big change is the addition of lyrics. This feature is powered by Musixmatch, and you can access the lyrics by clicking the new button next to the play bar. Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web. Continue Reading
Pandora announced in December that it would have a native app on the Xbox One, the latest game hardware from Microsoft. That app is now also available to Xbox One owners in Australia and New Zealand, Pandora’s two other markets outside the U.S. Continue Reading
Music and business mogul Jay-Z made an offer to buy Aspiro, parent company for the Tidal and WiMP streaming services, back in January. Although Aspiro encouraged its shareholders to accept the roughly $56 million offer, the response from those shareholders has been lukewarm. Continue Reading
The recorded music industry in Denmark posted a record year on the back of a 50.5% increase in revenue from streaming services. With streaming accounting for 58.5% of the market’s total revenue, that boost helped secure industry growth of 1.8% for the year to 437 million Danish kroner (about $66.5 million). Continue Reading