Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web.
Results of Dr. Dre’s Apple exclusive release: The NY Times reports that Dr. Dre’s exclusive album release this summer (Compton) was streamed 25-million times in its first week, according to Apple Music executive Jimmy Iovene. The album remains exclusive to Apple Music — good for Apple, but probably limiting the album’s success. The Verge notes that Kendrick Lamar and Drake both had much higher first-week successes by releasing their albums across the streaming music services.
Spotify helps tour planning: When Hunter Hayes was planning a concert tour, Spotify listener metrics helped determine where he should play. Pandora has long promoted its ability to identify fan hotspots for artists, and even built a hands-on artist dashboard called AMP. Spotify is likewise in the Big Data realm, and Mashable reports that Hunter Hayes used that info to pinpoint college towns where his fans were concentrated. The data were derived from 10 weeks of streaming a single track, which received 21-million streams.
Is $10/month too high a price?: Hugh McIntyre examines the pricing of music services in a Forbes piece. The debate over how much an online music subscription should cost isn’t new, but this article reveals interesting statistics of how much money consumers have paid for music over time.