Tag: MUSICINDUSTRY

For starving musicians and champagne-sipping mega-stars alike, a strong digital presence is essential. The ways in which artists can present and sell their work online are constantly expanding, changing the face of the music industry in the process. The need for intermediaries between artist and audience, such as record labels and publicists, is a thing of the past. Enter Bandcamp, a service ...

Innovative artists tired of the unyielding ways of the corporate music industry made our pick as one of the coolest tech trends in 2010. When Kanye West released one song each week to his Twitter followers, the hype surrounding his critically acclaimed 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' snowballed, even though many of the songs he offered for free download then appeared on the album. Not only ...

2010 has been a pretty packed year for tech. Streaming video came into its own with radically improved content choices and affordable living room hardware devices, Android and Apple's iOS dominated the cell phone market, the mobile app markets show no sign of slowing down and the iPad revealed a huge demand for tablets. We here at Switched have taken a look back over the past 12 months and each ...

After years of quibbling with record labels, sweating a 2007 government-proposed royalty hike, and dealing with their increasingly uncertain future, Internet radio stations are finally off the hook, the New York Times reports. These stations -- among which Pandora and Slacker are probably the best known -- enable users to enjoy custom-tailored streams of music, free of charge. Because the sites ...

No amount of marketing genius or label support has helped Fleet Foxes, says Robin Pecknold, lead singer of the indie-pop band. Instead, he thanks the Internet, which allowed thousands of fans to share 'Fleet Foxes,' the band's wildly critically acclaimed self-titled 2008 album. According to TorrentFreak, Pecknold admitted to the BBC, "I've downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records - why would I ...

Despite the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) promise to Congress in August 2008 that it would not start any new file-sharing lawsuits, the music industry lobby filed at least three new cases in April. It's not really a good idea to lie to Congress, so the RIAA is claiming that these new cases are actually settlements of existing cases. Basically, the RIAA has a number of ...

In a twist on conventional logic, a new study reported in the Guardian has found that piracy, so often blamed for the continual downturn in music sales, may actually be sustaining the industry. The surprising report, from the BI Norwegian School of Management, was based on a study of approximately 2,000 online music listeners over the age of 15. Researchers discovered that the people who ...

Last week, the four founders of torrent site Pirate Bay got what they deserved, at least according to Sir Paul McCartney. Of the downloading pioneers' being found guilty of copyright violation in a Swedish court, the songwriter and former Beatle told the BBC's Newsbeat, "If you get on a bus you've got to pay. And I think it's fair, you should pay your ticket." The Pirate Bay, a Web site on ...

The book and music retailer Borders may soon be removing CDs and DVDs from its stores' shelves, according to a report in the Consumerist. Apparently, this past Monday, a Borders employee wrote the Consumerist, claiming that "most Borders [stores]" will remove 75-percent of their CD and DVD inventory over the next couple of months. According to this tipster, whose veracity has not been ...

Some of the most popular musicians in the UK have decided to collectively protest what they see as poor treatment both from online music streaming sites (YouTube, MySpace, etc) and from the record companies that do business with them, according to CNET. Essentially, the artists have joined to create the most creatively inspired group of lobbyists, ever. The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) is ...

Yesterday, Neil Young fired a shot at YouTube, claiming that the Google-owned purveyor of online video has unfairly treated artists signed to the Warner Music Group. According to Young's blog (cleverly titled 'NY Times'), YouTube has underpaid Warner artists, whose peers on other record labels have been getting larger licensing checks. Young points out that, because Warner Reprise was one of the ...

Yep, it finally happened. One label has come forward and admitted that, for the first time, digital sales of its music have surpassed CDs. While many pundits asserted that loosing tunes via tiny downloadable files would instantaneously cause the deep-pocketed record labels to crumble as piracy ran rampant, the numbers tell a different story. In fact, music sales overall have declined from $14.6 ...

It's a sad state of affairs for the music industry these days. It's making far more news for its idiotic statements and unnecessarily huge lawsuits than for discovering and nurturing fresh new talent. This time, though, it's the industry that's on the receiving end of a lawsuit, being taken to court by a mother whose video was removed from YouTube by Universal Music Corp because of the song ...

With file sharing, the death of independent radio, and out of touch record labels, the music industry hasn't exactly been flourishing lately. CD sales are way down, and while online music sales are way up, they're not exactly filling the gap. Unsurprising, then, that coffee uber-franchise Starbucks is scrapping its foray into the music distribution business, focusing instead on what it does best: ...