Category: Music

  • How Should Spotify Pay For Its Music?

    Yesterday I got into a bit of a discussion with James Cridland on Facebook about the rights and wrongs of how services like Spotify distribute their revenues. And I thought it was worth sharing and expanding on some of my thoughts on the matter. This comes off the back of a Medium piece from Sharky…

  • Releasing a Soundtrack Album

    This is a small frustration, and quite possibly it’s specific to me, but why are record labels so tardy in releasing soundtrack albums. Everyone knows that for most films, the opening weekend is key. The largest number of people tend to see a film on its opening weekend, and in many instances, the film gets…

  • Folk by the Oak 2015

    I think the relaxed atmosphere and great music makes Folk by the Oak in the grounds of Hatfield House my favourite festival. And with both The Unthanks and Bellowhead on the bill this year, it was unmissable. Here are a few photos I took of this year’s event, with more over on Flickr.

  • Apple, Spotify and a Binary Way of Selling Music

    Apple Music is now up and running. If you have an iPhone, you’ll be pestered to update your device, and a new Music app will appear that on first open is desperate to give you a 90 day free trial of Apple’s Spotify-like experience. So I dusted off an iPod Touch (mainly bought to use…

  • Music Tourists

    There’s been a new report published by UK Music, the consortium that supports the UK music industry’s political needs. Wish You Were Here 2015 highlights the importance of the music industry to tourism and that audience’s spending power. It was released on Monday and has generated a decent amount of press coverage. It’s a chunky…

  • Apple Music

    So now we finally know the details of Apple Music. I won’t go through all the details because every site on the planet has already done so, breathlessly live-blogging the full announcement. So go elsewhere for those. To be honest, as The Verge reports there are probably some sighs of relief around the rest of…

  • Thoughts on Tidal and Streaming Music Services

    I’m still not really clear about Tidal – the music streaming service. There was some kind of hideous press conference with lots of very successful – i.e. rich – artists talking banalities earlier this week in New York. But at this stage, a streaming music service really needs to have a point of difference compared…

  • The Unthanks at The Roundhouse

    I went to see The Unthanks yesterday at The Roundhouse in Camden. For no obvious reason, and having been to see an exhibition at Tate Modern first (Conflict, Time – I only found it so-so to be honest), I decided to walk to Camden for the concert, taking photos as I went. Here are a…

  • 19,013 Songs

    That is what it says on my Google Play Music account. 19,013 songs. Look, I realise that all the cool kids are renting their music on Spotify. It might not actually make any money, but it’s so much more convenient paying £10 a month and having access to all your music. Except when the album…

  • Spotify and Meghan Trainor

    A week or so ago I popped in for a couple of sessions of an interesting music tech conference held in the BBC Radio Theatre called On the Beat. One of the sessions included a presentation by the always interesting Will Page, Director of Economics at Spotify. He was examining the interaction of Spotify, Shazam,…

  • How Effective is the Charity Single in 2014?

    In the last full series of More or Less, there was a really interesting episode that looked at charity giving and what is the most effective way to give money. It is not an easy question to answer as the programme clearly addresses. I was thinking about this over the weekend when Bob Geldof was…

  • Bad Visualisations

    There’s a really interesting piece to write about Taylor Swift, Spotify and iTunes revenues, and the music industry in general. But this isn’t it. I’m writing this because TechCrunch has an interesting piece about European Spotify earnings overtaking iTunes earnings. The piece reports that Kobalt, a publishing company that collects music royalties on behalf of…