This & That

Underground Vs Commercial – Does it really matter?

Tel Young's avatarMEDIA EMPEROR

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The quote above sums this latest Post i have written.

Does it really matter if a track is classed as underground or commercial?

After trailing through various sites and forums and other various forms of social media i have seen people actually being bullied over the net for their taste in music, because they like a commercial record, or they are not underground enough and their sets contain the likes of Martin Garrix, Avicii, Don Diablo and so forth.

I find this attitude in music absolutely ridiculous. Its narrow minded, one dimensional way of thinking and it totally annoys me. The whole underground vs commercial debate is totally stupid and not needed in the world of music. It does not make a DJ instantly cooler because he has got the latest releases by a producer who is underground. It does not make the listener or the clubber any cooler because…

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This & That

Pandora Buys Rdio To Become A Global Streaming Powerhouse

Mark Mulligan's avatarMusic Industry Blog

pandora rdioPandora today announced that it was acquiring the assets of now failed subscription service Rdio.  While the whispers about Rdio’s future had been building for some time, the deal is more interesting for what it says about Pandora’s plans than what it says about the state of the subscription business.

Rdio Battled Bravely And Set Innovation Standards But Fell Short

For what Rdio lacked in subscriber numbers it made up for in innovation.  It continually set product and feature precedents that Spotify and others subsequently aped, and its $75 million dollar ad inventory deal with US radio giant Cumulus sets a business model blueprint that other streaming services will follow. But for all its efforts and extensive marketing efforts Rdio was simply not able to get to the same sort of level as Spotify’s 2nd tier competitors, let alone to seriously challenge Spotify itself.  The music subscription business is not…

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This & That

YouTube And The Attention Economy

Mark Mulligan's avatarMusic Industry Blog

This is the third in the series of posts exploring how the music industry can better leverage the potential of the YouTube economy.  You can see the first post here and the second here.

Short form video is accelerating at a rapid pace, racking up 4.2 trillion views in the first half 2015.  While challengers Facebook, Snapchat and others now account for just over half of that total, few platforms of scale yet provide content creators and owners comparable ability to build engaged audiences and income.  For music the situation is even more pronounced – no other platform is even on the same lap of the race (and I include Vevo as an extension of YouTube). YouTube is the most popular online music destination by far (46% of consumers use it regularly) and its role for Digital Natives cannot be exaggerated – 65% of US under 25’s use YouTube…

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