In 2012, global music sales rose by 0.3 percent to $16.5 billion. This marks the first good year for the music industry since 1999.The music industry’s 21st century renaissance comes down to four factors: Better mobile technology, a growing global middle class, more music-listening options, and an effective crackdown on piracy that is making paid music a more attractive option.
Devin Murphy fell in love with the new remix of the 1984 Bryan Adams hit “Summer of ’69.” But she didn’t hear it on the radio, iTunes or see it on a friend’s Spotify page. She fell for it while sweating it out at a fitness class at Barry’s Bootcamp.
Apple’s best of 2012 section has been launched for the year, listing the top apps, iBooks, movies, music and TV Shows for the year. The section is an annual event that features both Editor’s Choices hand-picked by Apple and the top sellers in every category.
SoundCloud, the audio-sharing network, which allows users to share not just music but any audio recording — from company earnings calls to cat impersonations — has just launched a new version, “Next SoundCloud,” at LeWeb in Paris.
Over the past twenty years the geography of popular music has changed considerably. The internet and social media have obviously played a large role. While industries like automobiles or steel still cluster around resources, cheap labor and transportation routes, or high-tech companies cluster around skilled labor and universities, the forever altered music industry now has fewer physical reasons to cluster — musicians no longer need to be near any particular resource to record and distribute their work anymore. And yet, they clearly still do cluster, just perhaps for slightly different reasons.
Forty-eight percent of consumers in the U.S. still see radio as the dominant way to discover new music, according to Nielsen’s latest “Music 360” report. For almost two-thirds of U.S. teenagers, however, Google’s YouTube is now a more important source of music than radio (54%), iTunes (53%) and CDs (50%).
The “Irrelevant Sound Effect”, is all about the way background sounds can interfere with our short-term memory.
A lot of people like to listen to music while they work. Previous research suggests this is probably not a bad thing. In lab studies, people who listen to music they like, generally perform better at mental tasks afterwards, an effect that’s been attributed to boosts in mood and arousal.
The Copyright Board of Canada reviews copyright tariffs for various collection societies (like ASCAP and BMI in America, which collect performance licensing fees from venues). They have just approved a new set of fees to cover recorded music at a bunch of different live events. Karaoke bars, conventions, parades, weddings and several other classes of event—which already pay fees to SOCAN, which represents songwriters—will now begin paying additional tariffs to collection society Re:Sound, which represents recording artists and labels.
Because everyone knows that business success relies on linking your brand to bodily waste, here is a urinal in Brazil from Billboard that lets you shred while peeing.
The face-melting bathroom fixture, conceived by ad agency Almap BBDO and 3-D modeled by Cricket Design, is making the rounds this summer of several bars in São Paulo. As you can see, “Guitar Pee” looks like a regular urinal with a fretboard sticking out of its top and an ominous electric cord connected to an amp on the wall. Make sure you’re wearing rubber-soled shoes before whipping it out, lads!
Ever since Zeon took a hammer to my boombox, I haven’t been able to rock out to my favorite New Kids on the Block tunes at work. Aisen Caro Chacin’s invention may prove to be an acceptable alternative. Her tongue-controlled MP3 player uses the palate to carry sound to the ears…