We asked a half dozen leaders in the music and technology field: What do you think the music industry will look like in five years? How about in ten years? Sharky Laguana, Founder/CEO of Bandago: I am hearing rumblings of some big changes in the industry coming soon. After decades of largely staying away from the music industry there are a few significant VC firms making substantial investments in the sector - focusing on stealth technologies we haven't heard about yet. Tech

We asked a half dozen leaders in the music and technology field: Do you believe that a blockchain solution will come into being? What will it take to get there and how long will it take before it is the primary method of music compensation? Stephen White CEO of Dubset Media Blockchain has become the buzzword associated with the idea of building a better infrastructure for the administration of music rights. It is a bit overhyped. There is no doubt that a new infrastructure is

The annual Austin gathering can be overwhelming so we at Music Tectonics and rock paper scissors have identified 39 official meetups and sessions that focus on music tech and related fields taking place at this year’s SXSW. If you are in music tech, these sessions will help you get a foothold in finding partners, peers, and programmers. If you think we missed an event, please email us. We hope to see you at the rock paper scissors meetup! The Official Music Tech Meetup Musi

We asked a half dozen leaders in the music and technology field: Do you believe that tech companies have taken advantage of artists and labels in terms of fair payment? Vickie Nauman Founder/Owner of CrossBorderWorks I've personally witnessed the gamut on both the licensee and licensor side -- there is no shortage of examples where nefarious practices come in the way of getting business done and getting everyone paid. Sharky Laguana Founder/CEO of Bandago Tech companies are t

This is the second in this series. We asked a half dozen leaders in the music and technology field: How will increased transparency in music rights and payments manifest? In what ways will it specifically help songwriters, performers, and rights holders? Tom Silverman, Founder of Tommy Boy and New Music Seminar Transparency will continue to increase over the next ten years. It will not help anyone because the economics will not change but 80 page contracts will become 8-page

This is the first in a series we’re calling The Question. We asked a half dozen leaders in the music and technology field: How can we make the music recording industry profitable? Jim Griffin, Co-Founder of Pho and Managing Director of OneHouse: Music is profitable today, but the path forward is to unite our fragmented interests into a price for music, making it faster, easier and simpler to pay, in hope that when it is, more people will pay. In addition, the voice of music b

Controversy about YouTube in the music industry surged this summer. There were outcries that the company pays less out to artists and rightsholders than streaming services. There was a highly publicized petition -- signed by the three major labels, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney and U2, among others -- calling for Congress to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Though the negative publicity died down, the problem for many remains unresolved. Yet YouTube clea

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Many of the complaints about payment for music streaming come from artists who signed contracts with record labels. While their public complaints are readily available online and in the media, their recording contracts are not. Did they take a six or seven figure advance that still hasn’t recouped? Did they sign away their rights for digital revenue with their label? Is their label making legal claims on digital revenue that is not included

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 At the crux of the anti-streaming argument is that certain people or companies are getting rich on the backs of under-compensated artists. This narrative frequently goes that technology companies (pure streaming services or tech companies that use music as a loss leader for hardware or advertising), their CEOs, and their investors are getting wealthy while artists are losing revenue. We never hear a comparison between the compensation of major labe

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 When radio emerged, as a society, America decided to allow radio stations to trade radio airplay for record promotion for record labels. Thousands of potential music fans would find out about new recordings through radio airwaves. The recording studios and labels would profit from those sales. The radio stations would profit by selling advertisements around that music and other programming. When Pandora emerged as a leader of streaming music, their model

Read Part 1 and Part 2 While prices went down for an overall album, over time, the music industry transformed into a singles business. Much of the pricing structure of recorded music has always been related to the physical format and capacity in which music reaches the ears of fans. Two-sided vinyl singles and LPs determined the length of a recording. Marketing and distribution budgets were determined based on these capacities. As things shifted to digital, the concept and ef

A recent online discussion asked: Is the rise of streaming services as the dominant delivery method making music more of a background experience and diluting its power? I curate and program Ambient music for a living, so this question is of fundamental importance to me. When the Ambient genre was identified and named by Brian Eno in his "gentle manifesto" of 1978, he pointed to an emerging socio-cultural fact to support it. People, he said, were increasingly using music to cr

Read Part 1 Physical retailers struggled under the weight of a growing catalog of CDs. There was an upswing in the creation of new titles and a marketing model had emerged in which every extra inch of a commercial record store was sold for promotional dollars: end caps, listening stations, light boxes, and counter displays. Record labels believed they had to pay for this promotional space to have a shot at getting any customer attention. Sometimes this marketing and distribut

In the music industry, there’s not a more contentious issue than the fairness or viability of music streaming as the economic driver for musicians. One side of the debate says that streaming has driven down the potential revenue for artists by putting a higher value on technologists and technology investors than on composers and performers; undercutting the creators of the art and usurping control and profit. The other side of the debate says that the way people engage with r

Tech-fueled earthquakes have shaken the music industry and it’s easy to point fingers about who’s at fault, from streaming services to record labels, from user-generated content platforms to hardware manufacturers looking for a loss leader in music. To kick off Music Tectonics, I identify six shifts in our society that have been simmering beneath the industry’s ground and are surfacing in unexpected ways. Yes, earthquakes are destructive, but they also create beautiful, drama