Wednesday night sees the 2014 Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) awards honouring the greats of Aussie pop. The ARIAs has a much more international feel this year, with the largest ever overseas…
Everyone’s listening, but few are buying.
karljonsson
Taylor Swift’s announcement that she was removing her music from the Spotify music service started a debate about the future of music. Swift argued that artists were not receiving appropriate compensation…
Country music’s soaring popularity in the Northeast isn’t so much a novelty as it is a rebirth.
US Navy
This past June, radio conglomerate Clear Channel (now known as iHeartRadio) announced it was converting Boston’s 101.7 FM to a country station. The story they told the Boston Globe was a familiar one…
Pirates aren’t all that hard to please.
Philippe Put
Music piracy is a huge problem, if the music industry is to believed. But so far, very little has been done to stop it. We are, however, starting to get an idea of what motivates people to do it. If record…
American internet sensation Michelle Phan is being sued for copyright.
AAP Image/Lancome/Michelle Phan Images
Nicolas Suzor, Queensland University of Technology and Eleanor Angel, Queensland University of Technology
The latest case of a popular YouTube blogger being sued for using music by other artists in her videos without permission raises the question of who really benefits from the re-use of music. In a claim…
There have been four very interesting pieces of news over the past few weeks that, although apparently unconnected, are anything but. First, Apple’s third fiscal quarter sales were released earlier this…
Paul McCartney has released five of his classic post-Beatles albums as tablet apps. Band on the Run, RAM, McCartney, McCartney 2, and Wings Over America contain interviews, video footage, artwork and photos…
It may have raised eyebrows for some, but it is entirely appropriate for Taylor Swift to be writing an article for the Wall Street Journal. Over the past few years she has appeared regularly in the Forbes…
Taylor Swift is optimistic about the future of the music industry. How accurate is her diagnosis?
Eva Rinaldi
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Taylor Swift in which the singer-songwriter provocatively claims “…the music industry is not dying … it is just coming alive”. Her message of optimism…
Thom Yorke of Readiohead pulled his solo releases from Spotify in 2013, arguing that digital streaming is destroying the livelihood of artists.
EPA/ Fabrice Coffrini
Let’s be clear: from Spotify to Pandora, streamed music is killing downloads, and that’s bad for artists and music lovers. The opposition between art and commerce has been a defining feature of the history…
These days a punter has bloated, blander lineups and higher ticket prices.
AAP/ Dean Lewins
There will be no Big Day Out in 2015. It’s been confirmed by American owners of the Aussie event, C3 Presents. No more, the clusters of very bright-eyed, over-stimulated teens drifting from stage to stage…
Last week, citylab.com reported that there is a strong correlation between the number of heavy metal bands in a particular country and various measures of quality of life, such as economic output per person…
The allegations come a long time after Zeppelin and Spirit toured together in 1969.
Musikhalle Hamburg, März 1973: Robert Plant, Jimmy Page/ Photo: Heinrich Klaffs
Nicolas Suzor, Queensland University of Technology and Eleanor Angel, Queensland University of Technology
More than 40 years after the release of Stairway to Heaven, English rock band Led Zeppelin are facing allegations that its iconic guitar riff was stolen from Taurus, a song released in 1968 by the American…
Justice Crew perform at Madame Tussauds Sydney, for the Australian launch of Michael Jackson’s Xscape album, May 2014.
AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts
Epic Records, in conjunction with the estate of Michael Jackson released the King of Pop Michael Jackson’s second posthumous album Xscape last week. To create the album Epic Records chairman and CEO L.A…
The Moog, 2014 Model Sub 37 – producer of squelchy bass lines and distorted expressive solos.
Wikimedia Commons
The classic sound many of us imagine when the word synthesiser is mentioned is the sound of the Moog – the warm, solid propulsive groove of its bass sound and the distinctive sweep of its patented lowpass…
Shimmy shimmy ya, shimmy yam, shimmy yay, Gimme the mic so I can take it away.
NRK P3
American East Coast rappers the Wu-Tang Clan have developed a revolutionary model for musicians to make money from their work. They are about to sell a copy of their new album, but in doing so they will…
Twitpic does all the hard work these days, so A&R men don’t even have to leave the office.
marfis75
Twitter has decided to woo the music industry with a promise to share data on up-and-coming artists in a deal that would whet the appetite of most music lovers. It makes sense for one of the largest social…
Nodding to the past in the present.
Matt Sayles/AP
Given the group’s sonic ownership of last summer with Get Lucky, it seems apt that Daft Punk collaborators dominated last night’s Grammy Awards. They had a total of seven wins, including Album of the Year…
The Grammys are about selling the industry, as much as its products.
EPA/Paul Buck
On Sunday, “music’s biggest night,” the 56th Grammy Awards, will be held in Los Angeles – no doubt with the customary level of humility and circumspection so characteristic of the music industry. Commentators…