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Since taking over MySpace from News Corp, Interactive Media (formerly Specific) has pushed traffic back up 36%. But that hasn't stopped MySpace from bleeding $40 million in 2012, according to pitch materials dated 11/16/2012. To save the ailing company, investors are being asked to pony up $50 million to re-launch MySpace as a direct competitor to Spotify and Pandora.

Flat fee digital music distributor TuneCore has launched in Japan. Artists in Japan will be able to sell in online stores like iTunes and AmazonMP3, with more stores expected. TuneCore has previously been used internationally, but this is the distributor's first country-specific site.

Direct to fan provider BandCamp never touts its accomplishments.  Many popular indie artists like Amanda Palmer, Zoe Keating and Sufjan Stevens use Bandcamp.  But unlike their competitors, the company never sends out press releases announcing milestones, new features or strategic partnerships.  Occassional announcements come without fanfare on their blog. But at last week's FutureSound conference, Bandcamp CEO/Co-founder Ethan Diamond shared to impressive stats:

Guest post by Aaron Master (@aaronmidomi) for sidewinder.fm, a music a tech think tank. Master works at SoundHound Inc., a sound search company.

When the history of music social networking is written, it probably won’t list 2012 as a strong year. Apple’s heavily marketed Ping service failed to catch on and closed down. Upstart Turntable.fm saw usage decline. A music app that was a near-exact copy of viral hit Instagram managed not to get bought for $1 Billion. Facebook users engaged in everything from eye rolling to wall screaming as their feeds continued to be crammed with robotic updates of high school friends listening to terrible music in Spotify.

By Amber Horsburgh (@amberhorsburgh) of MTV. She's teaching a free Skillshare course for musicians on how to build fan-based communities based on Macklemore's story.

There aren't many stories quite like Macklemore's; the Seattle born rapper has been making music for 12 years, but it was earlier in 2012, upon his debut release "Heist" (with Ryan Lewis), when he shot to mainstream fame. Just hours after "Heist" dropped it had secured the #1 spot on the iTunes Album Chart, before entering in at #2 on US Billboard 200. But even before these successes, the pair had sold out 18 of 27 shows on tour across the US and UK. No label, just pure fan support.

It’s no secret that mobile will continue to play a dominate role in our daily lives, but what exactly does the future look like for mobile adoption? More specifically, how does it look in the context of music discovery, consumption and the listener/fan dynamic? The following infographic, created by mobile app developers MobBase, takes a look at how the future is shaping up for musicians in terms of just how connected both they and their fans will become in the mobile future. 

Amidst a growing battle over digital broadcast royalty rates, SoundExchange today fired the most powerful gun in it's arsenal: the largest quarterly payments from non-interactive digital music services to artists and labels ever. The third-quarter distribution of $122.5 million announced today means that payments have reached $326.9 million in the first three quarters of 2012 and are already $30 million greater than all of 2011. 

The only reason I've heard of Nickelback is that they have somehow become a running joke on the web. Even hardcore Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, brother of Ari Emanuel, was compelled to claim not to be a fan in response to a protestor's sign claiming otherwise. But polarizing music fans is but one of the many lessons that any musician can learn from one of Canada's most well-known musical exports.

There’s been a debate going on about the Internet Radio Fairness Act which will reduce royalty payments to artists by more than 80% if enacted. Last week, 125 artists came together to oppose Pandora’s subsidy in a press release from SoundExchange. On Music Think Tank, Mark Doyon joins the debate and posts his opinions on the act. What are your thoughts on the Internet Radio Fairness Act, royalties, and Pandora?

As music formats shift and transform in ways that upend previously lucrative business models, many musicians cry out in despair and claim that shifts in consumer behavior indicate that music has been devalued. Yet a new campaign in the U.S. maintains that the shift to digital music has only increased its worth and presence in our daily life. "Music Matters US" hopes to remind us that music matters in our lives and encourages everyone to enjoy legal digital music services but is their desire to control consumers blinding them to actual consumer behavior and effective means for encouraging legal ecommerce?

SXSW has announced another extensive rounds of panels. They range from the expected royalty and social marketing discussions to the far more arcane like "Into the Mystic: Secular Music as a Quest for More" by Greg Garrett of Baylor University. Here's the full list of SXSW panels so far:

There's clearly a lot of interest in Wordpress among musicians based on traffic to my previous posts on themes and plugins for Wordpress.org and WordPress.com's music tools. Since then I've encountered some additional resources for Wordpress.org that are relevant to bands and musicians along with a caveat about Wordpress hosting and free Wordpress themes.

Last night, the 40th Annual American Music Awards hosted by Ryan Seacrest were held at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. While there were few surprises among the winners of these pop and mainstream music awards - Justin Bieber as Artist Of The Year says it all - there was a noticeable shift towards a younger generation of hit makers.

MONDAY 11.19.2012

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