YouTube Now Lets You Selectively Blur The Screen

YouTube videos are so incredibly powerful that every artist and band has to do them in order to both engage their current fan base and also to expand it as well. That said, many artists shoot randomly and never think of the consequences of not getting releases from people and places in the video.

There are times that people and venues want money for using their name and likeness. That used to require a reshoot, which wasn't always possible, until now. YouTube now gives you the tools to selectively blur any part of your video for maximum anonymity.

Way back in 2012 YouTube launched a face blurring tool, but the current update allows other things to be blurred out in the video like license plates, phone numbers, wardrobe malfunctions, disturbing imagery, etc.

You draw a box on top of the part of the video that you wish to blur, and then the feature will track the object as it moves throughout the video. You can also choose when the blurring begins and ends.

This update is only available on the desktop version of YouTube at the moment, but they promise that the mobile version update will follow soon.

Here's a video that shows how to do it.

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Volvo Adds Phone-Free Spotify

Almost all new cars are blue-tooth enabled so you can stream music from your smartphone, but any driver who's tried this knows how clunky it can be while driving, let alone dangerous.

Volvo is making music streaming a lot easier by integrating Spotify directly into its new XC 90 SUB, S90 sedan and V90 wagon this spring.

All you need is a Spotify premium account to get going, and as the video below explains, it's pretty easy to use and doesn't require a smartphone to use. Is this the way of the future for car audio?

Read more about it here.

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Maybe Piracy Hasn't Gone Away After All

Just when you thought music piracy was over comes this study from Music Watch which claims that there are more people stealing music than ever.

Most studies contradict this notion (which is what I believe myself), but the following infographic takes an interesting look at the situation. It's short on data, but this article does give a lot more detail.

Note that it was also published a year ago, and the streaming world has certainly gone up a notch since then.

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Rock Still Isn't Dead According To A New Study

We keep on hearing that rock is dead as a music genre, but that's not the case at all, according to a study by Nielsen Music. Surprising, rock came out on top when it comes to genres of music that people consumed in the US during 2015.

If you listen to the radio, pop music dominates, but it's only #3 when it comes to favorite music. Also surprising was the fact that country and dance/EDM scored lower than other genres.

Here's what the study found.

   Rock 29%
   R&B/Hip Hop 17.2%
   Pop 14.9%
   Country 11.2%
   Dance / EDM 3.4%
   Christian Gospel 3.1%
   Holiday / Seasonal 2.6%
   Latin 2.6%
   Jazz 1.4%
   Classical 1.4%
   Children 1%

It just goes to show that in these days of music consumption online, it's more difficult than ever to determine what's really hot and what's really not.

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Will Music "Windowing" Become The Norm?

When Adele released her latest album 25, it wasn't officially available on most streaming services, which certainly helped her attain some healthy sales. Now nearing 20 million sales worldwide, many label execs have taken notice and want to institute the same policy with other artists as well.

Known as "windowing," the strategy has been used in the movie industry for some time. That's where a film is released on in the theaters for a period of time, and only allowed to go to rental and television only after it's finished its theater run.

The music version of windowing would have a superstar album release be only available via CD or download for a period of time before being released to the streaming services.

While that sounds all well and good on the surface, it also sounds like an industry pulling at straws in hopes of peeling back the flow of time. It won't work for a few reasons:

1. Consumers have now adapted to streaming and they're not going back. They expect to be able to find the music they want on their platform of choice right now and if your latest release isn't there they'll just move on.

2. Adele is a special case, with sales propped up mostly by soccer moms and baby boomer women (Sony did a study) who are predisposed to buy a CD or download.

Windowing is a bad idea, and while I don't think it will ultimately get any traction, it's only pushing back the inevitable. Streaming is here to stay until the next new technology is upon us, so let's all get used to it and maybe even enjoy it.

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MySpace Purchased by Time, Sort Of

MySpace is back in the news again, this time because it's just a small piece of a bigger deal where its parent company has been purchased by big media player Time Inc.

The company was just one of the companies owned by Viant, which is a big player in online ads. Viant also owns the Specific Media ad network and what it calls an "advertising cloud" that's said to connect to more than 1 billion registered users.

There's no word yet on what Time intends to do with MySpace, but despite its long fall from social grace, it still racks up 10's of millions of viewers each month.

If you recall, MySpace was bought by at its peak as a music site for $580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp back in 2005, after which it shed users by the millions. Viant and Justin Timberlake (among other investors) purchased the company in 2011 for a mere $35 million, and tried to revitalize the site, but it never gained traction again.

The platform also proved to be a cautionary tale regarding trusting your user data to a social site, when users woke up one morning in June of 2013 to find their followers reset to 0 after the MySpace relaunch.

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Spotify Up To 28 Million Paid Subscribers

The music industry received some good news recently when Spotify announced that it had surpassed 28 million paid subscribers at the end of 2015. In June it announced that it was up to 20 million, so a jump that steep in only 6 months shows that consumers are indeed onboard with paying to have their music streamed.

Last week Apple also announced that it was up to 11 million paid subscribers, which means that the industry has recently made great strides towards the 100 million goal that so many industry experts perceive as the point where streaming music begins to overtake the erosion of revenue from falling CD and download sales.

One of the reasons that Spotify's numbers have increased may be because of its educational tier, which charges students just $4.95 per month instead of the normal $9.95.

Many in the industry have long thought that $5 was the magic price point for consumers, but the major record labels have been reluctant to allow that during their licensing negotiations.

Regardless of the price, it's good to hear that paid streaming is finally catching on in a big way. This can be nothing but good for artists and songwriters in the long run, even though it might seem that the payouts are low now.

And by the way, streaming has just about totally killed piracy, which again, is a giant plus for the industry.

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Google's Hangouts Changes To P2P

Many artists and bands use Google's Hangouts On Air to engage with their fans. This includes everything from mini-concerts to online meet and greets (I use it as part of Webinarjam for my webinars), and while it was reliable, there was always a question with its audio quality, especially when it came to music.

Google has now rolled out Hangouts 7.0, and while it has a number of cool features, the main upgrade is that it now uses a peer-to-peer connection, or P2P, between Hangout users who are on the call.

The reason is to make the calls more efficient, and as a result, take the audio and video quality up a notch to generally improve the experience.

Previously, the call would go through Google's servers, and while the company has what many consider one of the most robust backbone's in the world, the connection was always as solid as you'd expect, hence the move to P2P.

One of the potential downsides of using the P2P connection though is that each user's IP address is revealed, which means their location could be discovered and their privacy compromised as a result.

There's talk that the P2P feature may be selectively disabled in the future, but that's not the case at the moment.

So if you're a Hangouts users, enjoy the new features and increased quality. If you live in an area where you'd like to protect your IP address and privacy, maybe it's better to use another platform for the time being.

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6 Strategy Tips From Instagram Experts

iDigic has an excellent post with a great infographic containing bits of advice from 31 Instagram experts. You can check it out here, but below is a summary of what they feel is important to use the platform to its utmost.

1. Have a pre-load strategy. Before you begin posting, know who you're trying to engage, how often you'll post, the number of times of day you'll need to do it, and the times.

2. Provide value. You need to post content that your followers find useful or engaging, but also reinforces your brand as well.

3. Communicate with your followers. The most critical part of a good Instagram strategy is engaging your followers. Contests are a great way to do that. Commenting and sharing photos of other Instagrammers is another way.

4. Relevant hashtags are critical. Hashtags are as essential on Instagram as they are on Twitter, but you must treat them strategically. Find the appropriate hashtags for your feed and then use them consistently.

5. Build a community. Followers have to feel like they belong to your community and identify with your brand. The best way to do this is to repost their pictures, which shows that you're willing to engage them, and be sure to reply to all their comments.

6. Treat it as a unique environment. You need your account to stand out and the only way to do that is by treating it differently from your other social media platforms.

Check out the full article here.

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Patrick Mahoney From Manhead Merch On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

If you're in the music business you've heard how increasingly important merchandise is to the revenue stream of an artist.

My guest on this week's Inner Circle Podcast is Patrick Mahoney of Manhead Merch, who's going to tell use about how merch licensing deals work, as well as what the hot merch is these days.

In the intro I'll discuss how Warner Music and Sony Music plan to give back at least some of the profits to their artists if and when Spotify goes public. I'll also give some tips for setting up that cool mastering compressor plugin that you probably have but were afraid to use.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes, Stitcher and now on Mixcloud and Google Play.

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Bandpage Is Acquired By YouTube

Bandpage, the app that allows artists to monetize their followings, has been acquired by YouTube for a fire sale price of $8 million.

The app allows artists to set up a store and syndicate it to numerous social media and streaming platforms.

Bandpage started as an app to create a special tab on an artist's Facebook page, and had about 32 million users when Facebook shut that feature down in 2012. The company reportedly lost 90% of its traffic in 3 months.

The app then disconnected from a single platform, instead allowing artists to syndicate their pages or stores to most of the artist-friendly platforms available instead.

The company claims to have over 500,000 users, among them superstars like Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake.

Investors had poured over $32 million into the app, so a sale of only $8 million is somewhat surprising. It should be interesting to see how YouTube integrates it, especially now that the YouTube Red service has launched.

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Despite Reports, Don’t Look For Pandora To Be Acquired Anytime Soon

Is Pandora really up for sale? If it is the timing is extremely curious.

Pandora was said to have begun talks with Morgan Stanley to help it find a buyer, according to an initial article by the New York Times, although the talks were deemed preliminary and had no guarantee of a deal. If you look deeper into the company’s pros and cons, a sale looks a lot more fantasy than reality though, at least in the near future. 

While much of the press has focused on the financial part of a possible sale, let’s look at what may be some of the more intriguing aspects of a possible sale.

Where’s the match? 

There are only a handful of deep-pocket companies that might take a even cursory glance at a Pandora acquisition, but most are not a good fit. For instance, Google’s name is frequently mentioned as a possible Pandora suitor, mostly because of the synergy with it’s ad network, since most of Pandora’s revenue comes from ads. That said, there’s really nothing about Pandora that Google doesn’t either already have, or can’t get for less money.

Apple is another that doesn’t need what Pandora has to offer. It already has the same infrastructure for its iTunes Radio, and chances are that most of Pandora’s subscribers are already iTunes users. There’s not much that Apple would find attractive.

iHeart Media could probably find a space for Pandora among its current online radio properties, but the company reportedly has a huge amount of debt and would find it tough to swing a sale that would probably cost it around $2 billion.

Some think that Samsung might be a fit based on the company’s need to keep up with Apple in the smartphone market. The problem is that it already has a similar service in its Milk Music which hasn’t gotten any traction in the U.S. Pandora could instantly give it that traction, but to what end? Does the addition of an on-board music app make that much of a difference to the average smartphone buyer? In a word, no. Samsung would be better off pouring that $2 billion or so into R&D than adding a music app that could be obsolete in the blink of an eye.

Then there’s Amazon. I’ve been predicting for the last year that Amazon would be the next deep-pocket company to enter the streaming music market in a big way, as it’s basically there already with its Amazon Prime Music service for its Amazon Prime members. Reports have recently surfaced that the company is getting ready to introduce a mainstream streaming service not tied to Amazon Prime, and Pandora could actually be a useful addition if that were the case.

Read more on Forbes.

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Record Label Opens Its Own Brick And Mortar Store

Maybe this is the way it should be.

Concord Music Group, which owns a variety of record labels and is home to prestigious artists like Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Chick Corea, Alison Krauss, Ben Harper, Arturo Sandoval, Booker T. Jones, Kenny G, George Benson, Steve Martin and Alejandro Escovedo, has opened up it's own brick and mortar record store.

The store, called Stax of Wax, is in the upscale Malibu Country Mart in Malibu, California, and features products from its various labels, although it pays tribute to the soul label of the same name.

Of course, this avenue isn't new, as labels over the years have owned their own record stores both in the US and the UK. In fact, Jack White's Third Man Records has had its own store in Nashville almost since the label's inception.

It does make a lot of sense these days though, even for major labels, although it's doubtful they'd get behind the idea. Label-branded record stores could control the inventory, promote the latest releases and add a presence in the community that it now lacks.

Just as many of the larger indie stores like Ameba offer artists a way to promote their work with in-store performances, a label store could also be a place for showcases to find new talent as well.

On a creative level it makes total sense, although it's hard to say if it works on a financial basis.

Either way, support you local record store. It's still vital to the success of the music business.

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The 5 Characteristics Of The YouTube Voice

We've all either experienced or heard of the teenage (or just beyond) YouTube sensations that have millions of followers and hundreds of millions of views, but is there something that's common between them? Business and presentation aside, The Atlantic attempted to find out by asking a few linguists to determine the characteristics of a "YouTube voice." Here's what they discovered.

1. Overstressed vowels: Emphasizing a vowel that would normally pass loosely in the middle of the mouth.

2. Extra vowels between consonants: Elongating a word by adding an extra syllable to it so it's emphasized. The name for this is epenthetic vowel.

3. Long vowels: Stretching out vowels is another common way of emphasizing words, but sometimes they're just only slightly longer than normal.

4. Long consonants: Especially those at the beginning of words.

5. Aspiration: From the article - “If you put your finger in front of your mouth, I'll teach you a very quick phonology lesson,” Baron said. I did. “Are you ready? Say ‘keep.’”
“Keep.”
“Now say ‘geep.’”
“Geep.”
“When you said keep, did you feel a breath of air on your finger?” She asked. (Indeed I did.) “That’s called an aspiration.” There’s normally an aspiration on the K, even if you say it normally, but if you huff and puff a little more, that makes the word stand out."

The “YouTube voice” is just a variety of ways of emphasizing words, but they're actually things that people do all the time. YouTube vloggers need to keep the viewer's attention, so they do them a little more.

It's interesting, though, that one linguist called it an "intellectual used-car-salesman voice."

Check the original article for some great examples. Could this be something that you can include in your YouTube videos?

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Bose Turns Superbowl Tweets Into Songs

Bose didn't pay for an ad during the Superbowl broadcast, but it did figure out a unique way to capitalize on the event.

The company asked a number of artists and bands to turn Superbowl related tweets with the #LetsHearIt hashtag into some short songs for a campaign it called Fantracks.

A variety of artists from different genres turned in 30 second songs recorded on the spot at the Bose studio and then posted them on social media and a dedicated Tumblr blog.

Not only did the artists use the tweet's text, but emoji's as well, which added a fun element to the process.

They're all pretty good and fun to watch and listen to, and it's hard to get bored since they're all so short. In fact, some of them are so good I wish they were longer.

Check out the Fantracks here.

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Apple Music Now In Far More Countries Than Spotify

Apple has done a great job making Apple Music available throughout the world. As a matter of fact, Music Business Worldwide notes that the service is now in 59 more countries than Spotify.

While we haven't received any info lately as to the number of subscribers that's translated into (the last figure was 10 million after 6 months, half that of Spotify), it does give Apple Music a huge leg up over the the competition. It's true that many of the countries have small populations, but it all ads up when the number is as large as it is.

Here's the list of countries where Apple Music has a presence, but Spotify does not.

1. Anguilla
2. Antigua
3. Armenia
4. Azerbaijan
5. Bahrain
6. Barbados
7. Belarus
8. Belize
9. Botswana
10. British Virgin Islands
11. Cambodia
12. Cape Verde
13. Cayman Islands
14. China
15. Dominica
16. Egypt
17. Fiji
18. Gambia
19. Ghana
20. Grenada
21. Guinea-Bissau
22. India
23. Indonesia
24. Japan
25. Jordan
26. Kazakhstan
27. Kenya
28. Kyrgyzstan
29. Laos
30. Lebanon
31. Macau
32. Mauritius
33. Micronesia
34. Moldova
35. Mongolia
36. Nepal
37. Niger
38. Nigeria
39. Oman
40. Papa New Guinea
41. Romania
42. Russia
43. St Kitts & Nevis
44. Saudi Arabia
45. Slovenia
46. South Africa
47. Sri Lanka
48. Swaziland
49. Tajikistan
50. Thailand
51. Trinidad & Tobago
52. Turkmenistan
53. Uganda
54. Ukraine
55. UAE
56. Uzbekistan
57. Venezuela
58. Vietnam
59. Zimbabwe

This is good news if you're an artist, since Apple Music is more likely to get a paying subscriber than just about any other service, thanks to the fact that they already have credit cards on file.

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Rumors Untrue - Twitter Not Changing To Facebook-Like Newsfeed

Twitter was in a panic last week as rumors circulated that the service was moving towards an algorithm-based feed that would select which tweets you see instead of by the time posted as they are now. The company's president, Jack Dorsey, has now made an official announcement denying the rumor, stating that it's trying to make it "feel more, not less, live."

In Facebook, an algorithm selects the posts that you see in your Newsfeed by how popular they are and how relevant they are to you, which means that you miss around 98% of the things posted by your friends and followers.

With Twitter, you see everything posted by those that you follow, but chances are that you won't want to dig back through a few hours or more of tweets, so usually the ones seen are the most recent.

A change to an algorithm would mean that tweets would be selected for you based upon your preferences and viewing habits, which means that the element of live news would be somewhat replaced. Thankfully, that's not the case as the company says it has no intentions of changing.

This is a big deal if you're using Twitter for promotion in that the Facebook algorithm means that only around 2 to 3% of your friends and followers are seeing your posts, unless you pay to promote them.

This is a good move for Twitter in that its user numbers have flattened at around 300 million, and the last thing that it needed was any controversy that might have caused users to flee to another service.

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UPDATE: It turns out that Twitter introduced the algorithm anyway, but it's not turned on initially. Users can choose to turn it on in their preferences, but this might change over time where it defaults to on and users can choose to turn it off.

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Warner Music May Give Spotify Windfall Back To Artists

Major record labels aren't known for being particularly generous to their artists, but in at least one case, that might change a little. Warner Music has made it known that should it ever sell its stake in Spotify, at least some of the proceeds will go to its artists, according to a post on Music Business Worldwide. WMG CEO Stephen Cooper made the announcement when speaking to investors yesterday.

This is an unprecedented step as any income from these types of equity sales have traditionally made their way directly to the label's bottom line in the past, bypassing the artists.

The major labels own around 15% of Spotify, which came as part of the company's negotiations for licensing rights to the major label's catalog. It's estimated that WMG owns between 2 to 3% of Spotify, which at its current $8 billion valuation, is worth around $200 million.

Spotify has signaled its intention for an IPO (Initial Public Offering - where shares of the company are offered to the public for the first time) this year, which would mean a windfall for its shareholders, including the major labels.

Knowing the potential blowback from artists should they not see any money from the sale of the company they helped build, WMG decided to get on the right side of the situation instead of having to react to it after the fact.

Any resulting bad publicity from a Spotify IPO could harm the streaming side of the music business, which has grown into a major source of revenue for the industry as is quickly replacing physical sales.

As a result of this story, Sony Music announced that it would also give back a piece of the proceeds from any sale (no word on exactly how big a piece). The question now remains, will Universal Music feel compelled to follow?

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SoundCloud Rolls Out Its Own Version Of Pandora

SoundCloud is angling to become a full-fledged streaming service, and it just took a big step towards that goal with the introduction to what it calls Stations.

Stations takes the the previous "Related Tracks" feature one step further by simplifying it and improving the recommendations. The result is what the company hopes will be increased music discovery.

If this sounds familiar, that's because it's just what Pandora has been doing for a number of years now,  as well as Spotify and Apple Music, but this is a first step to get SoundCloud into the same game as those large services.

Essentially, a station is generated from any track, search term, or content stream in your Collection. All you have to do is tap the three-dot menu next to a track and select "start track station" to begin. After the first track plays, SoundCloud uses your listening habits and track selections to determine the songs you'll hear next.

The feature works on both Android and iOS devices but hasn't made it to the web app yet.

My guess is that it won't have too many people giving up their Pandora accounts just yet, but it's a good first step.

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1500 Track Streams Now Equals 1 Album Sale

The RIAA announced that it will now count 1500 track streams as 1 album sale when it comes to qualifying for awards like gold records.

This means that 150 streams now equals 1 track sale, thus 10 track sales (1,500 streams) then equals 1 album sale.

It's nice that there's some metric, but there's a big flaw in this logic.

1500 plays of the same song now equals 1 album sale, which is hardly the same thing as a true album sale.

When you buy an album you pay for 10 songs, and although you may not listen to them all as much as the ones you like, you did pay for them all and are exposed to them all.

That's far from the case with the 1500 = 1 logic.

Another thing is that until the announcement on Monday, 100 streams was considered 1 sale, so the bar for a sale has been raised (probably rightfully so).

It's great that the RIAA has announced this metric to reward performance, and although it doesn't seem to be as fair as real sale once was, I can't think of (nor have I read) a better idea of how to measure this.

Ideas anyone?

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The Best Way To Live Stream To Multiple Platforms

Live Streaming is becoming an important part of an artist's social repertoire, but until now it was limited to one platform like YouTube or Ustream. Wouldn't it be great if there was a service like OneLoad where you could upload your video to multiple services from one platform?

It turns out there is and it's called Joicaster.

Joicaster allows you to stream to up to 67 live streaming platforms that range from popular ones like YouTube and DailyMotion, to gaming (Twitch, Hitbox), New Media (StreamUp, Roku), Sports (CBS Interactive, TheCube), Faith (StreamingFaith, SundayStreams), Production (MakeTV, SnappyTV) and CDN (Akami, Amazon Media Services).

The service features a simple dashboard that allows you to stream your high-definition broadcast to one or more platforms, and provides chat, social sharing and live analytics as well.

There's actually a free plan that allows up to 4 concurrent streams, with the paid plans providing more streams and features. They start at $4 to $30 per month, with a custom enterprise plan also possible.

If you're into live streaming, check out Joicaster to help you expand your audience.

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Artist Management Consultant Mike Gormley On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

My guest on this week's Inner Circle Podcast is artist management consultant Mike Gormley.

Mike was head of PR for Mercury and A&M Records before he headed into management, where he worked with acts like The Bangles, Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo and Danny Elfman, and now heads up LA Personal Development.

We'll discuss the differences between PR and management from the classic days of the 80s and 90s to today, and you'll hear some good war stories as well.

In the intro I'll discuss how Spotify will now stream video but not for the reasons you might think, the latest music streaming platform called Cur Music, and the latest in the labor dispute between Guitar Center and its employees.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes, Stitcher and now on Mixcloud and Google Play.

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Small Webcasters Forced To Shut Down Thanks To Royalty Increase

A number of issues seemed to have doomed thousands of small webcasters who use the Live365 platform, which closed down today. The webcasters include everything from one man niche programmers dedicated to new music discovery, to smaller radio stations like Smooth Jazz Chicago and Pulse 87 NY.

One of the main issues that caused the Live365 to close is the recent Copyright Royalty Board ruling to increase the royalty rates webcasters must pay to artists and songwriters.

In 2009 SoundExchange (which collects the royalties and then distributes them) negotiated a rate based upon the amount of revenue generated by a webcaster which helped the smallest webcasters stay on the air. A webcaster with no revenue could pay a flat rate to Live365, which then passed it on to SoundExchange.

That agreement terminated at the end of 2015 however, which now means that smaller webcasters are subject to the same per stream rates as major entities like iHeart Radio and Pandora. With a massive royalty commitment and little revenue to count on, most small webcasters can't afford to stay on the air, and even medium sized webcasters find that all their revenue will be eaten up.

The Live365 platform had additional issues, as it never turned a profit, and now with the new CRB ruling, faced a loss of much-needed investor backing.

This is actually a very complex issue, as there are multiple rates for commercial versus non-commercial webcasters. The fact is that many small webcasters were responsible for exposing new music while paying a very low royalty rate.

Musicians and songwriters now make marginally more, but to what end? If there are fewer outlets for your music, there seems like no winner in this decision, but many with a lot to lose.

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