SoundCloud Launches Its Subscription Tier

It's been rumored for months, and it's finally happened. SoundCloud has launched a subscription tier to its streaming service called SoundCloud Go and it's priced at what's now become the standard - $9.99 per month ($12.99 for iOS).

The fact of the matter is that SoundCloud Go seems like it's more to appease the major labels than anything. All 3 majors have now licensed their catalogs to SoundCloud in an effort to get a piece of the DJ remix space they'd been missing.

As for the consumer, there's not all that much of an advantage. The free tier provides 125+ million tracks while the SoundCloud Go offers the same plus an "expanded catalog" (no idea what that means), offline listening, and it's ad free.

One of the big problems for consumers is the lack of big names on the platform, or extensive catalog from major label artists, although the platform seems to be adding more content to Go today. Still, the majority of available songs consists of remixes or user uploaded tracks.

SoundCloud has had a major problem with DJ remixes using unlicensed material, and has had to revoke the subscriptions of many of them as a result, which has led to bad blood in the community and mass defections to MixCloud and Dubset. It's going to be difficult to get them back, if for no other reason than from a logistics standpoint of moving a catalog to a new service.

It appears that SoundCloud Go will pay artists according to their market share, which means that the top 1% will continue to enjoy a higher revenue stream regardless of whether they own the copyright of their material or not.

SoundCloud currently has 175 million active users, so even a conversion rate of 5% would make it a player in the streaming space with nearly 9 million subscribers. SoundCloud Go is only available in the U.S. market for now, but will roll out globally later this year.

By the way, you can avoid the extra $3 iOS charge by signing up on your desktop instead of your iPhone.

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U.S. One Of 4 Countries That Doesn't Pay Artists For Radio Airplay

Radio is still a big part of an artist's success, but did you know that an artist doesn't get paid for radio airplay in the United States? Songwriters get paid from money collected from broadcasters by ASCAP, BMI or SESAC, but there's no mechanism in place for an artist to get paid for the same airplay.

As an example, the Righteous Brothers "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" is the most played song on the radio ever, with more than 15 million plays since its release in 1964, yet the group never received a dime from all that radio play. The writers (Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Phil Spector) got rich, however.

Unbelievably, the U.S. is one of only 4 countries in the world that doesn't pay artists for radio airplay. More unbelievably, the other 3 are North Korea, Iran and China, none of which are exactly known for their artistic freedom or copyright protections.

So what's the problem in the U.S.? Lobbyists, to put it simply. The National Association of Broadcasters is very powerful and contributes to many political campaigns, so they've always managed to quash any legislation that gets introduced to Congress.

The NAB has always threatened that radio and television stations would go bankrupt and be forced to go off the air if legislation was passed mandating them to pay artists for playing their songs, all while the industry was raking in billions of dollars of profits.

Sadly, this situation won't change soon, mostly because radio is in a true downswing (especially AM) with advertisers moving their money away from radio to social media instead (streaming platforms do pay artists for airplay, by the way).

Radio still helps break a song as millions of people continue to listen at work and in their cars, but it's mostly from the top 1% artists or those backed by the major labels. It's irrelevant to young artists and bands since airplay is out of reach.

While the rates seem low, music streaming is an artists friend, since at least you get paid something. Because unless you're the writer, you're not going to see any money from radio airplay. And at least online is a place for a young artist to build an audience, since local radio (once the champion of local music scenes everywhere) barely exists anymore, and many colleges have shed their terrestrial radio stations.

For a deeper look into the subject, check out this article on Medium from CD Baby's CEO Tracy Maddux.

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How Gen Z Is Using Social Media

Gen Z is coming of age and they have a whole different take on communication than the generations before. Gen Z is generally defined with birth years ranging from the mid or late 1990s through the early 2010s or starting from the early 2000s.

A study by the college marketing insights agency Fluent examined the online active of Gen Zers and found a number of interesting points.

• Facebook is still the top network for many users. 51% use the platform for keeping in touch with high school friends and family, while 39% used it for keeping in touch with college friends. Gen Zers like the fact that the platform keeps on top of new technical trends like messaging and video.

• Snapchat and Instagram were used to keep in touch with closer friends, particularly at college. 34 and 35% used Snapchat and Instagram several times a day.

• They spend their time online looking for content rather than social interaction.

• 24% sample new apps every month.

• YouTube is a major destination with 80% of respondents.

• That said, Facebook has become a major video destination as well for 79% of respondents.

• 32% watched at least 1 hour of video a day, 30% watched 2 hours a day, and 21% watched 3 hours a day.

• They cannot live without the following brands in order of popularity: Apple, Samsung, Google, Netflix, YouTube.

Notice that Twitter isn't a part of the social mix. This goes to show that pictures and video are a big part of the Gen Z lifestyle, so if you're fan base is in this demographic, this is something to strongly consider in future marketing campaigns.

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YouTube Says It Pays Plenty Of Royalties

Many fingers are being pointed at YouTube for not contributing much to label and artist bank accounts despite the enormous number of streams it generates.

For instance, YouTube claims that it had 50% of the 317 billion streams last year, yet paid only a fraction of what the paid tier from Spotify paid.

How much? We don't have the exact breakouts, but a combination of YouTube, Soundcloud, and all the ad-supported tiers from all streaming services accounted for $385 million in the U.S. in 2015.

Premium tiers of Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play and others amounted to $1.22 billion last year.

While everyone is disgruntled with YouTube for paying such low rates, its response as been that it's paid out over $3 billion dollars to the music industry, which is deceiving in that it's over the services lifetime, not last year.

The fact of the matter is that YouTube is still the go-to service by most people to listen to music, yet it pays the least to artists, songwriters, labels and publishers.

Yet the company has the music industry over a barrel as it holds all the leverage. Whether an artist wants their music there or not, chances are some fan is going to upload it, so it's always going to be available, and the price is still right at free.

Unfortunately, don't expect this dynamic to change soon.

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The Official RIAA 2015 Statistics Are Out

The RIAA has released its statistics for 2015 and, as always, there are some surprises. The things to remember about the RIAA is that it works for the record labels (especially the majors), so some stats you have to take with a grain of salt. Here are some of the more noteworthy data points.

• There was a very slight increase in the recorded music part of the business, with revenues of just over $7 billion, for an increase of 0.09%

• Streaming accounted for more revenue than any other income stream for the first time, accounting for 34.4% of income, while download sales made up 34%, physical sales were 28.8%, and synch were 2.9% of total revenue.

• Paid subscription revenue increased 52.3% to $1.22 billion, compared to $800.1 million in 2014, while ad-supported streaming revenue increased 30.6 percent to $385.1 million. All very good news!

• Revenue from CDs, vinyl and DVDs of albums and singles fell another 10.1 percent to $1.9 billion (although that was less than predicted). CDs fell to $1.521 billion from $1.83 billion the year before based on 123 million CDs that were sold last year, which was down from around 143 million in 2014. 

• Vinyl sales continued to soar, generating $423 million from 16.9 million album sales and roughly 500,000 singles, an increase of 31.8 percent.

Here's the catch - the RIAA's numbers reflect retail sales, which means that the above numbers don't reflect how much the labels actually received for their music, although wholesale prices are from 65 to 70%.

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Branding For Musicians Quick Overview

Last summer I was a thought-leader at David Cutler's wonderful SAVVY Musician program at the University of South Carolina, which is basically a mini-MBA program for musicians. The program not only teaches you have to think like an entrepreneur, but produce results as well.

Here's a brief branding outline that I gave while there, which explains some of the very basic steps that any musician, engineer, producer, or music exec can do to develop your brand.

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Twitter Can't Get Young Users

If you're an artist or in a band then you're probably on social media to reach your existing fans and to expand your fanbase. There's a problem though, in that it's getting a lot harder to do that, especially with the biggest social platforms available.

This is especially evident with Twitter, which still has 320 million monthly users, but most of those seem to be business, sports and celebrity users or journalists. Gen Z and younger millennials are staying away like the plague.

It seems that, unlike Facebook (which they reluctantly use), younger users really don't have a good reason to use Twitter when other alternatives like Snapchat, Instagram and Kik fulfill their needs in a better way.

Twitter is hard to define and even harder to describe why you need it, but any social network is in trouble if the user doesn't have any friends on it, as is currently the case with Twitter and the Gen Z and millennial crowd.

Brands are beginning to recognize this as well and spending less on the platform, understanding that it probably won't be growing much in the future, and that you're buying current users, not future ones.

That's why it's important that you know exactly where your fans are before you invest your time in a social platform. You only have a limited amount of energy and as a result, can't be everywhere, so go where you can get the most bang for your buck in terms of time invested. If you know that your fans are on Twitter, spend your social capital there, but if more are on Instagram (for instance), that's where you have to be.

Also, be aware of the ebb and flow of social media platforms, because they change every year both in terms of users and features. What works this year might not work next, and vice versa.

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EDM Is Slowing Down

We've all seen clubs and restaurants that were white hot for a while and suddenly petered out after the sheen had worn off. That's what's happening with EDM at the moment as the scene is slowly winding down on a number of fronts.

Although some big festivals like Ultra Music can still command large crowds, they're not the instant sellouts that they once were. In fact, many formerly successful festivals like TomorrowWorld have been cancelled this year.

Why is this happening? There are a number of reasons why the scene is said to have peaked (some say back in 2013).

• For one thing, EDM is a victim of its own success, with entrance, VIP and bottle prices now beyond what the normal fan can handle.

• There are fewer South American high-rollers to prop the clubs up as unfavorable exchange rates and country economics have kept them at home.

• Soaring DJ fees (as high as $400,000 per night) have also made it impossible for many clubs to continue.

• The "show" that most DJ's put are is basically the same, and is pretty much limited by the genre and environment. People that used to love EDM are now looking for something new.

• Many are also tired of the house music genre that's at the heart of EDM.

Both Las Vegas and South Beach, the respective ground zero for the genre, have seen mass club closings in the last year, and SFX Entertainment, who bet heavily on investing in EDM, has declared bankruptcy.

It looks like we're ready for a new trend. Do you see it on the horizon?

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Former Taylor Swift Manager Rick Barker On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

This week's guest on my Inner Circle Podcast is Rick Barker, who helped launch the career of Taylor Swift as her first manager. In the interview, Rick provides an overview of how Taylor became such a huge star, and gives us some insights into how the music business has changed since she hit the scene.

Rick is now is the social media mentor on American Idol, and offers a great Social Media For Music video full of tips and tricks on how to use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to help you promote your music. Rick is cutting edge in this regard, and taught me a few things I didn't know myself.

In the intro I'll take a look at how the record labels are now changing their marketing strategy away from the short product release window to a "continuous loop," and how the fifth Beatle Sir George Martin changed the finances of the music business.

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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Labels Adapt To Music Without Sales

Major record labels are are finally coming to grips with the fact that we're going to be living in a streaming world where any sales are a bonus. That means their strategy is now changing from one of selling product to one of engagement, according to a great article on The Drum.

The article states that there's now a rethink of how product should be marketed.

Instead of the short "release windows" of the past, labels are coming to realize that the more consumers are listening to an artist's streams, the more money everyone is making. As a result, the marketing cycles are becoming much longer, creating a "continuous loop" that's geared to keep people coming back to listen.

This movement is being spearheaded by Sony Music UK, but other labels are slowly adapting the strategy.

Sony began to look at other industries like traditional publishing and hotels to see how both are courting and keeping their customers, then incorporating that strategy to help increase engagement.

This can only be good for artists, who have long suffered from inadequate promotion when a song or album wasn't an immediate hit.

In the past, there was still a chance that a record could catch fire if a radio station (no matter how obscure) would add the song to its playlist, but in these days of station groups, consultants, and less local radio, that's more difficult than ever. Plus, radio is less and less relevant when there's no product to sell, so any new ideas in music marketing is great news for every artist and label in our new Music 4.0 age.

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Kanye Gets Tidal To Extend Trial Period

If you want to listen to Kanye West's new album The Life of Pablo, there's only one place online and that's Tidal. The problem is that after the 30 day trial period, you have to start to pay for the service, either at the $9.95 per month premium rate, or the more spendy $19.95 per month rate for the CD quality Tidal Hi-Fi.

Fearful of losing a chance at upselling trial subscribers that signed on just to listen to the album who's time has run out, Tidal has extended it's free trial period by 30 days.

There are probably a couple of reasons for this. First, Tidal screwed up Kanye's TLOP launch by not reporting it's numbers to Billboard, resulting in the album not even charting when it was released. Whether this was because the numbers might have been embarrassingly low, or just a human error hasn't been determined.

The second reasons might be that Tidal owner Jay-Z is reportedly looking for either a partner in the platform, or a straight buy-out. Any subscriber attrition, even those on free tier, looks bad, so it's in the company's best interest to bite the bullet and add another free month rather than have the numbers decrease.

One interesting thing is that Kanye and his producers keeps changing TLOP even after it's been released, which may be the wave of the future in terms of production. Hit the release deadline and perfect it later in the form of updates may become the norm before you know it.

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Get More People To Watch Your Live Video Streaming

Live video streaming is pretty hot these days, and most of the major social platforms allow you to do it. The problem is that you only get a small portion of your available fans when streaming in just one place.

While it's possible to embed your player on a number of websites, that's a pretty time consuming process, and that's where StreamSpread comes in.

StreamSpread is a new network that finds compatible websites for you (called "publishers") so you can get your live stream out to more people. You have to pay for this service (you're an "advertiser") at a rate of either $5 per 1000 views or $0.03 per hour viewed, but you can quickly and easily expand your audience.

The service works with a stream you create from Ustream, Livestream or Twitch, and provides analytics such as number of viewers, time watched, viewer geolocation, concurrent views, and viewer's browser and device type.

You can also filter the categories of the websites that will serve up your stream to make sure that you target the exact audience for your message or music.

Here's a brief video below that explains the service.

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UK Adopts Sensible Legislation To Stop Music Venue Closures

It looks like the task force set up by London mayor Boris Johnson is actually having some effect, as tweaks to planning legislation may actually help to save some live music venues.

Alarmed by the closing of some of the most popular clubs in the city, the mayor took action last October in an effort to save its remaining music venues. The impact has spread to the entire country though, as the Music Venue Trust announced that new legislation would be put in place specifically to deal with noise complaints that threatened many successful music venues.

With many cities sections undergoing gentrification, it was not uncommon for a new apartment or condo building to be built beside a long-standing music venue. When new residents moved in, they complained about the loud noise and large crowds of people, in many cases causing a successful club to close.

The new tweak in the legislation requires a developer to consider the impact on the new residents before applying for any building permits, and ceasing development if the impact will be too great, thereby saving the venue.

Something like this happens so rarely that it feels good for musicians and venues to finally get a win. Now if only more localities around the world would adopt the same attitude, the music industry would be a lot better off.

Here's a great overview of the situation from DIY.

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Instagram Users Consume A Lot Of Music

Nielsen just completed a new study assessing Instagram user's music behaviors, and discovered a number interesting facts.

It turns out that Instagram users are above average music consumers. They spend more time listening, and they spend more money on music items than other music consumers for starters. They also take artist's live performances more seriously than most other music consumers.

Their tastes in music is also different, as they listen to more pop, hip-hop and R&B than other music consumers (check out the chart below).

They're also more than twice as likely to pay for a premium streaming tier than other users.

The upshot: if you're not on Instagram already, it's time to sign on, as there are a lot of music fans there.

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Two Year Anniversary With Episode #100 Of My Inner Circle Podcast

Today is a joyous occasion in that it's the two year anniversary of my Inner Circle Podcast!

I want to thank you all for your support of the show. I don't make any money from it, but I love doing it as long as you find it interesting and useful.

For episode #100 I welcome back the great studio and live engineer and my good friend Dennis Moody, who was my first guest and also first anniversary guest on episode #50.

Dennis will talk about the changes in venues around the world, especially after the latest terrorist incident in Paris. Dennis arrived there on tour shortly after the event, and he'll describe what it was like.

In the intro I'll take a look at how the once promising Tidal streaming network is currently in trouble and why, as well as some of the unique and interesting vintage gear finds of late.

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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SoundExchange Introduces A New Song Code Search Tool

You'd think that with so much music existing in the digital domain that it would easy to track down the usage and royalties for a song, but unfortunately that's still not the case. Despite calls for the recording industry, there's no one single search engine that can find that data, but SoundExchange recently came up with a step in the right direction.

SoundExchange now offers an online tool for looking up the ISRCs, or International Standard Recording Codes, that are related to the nearly 20 million recordings in its database.

ISRC codes have long been the standard method for identifying sound recordings, first being introduced in 1986. Each code number is comprised of a two-letter country code, a three-character code for the registrant, two numbers for the year, and five numbers assigned by the registrant. The RIAA oversees the ISRC system in the United States and its territories. The IFPI oversees ISRCs globally.

SoundExchange's search engine allows you to look up an ISRC code by artist name, song title, album, year, version and UPC/EAN. The result can be added to a cart for future reference, which can then be exported to a CSV file so the data can be inputted to a digital service's system. The IFPI also provides a lookup tool it created in conjunction with SoundExchange with identical information.

SoundExchange collects royalties for non-interactive streaming platforms like Pandora and satellite radio only.

As said before, this isn't the ultimate solution that everyone has been wanting, but it's the best solution so far in that it provides cross-check information to make sure that copyright owners are being paid at least in some areas.

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Sony's Red Label Services Expands To The UK

Major labels have learned that many of their services are very valuable to smaller indie labels or directly by artists. Where once upon a time, if you wanted a label's distribution, promotion and marketing, you had to sign to the label, that's no longer required.

Labels now take advantage of their unique expertise and excess capacity by making these services available on an a la carte basis called "Label Services."

In other words, if you can afford to pay for radio promotion from Sony or Warner Music, they'll be happy to make those services available to you.

One of the biggest at this is Sony's Red Music, which has made major label distribution, and more recently, marketing available to indie labels everywhere. Now Red has expanded into the UK with its acquisition of Essential Music to form Red Essential.

Essential has recently worked records by The Prodigy, Marilyn Manson, Passenger and Lucinda Williams, among many others. Of course, one of the biggest acts to take advantage of label services was Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, which launched the concept to a new level, and later 50 Cent (check out the links for specific info).

Keep in mind that while using label services is a great idea, it's never free. You pay for everything if you're an indie regardless of your sales or engagement, and you pay for a portion of it even if you're signed to the label, only not up front.

The major labels have built marketing and distribution infrastructure over the last 50+ years that can't be matched by a startup or indie, so why not take advantage if it if you can?

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Samsung To Close Milk Music Service

Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of Samsung's Milk Music service - not many people have. Even though the company launched Milk Music to great fanfare a couple of years ago, the service managed to gain little traction since.

That's why Samsung has decided to shutter the service, according to various reports.

Milk Music was originally meant to be a competitor to Pandora that would play exclusively on Samsung mobile phones. When phone users mostly ignored it, Samsung then opened it up online, then brought it to their smart televisions as well.

In 2014 the company launched the Milk Video version of the service specializing in short form videos as part of a greater media strategy that included sports and an advertising platform. Needless to say, that failed to gain traction as well.

Actually Milk Music did gain some users on the free tier, but the company wasn't able to upsell them to the paid premium tier, which is a continuing problem with many other platforms as well.

This just goes to show that just having deep pockets doesn't guarantee success of a music streaming service. Look for more smaller services to either shutter or be acquired soon.

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Facebook Integrates Spotify Into Messenger

Facebook and Spotify are trying to make it easier for fans to share your songs. The latest version of Facebook Messenger now incorporates a button so you can quickly jump to Spotify to choose a song and then share it in the message.

While on the surface this seems like a great idea, the problem is that the integration isn't as seamless as expected.

It's a bit clunky to get to Spotify, although once there it's pretty easy to select the song you want. The real problem is for the person receiving the message, since the tiny "Open" button beneath the image isn't totally obvious. Once clicked, it then sends you to the Spotify app so you can listen to the song there.

Both companies are quick to point out that this is only an early version and the implementation will be refined over time.

Any time a social platform can be combined with streaming music distribution it's a good thing for both consumers and artists. Word of mouth is still one of the most popular music discovery methods, and anything that extends that is most welcome when it comes to social media.

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Sony Develops Real-Time Streaming Royalty Reports

In what may be a real breakthrough for artists, Sony Music has developed an app that shows exactly what their daily streaming royalty earnings are. The app also includes information about how these earnings impact their label advances as well.

Other features include other key information in real time, such as streaming volume across all platforms, airplay data, profiles by age, gender and location of listeners, and a heat map of areas of the world where the artist is currently popular. It also offers insight to the artist's popularity on social networks as well, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The app is only available to Sony artists in Sweden (where the app was developed) at the moment, but is expected to be rolled out to Sony artists globally later in the year.

This is a first for a major label, since it makes earnings a lot more transparent than in the past. Artist royalty statements have always been viewed with some suspicion as labels have traditionally used a variety of accounting tricks to limit the royalties owed, but the new Sony app gives at least some hope that this position may change in the future.

Although the Sony real-time app is a revolution for a major label, it's not the first of its kind. Kobalt has offered these features to artists and songwriters for some time.

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Facebook Encourages Ads With No Audio

There are a lot of videos on Facebook and many of those are ads. Facebook has now decided that your ad begin without audio so that you don't annoy the viewer or those around her, so it now encourages that you design your ads with the sound off.

It's been found that 80% of people react negatively when a video ad pops up and blasts the sound, and that reflects not only on the ad, but Facebook as well. That's why it's now incorporated new tools to help advertisers out with their silent ads.

It now offers a new automated caption tool for videos to help give context to an ad that's scrolling in your feed without sound. What's more, the caption tool learns and becomes more accurate over time, although the advertiser has the ability to review and edit the captions before posting.

The problem is that a study found that 41% of the video ads on Facebook were meaningless without sound, that's why it's now encouraging advertisers to rethink their ads to work minus the audio.

You may be advertising a gig or a new release, so keep this in mind before you post.

Here's more from Facebook that explains how the new capturing feature works.

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Facebook's Still Growing

Recently there have been reports that not only has Twitter use peaked, but it's even beginning to fall, with active users dropping from 330 million down close to 200 million.

That's a good example of what typically happens with social networks, where they're hot for a few years and then replaced with something newer and hipper.

The exception so far is Facebook, which continues to grow despite predictions that its use plateaued long ago. Indeed, it's active users are now up to 1.59 billion, and incredibly, still growing.

Facebook shared the following statistics regarding it's growth (especially in advertising) in an email to SocialTimes:

• There are more than 43 billion connections between people and businesses on the social network.

• Southeast Asia is the fastest-growing region, and the top five countries in terms of year-over-year growth were the U.S., Brazil, the U.K., Italy and Australia.

• 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook per day.

• There are 1 billion users on Facebook Groups.

• 80 million users on Facebook Lite.

• 500 million users on Events and 123 million events were created in 2015.

• More than 1 million advertisers on Facebook are creating ads via mobile devices.

• More than 20 million active pages are using the social network’s Pages application.

• More than 70 percent of Facebook’s 3 million-plus advertisers are outside of the U.S.

• More than 50 million small and midsized businesses are currently using Facebook pages, and more than 80 percent of the social network’s users in the U.S. are connected to SMBs. More than 2.5 billion comments are posted on those pages each month.

• The top three verticals building Facebook pages are services, local commerce and e-commerce.

You may find that more of your fans are currently on other platforms, but ignore Facebook at your own peril.

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Your Music Won't Be Played In China Anytime Soon

China is one of the most populated countries in the world with over 1.3 billion people, 75% of which listen to music regularly.

That said, the revenue generated by music is stunningly small (see the chart composed of data from the IFPI) and it looks like it's not going to increase anytime soon, at least for Western artists.

Only 10% of the population currently listens to non-Chinese music and that's going to drop, thanks to the government's recent declaration that any kind of content from foreign media companies will be blocked starting March 10th.

Companies like Apple and the New York Times who have invested millions in China just may be out of luck, and if your music or content was aimed that way, so will you. The big windfall that China promised may never take place after all, thanks to the protectionist policies of the Chinese government.

Then again, if the video below is what they consider hip, then maybe we're not missing anything anyway. It's a communist corruption rap featuring president Xi JinPing.

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Tidal's In Big Trouble

When Jay-Z bought the music streaming service Tidal last year the purchase was met with a lot of hope and controversy.

Hope because he was an artist and successful businessman who could steer the company in the right direction. Controversy because of the initial tone-deaf press conference where a who's who of artists were trotted out, all saying that they'd finally be getting their financial due now that Tidal was here.

Since then it's been all downhill. Just in the last 30 days:

• Tidal exclusively released Kanye West's latest album The Life of Pablo, which gained no traction on the Billboard charts since Tidal refused to release any of the user data to Nielsen. A total embarrassment for all.

• Yesterday Tidal was served with a class-action lawsuit for $5 million for failing to register and pay mechanical royalties to an artist in the U.S. This is exactly the same type of lawsuit currently pending with Spotify, and one that an "artist's company" would be expected to avoid.

• Today it's being reported that Tidal fired both its COO and CFO, after having fired it's CEO late last year. At this point, the company is left without any experienced leadership.

Jay-Z has reportedly been in talks with Samsung to buy Tidal, but one wonders why that company would even want it, since it already has a failing music service in Milk Music.

Tidal could have been an innovator and leader in the streaming sector, but instead it's just a mess. It's lead in hi-res music streaming was never exploited and even acknowledged once Jay-Z took over, and every month there's a new mis-step. Maybe Jay-Z isn't the businessman he's cracked up to be after all.

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MP3Skull Owes The RIAA $22 Million

When it thinks that there's copyright infringement going against its major label clients, the RIAA shows no qualms about slapping a lawsuit on the service, and it usually wins.

That was the case recently when the association won $22.2 million in damages from the filesharing site MP3Skull, a site that supplies download links to songs by popular artists.

The damages were determined by multiplying the 148 songs submitted as evidence by $150k each.

In this case though, the RIAA might not collect a dime since the identities of the owners is totally unknown.

MP3Skull now operates from the MP3Skull.yoga domain, and it has moved from .com and .to domains when they have been blocked via previous court orders in the UK.

Although the ruling allows the RIAA to size the domain, it can't get at the assets if it doesn't know where they are and who they belong to.

Here's the thing though - with streaming just about everywhere these days where a user can listen to any song at any time, why would anyone be bothered with downloading a pirated song?

The lawsuit may end being a moot point, but at least it shows that the RIAA is doing something to warrant the big bag of money that its clients put into it.

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