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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