Song Stories

In this episode of the Music Business Podcast, Alex May talks with James Shotwell of Haulix, a platform for artists to securely share electronic press kits. As the company’s Social Media Coordinator, Shotwell helps us explore how Haulix addresses and prevents the unauthorized leaking of promotional pre-releases. With his wide range of music business expertise, Shotwell addresses social sharing and helps us answer the question: is Haulix on the road to making album leaks a thing of the past?

In this episode of Music Business Podcast, we talk with George Howard, who is an Associate Professor of Management at Berklee College of Music and Head of Music at Music Audience Exchange. We talk to Howard about his recent Forbes article about why people do not want to discover music.

Cortney Harding and Kyle Bylin review Apple Music.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Music Business Podcast, presented by Hypebot.com. I’m your host Kyle Bylin. Today on the show, we are talking with Bill Wilson, who is the VP of digital strategy and business development at the Music Business Association. We are going to talk to Bill about the state of metadata in the music business and why it’s so important today.

In this episode of Music Business Podcast, presented by Hypebot.com, we talk with David McMillin, who is the lead singer of Fort Frances and author of a recent essay on Pop Matters called “Why Its Time To Stop Hating Spotify.” In the piece, McMilion adds an indie musicians perspective to the royalty payout discussion and floats the idea that maybe Spotify isn’t run by a bunch of sadists. We talk to McMillion his essay, Spotify, music royalties, Tidal and so, so much more. Make sure that you subscribe to Music Business Podcast in iTunes or your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the show and get the latest episodes and on SoundCloud. If you like the show, I would love for you rate us highly and submit a review in iTunes.

Kyle Bylin and Cortney Harding discuss Apple Music.

In this episode of Music Business Podcast, I talk with Anu Kirk, the former Director of Music Services at Sony Network Entertainment. He spent over three years as the business owner of Sony Music Unlimited, a global multi-platform music subscription service. He also worked on MOG and Rhapsody for several years. I talk to Kirk about Spotify Now, Pandora’s acquisition of Next Big Sound, and music streaming services more broadly. Who is creating the best product? How could they be improved upon? These are all important questions to think about as the music industry gets ready for the Apple Music announcement on Monday. Make sure that you subscribe to Music Business Podcast in iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

Today on the show, I am talking with Jim McDermott, who is a social media and content marketing strategist for artists. Jim has been involved in the new media and digital music space since 1993. During his career, Jim has developed successful grassroots and online marketing campaigns for Guns & Roses, U2, Sheryl Crow, David Bowie, and many others. He has also worked for Sony Music, PolyGram, Warner Music, UMG, and Island Records. I am going to talk to Jim about music exclusives. These days, every music streaming company is fighting over exclusive content. They want singles and albums from popular artists that no one else has. But do consumers care? Is this going to a strategy that signs up more paying subscribers for companies? Make sure that you subscribe to Music Business Podcast in iTunes or your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the show and get the latest episodes and on SoundCloud.

In this episode, I talk with Nicole Cifani, who is a marketing lead 
at Chosen, a talent competition app. Chosen officially launched a few months ago after being in stealth mode for two years. I talk to Nicole about what Chosen 
is and how she landed a job at the company. We are also going to talk about what exactly 
it means to “gamify” the music experience.

Music Business Podcast's Kyle Bylin and Cortney Harding discuss the present and future of YouTube and music videos.

We talk with Jack Conte, who is the co-founder and CEO of Patreon, a platform that allows people to support creators by becoming paid subscribers of their creative works.

In this episode of the Upward Spiral, a music business podcast, we talk with Julien Simon, who is the VP of Music Rights and Label Relations at Deezer, a subscription music service. We discuss the company's global expansion strategy and the challenges it must overcome in new markets.

Gideon Bullock, who is a design director at Songkick, discusses user research methods.

Jon Healey of the LA Times and Kyle Bylin discuss Jay Z's Tidal streaming music service.

Data journalist Liv Bulli crunches the numbers at Next Big Sound, then puts them into words that even the lay-artist can understand. She and her team have an uncanny way of predicting future hits; they’ve called out Iggy Azalea and Sam Smith way before they were commending awards and headlines. Liv joins the podcast to talk about her role, why artists shouldn’t compare themselves to Taylor Swift, and why tweeting isn’t enough — you actually need to engage your base.

In this special episode of the Upward Spiral, a music business podcast, Cortney and Kyle discuss whether Jay-Z's Tidal will suffer a hard knock life in the subscription music market.

In this episode of the Upward Spiral, a music business podcast, we talk with Panos Panay, who is the founding managing director of Berklee's Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship. You probably know Panos from his previous role as the founder and CEO of SonicBids, a platform that allows bands to book gigs and market themselves online. I talk to Panos about the founding story of Berkee ICE and his goals for the initiative.

According to professor Aram Sinnreich, author of the 2013 book The Piracy Crusade: How the Music Industry’s War on Sharing Destroys Markets and Erodes Civil Liberties, college students have changed significantly in their music listening habits and overall musical tastes over the last decade, in part due to market forces and technological innovations. Ten years ago, undergrads typically had a CD collection, perhaps supplemented by a computer hard drive full of MP3 files downloaded from a file-sharing service and listened to using Winamp or iTunes. Students carefully managed their music libraries and strongly identified with one specific genre or group of genres. It’s also likely that they owned an Apple iPod or MP3 player or used an old Sony Walkman. Today, students with access to a computer or smartphone with an Internet or data connection have millions of songs at their fingertips if they don’t mind sitting through a couple of annoying ads. They’re more likely to experiment with new styles and develop broade

Studying people’s music buying habits used to be simple. You handed a person a stack of postcards and told them to send you one the next time they bought an album. They wrote down what they purchased, why they purchased it, where they purchased it, how much they paid for it, and sent that postcard back to you. Russ Crupnick, managing partner of research group MusicWatch Inc., says the rise of file-sharing clients and streaming music services has made it harder to track where people getting their music and whether they are paying anything at all. The number of things that people are doing has increased each passing year. You have to ask people a myriad of questions to cover all the bases. Are you listening to AM/FM radio or SiriusXM? Are you playing songs on Pandora or Spotify? Are you looking up music videos on YouTube or VEVO? Are you buying songs on iTunes, Google Play, or Amazon? Are you ripping the audio from a video clip on YouTube and downloading it to your computer as a MP3 file? If you type “YouTube t

Edison Research, a New Jersey-based market research firm, introduced its “Share of Ear” study in June 2014, where it showed the share of everything in the audio space. For the first time, the amount of time that people spend listening to broadcast radio, streaming music services, and owned music, among other audio sources, could be compared side by side. In January 2015, Edison Research announced an important finding from its latest “Share of Ear” study: American teens now spend more time with streaming music services, such as Pandora and Spotify, than they do with AM/FM radio. Larry Rosin, president and co-founder of Edison Research, said in a blog post that while AM/FM radio listening “leads by a significant margin among all other age groups,” the increasing amount of time that teens are spending with Pandora and Spotify “could be a lens into the future of audio usage.” Here is an Upward Spiral podcast interview with Larry Rosin.