Music Biz 2022
Inside Track: Creator Power, Spatial Audio & the Metaverse Dominate Music Biz 2022
For the first time since the onset of the pandemic, the Music Biz conference happened in person in Nashville this month, bringing together industry figures from across the globe to banter about the various topics facing the business after two years of relying on tech and streaming to connect an increasingly-fractured landscape. One conversation that seemed to permeate both panels and interpersonal conversations at the convention was the expanding role of artists in their own marketing and release strategy, whether they are signed to a major or not. During panels like “The Future of the Artist Deal” and “Navigating New Strategies,” speakers waxed near-philosophical on the improved standing of artists in advocating on their own behalf, while also examining the pitfalls that come from this mo...
The Ledger: How the Industry Went From Discussing Fairness to Accuracy – And Why it Matters
The Ledger is a weekly newsletter about the economics of the music business sent to Billboard Pro subscribers. An abbreviated version of the newsletter is published online. What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, most music industry conferences played like long, geeky arguments between technology companies that said they represented the future of the business and labels and publishers that wanted that future to involve getting paid. At one memorable SXSW panel, independent artists and small label owners seethed over their inability to get YouTube to permanently remove their music from user-generated videos. At MIDEM in 2010, a year before Spotify launched in the U.S., Americans heard horror stories from European executives about the platform’s minuscule royalty rates for ad-suppor...
Artists Without Labels Must Be the ‘CEO of Their Brand’ (Music Biz 2022)
One of the most significant byproducts of the streaming era has been the increasing number of ways that artists can make money outside the traditional record label system. But there’s often less attention paid to the actual ramifications of artists choosing to go that route — and the roles that distributors, managers, digital marketers and others play in filling that gap while using the data offered by digital service providers to help an artist succeed in whichever way they choose. That was the topic of the panel “Navigating New Strategies: How A&R, Artist Marketing & Distribution Come Together in the Age of Streaming” at the Music Biz 2022 conference on Monday (May 9). Moderated by Label Logic co-founder, digital strategy Jay Gilbert, the panelists — Rareform co-founder Hallie An...
