Blisstunes

The Latest! NPR, Thinglink, Thrillcall, Thefuture.fm, DEV, Coachella, Sigur Rós, CBGB's, Pledge Music, Ben Folds... These are the stories we're tracking late in the day. Check back for late-evening and early-morning developments. NPR is now beefing its 'All Tech Considered' series, a '2.0 upgrade' that means broader dive-ins and expanded analysis. The same thing goes [...]

The Latest! Angry Birds, Pandora, WiMP, Pirate Pay, Live Nation, NARM, UMG+EMI... First, let's rattle through some stunning stats. Angry Birds has now reached 1 billion downloads, according to Rovio. That's up from 'just' 500 million in November. Previously, we reported that Pandora hit 150 million registered users. But perhaps more eye-raising is that 70 [...]

May 27th at the Rusty Nail Ardmore, PA. Get Tix and info here.                  

One Simple Change Brought $144 Million In Extra Tips to New York Cab Drivers. What's the Equivalent for Artists? As artists toe the potentially awesome waters of crowd-funding, the following question is staring us in the face:   Here's a story about the New York cab industry, which switched to backseat, credit card payments systems [...]

What Else? EMI, Mp3tunes, HBO, BigChampagne, Music Mania, Hendrix, Deezer, Merlin, Raditaz, Lyricfind, MobBase... Hatchet, never buried.  EMI says an 11th-hour bankruptcy filing can't protect MP3tunes from infringement liability, including personal liability for its founder, Michael Robertson.  C|Net reported the latest salvo in this five-year battle.      Is this becoming a story of subscription [...]

AdRev: It Finds Your YouTube Videos, and Wraps Them With Ads... If Tunecore solved the 'iTunes problem' for smaller artists, then who gets to solve the 'YouTube problem'? Meaning, who's got that simple-stupid solution for directly managing and monetizing your YouTube collection, no matter how small? And most importantly, who jumps in front as the [...]

Report: Facebook Plays a Relatively Minor Role In Music Discovery... The industry's addiction with likes, friends, and followers is reaching junkie status. So maybe this is a step towards recovery. Or, at least a little more balance: according to a new finding from NPD Group, social media's role in music discovery is actually minor compared [...]

We Asked a Spotify Executive If Artist Payments Are Improving. Here's What He Said... Spotify has been amassing millions of users and subscribers, but is any of this trickling down to artists? Is this situation getting better? Just recently, a report in evolver.fm said the answer was yes - at least for indie labels, citing [...]

The Latest! EMI, Mp3tunes, HBO, BigChampagne, Music Mania, Hendrix, Deezer, Merlin, Raditaz, Lyricfind, MobBase... These are the stories we're tracking late in the day. Check back for late-evening and early-morning updates! Hatchet, never buried. EMI says an 11th-hour bankruptcy filing can't protect MP3tunes from infringement liability, including personal liability for its founder, Michael Robertson. C|Net [...]

I'm a Top Industry Attorney. And These Are Your Realistic Chances of Success... The following comes from top music industry attorney Ken Hertz, who spoke on an artist branding panel at NARM in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Hertz, a senior partner in Beverly Hills-based Hertz and Lichtenstein LLP, has an artist clientele that includes will.i.am, [...]