Blisstunes

I Run a Truly Independent Distribution Company. Here's Why That Still Matters... The following guest post comes from Steve Corn, CEO of BFM Digital.  After a wave of consolidations that find major labels controlling large shares of a once-independent sector, BFM remains one of the few truly independent distributors. Which, in Corn's opinion, makes all [...]

Sales of Vinyl 45s Grew 99.6 Percent In 2011... Vinyl is officially booming, but this retro explosion is going beyond full-length LPs.  According to data just released by the RIAA, US-based sales of 45s - categorized as 'vinyl singles' - surged 99.6 percent in 2011.  This is based on the retail price of units shipped, [...]

The Latest: Sony, Les Paul, Jet, UMG, 78s, Brooklyn Bodega, EMI... The stories we're keeping an eye on. Check back for more developments this evening... This is bigger than 'Africa'... Sony Music Entertainment is now moving to dismiss a case brought by Toto, just one of several groups demanding a royalty shift from digital 'sales' to 'licenses'.   [...]

Layoffs at the Orchard+IODA... The pare-down is happening just moments after the completion of the merger ― and that's no accident.  According to a pair of well-placed sources, the freshly-combined Orchard and IODA is now laying off employees, with estimates in the twenty-something-range.  This looks like it's largely happening on the IODA side, with redundancies being plucked.  [...]

So, Who's Your Album Sugar Daddy? Madonna Finds Smirnoff... For years - decades! - we've been talking about branding bands and releases. Well, the future has arrived, and it's a deeply-discounted reality.     Maybe it's all part of an inevitable slide towards $0.  Just today, Smirnoff is announcing a massive discount on a modified [...]

Ahead of Timeline, Facebook Artist Apps Are Officially Plunging... Timeline becomes a mandatory switch on Facebook in a matter of days (more on that here). But ahead of that forced conversion, lots of folks (including artists) have already made the switch.  Which would explain why traffic to dedicated, customized Facebook artist pages is plunging.   [...]

Huh? Avicii Tickets Were Getting Scalped ― Before the On-Sale Date... But wait: isn't the 'aftermarket' where tickets are bought-and-sold 'after' they go on sale?  Not for Avicii, where tickets were showing up at 4 times the price ahead of the weekend - despite being unavailable to first-run purchasers.     Looks like another classic end-around [...]

The Black Keys: 'Sean Parker Made Billions Stealing from Artists...' Looks like the Black Keys have more problems with Spotify than we initially thought.  In a recent radio interview with WGRD in Grand Rapids, Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney pulled no punches while talking about Spotify board member Sean Parker, an increasingly-important face for the [...]

Black Artists Are Silent on Trayvon, But Sinead O’Connor is Not She might be a white woman from Ireland, but her she’s got kahunas bigger than any of the biggest, baddest rappers in the music industry.  Sinead O’Connor wrote a very long public letter addressing the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the black community and [...]

Did SXSW Really Help Your Band? Probably Not... I wasn't there in the 90s; I can't swap stories about up-and-coming Austin bands and easy hotel bookings. But I do know that in 2012, superstar-level artists like Snoop Dogg, Skrillex, Train, Bruce Springsteen, Nas, Norah Jones, Jay-Z, and Mumford Sons were the ones competing for most [...]