Blisstunes

Good Morning! TPB, China, Amanda Palmer, Kickstarter, Rdio, Live Nation, Barcelona, Jack White, Tunecore+Topspin... The Pirate Bay is getting shut out of the UK... or is it?  Blanket ISP blocks seem lethal, except that workarounds are already motion. And, there's all the free publicity: in the moments after the UK High Court ordered the blocks, [...]

Pandora vs. Sirius, Turntable.fm, Spotify, Clear Channel, Slacker... It's official: Pandora's got a crappy business model, but a crap-load of users. Sound familiar?  It does to Wall Street, which is now starting to run, not walk, away from this dog.  But maybe the troubled fish that is interactive radio would do fine in another pond, [...]

Nearly 1 In 1,000 Americans Is a Working Musician... That's according to statistics compiled by the US Department of Labor, which counted 269,400 working musicians in 2010.  That, overlayed with the US Census population figure of 308,745,538, means that 1 in 1,146 American adults is thriving, surviving, or scraping by as an instrumentalist, singer, director, [...]

What Else? Spotify, Major, Skip, Jonas, Sirius, Ditto, Mobile Roadie... Spotify just launched a native iPad app, a long-anticipated move. The app dazzles with tablet-sized retina graphics and is available now in the App Store.    Charges are now being filed in the hazing death of Florida AM University drum major Robert Champion.  Essentially, Champion [...]

Good Morning! Major, Skip, Jonas, Sirius, Ditto, Mobile Roadie... Charges are now being issued in the hazing death of Florida AM University drum major Robert Champion.  Essentially, Champion was pummelled in a post-game ritual by more senior band members, and collapsed.  Several individuals are facing serious penalties. His signature wah-wah on Shaft will live forever, [...]

YouTube Music: It's Bigger Than Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody, Grooveshark Combined... It may not be the cleanest experience, but it is the biggest experience - by a gigantic and overpowering margin.  In fact, nearly 40 percent of YouTube's trillion-plus annual views come from music videos according to the latest research estimates.  And according to our calculations, [...]

India: A Seriously Strange Music Market... If you're perplexed by the absurdities of the music industry in, say, the United States, then consider India.  At Musexpo on Monday, Indian entrepreneur Vijar Nair described a situation that involves 1.2 billion inhabitants, something like one download store, and a ragingly-successful ringback tone industry.  Here are some of [...]

If 'DIY' Is Killing You, Then Please Read This... The industry debunked 'DIY' years ago, yet the concept remains a romanticized, religious idea for many artists and companies.  More and more, that's proving to be an expensive belief, especially when it overloads, distracts, and demoralizes artists who need to be focused on their art first-and-foremost. [...]

What Else? TPB, Square, VinylChic, Fandalism, Musexpo, Covify, Stagecoach... Another hammer just dropped on The Pirate Bay. The British High Court has now ruled that ISPs including Sky, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must block access to the BitTorrent tracker - to the extent that this is possible.  BP has requested extra time to deal [...]

10 Years of Apple Evolution, In 10 Seconds or Less... Apple didn't become the most valuable company in the world by accident. And it didn't happen overnight.  Here's a look at the drastic product evolution that's been happening since 2001, using financial breakdowns from the company.   To start the sequence over, just wait a [...]