Students often asked me about the legitimacy of text messages they received from various “promoters”. I have yet to see one which looks legit. The music promotion landscape has undergone an enormous change since I first started working in media more than 35 years ago. Back then, there were powerful major labels collaborating with powerful…
(This is Part II of the three-part series on music discovery. Part I is How Do We Find Music? and Part III is How Do We Find Music? (Outside of the U.S. version).) Every year in my Musical Taste and Monetization class, we trace the evolution of our listening habits, observing ourselves and becoming more…
A new era has arrived, one in which Spotify becomes profitable. I pulled numbers from Spotify’s annual reports going back 10 years and one thing stood out yet again: the falling % of cost of revenue to revenue. Cost of revenue (COR) for Spotify “consists predominantly of royalty and distribution costs related to content streaming.”…
The fantastic article on Spotify by writer Liz Pelly in Harper’s Magazine (The Ghosts in the Machine) felt like an apt summary at the end of the year. I appreciated the nuanced approach, especially since the writer makes efforts to follow and interview current working musicians on the scene, which is so often not the…
[This has been edited on 11/6/2024 to reflect the election results. This post is now a list of links to articles relating to media leading up to the election, continually updated.] The Republican sweep was decades in the making, and a win for unbridled capitalism. The markets are elated, for now. What role did the…
The following is based on a presentation I recently did during a class visit at Dartmouth College. When the pandemic hit, live in-person performances were suddenly cancelled, the phrase “force majeure” was thrown around to nullify contracts, and the organization had to quickly reevaluate its raison d’être as well as shift its PR strategy. In…