YouTube Loses US Music Streaming Dominance As Subscription Plays Jump 124%

People paying for the likes of Spotify and Apple Music played more music streams in the US last year than users of YouTube – in a dramatic market reversal.

That’s according to the latest data from trusted market monitor BuzzAngle – whose stats show that digital video music streams grew by just 7.5% in the year.

By contrast, audio on-demand services saw streams on their platforms grow by a whopping 82.6% – from 137.29bn in 2015 to 250.73bn in 2016.

That was enough to comfortably overtake digital video, which attracted 181.31bn music streams in 2015, up 7.5% on 168.59bn in 2015.

(Obviously, two related players completely dominate this field. So for ‘digital video’ you can largely read ‘YouTube and Vevo’. And before you ask… BuzzAngle’s tally includes both premium content and identified tracks attached to YouTube user-generated-content.)

Motobunny Will Be Recording Live Show On StageIt March 1, 2015

Motobunny is set to conquer in 2015

On March 1, 2015, at 5pm PST...MOTOBUNNY takes the stage live online in concert exclusively on Stageit.com. Presented by Six01 Studio, the band will perform their entire upcoming album...and you all need is an internet connection and a ticket (go to stage Stageit.com and make any donation to get one). This show will not be archived so tune in or miss it forever.

Will The Streaming Revolution Save The Music Industry?

Will The Streaming Revolution Save The Music Industry?

"Do streaming services like Spotify and Pandora hurt musicians? Artists, established and aspiring, can flow both ways on the debate, but there’s no denying that the new model has had a dramatic impact on the industry and its profits. Hari Sreenivasan reports, from PBS.org"

It Is Hereby Decreed, Pirates Are Helping To Save Music Industry

Digital piracy of music sales could be coming to an end. Or maybe the bigger labels should just evolve.

 Link to original article on Huffington Post

"Digital pirates have long been the bane of the music business, those in the music business say. No longer interested in buying songs when they can get them for free, pirates are the reason behind the recording industry's falling revenue, the argument goes.

Turns out, it may be pirates who are keeping the music business alive.

According to a Columbia University study published this weekend, frequent users of peer-to-peer "piracy" networks in the U.S. legitimately purchase 30 percent more music than non-P2P users. 

The study, called "Copy Culture In The US And Germany," also found a slew of other findings that might upset recording industry players. Top of the list? Internet users surveyed have a widespread dislike of current copyright enforcement practices, including bandwidth throttling, Internet access suspension and "criminal prosecution and fines."

TorrentFreak points out that the survey is merely one in a long list of studies that show pirating doesn't harm the music business, including a study showing that filesharers are more likely to buy physical CDs than non-sharers.

But as Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica points out, pirates are not necessarily good for the industry just because they buy more music. "It's possible, for example, the most avid music fans are also the most likely to be drawn to peer-to-peer networks," he writes. "Perhaps without those networks they would have purchased even more music from legitimate services." 

Even so, the music industry likely should not ignore the news that pirates are some of its best consumers -- and thus perhaps a bad demographic to alienate. 

In recent years, organizations backed by the American recording industry have taken more steps to curb piracy, including asking Internet service providers to take action against pirates. In January, The Huffington Post reported that Verizon is considering slowing down the Internet of repeat pirating offenders, while Time Warner reserves the right to cut off Internet access "even for a single act of copyright infringement."

Will Amazing Radio Become The David That Topples Goliath?

Technology is a friend to us all. It has made our lives easier in so many facets. One of the biggest areas that we enjoy the most is access to an unprecedented amount of music world wide. Without youtube our days of enjoying new videos would come to a grinding halt. 

There is change afoot and especially in the way we listen to music. Terrestrial radio is full of crappy playlists that only appeal to folks who want to hear pop hits. Real music enthusiasts have to focus their energy on finding new stations online or seeking out new bands far and wide. There is a company in England called Amazing Radio and they are making quite the headway into becoming a new type of Muzak, but far more compelling.

Find out more on Amazing Radio

Link to original post on cnet.com

"CEOs of digital music startups often strive for diplomacy when it comes to talking about the major powers that control most of the world's music. Not Paul Campbell. 

"Simon Cowell is Satan, and the major labels have become antique dealers," says Campbell, a 53-year-old former BBC TV and radio producer turned entrepreneur. "We don't touch the labels and never shall. The key is to cut yourself free from the labels." 

Which is exactly what Campbell has done with his company, Amazing Media, and it's why he's having such success. 

Unless you're really into new music, or live in the U.K., where Amazing Media has created quite a stir for reasons I'll get into in a moment, you've probably never heard of Amazing Media. But the way Campbell is going, that's soon likely to change. His business has piqued the interest of big Silicon Valley venture capitalists; he's in talks with major consumer Web businesses to distribute Amazing music; and he's on track to launch a radio station in the U.S. in the coming months. 

Campbell, in work mode. (Credit: Amazing Media)

In fact, what began five years ago as a simple Web site to let unknown musicians upload and sell their music has grown into a burgeoning business unlike any of the others trying to take advantage of the chaotic music industry. Amazing Media also does something else that sets it apart from the likes of Pandora, Spotify, SoundCloud, and all the rest: it makes money. 

Campbell, a professional drummer since he was a kid, began thinking about the opportunity in music back in 2005. Technology had made it supercheap to record and produce music, but it was still a monstrous challenge to get your music heard. It was an even bigger challenge to make any money from it. 

He wanted to change that. Campbell assembled a small team and, working from the top floor of a Victorian building in Newcastle, England -- the home town of Sting and The Animals -- started building Amazingtunes.com, a site where musicians could upload and sell tracks and get paid 70 percent of the price. 

That might sound like a bad deal for Campbell, certainly compared with the big labels, which typically pay musicians about 8 percent of the sale price. But his main goal was to build the catalog of music and win customers. Plus, musicians who used the site gave Amazing the rights to use their music for promotional purposes. "The idea was to be fair to the musicians," says Campbell. "And we deliberately gave margin away to attract users." 

The site launched in 2007, and the first couple of years were slow going. This was pre-Twitter -- even pre-Facebook, to some degree -- and it took a while to amass much of an audience. Gradually, though, more and more musicians joined, and competitors emerged. Amazingtunes.com gained enough traction and buzz that in 2008, Richard Branson's Virgin Media tried to take over the business for an undisclosed amount. Campbell wouldn't sell. 

Amazingtunes.com is similar to well-backed SoundCloud or BandCamp, sites that also let musicians push their music out across social networks and the Web. But Campbell takes things a step further. A few steps, actually.

AmazingRadio and AmazingTunes.com are working to create a level playing field for musicians

In 2009, he launched a commercial-free, national radio station to play 100 percent new music, a strategy that anyone in the radio industry would have told him was crazy. Campbell did this as a promotional tool to drive people to Amazingtunes.com, which would supply all the music for the station. Amazing Radio, which broadcasts on Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) and via the Internet, effectively became a 24-7 marketing channel for Amazingtunes.com. 

Campbell had no marketing budget for the station. Instead, he and his team took to the streets and got passersby to record promos. The station also had no DJs. It just played programmed tracks, like a jukebox. 

The algorithms, along with the fans, did the work. The best songs on Amazingtunes.com -- as measured by how many people listened to, purchased, and liked them (in the Facebook sense) -- bubbled up and got featured on Amazing Radio. If no one played a song, it got ignored.
Next, Campbell beefed up the station by signing on some known musicians and DJs to host regular programs. The station fuels the Web site, where people purchase songs, and vice versa. It's a powerful cycle. 

Today, Amazingtunes.com boasts music by 65,000 artists, some of whom are now signed to indie labels. Musicians, even those signed to labels, agree to give Amazing the rights to air the music for obvious reasons: they want the exposure, and it boosts their download sales. 

The mix of software and DJs has turned Amazing Radio into a powerful force in emerging music of all styles -- not just in the U.K. but also in the U.S, where people can listen via the Web or mobile apps, which, incidentally, a fan built for free. 

"I haven't met a good manager in the recent past that hasn't brought up Amazing Radio," said Daniel Glass, whose New York-based Glassnote Entertainment just signed a band called Daughter, which has been heavily promoted on Amazing Radio and that Glass expects to be big in the U.S. 

Radio row
Amazing Radio is also the source of the "stir" I mentioned at the beginning of this article. A couple of weeks ago, Campbell got into a fight with the company that broadcasts the station, over the terms of their contract. Campbell wouldn't budge, and at midnight on May 14, Amazing Radio went dark. 

Designed by a fan fighting to get Amazing Radio back on the air. (Credit: Amazing Media)

Fans weren't pleased. Campbell had taken to Twitter to announce what was happening, and within an hour, the outrage began. One fan launched an online petition, another created a Facebook page, plenty others wrote to members of Parliament and major newspapers. 

In the subsequent days, Amazing launched a new logo -- "Keep the Faith" -- that a fan designed unsolicited and sent to Campbell. The company also began selling T-shirts with the logo and is using the money as a prize for a Keep the Faith band competition it's holding next week. 

The whole thing has turned into a major publicity event for Amazing Media, with people from indie labels around the world also voicing support. It's also once again reinforced to Campbell that he's doing something people care deeply about. 

"This is not about whether we're on the radio in the U.K.," says Campbell. "It's about how musicians find an audience in the modern world." 

And how music fans find new music, which in Amazing's world means a mix of crowdsourcing, knowledgeable DJs, and algorithms -- a formula that goes beyond creating playlists of known music that you share with friends on Facebook. 

"It's nice to be able to be your own DJ," says Billy Mann, a top producer and music exec who has written songs for Pink and Jessica Simpson, "but there is a place for good taste-makers, especially in the sterile digital world we're living in." 

Muzak with an edge
Just after Campbell launched the radio station, a store owner e-mailed him asking if he could use music from Amazing in his shop as background music. That led Campbell to develop a new part of the business, called Amazing Instore. It's also the part that's financially fueling the rest of the company, which, while still small, is on track to make $3 million this year in profits. (Spotify can't claim that). 

Because most of the music on Amazing isn't bound by publishing deals, Campbell is free to license it. His only commitment is to pay the artists, who Campbell says make 120 times what they earn from having their songs streamed on Spotify, based on what some musicians who work with both Amazing and Spotify have reported to him. 

Amazing launched the store business in 2010, and Campbell quickly realized how lucrative it could be. Amazing customizes the music for each client, so what you hear in a clothing store will be different than what you hear in a restaurant. In some case, clients want ads -- maybe to promote sales going on -- and Amazing creates those as well and builds them into the sound track. 

A fan built Amazing's mobile apps for free.

This leads to three revenue streams: a license for the technology, the music, and the ads. Only the music fees get shared with the artist, and the terms vary. This new business helped the startup enough that Campbell changed the terms of Amazingtunes.com, so that the musicians get 100 percent of the price (Campbell also did this to compete with Bandcamp, which gives the artists 85 percent of sales). 

Amazing now has deals with more than 1,000 retailers and restaurant chains across the U.K., and Campbell has been meeting with chains in the states to try to crack the U.S. market. 

He's gunning hard to take on the U.S. on many fronts. He won't share details about his plans for a U.S. radio station, other than saying it will launch either in Boston, New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. He's brought on Ted Cohen, a pioneering digital music exec, who's been trying to cut deals with AOL, Yahoo, and others to boost the audience for emerging artists and for Amazing. So far, says Cohen, "The reaction has been unbelievably favorable." 

And Campbell is in talks with big VC firms, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mayfield Partners, as he seeks to raise $30 million to fund expansion in the U.S. (to get this far, he raised $8 million from private investors). 

"The basic pitch is this is a bold and imaginative idea that will either fall flat or become a billion-dollar business," says Campbell, who has 26 full-time employees. "It won't be anything in the middle. We're trying to reinvent the music industry." 

That will mean adding more lines of business, and becoming more global. Already, Amazing is working with festivals across the U.K, and it's starting to put on concerts that it records and broadcasts. It plans to edge into more traditional revenue streams such as publishing, merchandise, and ticketing and will likely add its own label, even releasing albums. With the goal remaining that of bringing good musicians to the world, and helping them make a living."

Spotify Is Working To Make Music Discovery More Personal, From Mashable

The way we explore and enjoy digital music is going to become quite a bit more interesting in 2013, especially on the Spotify platform. I personally enjoy the service and use it to find new music or peruse older albums, I don't currently have loaded onto Itunes. The new features which are highlighted below from an article on Mashable will open up quite a few new possibilities and further cement how much Pinterest has changed the way we view information online.

Find out more tech and music industry info from Mashable

Spotify gets more personal in 2013

Spotify has plans to make music discovery more personalized and more social.

We've always classified discovery as Spotify's Achilles' heel. Because Spotify's catalogue is so large, finding new music or rediscovering old favorites is difficult.

For a time, Spotify was happy to relegate discovery details to the service's desktop apps. And while Spotify will continue to leverage those apps in helping users find new music, discovery will now be an intrinsic part of the Spotify service on all platforms.

The new features -- which will start rolling out in January -- are the most significant product upgrades that have hit Spotify since the service launched in 2008.

Check out this video to get a look at what the company wants to do.

The Follow Tab

The core to Spotify's new experience is what it's dubbing the Follow tab. Think of the Follow tab as Apple's ill-fated Ping service, but done correctly.

In a view that looks similar to Pinterest, users can get real-time info on music their friends and influencers are listening to.

More than just showing the activity of your Facebook friends, the Follow tab is designed as its own network of sorts for Spotify users you want to follow. 

The Follow tab will also be a way for influencers, celebrities and artists to share their tastes and song picks with an audience. Just as bands can share their favorite photos to Instagram, they can share their latest albums or their picks for what bands they dig on Spotify.

The Discover Tab

The second component to the next Spotify update is about music discovery. This tab will show users relevant artists and playlists based on what they have in their library, what the people they trust listen to, as well as listening history.

The Discover tab pumps in info from Songkick, Tunigo and Pitchfork to deliver information such as reviews, nearby concerts and related or similar acts.

Other New Features

Spotify is also rolling out some other improvements. One of the biggest is "Collection," which is just what it sounds like. Rather than having to create a playlist for every album you want to save, you can just add it to a collection instead.

Rival services such as Rdio and Rhapsody have used the collection motif successfully for years so it's great to see Spotify catching up.

Spotify will also introduce audio previews -- a way to briefly hear a new song before deciding if you want to move away from the song you're playing now.

Another big move for artists is that Spotify will now offer mobile push notifications for new album releases for artists' users follow. For us, this has huge potential for artists and labels who want to use Spotify as a promotional strategy to work alongside traditional retail and digital releases.

The Future is Now

The Follow features will first appear on the desktop version of Spotify in the coming weeks. In the new year, the mobile apps and the new web app will get the features as well.

When we spoke with the Spotify team, it was clear that everyone involved was excited about what the advent of true social discovery could mean for the service. With more than one million paying users in the United States and the support of artists such as Metallica, it's crucial that Spotify move quickly into personalization and discovery.

Billy Don Burns Is A Featured Artist On Air Play Direct

So let's get this straight, you are a radio DJ and you want to spin new music compared to the set list that corporate sponsors want you to play. We totally understand your mindset and have just the songwriter and one helluva great individual in Billy Don Burns ready to unleash his music upon the world. All of you folks spinning records world wide, get over to AirPlayDirect.com and download Billy Don's music and get his music to the masses.

Link to Billy Don Burns music on AirPlayDirect.com

Billy Don Burns is a featured artist on AirPlay Direct

Emily White, David Lowery And The Future Of Music Consumption, From Forbes.com

If you are a music fan and have ever burned music on tape, cd or given a usb drive of songs to a friend, really think on this discussion. Its not out to brand the casual listener that gives away music as a criminal, but more or less to think on where the true value resides.

Does a band deserve to be heard and paid just because they are making music? Hell no, there is too much generic crap proliferating the airways and facebook accounts far and wide already. Does it mean you have to do everything that much better and write original music to be heard by the masses? Hell yes, ya do. Once you have original music is the world going to be at your beck at call? Nope, not just yet. Now you have to prove your worth and build your fan base as those are the good folks that want to keep your art form alive and well. Sam Phillips said it best in Walk The Line, when he asked Johnny Cash to play the one song that would sum him up his life, if he was laying in a ditch about to die.

Take notice on why you are hearing so much about acts such as Skrillex, David Guetta and DeadMau5 in national press. It is not that their music is better than other genres, but give credit, where credit is due. Electronic dance music figured this shit out years ago, its all about the vibe and getting fans in the door, not about album sales. While rock n' roll, hip hop and country genres fight over ownership, originality and who should be paid, fans of dance music are filling stadiums to hear the music and the acts are commanding upwards of a million bucks a show. In many ways this is due to electronic music's world wide acceptance of file sharing and the ability to quickly grow a fan base over the internet through remixes, mashups and giving away music for free.

Music is about the soul. Seek out the music you personally enjoy. Live and breathe it and when you want to take personal stock in seeing it last, contribute and support the artists that make it happen. Life is too short to be bothered with the mundane or those that want to be naysayers and constantly complain. As an artist make great music, build the vibe and fans will find you. There is no magic elixir except hard work and dedication to your craft.

Updated rebuttal article from Forbes.com

Link to original article we posted a week ago

David Lowery of Cracker at the 2011 Pop Conference at UCLA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"The ongoing discussion about the music industry’s struggle to survive in the digital realm is marked with periods of intense debate. The latest exchange started almost one week ago with a post on NPR’s “All Songs Considered” blog titled ”I Never Owned Any Music To Begin With.” Emily White—a 20-year-old NPR intern who also serves as the general manager for American University’s student-run radio station, WVAU—wrote the piece, in which she described how she’s bought just 15 CDs in her lifetime while acquiring a digital music library of more than 11,000 songs. David Lowery—who co-founded alternative rock acts Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker and is a lecturer at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business—responded with a “Letter to Emily White at NPR All Songs Considered,” a lengthy, detailed overview of the nosedive the music industry has taken due in part to the disruptive innovation fueled by the new technology economy, a point-by-point breakdown of what he considers to be the fallacies of the free culture movement, and the financial toll that musicians have suffered in the days since Napster introduced most of the world to file sharing.

Lowery’s piece sparked an even bigger discussion, with plenty of new think-pieces re-treading old dialogue. Of the many third-wave response articles, Huffington Post director of commercial production and Dismemberment Plan frontman Travis Morrison managed to pinpoint a vital change in the conversation with a post titled “Hey Dude From Cracker, I’m Sorry, I Stole Music Like These Damned Kids When I Was A Kid.” Morrison noticed that when Lowery’s article began to go viral the conversation began to focus on a generational divide, which implied that the younger generation of music listeners are morally bankrupt for accumulating great volumes of music without paying for it and that young people acquiring music without paying for it is a new phenomenon that started at file sharing. Setting out to prove that the new is old, Morrison listed the various ways he copped new tunes as a kid without paying for it.


“Copped” is more or less an accurate way to describe the way Morrison went about getting new music. He was, and still is, driven by obsession, and Morrison even described the way he dubbed music from his college radio station onto cassettes in terms of addiction: “I was like a crackhead—if they sold crack at CVS, and it was free.” Unlike so many pieces focused on the ethics of illegal downloading and the moral ambiguity of the free music culture, which tend to focus on the broad economic affect, Morrison eloquently explains his reason for obtaining music through unsavory means:

"Music is so important to people. It is majorly important to young people. And to me? Literally somewhere below water and air but above food. And I just went for it. I bought a lot of music; I got a lot of free music from whatever sources were at hand; I just had to have it by any means necessary."

That personal explanation is no doubt something many music fans share—a love of music that’s so strong the desire to hear more tunes can displace a basic life necessity. It’s a level of passion that led Morrison to snap up albums through legal and illegal channels, it’s most likely the same fervor that fueled Emily White to rip the CDs at WVAU onto her laptop, and it’s an attitude that strongly that resonates strongly with me. (I also rank music higher than food, and have made my fair share of unhealthy decisions based upon that ranking system: I once spent less than $10 on groceries in a three-week period so I could spend what little money I had on some concert tickets, but that’s a story for another time.) Though some could view this philosophy as the very thing that’s led to the unravelling of the music industry and the nonchalant attitude some people have towards illegal downloading, it could very well be the key to helping musicians survive and thrive.


There are a couple important terms pivotal to the recent chain of comments on Emily White’s initial “All Songs Considered” post: “fan” and “the man.” The word “fan” has been used pretty loosely to describe anyone who listens to music, but Morrison’s illustration of his experience as a music obsessive harkens back to the original phrase that begat the nomenclature “fan,” and one that hardly describes a large portion of the listening public—fanatic. The element of fanaticism is why White (among countless others) is experiencing a moral dilemma when it comes to the subject of file-sharing an a growing interest in supporting the musicians she loves. There’s a good chance that not everyone who listens to music is experiencing the same ethical quandary as White, a fickle demographic of mostly casual listeners who bought a few records every year in brighter times but ranked music on the low end of their priority list. Music may be important to many people who bought Michael Jackson’s Thriller or AC/DC’s Back in Black, two of the highest-selling pop albums of all time, yet among those who purchased those albums some may only have a passing interest in music and others may have only purchased a few albums in their lifetime prior to the advent of file-sharing.





These casual consumers may have been an important demographic before Kazaa and LimeWire became household names, but these days that’s not quite the case. For those who might have dropped $20 on an LP or CD every so often in the past it just might feel like a better decision to grab one or two songs from iTunes, or even snag it for free from a file-sharing site. Though it’s still important for record companies and musicians to try and reach these listeners, the focus needs to shift more towards the fanatics—those who see music as a vital necessity in life to the point where they may get it through illegal means but who are still interested in supporting musicians even if their actions appear to negate that notion. The leading method of gaining support from the fanatics these days is through engagement. The very act of reaching out and involving fans is not only important in gaining financial support but also in combating negative characteristics associated with the music industry hierarchy, in particular the concept of “the man” holding all the purse strings.


As Lowery wrote, his students justify illegally downloading music in two ways, the first of which is by saying:

"It’s OK not to pay for music because record companies rip off artists and do not pay artists anything."

There are countless anecdotes of labels ripping off artists dating back to the days when the blues became the “electric blues,” each one feeding into this concept of “the man” that’s appropriate to rage against when something goes awry. Lowery details the ways in which labels (and, by proxy, the executives) invest in musicians, even without the guarantee that there will be a return on said investment, but when it comes to obtaining music the cultural climate is still stacked against labels—even if it means, as Lowery says, it’s the middle-class “weirdo freak musicians” who end up getting hurt.


There’s a certain degree of mystery to the concept of “the man,” a cultural figure that exists in the shadows. Engaging with fans helps combat that notion through a greater sense of transparency. Crowd-source funding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo give musicians (as well as other artists) the opportunity to pitch various projects and show potential donors how the money they hope to raise will be used, and artists are encouraged to offer rewards—such as digital or physical copies of an album, t-shirts, concert tickets—for different levels donations. It’s an idea that brings audiences into the creation process in ways that establish strong connections between listeners and musicians, and Kickstarter in particular has become an important tool for many independent and established musicians. Boston singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer recently made headlines when a Kickstarter campaign she put together to help mix, manufacture, and distribute her forthcoming solo album received more than a million dollars in donations.


Amanda Palmer is a bit of an outlier, but her example shows that musicians can find some level of success through engaging the very fans who want to do nothing more than support artists. There are any number of cost-effective ways of doing so—be it promoting one’s work through social media, or streaming and selling albums on BandCamp, or writing and recording songs for fans. As much as technology has made it easier for people to steal art—music, film, photography—it also provides an opportunity to explore new methods of economic sustainability for the arts, giving creators the chance to find the model (or models) that fit best, or develop an entirely brand new model. The current financial outlook may seem grim, it doesn’t have to be that way."

Flat Tires Featured In Latest Episodes of Cafe Racer TV

Cafe Racer TV has been an amazing series so far. From the different types of builds to the varying characters finding new angles and ideas to create killer machines, the show is just damn cool. One of the best aspects in our minds overall though is how down to earth everyone appears to be. Ego is abundant anywhere and everywhere, but the show has done such a great job of really honing in on the distinct personalities of the builders, creating a timeless series. Huge congrats to all of those involved to make the show happen and we are even more proud of the fact that Flat Tires and Reno Divorce have both had music featured in the series.

While they are airing currently, do your best to check out Season 3 episodes 11 and 12 and hear some music from the Flat Tires while Stan Lipert is racing his vintage Honda 350.

Dig into all that is Cafe Racer TV

Cafe Racer TV - Season 3, features music from the Flat Tires

Rory Kelly's New Album, Available World Wide Today

Rory Kelly's new album (Don't Shake My) Family Tree been unleashed on the world and is available through Itunes, amazon and close to three hundred other digital outlets. Follow the link and get this great album streaming now. 

Rory also has a big showcase this weekend for the cd release party in western North Carolina, so you can insure this album will be getting a lot of play for a long time to come.

Get Rory Kelly's - (Don't Shake My) Family Tree, through Itunes

Rory Kelly's (Don't Shake My) Family Tree is available through Itunes

Billy Don Burns - Creating A Custom Gas Can Banjo - Part 2

The second process video for Billy Don Burns new album coming out on July 10th is available to check out. These videos are coming out great and a huge thanks to Rpeek for putting such a great piece together for the album, enjoy. 

Support Real Country Music

Rory Kelly Interview Part 2 and New Track - Low

The month of May is going to be a great one for Rory Kelly. With numerous big shows coming up around the south east region, debut album coming out on May 22nd, being part of the Rock N' Rassle Apocalypse and then hitting Europe for five weeks this fall, damn are these fellas putting in some work. 

Here is our treat for you, check out another brand new track from Rory Kelly entitled "Low".

Get Rory Kelly's debut album now through our store

Rory Kelly's debut album (Don't Shake My) Family Tree out May 22nd

Rusty Knuckles Presents: Rock N' Rassle Apocalypse, July 28th 2012

Coca Cola And Spotify Equal Pop Fizzle?

Advertising runs everything we know, plain and simple. If it wasn't for advertising would we have all the shows on TV? I highly doubt it, as there would be a lack of money to produce such entities. This convergence is good and bad, but at least if you can see through the crap and understand its just marketing. Hell, use the service as needed without feeling like you have to drink a coke to enjoy the streaming music of Spotify.

Personally, we hope that Spotify does well. Not in the sense that it is a perfect service, but it serves a purpose and could potentially help more bands to be heard. It isn't the best thing since sliced bread, but its a start at a solid music streaming service, which can cue up most anything you want on demand. Other services are offering similar products, but Spotify seems to be taking the lead or at least getting the most attention. If Coca-Cola can inject advertising dollars and help to get the bands paid from the streams instead of the paltry amounts that Spotify pays now, then great.

So here it is Coke, use this Spotify partnership as a platform for the streaming music service to better pay the bands. If both of yall cannot do that, well move on to the next batch of sheep.

See the original article on Hypebot.com

Coca Cola and Spotify are creating new partnership for music streaming

"Yesterday Spotify and CocaCola announced a major partnership. Brands have taken an interesting role beyond just ad dollars at Spotify starting with its July 2011 launch. I know this because I worked with Chevy to partner with blogs/publishers to generate editorial exposure for Spotify and Chevy in exchange for advance access to the streaming service for their readers. It seemed only suitable that Spotify would try to evolve this symbiotic relationship with brands even further.

During the morning talk, Spotify founder Daniel Ek made at Ad Age's Digital Conference, he kept referring to Spotify as a platform as opposed to simply a streaming service. Depending on the brand, having a Spotify app might even be more important than having a Pinterest or Instagram account because of the emotional role music plays in people's everyday lives. To quote a Coca-cola rep, "we're trying to develop a Coca-Cola experience within Spotify." 


On the surface this partnership sounds pretty innovative. Coca-cola will tie Spotify into their global marketing efforts (including Olympics, FIFA, and various live events) and help Spotify launch their service in new markets. Spotify will help Coca-Cola look cool by injecting them into the conversation of music fans. In addition, the two partnered this past weekend to host a friendly competition between 6 different hack teams. The winner, named "London Calling," will be an integral part of the public launch of this partnership. 


However, the whole event was presented very ambiguously and vague without going into much specifics. Since this all was kept fairly abstruse, it's hard to ignore whether or not how the listening community will react to an even deeper branded experience when some already see Spotify ads as an interruption? On the flipside, Spotify insisted at the Press Event that "this is not an advertising campaign [with Coca-cola]." In addition, Daniel sited Subaru's First Car playlist as a successful brand in his Ad Age presentation by saying that the average person on the playlist listened for an average of 70+minutes. People shared and spoke about what song defined their first car, and Subaru wins because they're at the core of conversation.


Discovery & Amplification
I guess my gut insists that in order for the execution of this partnership to be successful, Coca-cola needs to improve the Discovery and Amplification experiences of listeners without inauthentically injecting their beverages into conversation."

30 Years Of Music Industry Change, In 30 Seconds Or Less...

Remember when buying an album, the artwork was absolutely critical and had to be exactly right, as that was a fan's first impression? Umm yeah, we still think way, but damn how things have changed and will continue to evolve. Have a look at these infographics created by the folks over at Digital Music News. You can watch the gif animation play or click on the small graphics at the bottom to hone in on particular years.

Link to Digital Music News

If you liked our ten year recap, you'll love this. Each pie shows the revenue contribution from various formats, 1980-2010, based on RIAA revenue figures.  If you want to see it again, just wait a few seconds for the animation to start over.                    

      

This is US-based data, and each pie represents 100% of total recording revenue.     

And, here are the individual year source images, starting with 1980 on the top left and 2010 on the bottom right. Just pick a year and go, and download whatever you need.

5 Alternatives to Consider After Spotify’s Free Music Cutoff From Mashable.com

Is your Spotify free account service about to run out similar to ours? Well friends there are quite a few options for ya. If you are like us, then you have already been naturally listening to the FREE stations on Itunes Radio for years. Or better yet, hopefully you are enlisted with Sirius XM satellite radio. That will be a service we continue to pay for as its for home, shop and most of all mobile. 

Spotify is definitely a great service and it has been quite enjoyable to listen to whatever pops in mind but we are definitely in league with quite a few other labels and artists on the front of, where are all the dollars going. Their streaming rates don't account for much in revenue and we get the monthly proof, but it is a shit ton better than other places who don't bother to pay at all. This is sort of like many of the other labels out there who have never paid their bands or told them they didn't sell squat in streaming or downloads. Spotify is an amazing product and we really hope that it will continue to get better.

Folks its a brave new world for digital music so do yourself a favor most of all, get out to see bands live and continue to support them by buying their music directly from the bands themselves or their stores. These funds go directly back to the bands who will then continue to create the music we all enjoy hearing.

Link to original article on Mashable.com 

If you’re an early Spotify user, you may be looking for a new, free music-streaming service as Spotify’s six months of free listening comes to an end.

Trendsetting music lovers who signed up for Spotify when it first hit the U.S. on July 14, 2011 will soon encounter roadblocks. For instance, come the six-month deadline to switch to Spotify Unlimited ($4.99 per month) or Spotify Premium ($9.99 per month), Spotify users will only be able to play their favorite songs a maximum of five times, and free streaming will cap at 10 hours per month.
It’s no doubt the unlimited access to a huge library of music — about 15 million tracks — is one of the features that loyal Spotify users love.





SEE ALSO: Shazam’s New App Wants to Be Your Music Player  
Other features include the ability to make playlists of favorite songs (up to 10,000 tracks per list) and social integration to Facebook. Songs you play automatically display on your Facebook Timeline and desktop sidebar. Plus, access content via share buttons and a convenient search bar. With Spotify Premium, users enjoy an offline mode, which means they can listen to playlists on the plane, train or beach. Finally, radio stations specifically tailor to a user’s specific artist or genre preferences.
As fun and convenient as Spotify is, for many, the honeymoon phase is over with the service’s free music cutoff. Here are five free music-streaming websites and applications that act as alternatives to Spotify.

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1. Grooveshark

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Grooveshark interface screenshot

Grooveshark is a comparable service that provides free on-demand music streaming with ads. Over 30 million people use Grooveshark globally.

How it compares to Spotify: Comparable features include the option to share songs or playlists with friends on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other social networking platforms. Like Spotify, Grooveshark offers a downloadable desktop application. Other capabilities include radio-streaming and uploading your own music. Grooveshark also offers song and artist suggestions related to your listening habits.

Differences: Since anyone can upload music to Grooveshark, audio quality of tracks may vary. With Grooveshark, there is no monthly limit for free accounts, as opposed to the 10-hour cap soon to occur on Spotify. However, ads play on both systems.
Size of Music Library: Over 7 Million Songs

Paid Options: Grooveshark-Plus ($6 per month) provides unlimited, ad-free listening. New application Grooveshark-Anywhere offers to-go music streaming at $9 per month.
Mobile Availability: Free radio streaming or on-demand access to music with paid subscription for Android, Nokia, Palm, Blackberry and “jailbroken iPhones,” as listed on Grooveshark’s website.

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2. Pandora

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Pandora interface screenshot

Pandora‘s desktop and mobile free radio-style music-streaming service provides tailored sets of tunes based on the artist or track you input.

How it compares to Spotify: Pandora allows users to easily listen without having to search for tracks or create a playlist. “The Music Genome Project” behind Pandora generates music related to your search terms. The radio will tweak itself according to your thumbs-up or thumbs-down ratings. However, there are limits to songs skipped per hour. Pandora’s social sharing capabilities are pretty weak compared to Spotify’s wide range of Facebook, Twitter and Messenger capabilities.

Differences: Spotify is clearly better if you want a wide selection of on-demand music streaming. Pandora Internet radio plays from a smaller collection of 700,000 songs, compared to Spotify’s 15 million-song vault.

Size of Music Library: 700,000 tracks

Paid Options: Pandora One ($36 per year) comes with unlimited music play, higher-quality audio, unlimited song skips and no advertisements.

Mobile Availability: Free radio streaming and premium listening via Pandora One options are available on Android 1.6 and later, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPod touch and Palm Pre devices.

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3. Rdio

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Rdio interface screenshot

Rdio is a desktop music streaming application that allows new users in the U.S. to access ad-free, on-demand music streaming for an undisclosed amount of time a month. From the co-creators of Skype, Rdio began to offer Rdio Free with a set amount of ad-free, free on-demand music with its Facebook integration in October 2011.

How it compares to Spotify: Both non-paying users of Rdio and Spotify can play music on-demand, share their playlists and favorite songs on numerous social networking websites, receive music recommendations and listen to artist-tailored radio stations. We like how Rdio and Spotify allow free users to browse and listen to top tracks lists, albums and new releases.

Differences: Rdio Free comes ad-free and on-demand, whereas Spotify plays ads in between song sets. The company will not disclose how much time is free for users who opt out of the premium service. Rdio states, “We’d rather do it this way than bombard people with ads…When you run out of free music in any given month, you can choose to upgrade to any of Rdio’s existing pricing plans or start free anew the following month.”

Size of Music Library: 12 million songs
Paid Options: Rdio Web ($4.99 per month) offers unlimited web streaming from browser or desktop platforms. Rdio Unlimited ($9.99 a month) offers unlimited web streaming plus unlimited mobile streaming. Unlimited Family ($17.99) offers two unlimited web and phone subscriptions.

Mobile Availability: Available on iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android 1.6 or higher, Windows Phone 7 devices and Blackberry phones.

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4. MOG FreePlay

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Mog interface screenshot

MOG FreePlay is the free version of its original subscription-required application.

How it compares to Spotify: Like Spotify, MOG FreePlay offers free music streaming with ads. However, for 60 days, new users can listen to MOG FreePlay without ads. Similar to Spotify, MOG FreePlay logs users in through Facebook and shares music with friends. The service provides recommendations based on bands and artists you have Liked on Facebook. Both players have options to create playlists, favorite songs and much more.

Differences: MOG FreePlay also offers an undisclosed amount of play, like Rdio; however, this platform gives you a chance to earn more free music every month by earning points for inviting friends to join MOG.

Size of Music Library: 13 million songs

Paid Options: Paid options for unlimited music include a MOG Basic plan ($4.99 per month), which comes with unlimited, on-demand music for your computer, sans mobile access. The MOG Primo plan for $9.99 per month comes with computer and mobile access and unlimited streaming to your phone.

Mobile Availability: Only available through Primo plan to iPhone, iPod Touch and Android phones.

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5. YouTube

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Youtube interface screenshot

While YouTube is a video player, we recommend using YouTube for free, on-demand music streaming if you love listening to songs on-demand. You can use YouTube Disco to find songs by artist. A search for Beyonce turned up 100 videos, mostly from her official VEVO site.

How it compares to Spotify: Create playlists of your favorite songs for listening at work or play. You can also easily share YouTube videos on various social networking platforms.

Differences: Listening to music on-demand on YouTube may be more work — you will have to search for songs to listen to them. However, access plenty of playlists others have pre-packaged.

Mobile Availability: YouTube’s pre-installed application works on Android and iOS devices. Downloads are also available on Windows Phones. Web-based versions are available for most smartphones.

What music streaming applications or services do you use? How do they compare with Spotify? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Andreas Blixt