spotify

Crime Junkies: The Peculiar Rise of True Crime Podcasts on Spotify

BPT

Listening to podcasts on Spotify grew by more than 50 percent in 2019, and true crime is one of the most popular genres, with My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark and Crime Junkie as some of the most streamed true crime podcasts on the platform in 2019. In 2020, fans can look forward to a fresh batch of true crime podcasts, including the infamous stories of Michelle Carter, Chris Watts, Henry Lee Lucas and Samuel Little, which are expected to launch throughout February and March.

Radiohead Didn’t Change the Music Industry, But at Least They Tried

Sandra Canosa

Few alternative rock bands from the 1990s should still honestly be described as “contemporary” artists, but at least Radiohead can be safely counted among them. Their May 2016 release and ninth studio album, A Moon Shaped Pool, once again showcased the band’s continuous refusal to become irrelevant, despite the usual statutes of popular culture regarding people over 40. The record explores new landscapes sonically, but its actual release proved, yet again, that the band knows how to take advantage of the Internet.

Piracy Gets Washed Down With Streaming – But Is It Good for the Music Industry?

Sandra Canosa

The end result of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing technology was not only that the floodgates of the Internet’s capacity for copyright evasion were flung wide open, but that, perhaps even more significantly, an entire generation of media consumers got to experience a long and sinful taste of high-dosage downloadability. With so much free material available through a simple search-and-click function, the limits of music ownership were defined only by the size of one’s hard drive and the speed of one’s dial-up.

Patreon: Portrait of the Artist in a Digital Economy

Sandra Canosa

It goes without saying that the Internet and digital software have radically changed the ways we consume, create, and interact with art, not least of all music. It’s no wonder then that Patreon was co-founded by a financially-frustrated musician: Jack Conte, one-half of the duo Pomplamoose, themselves early pioneers in the viral-video potential of YouTube. But ad-based revenue, Conte explains, wasn’t earning the band nearly enough money to cover the costs of their production, let alone basic living expenses. 

How the War Over Streaming Services Changed the Music Industry

Angelo Franco

When Taylor Swift’s 1989 album became the only record of the year to reach platinum level, that was the second biggest news in music of 2014.  The most important news of the year in the industry came when Swift pulled her entire catalogue from the popular streaming service Spotify one week after the release of her album.  The move, more so than spark a heated though admittedly civil battle between Swift and Spotify, has opened the gates to a debate about the future of the music industry. 

How the Big Sound of Hip-Hop Went Indie

Daniel Sternkopf

Kitwana also talks about how some labels have veteran black artists at their helm, but that they aren’t the ones making important label decisions. Kitwana quotes from Wendy Day, who has spent the past 13 years fighting against what is often described as a sharecropping system, and states “It’s very much an industry dominated by white men in their fifties… That’s who’s empowered, that’s who’s running things, that’s who’s saying yea or nay to signing checks. And the music industry is still run 100 percent by white corporations” 

The Future of the Music Industry: Consumers in the Clouds

Sandra Canosa

Downloading was sticking it to The Man, even if we knew we were hurting the musicians in the long run that we’d rather support. When streaming services came along, they seemed like a godsend for music aficionados with a heavy conscience. They’re free – or based on tiers of what you can afford. They’re legal. They offer instant gratification. And they actively cater to the pleasures of discovering new music without having to make an initial financial investment. They seemed like a way to circumvent The Man and simply get to the music.

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