Bits & Bytes 8/17

INFLUENCING EMERGING MUSIC TECH CULTURE

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THIS WEEK IN MUSIC x TECH

AUGUST 17, 2015

Happy Monday! 

As Summer winds down, the heat is on high. 

I’m loving Tim Westergren’s response to David Byrne’s open letter.

In his letter, David Byrne stated that this is the best time in history to be a musician. He spoke about a "Black Box" surrounding music that until now, many music makers were unable to break. The catalyst for this is of course, the Internet. Tim Westergen echoed his sentiment:

The “working musician” is giving way to the musician as “small business.” And the foundation for the success of what could be hundreds of thousands of small businesses is information. Knowledge is power, and our goal is to enable musicians to harness that power to build sustainable careers. It’s exactly why the Internet was created for — to inject openness, creativity and innovation into old ways of doing things, making them better for all of us. That is the real future of music. I think David Byrne would agree: It’s time to start making sense.

Tim is a product of the Internet age. His vision for the music business and how it applies to the Internet culture is calculated and savvy. Whether Pandora is paying artists enough is another issue, yet the facts remain - the company is on the forefront of reinventing the music industry. 

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The NWA film, which I saw this weekend, is phenomenal. The same spirit that was alive then, during the inception of Hip-Hop, continues today. Music is dominating entertainment and continues to push culture forward. 

Along with "Straight Outta Compton" breaking box office records, Drake's album "If You're Reading This Then It's Too Late" is the only Platinum record this year. A Hip Hop History show is owning Broadway with Hamilton. Jimmy Fallon extended his contract until 2021 - putting The Roots on our screens for the next 7 years. Empire is at the top of TV Ratings. Obama just dropped a Spotify playlist featuring some of our favorites, but also throwing in some Mos Def. 

Music is everywhere! As we continue cracking open the "Black Box" and redefining the industry, music will continue doing what it's always done - find it's way into lives, hearts and... keep us guessing.

- Jesse K // CEO, NUE Agency 

A ton of money in the music industry is going missing. Some companies, like Kobalt Music Publishing, have platforms that watch their money in real time. And yet according to a

 recent report by Berklee College of Music

, somewhere between 20-50% of royalty payments aren’t making it to the correct recipients. And in a $45 billion dollar global music economy, that figure certainly isn’t chump change. 

So where is all of that money going? The business of streaming music, as it stands today, is confusing, muddy, and incredibly mysterious. And that’s part of why it’s so controversial. Let's take a dive. 

Just as reports of SoundCloud's impending demise started to grow louder, it appears the maligned streaming and discovery service may have taken a major step towards creating a sustainable business model. 

1.5 months ago, Apple Music entered a crowded marketplace full of competitors and now, they have put out a new trio of ads that highlight them as the tool to discover new artists, designed to distinguish its streaming service from Spotify and other rivals.

Is the key to saving this industry bridging the divide that separates the worlds of art and technology? Jimmy believes that unless the tech world learns to value musical culture, our machines—and everything we do with them—will ignore and eventually suffocate a crucial part of our humanity.

Next Big Sound now has access to all the consumption data at Pandora, which streams music to tens of millions of listeners every day. The latest result: 2015 listening trends and h

ere are five of the most important ones.

It's summer and music is in the air. 

Festival-goers will benefit from 

Doppler Labs, developing buds that connect wirelessly to a smartphone app so you can control the volume of the performance and adjust the levels.

Researchers are developing a program that is exploring the realm of musical improvisation without the presence of human beings. This technology is not to rid the world of musicians, rather to develop techniques in dealing with things like phobias, pain perception,  and countless other biological/psychological processes.