MuxWx | music | muxwx.com

Streaming Music Trends, Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora

2015-07-06T19:34:00.003+01:00

Streaming Music Trends: Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora

Follow @muxwx

You, Musical Expert

2015-02-28T00:00:00.000+00:00

You are a musical expert – Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis – Aeon: ".... Many of our most fundamental behaviours and modes of understanding are governed by similarly implicit processes. We don’t know how we come to like certain people more than others; we don’t know how we develop a sense of the goals that define our lives; we don’t know why we fall in love; yet in the very act of making these choices we reveal the effects of a host of subterranean mental processes. The fact that these responses seem so natural and normal actually speaks to their strength and universality. When we acknowledge how, just by living and listening, we have all acquired deep musical knowledge, we must also recognise that music is not the special purview of professionals. Rather, music professionals owe their existence to the fact that we, too, are musical. Without that profound shared understanding, music would have no power to move us." (read more at the link above)

Follow @muxwx

Brain Damage, Music

2015-02-21T00:00:00.000+00:00

Brain Damage Saved His Music - Issue 20: Creativity - Nautilus: "Omigie echoes the point that Martino’s brain, long before it hemorrhaged or Martino even knew about his tangled veins, reorganized itself in a way that might shield it from damage. “In our review,” Omigie said, “we observed that musicians who underwent surgery for early lesion, cerebral malformations, or slow growing tumors, showed a larger likelihood of recovering cognitive function than those who, for instance, had a stroke and therefore suddenly lost a large amount of healthy normally functioning tissue. The reason is that in the case of slow-forming lesions, some reorganization might have occurred such that over time, the musical function was able to transfer to other parts of the brain and leave the damaged portions less necessary.”" (read more at the link above)

Follow @muxwx

Sting on Broadway, The Last Ship, The Risk He Took (video)

2015-02-14T00:00:00.000+00:00

Sting on Broadway's 'The Last Ship': The Risk He Took: Video - Bloomberg:
(Allow video to load after clicking play or go to link above)

Music legend Sting discusses the greatest risk he's ever taken -- opening a musical on Broadway. He talks to Bloomberg's Betty Liu in this edition of "Encore." (Taped Dec. 1) (Source: Bloomberg)

Follow @muxwx

Can the music industry survive the streaming revolution?

2015-02-07T00:00:00.000+00:00

Can the music industry survive the streaming revolution?

Follow @muxwx

Beatles, Abbey Road, Photos, Auction (video)

2015-02-01T12:00:00.000+00:00

Rare Beatles 'Abbey Road' Photos Up for Auction -

The six photos taken for the Beatles' 11th studio album were up for auction (Source: Bloomberg 11/21/2014)

Follow @muxwx

Sting, Being 63 Is More Fun Than 33 (video)

2015-01-25T12:00:00.000+00:00

Sting: Being 63 Is More Fun Than 33 -

Music legend Sting discusses how he keeps his looks and his fans throughout his decades-long career. He talks to Bloomberg's Betty Liu in this edition of "Encore." (Taped Dec. 1) (Source: Bloomberg)

Follow @muxwx

The Man Behind the Nation's Hottest Nightclubs (video)

2015-01-18T12:00:00.000+00:00

Meet the Man Behind the Nation's Hottest Nightclubs -

Strategic Hospitality Group's Rich Thomas discusses the state of the nightclub industry and the price to party on New Year's Eve. Dec 26, 2014

Follow @muxwx

Sting: Taylor Swift Is Brave (video)

2015-01-11T12:00:00.000+00:00

Sting: Taylor Swift Is Brave -

Music legend Sting discusses the changing music business and why he couldn't have made his millions if he was starting as an artist today. He talks to Bloomberg's Betty Liu in this edition of "Encore." (Taped Dec. 1) (Source: Bloomberg)

Follow @muxwx

Music Industry Fragmented, Dislocated, Changed (video)

2015-01-04T12:00:00.000+00:00

Music Industry Fragmented, Dislocated, Changed: Bourkoff : Video - Bloomberg:
(Allow video to load after clicking play or go to link above)

Aryeh Bourkoff, chief executive officer at LionTree, and Rich Bressler, president and chief financial officer at iHeartMedia, discuss changes in the music industry in the digital age. They speak on “Market Makers.” (Source: Bloomberg 11/24)

Follow @muxwx

Taylor Swift, 22% of albums sold in US

2014-12-28T12:00:00.000+00:00

Some have credited Swift’s huge sales to her stand against Spotify: unable to stream 1989, fans had to purchase the record. Swift initially used the same tactic with Red, adding the album to Spotify only eight months after it was released. Certainly, the mammoth sales will earn the singer more money than almost any number of streams: as Aloe Blacc revealed on Wednesday, he and Avicii received only $12,359 from 168m Pandora streams of their smash Wake Me Up.

Taylor Swift responsible for 22% of albums sold in the US | Music | The Guardian: "In just seven days, this year’s first platinum artist shifted more copies of 1989 than the combined sales of albums at No 2 to No 107 in Billboard chart"

Follow @muxwx

Garth Brooks, the Internet, Modern Music Business

2014-12-21T12:00:00.000+00:00

The difference between Taylor Swift and Garth Brooks--

How Garth Brooks took on the internet – and lost | Music | The Guardian: "The poor sales of his comeback album Man Against Machine show that taking a stand against the modern music business only works if you’re Taylor Swift... it doesn’t take a Nashville executive to see how thoroughly underwhelming Brooks’s return to recorded music has been, as a result of his many stubborn convictions... Man Against Machine was expected to be one of the biggest releases of the holiday season, with first-week sales landing somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000, but according to industry publication Hits, the disc is currently headed for a far more anemic debut in the 120,000 range. That’s less than half of what Taylor Swift’s 1989 will sell in its third week on the chart... Not everything is gloomy in Brooks’s world, though. He is selling out stadiums wherever he goes on his comeback tour, and he could probably do so for the next 20 years without ever putting out another album. But the question now is whether Brooks can hold his own against a new generation of savvy country stars like Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert in the never-ending battle for cultural relevance..." (read more at the link above)

Follow @muxwx

Bono, U2, Apple iTunes, Wrong Note

2014-12-14T12:00:00.000+00:00

For Bono and U2, Apple iTunes Partnership Finally Hits a Wrong Note - NYTimes.com: "... Bono, the band’s leader, explained as much to the packed audience at the Web Summit here, saying that 100 million people had listened to a song or two and that 30 million people had listened to the whole album. It was not without costs, even though it was given away. The album was pushed onto the playlists of some 500 million iTunes users, and Apple and U2 ended up in stockades on the web for what many consumers saw as an unwanted intrusion into their most personal territory — their music collection. As a mushroom cloud of discontent erupted, Bono engaged in what sounded like contrition in a video posted on the band’s Facebook page as part of a Q. and A. with fans. One of them asked why U2 thought they could embed themselves in people’s phones without so much as a how-do-you-do.... In truth, U2 is on a dead run to remain relevant and avoid turning into a nostalgia act that makes buckets of money on tour but produces records people no longer care about — the Rolling Stones come to mind. Bono will tell anyone who will listen that the new album, which is written as a kind of origin story for U2, reflects the band at its best and most personal. He did not want a project that took five years to finish to then be missed by indifferent, busy ears. Thus the iTunes gambit..." (read more at link above)

Follow @muxwx

Streaming Services, Music Industry, Taylor Swift

2014-12-07T12:00:00.000+00:00

Taylor Swift Pays a Visit to Bloomberg Surveillance

In today's "Single Best Chart," Bloomberg's Scarlet Fu displays the rising level of revenue derived from streaming services by the music industry. She speaks on "Bloomberg Surveillance." (Nov. 7 -Bloomberg)

Follow @muxwx

Tom Findlay, Groove Armada

2014-11-30T12:00:00.000+00:00

Belfast Telegraph
Why life is all plain sailing now for Groove Armada as dance stalwarts return to Belfast
Belfast Telegraph
Ahead of their Belfast show tomorrow night, Tom Findlay from Groove Armada tells Chris Jones why they have swapped their busy schedule for a ... (read more at the link above)

Follow @muxwx

Neil Young, Storytone, Super Deluxe, Charlie Rose Interview video

2014-11-23T12:00:00.000+00:00

Neil Young’s `Storytone’: Charlie Rose (10/31): Video - Bloomberg:
(Allow video to load after clicking play or go to link above)
On “Charlie Rose,” a conversation with Neil Young. Many consider him one of the most influential singer songwriters in US history. He is releasing his 35th studio album this month. It is called "Storytone." He also published his second memoir called "Super Deluxe." (Source: Bloomberg 10/31)

Follow @muxwx

Gibson Guitar, Trademarks, Trademark Opposition

2014-11-16T12:00:00.000+00:00

Gibson Guitar Facing 15 Trademark Opposers | Winthrop & Weinstine, P.A. - JDSupra:

Follow @muxwx

Music Business, Album Sales

2014-11-09T12:00:00.000+00:00

The Music Business, It's Not About Album Sales Anymore--

Not One Artist's Album Has Gone Platinum In 2014: "By this time last year, five different CDs had hit one million units sold or more, with Justin Timberlake’s comeback LP The 20/20 Experience in front. By the beginning of Q4 in 2013, that album had moved 2.3 million copies, which is still far behind the success of Frozen. In fact, album sales this year are so bad, you have to look all the way down to number four on the list of best-sellers to even find something that was released in 2014. The number two and three sellers are Beyonce’s surprise self-titled album and newcomer Lorde’s Pure Heroine, respectively. Both of those have moved in the area of 750,000 so far this year. Both albums were released in 2013 and moved the bulk of their numbers then, but have continued to enjoy commercial success."

Follow @muxwx

Tobacco Road, Miami, Making Way for the New (video)

2014-11-02T12:00:00.001+00:00

The Final Toasts at a Gritty, Beloved Miami Tavern - NYTimes.com: Oct. 27, 2014 "....Four thousand patrons attended the raucous farewell party, which drained the bar of all its beer and nearly all its liquor... A roster of beloved local bands played for free, a tribute to a bar that had offered one of the best intimate spaces for live music, blues in particular..... Mr. Rivera is hoping the crowd will follow when he opens a new Tobacco Road, but sequels are often freighted with unrealistic expectations. “The Road always represented the best part of Miami,” said Coz Canler, who for 30 years was the lead guitarist of The Romantics, as he sat near the stage and listened to bands play on the last night. “It was real. It even smelled like it. All that wood.” Many bemoaned the transitory nature of the city. “We have no appreciation of our history here in Miami,” said Luis Prieto y Muñoz, a 32-year-old Miami lobbyist who first drank at Tobacco Road when he was 18. “And we’re not good at keeping it.” But Patrick Gleber, 55, who was one of the bar’s owners, disagreed. “This is what Miami’s about,” he said. “The old makes way for the new.”"

Follow @muxwx

Melissa Etheridge: I Finally Own My Music (video)

2014-10-26T12:00:00.000+00:00

Melissa Etheridge: I Finally Own My Music -

Singer, songwriter and activist Melissa Etheridge discusses starting a new record label and her new album with Bloomberg's Pimm Fox on "Taking Stock." (Source: Bloomberg 10/7)

Follow @muxwx

Asheville, Music City

2014-10-19T13:00:00.000+01:00

Asheville Citizen-Times
Could Asheville music scene one day rival Austin?
Asheville Citizen-Times
"I've done a lot of research that says that when you participate in music, your body makes endorphins," she said. "It is about fun and happiness.".
Amplifying Asheville as a music city - Asheville Citizen-Times

Follow @muxwx

Wilderness Festival, British Posh Festivals (video)

2014-10-12T13:00:00.000+01:00

Wilderness Festival: The Rise of Britain's Posh Festivals: Video - Bloomberg:
(Allow video to load after clicking play or go to link above)

There’s a new breed of music festivals making waves in the U.K. where once the British music festival was synonymous with mud and stodgy food. Things have changed dramatically. Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde packed up her tent and went to the Wilderness Festival, where fashion and business royalty mixed with the real thing. (Source: Bloomberg 8/22)

Follow @muxwx

How to value art in a world without scarcity

2014-10-05T13:00:00.000+01:00

Taylor Swift doesn't understand supply and demand - Vox: "... on the internet, there's no scarcity: there's an endless amount of everything available to everyone. The laws of supply and demand don't work terribly well when there's infinite supply. Swift is right that "important, rare things are valuable," but she's failed to understand that the idea of rarity simply doesn't exist in the digital marketplace. This is such a huge idea that our perceptions of appropriate behavior in this market are still being hashed out, because our inherent sense of right and wrong is still tied to physical objects. Most people wouldn't shoplift a Taylor Swift CD or a Transformers DVD from Best Buy, but I don't know anyone who feels particularly guilty downloading pirated music or movies. We all know that bootleg DVD stands are doing something illegal, but the internet literally went black to protest SOPA, a law designed to crack down on digital bootleggers. Taylor is right that music is art, and that art should be valuable, but figuring out how to value art in a world without scarcity is a problem unlike any other in human history. It's why subscription music services like Spotify are the only way music makes money in countries that have rampant piracy, and it's why Apple had to buy Beats to compete. The only real answer anyone's got so far is advertising, which is probably why Taylor's RED tour was sponsored by Keds and product placement is so rampant in music that the Chris Brown song "Forever" was literally an extended Doublemint gum jingle in disguise...."

Follow @muxwx

Michael McDonald, His Voice

2014-09-28T13:00:00.000+01:00

How Michael McDonald, The Affable Captain Of Yacht Rock, Lost His Voice: "...I can't claim to be able to explain what it is that happens when Michael McDonald's voice—or ersatz representations of it—leaves his lungs, is recorded and transduced, travels through air to reach my ears, brain, and heart. The French philosopher Roland Barthes, mesmerized by the same phenomenon in a very different context, coined the phrase "the grain of the voice" to find a pathway into vocal description that eschewed critics' tendency toward adjectives. "The materiality of the body speaking its mother tongue," Barthes wrote as a way to get at the uniqueness of the singing voice. My musicologist friend Christian describes the effect somewhat differently for McDonald: "The magic really happens when he floats into his falsetto voice. His 'break'—moving from the natural chest voice to head voice—is around B-flat4 (ca.466 Hz)."..." (read more at link above)

Follow @muxwx

Making Music with the Web Platform (video)

2014-09-21T13:00:00.000+01:00

Making Music with the Web Platform - YouTube:

This session will demonstrate the music-making capabilities in the web platform via the Web Audio and Web MIDI APIs, across both mobile and desktop. (published June 25, 2014)

Follow @muxwx