5 Tips For Getting Music Bloggers To Write About Your Music
Although the value of a review in printed publicationshas greatly diminished, bloggers remain a valuable resource for getting your music into the public eye. Here we look at useful tips for capturing the attention of thesemodern day taste-makers.
It used to be that just one good review in a magazine could sell loads of albums. Even a bad review could be really good for business if it was in a publication like Rolling Stone. That’s all changed since magazine reviews have become pretty irrelevant as the music world has moved online. Now its the music blogs like Pitchfork or Stereogum that can make the difference not so much in sales, but visibility to a new audience. Yes, music bloggers are important.
Sometimes those larger blogs are tough to break through, but the smaller bloggers still provide more of a one on one chance to state your case.
But how do you approach music bloggers in the first place? There really is a right and wrong way to do it, so here are 5 tips to get a blogger interested enough in what you’re doing to actually post about it.
1. Read the blog for a while to become familiar with the theme and feel. You can turn the blogger off completely by sending something cold without knowing the backstory of the blog.
2. Make some post comments without any overt marketing.Just try to move the conversation along on a few posts. The idea is for the blogger to recognize you as someone who contributes regularly and adds to the conversation.
3. Only after the blogger becomes familiar with you is it safe to reach out about what you’re doing. If you’re a regular reader and contributor, the blogger is much more likely to read a press release or take a listen to your music.
4. Sometimes asking a question about your project gets a response. While many bloggers are too busy to answer every email, many go out of their way to accommodate a regular reader and contributor. As a result, it’s perfectly okay to follow up after you’ve sent something to the blogger and there’s a good chance he’ll answer.
5. Never hard sell, just inform. Hard sell is a turnoff in general. Don’t do it. It’s okay to state the relevant information, but keep the superlatives like “Best band ever!” out of the equation.
Female Composers in Games Industry See Gender-Based Pay Penalty, New Study Finds
"Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands" composer Penka Kouneva attends The Women Who Score: Soundtracks Live in Concert at Grand Performances on Aug. 19, 2016 in Los Angeles.
As GameSoundCon, the annual conference for game music composers, is set to begin on Tuesday, Sept. 27, in Los Angeles, the profession finds itself in the dichotomous position of being in a Renaissance Age for sound technology, but in the Dark Ages when it comes to income equality, a recent industry survey shows.
The penalty for being a woman in game audio is roughly equal to two years’ of experience, according to an independent analysis of the survey. In other words, a woman with eight years of experience composing music for video games was compensated on the same level as a man with six years of experience.
The analysis was based on data gathered online via the Game Audio Industry Survey, which tracks compensation, working conditions, contact terms and production information for the video game music and sound industry. The survey included responses from 526 men and 51 women. The 10:1 ratio of respondents mirrors the gender composition of the industry as a whole, said Brian Schmidt, a veteran interactive music composer and sound designer and executive director of GameSoundCon, which commissions the annual industry survey.
This is the first year survey organizers have commissioned an independent analysis of the gender data -- largely because there were so few women in prior surveys for there to be a valid sample, Schmidt said.
Now that the profession has quantified the bias, it needs to address the harder questions of why it happens and what can be done about it, said Karen Collins, the Canada Research Chair in Interactive Audio at the University of Waterloo.
"I don't think there's outright discrimination," Collins said. "I do think it's a systemic problem across all fields."
Though there may not be overt discrimination, many studies suggest that subconscious bias plays a powerful role by shaping expectations of what the ideal job candidate looks like, for both men and women. The influence may seem subtle, but the effect is substantial. An analysis of 100,000 job offers on Hired.com found that 69 percent of the time, men are offered more money than women for the same job title at the same company. In addition, men are offered an average of 3 percent more pay than women. While that's initially a small difference, it can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a career. A separate study by the National Women's Law Center calculated that difference to be $430,480 over a 40-year career.
"Because all their role models are male, women may not ask for as much pay or offered as much money because there's a perception that they don't look like what you would think of as a music composer, and, therefore, they're not as good," Collins said. "There's an expectation that women are not as capable as men. But it's not a conscious one, which makes it a lot harder to overcome because they don't recognize the bias."
In interactive music composition, women encounter a "double whammy," said Collins. That's because the profession stands at the confluence of two heavily male dominated fields -- technology and music composition. "In music school, women generally have male role models. Add that to the technological aspect, which is also male dominated, and you have a double whammy."
As for what can be done to balance the scales, Schmidt says he's doing two things off the bat. The first is acknowledging the bias in a roundtable discussion at this week's GameSoundCon conference. The second is to schedule a disproportionate number of women speakers at the conference, both to broaden the perception of what a game music composer should look like and to encourage more women to seek leadership roles.
"There tends to be two main salary peaks," Schmidt explained. "One is around $60,000 a year, and another is around $140,000 a year. That jump occurs when you shift into a manager, director or other leadership role." In other words, having more women in leadership roles would significantly tip the salary average higher for females. "I think it's important for people to see women as leaders and experts in the field of game music composition and sound design," Schmidt said.
Adele's '25' Hits Diamond Status in Less Than a Year
Adele was presented a plaque celebrating the 10x Platinum (Diamond) certification of her latest album 25. The presentation took place on Sept. 22, 2016 at Madison Square Garden where the artist just completed a six-night stint.
Adele is once again in a league of her own. In an era when mutli-platinum album sales are typically reserved for an elite group of artists, the British singer has reached a career pinnacle that most superstars are lucky to summit once, to say nothing of doing it twice in a row. According to the RIAA, Adele's smash 25reached diamond status last Thursday (Sept. 22), certifying it for 10 million in sales in the U.S. alone. She received the 10X Platinum plaque on the final night of her six-show stint at Madison Square Garden.
On the strength of the seven-times platinum single "Hello" as well as hit singles "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" and "When We Were Young," 25 reached diamond in a little over 10 months. Her previous album, 2011's 21, propelled by hits "Rolling in the Deep" and "Someone Like You," took almost two years to hit diamond in November 2012. Adele continues her sold-out North American tour, which runs through a Nov. 21 date in Phoenix, Arizona.
Hi Everyone, as usual I got this idea a couple months ago, since I heard the Tomb Raider (Video Games) was back again.
Then, again, I did the download the teaser and edit the clip. The first task was edit the voice of caracter. I used severa plugins, as gate, compressor, EQ and more gate to get as much as possible only the voice of caracter.
You see watching the video that there are little strings in some parts during the video.
Now was time to work on soundtrack. The clip as it self gave me the whole idea what kind of music I have to make. I start with basic drum first and change the EQ, reverb and add more taiko drums on bass drum. After that I started to add the strings. In the end I decided to keep on this way, only drums and strings on entire clip.
For the he sound design since the beginning I put the sound of the winds, airplane and the steps more to end of the clip, I keep some original partas such as Tomb Raider Hit the Glacier Wall and the crack starts to come in and the torch.
I hope you enjoin this demo any comments will always welcome.
Record Labels Welcome Rise from Streaming, But Songwriters Aren't Smiling Yet
Earlier this week, the American recording industry celebrated the very good news that they made more money during the first half of this year than they did during the first half of last year -- something that hasn't happened in any meaningful way for a long, long time. Streaming services, which have spent the past five years gaining acceptance stateside, seem to have reached a tipping point.
But as record labels watch their balance sheets go up and to the right, songwriters say -- and have been saying for some time -- they're being cut out of streaming's success.
Essentially, songwriters and publishers -- the companies that oversee and manage the use of songwriters' compositions, which are legally separate from the recordings of those songs -- see the problem as twofold. First, they say they're being forced to compete in an open marketplace with one hand tied behind their back, because of regulations put in place by the U.S. government in 1941 over fears of antitrust. 75 years ago, the government had a legitimate reason to be worried that control over who could play what music was overly concentrated, and mandated that those in control of licensing songs to various businesses would have to license those songs at a rate that was reasonable and predictable, preventing price gouging. However, songwriters, publishers and the performance rights organizations -- principally ASCAP and BMI, who originally agreed to the consent decrees -- argue that being mandated by these regulations in 2016 is unfair in a chaotic, and competitive, market.
"When labels negotiate, they set their terms and if they don't like them, they get to say no," says David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers Association. "The songwriters and publishers are operating under a patchwork of antiquated regulations that don't allow them to say no."
"The consent decrees don't allow songwriters and publishers to negotiate in a free market," says Dina LaPolt, an entertainment attorney who works with Songwriters of North America (SONA), tells Billboard. "The recording industry can negotiate in a free market for interactive services [also known as "on-demand" -- those that let listeners pick what they want to hear, like Spotify]."
One source from a digital service counters that publishers say they want a competitive market, but not "true capitalism... Because in a truly competitive market, prices always come down."
Those who license music from publishers and labels explained their stance in a recent letter written under the umbrella of the MIC Coalition, whose members include Google and iHeartMedia (and from which NPR and Amazon withdrew), "The protections provided by the consent decrees protect licensees from the massive market power of a few collectives over vast catalogs of non-substitutable musical works."
Another argument is that digital music services are paying out most of their revenue for "content costs" -- the music they play. If songwriters were allowed to collectively negotiate for higher rates, the lucrative new streaming economy would collapse.
"That's not how markets work," counters Israelite, saying that the labels and publishers wouldn't negotiate the industry's newest, massive revenue generator into an early grave.
Matt Pincus, CEO of the independent company SONGS Music Publishing, says that if he were able to freely negotiate the rates he charges digital services, as labels do, the result could be more money for the songwriters he represents. "Look at the one source of revenue where we can bargain, synch [the placement of songs in movies and television], we get fifty-fifty -- the same as the labels." (Pincus also obliquely references another ongoing dispute -- that publishers/songwriters should receive an event split of money from digital services. However, labels take on additional overhead, like recording and marketing, that publishers do not. Fear not, that debate will continue.)
The other problem, according to songwriters and publishers, is that record labels are getting "the lion's share" of digital revenues because of considerations labels secured during negotiations for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). At the time of these negotiations -- the mid-'90s -- labels argued that, because publishers receive performance royalties (the money owed from playing songs on the radio, in venues, and on the web) from multiple sources, labels should receive, at least, a digital performance royalty. Regulators agreed.
"First of all, it's not our fault," says Israelite, of the fact that record labels receive no money from broadcast radio. "We want them to get paid. The fact that they've gotten beaten in congress is no reason to punish songwriters." But more importantly, he says, is that because of how the music industry -- really any media business -- has evolved, all of the money is in digital anyways. This is clear from the very thing that prompted this article -- that the record business is growing after a long period of decline based entirely on digital sources of income.
"No one I know is against streaming services," writes David Lowery, a songwriter and professor, in an email to Billboard. "The issue is compensation -- or lack thereof."
"The main way that songwriters have earned money, performance royalties," Pincus says, "are now being directed to labels because of the DMCA." He offers the example of Pandora, which pays out 55 percent of total revenues (compared to Spotify's roughly 70 percent) back to the industry, of which he says 4 percent makes its way back to publishers. "It flips around the economics of the business in a fundamental way."
Record labels counter that the overhead of their business -- marketing, recording, for example -- makes every dollar they make more expensive than publishers' business.
So... what's the solution?
"Whether its a performance share [of digital royalties], or a greater share of the other sources of revenues from streaming," Pincus says, "we need to secure more of the revenue paid out by streaming services in order to keep the income of songwriters healthy."
LaPolt is more pointed: "Blow it up and rebuild it. We're asking these old hags who have been in the business for 30 years to deal with something they barely understand," she says, in reference to the industry's tectonic digital pivot. She also says that waiting for a legislative solution is a fool's errand. "We need to put a lot of pressure on the government, and not through legislation -- politicians spend ninety percent of their time trying to keep their job." So, she says, "the only other thing to do is sue! Sue everybody's asses off."
In the meantime, songwriters are left with little recourse but to wait for the titans to reach a median. "How many Etta James' have to die alone, penniless," LaPolt asks. "How many B.B. Kings will need to get up on stage when they can barely stand?"
Anyone who follows the music industry knows of the tussles between artists and those who rely on their creative output. The traditional food chain is a long one: between those who create the music and those who pay for it—music lovers, concert goers, advertisers, rights licensees, and corporate sponsors—there are publishers, producers, and talent agencies, and countless others with a stake in the industry. Each of these intermediaries takes a cut of the revenues and passes along the rest, the remainder of which eventually reaches the artists and musicians somewhere between 6 and 18 months.
Many thought the Internet might help democratize the industry, but the opposite has occurred. “In the latter part of the 20thcentury, if a song of mine sold a million copies, I would receive about $45,000 in mechanical royalties, and I was awarded a platinum record,” Eddie Schwartz, head of the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC), told members of the International Literary and Artistic Association in 2015. “Today, a major music service pays me an average of $.000035 per stream, or about $35 for a million streams, thus reducing a reasonable middle class living to the value of a pizza.”
We have swung from one extreme to the other. Now it’s time for the whole industry to collaborate on a healthy, sustainable, and frictionless ecosystem that benefits everyone in the value chain, not just the relative few.
Big technology companies and streaming audio services have taken an additional piece of the pie, leaving most artists with even fewer crumbs, not to mention less control over their work and little knowledge of those who interact with it. The business has become so complex and powerful, so concentrated, that musicians like Taylor Swift and Jay-Z have taken themselves off of Spotify. For most artists, that’s not an option.
This could all change under blockchain-based platforms — clever pieces of code called smart contracts, and their capacity to link and act upon data. The new technology runs on millions of devices, from desktops to smartphones, and is open to anyone, where not just information but money and anything else of value can be transferred and stored securely and privately. Trust among participants is established not by powerful intermediaries like record labels, streaming services, or credit card companies, but by the collaboration of those whose devices are running the software.
Toronto’s industrial rock band 22Hertz has already embraced the blockchain, creating hashes of whole songs—the lyrics and the melody—as proof of ownership for a fraction of the cost of registering only the title of the song in Canada. The band’s online store is currently running a promotion where fans pay half price for CDs and t-shirts if they go direct and pay in Bitcoin . Fans can also tip the band in Bitcoin and download song files for free. Canadian-born cellist and composer Zoë Keating, a friend of Imogen’s, plans to use the blockchain not just for registering and promoting digital rights but for cultivating direct relationships with her fans, offering them special privileges, and providing even greater transparency to prospective clients or partners.
Various companies are already teaming up with forward-thinking musicians to develop a fair and sustainable music ecosystem for artists to turn a song into a business that feeds its creators and those who enable others to interact with it, simultaneously. For example, one of us—Imogen’s—song, “Tiny Human,” was released on a beta blockchain-based platform, UjoMusic, along with all credits and terms of licensing. In exchange for the digital currency Ether, people could download the song itself or all the vocal and instrumental stems of the song for commercial or non-commercial use. Via a smart contract, all the musicians were paid immediately to their personal Ether wallets.
Nick Mason of Pink Floyd recently wrotein a paper published in July by Middlesex University London, “If blockchain technology is going to be the future, we need to dig in and make it happen.” How? We see its working like this. Artists would register their intellectual property by linking all elements—lyrics, musical composition, liner notes, cover art, licensing information, audio and video performances of the work—to the blockchainfor all to see or sample, thus contributing to the much needed peer-to-peer database of music, that is global, verified, inclusive, and currently non existent.
Using smart contracts—essentially templates for setting terms of service and usage for fans, distributors, sponsors, and licensees and templates for directly and immediately distributing revenues to contributors, collaborators, and promoters of the work—artists would decide who could interact with their work, how, and how much each type of interaction would be worth with a lot less paperwork.
Each of these parties—artists, managers, musicians, producers, record and publishing labels—could see all the transactions associated with the work on the blockchain and could track who was paying what amount for which right and who was receiving what proportion of revenues. There would be no opacity in accounting, no delay in payment, and no confusion over who owned or controlled which rights to the work.
Through a set of technical, ethical, and commercial standards, the ecosystem would enable an entirely new marketplace for music and services to flourish, eventually holding all music-related information ever recorded, all linked to a distributed blockchain network of personal computers. Those wanting to do business with the artists and musical works in the ecosystem would be able to do so without institutional friction, from sharing skill sets and finding collaborators to commissioning new works, booking shows, and hiring a tour manager or a local cellist.
What about the labels, collection societies, and distributors, such as Spotify, and YouTube? Does the blockchain completely disintermediate them?
No, if they adopt and embrace change, they would also greatly benefit from this database. As with all new technology, blockchain creates a shift in skill sets and opens up new opportunities. There is an ever-greater need for curation and marketing. Record companies could better help music lovers to sift through the hundreds of millions of hours of music and, along with the publishers and existing collection societies, verify that the data are indeed correct. At some stage, artists will invariably need to work with these and other parties.
Our point is that artists, as the source, will be sustained at the center of their own ecosystem, not starving at the edges of many others.
That’s the promise of a fair and sustainable music ecosystem, catapulted into action by the adoption of blockchain technology.
No matter what composition or production job it is for, a short film, feature film, for an artist or a band. It’s usually the toughest question. What if you charged too much or too little? What will the client say when they open up your estimate to see a crazy figure?
Now if you’re like most composers, you compose/produce music for a living. It is your job and you will have to somehow put food on the table at the end of the day. That is why you have to seriously decide on a price and rate that you can live with.
Don’t Do It For Free
You may doubt yourself if you’re new in the industry. Everyone feels the fear to charge money for their composition or production service especially when they are just starting up. What if I’m not good enough and my skills aren’t polished enough?
Truth is, nobody is ever ‘good enough’ and life is an on-going learning process. So as inexperienced as you are you should at least charge something. The danger of doing things for free is that clients would begin to perceive your work as ‘cheap’ or below standards. Surely the other composer who charged $500 more must be better? After all you’re not even charging for your services, how serious can you be in your work?
Perception is a dangerous thing and the last thing you want is your client to perceive your work as ‘cheap’, ‘under-value’ or ‘free’. Worse yet, they may come back for you again and expect you to compose music for free, simply because they know you’ll do it for free! So charge something.. please!
Okay, so how much should I charge?
Now that I pulled you off the danger zone of producing music for free, let’s talk about some ways you can start charging.
Charging by the percentage – This is what some composers do. Typically if you’re composing music for a film, you can ask for the film’s budget and then charge a percentage of the film. Again, there are no fixed percentage that composers charge but it may go from 5% to 15% of the film’s budget.
Going by the minute – This method usually works quite well too. You basically charge per minute of finished music composition. Rates usually run from $50 to $1000 per minute of finished music. Of course there are rumors that Hollywood composers like Hans Zimmer are able to charge over $50,000 per minute of finished audio. Again, that’s a rumor. I do not know how much the Hollywood composer charges, but yes you can figure a per minute rate and start charging clients based on that.
Charging on your net worth – This is my favorite way to price my services. How much do you value yourself? How much are you worth? If you’re happy working for $10 per hour, then that’s your rate. You have to calculate your running cost into this hourly rate though. Your running cost includes your equipment, electricity and supplies that you need to operate.
Don’t tell your client that you’ll start to charge hourly though! Some composers do that but I think it’s like shooting yourself in the leg. Clients will start to try to cut down your working hours or doubt when you take longer to finish. Instead, estimate how long you’ll take to finish the composition or production. If you estimate you’ll take 10 hours to complete and you’re happy to charge at $30 per hour, then you should invoice your client for $300.
More Tips
Use an invoicing software like Freshbooks! Admit it. Music composers and producers like us aren’t exactly people who likes to do accounting. Using an invoicing software helps you save time and at the same time, you’ll know how much you’re making per month. Also, if you have a repeat customer, you can always quickly refer back to how much you have charged him or her.
Ask for your client’s budget. By asking your client’s budget for your music composition, you’ll find out how much he or she is willing to pay. When a client tells you a budget, it is usually lower that what they can actually afford. From there, you can always price a little higher or at the budget the client has set.
Only do FREE if you get something in exchange. Sometimes it’s okay to compose music for free if your client is arranging a shared profit of the music or perhaps you want to cross promote your services. Don’t overdo it though. You may just end up spoiling your clients.
The Music Industry Grew 8% In The First Half Of 2016, Thanks To Streaming
First of all thanks to Hugh McIntyre for this article.
While times have never been tougher for the bank accounts of many musicians, the music industry is growing again, and the future looks bright for recorded music, and the thanks belong almost exclusively to streaming sites.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) released its 2016 Mid-Year Report this morning, and the numbers are encouraging, which is something the business is getting used to once again. The recorded music industry—that is, money made from selling or streaming song and albums, and which does not include publishing rights, ticket sales, merchandising, or other avenues—is up to $3.4 billion in revenues for the first half of 2016, which is a very promising number. The business has grown 8.1% since the same time period in 2015, which is the strongest growth seen since the late 90s.
While the sale of digital downloads, albums, and all things physical are certainly still important, they no longer compare to the money being brought in by the multitude of streaming services, which have quickly become the driver for growth and exactly what the industry needs more of.
The first half of this year saw revenues from streaming music sources climb 57% from the same time period last year, and the amount earned is now up to $1.6 billion. That figure means that streaming now accounts for 47% of all recorded music revenue. The category was only responsible for 32% of the same kind of revenue during the first half of 2015, so it’s clear that the growth is both increasing sharply and incredibly important.
When it comes to streaming, everything seems to be climbing upwards, from the dollars brought in to the amount of subscribers to the number of players in the game. In fact, both revenues from subscriptions and the number of subscribers have doubled from the first half of 2016. Revenues from subscription services alone passed the very important $1 billion milestone for the first six months of this year, which marks a first for the vertical. Paid subscriptions, which the industry values above all else, are up 101% to 18.3 million in just the U.S. alone, and that’s a figure that is sure to continue to rise.
Many in the music industry still argue that streaming is hurting the industry overall, but numbers show that the bleeding has stopped, and the business is finally on the upswing. Gains made in the streaming sector have more than offset the losses when it comes digital downloads and physical CDs and vinyl, and the more companies that begin offering streaming packages, the better. These figures take into account revenues brought in from on-demand platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, internet radio services such as Pandora and Sirius XM, as well as those sites that don’t require subscriptions, like YouTube and Vevo.
The entire digital market is now up to $2.7 billion in revenues, which makes up almost all of the recorded music industry. Digital revenues, be they from streaming or the sale of albums or songs not on a physical format, are now responsible for 80% of the overall music business, which is up from 74% in the first half of 2015.
Spotify’s subscriber numbers are leaving Apple Music in the dust
Although it's facing some stiff competition, it looks like Spotify has found a way to keep its paying user base growing.
A little over a year ago, back in June 2015, the world's most popular music streaming service counted 20 million paying subscribers. That number grew to 30 million by March this year. Earlier today, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced that more than 40 million users are paying for Spotify services.
Looking at the growth, it's impressive to see Spotify doubling its paying subscribers in 15 months and gaining 33% more subscribers in less than six months.
To put things into perspective, Apple Music now counts 17 million paying subscribers. If we're to compare Spotify's numbers with those of Apple Music, Spotify is doing really well. Sure, Apple Music only launched back in January, but following a massive initial wave of users, Apple's streaming service was actually slower in growing its paid user base. Back in April, Apple Music counted 13 million subscribers, meaning that it only added 4 million paying users since then.
Back when Apple Music launched, many industry watchers were quick to anticipate that Spotify will have a tough time maintaining its lead in the music streaming service niche. Nine months later, however, the numbers show that despite the iPhone maker's insane marketing budget, brand recognition, and iTunes popularity, Apple Music isn't winning hearts as fast as Spotify.
Jay Z-owned Tidal announced back in June that it counts 4.2 million subscribers. Some previous rumors claimed that Apple will eventually buy Tidal and integrate the service into Apple Music, but those rumors have been recently denied by an Apple executive.
Anyone who listens to commercial radio nowadays has probably been hit with the impression that a lot of pop music sounds very similar. It’s easy to dismiss this complaint as a gripe of the old and the cynical, but science actually bears this out: pop music has indeed been pretty homogenous throughout its history and is becoming ever more so.
In one 2014 study, researchers in the US and Austria analysed more than 500,000 albums, across 15 genres and 374 sub-genres. The complexity of each genre of music over time was compared to its sales. And almost always, as genres increase in popularity, they also become more generic.
In itself, this does not mean much – since genres and subgenres are always emerging. It may be considered a truism that a genre becomes accepted once its rules are defined – and once the genre is established, deviation will result in a new genre or sub-genre. For instance, funk emerged as a new genre out of soul and RnB, with a far stronger emphasis on rhythmic groove and the bass.
Another study, in 2012, measured the evolution of Western popular music, using a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which contains vast amounts of low-level data about the audio and music content in each song. They found that between 1955 and 2010, songs had become louder and less varied in terms of their musical structure.
These are trends – but the perception among many listeners is that this homogenisation of music has taken a big leap forward in recent years. And there are a couple of important technological developments that have made this happen.
The loudness war
Dynamic range compression is the (usually automated) continual adjustment of the levels of an audio signal, primarily intended to reduce the variations in loudness. Its overuse has led to a “loudness war”. The musician who wants a loud recording, the record producer who wants a wall of sound, the engineers dealing with changing loudness levels during recording, the mastering engineers who prepare content for broadcast and the broadcasters competing for listeners have all acted as soldiers in this loudness war.
But the loudness war may have already peaked. Audiologists have become concerned that the prolonged loudness of new albums might cause hearing damage and musicians have highlighted the sound quality issue. An annual Dynamic Range Day has been organised to raise awareness, and the non-profit organisation Turn Me Up! was created to promote recordings with more dynamic range. Standards organisations have provided recommendations for how loudness and loudness range can be measured in broadcast content, as well as recommending appropriate ranges for both. Together, these developments have gone a long way towards establishing a truce in the loudness war.
Auto-Tune
But there’s another technology trend that shows no signs of slowing down. Auto-Tune, which a surprising number of today’s record producers use to correct the pitch of their singers, actually originated as a byproduct of the mining industry.
From 1976 through to 1989, Andy Hildebrand worked for the oil industry, interpreting seismic data. By sending sound waves into the ground, he could detect the reflections and map potential drill sites – in effect, using sound waves to find oil underground. Hildebrand, popularly known as “Dr Andy”, studied music composition at Rice University in Houston, Texas and used his knowledge in both areas to develop audio processing tools – the most famous of which was Auto-Tune.
At a dinner party, a guest challenged him to invent a tool that would help her sing in tune. Based on the phase vocoder, which covers a range of mathematical methods to manipulate the frequency representation of signals, Hildebrand devised techniques to analyse and process audio in musically relevant ways. Hildebrand’s company, Antares Audio Technologies, released Auto-Tune in late 1996.
Auto-Tune was intended to correct or disguise off-key vocals. It moves the pitch of a note to the nearest true semitone (the nearest musical interval in traditional octave-based Western tonal music), thus allowing the vocal parts to be tuned.
The original Auto-Tune had a speed parameter which could be set between 0 and 400 milliseconds and determined how quickly the note moved to the target pitch. Engineers soon realised that this could be used as an effect to distort vocals and make it sound as if the voice leaps from note to note while staying perfectly and unnaturally in tune all the while. It also gives the voice an artificial, synthesiser-like sound, that can be appealing or irritating depending on your personal taste.
This unusual effect was the trademark sound of Cher’s December 1998 hit song, Believe, which was the first commercial recording to intentionally feature the audible side-effects of Auto-Tune.
Like many audio effects, engineers and performers found a creative use for Auto-Tune, quite different from the intended use. As Hildebrand said: “I never figured anyone in their right mind would want to do that.” Yet Auto-Tune and competing pitch correction technologies, such as Celemony’s Melodyne, are now widely applied (in amateur and professional recordings – and across many genres) for both intended and unusual, artistic uses.
Its became so prevalent, in fact, that these days it is expected almost universally on commercial pop music recordings. Critics say that it is a major reason why so many recordings sound the same nowadays (though the loudness wars and overproduction in general are also big factors). And some young listeners who have grown up listening to auto-tuned music think the singer lacks talent if they hear an unprocessed vocal track.
It has been lampooned in music and television and on social media, and Time magazine called it one of the “50 Worst Inventions”. But if anything, both its subtle, corrective use and overt, creative use continues to grow. So if you can’t tell your Chris Brown from your Kanye West, it may be down to Dr Andy.
How Many Streams Does It Take to Earn $1? Take a Look…
It takes 776 streams on YouTube to earn a dollar, and just 32 on Microsoft Groove. On SoundCloud, you’ll need 766 streams to earn $1, while it only takes 96 from the SoundCloud GO premium service. In between, there are streaming music services Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Rhapsody, TIDAL, Google Play, and VEVO, all paying wildly different sums for the same exact song.
Why the polar extremes? We’ve been receiving — and posting — lots of streaming payout information on Digital Music News, only to learn that payouts aren’t normalizing over time. Instead, they’re become more divergent over time. Just recently, an independent hip-hop and r&b label shared an entire statement with Digital Music News, one showing multi-dollar payouts from Microsoft Groove (via Xbox), and almost worthless payouts from YouTube (take a look).
Now, the latest streaming music data dump come from an independent rapper, who will remain unnamed but leaked his/her payout spreadsheets to industry executive Wendy Day.
Here’s the breakdown:
Service
Per Stream Royalty
# of Streams = $1
Microsoft Groove
0.031113139
32
Soundcloud GO
0.01037594
96
Slacker
0.006153846
163
Tidal
0.0054
185
Google Play
0.005278658
189
Apple Music
0.005103035
196
Deezer
0.00510566
196
Rhapsody
0.004579501
218
Spotify
0.003589881
279
Vevo
0.002071429
483
Aspiro
0.001676301
597
Soundcloud
0.001305585
766
YouTube
0.001288172
776
A few quick notes on this data. TIDAL is part of Aspiro, acquired by Jay Z last year, but we’ve noticed in statements that ‘Aspiro’ usually refers to the older service, and ‘Tidal’ the newer service, with payment lags to blame. Tidal has received lots of complaints over delayed payments, but the actual payouts seem to be on the upper range of competitors when they do arrive.
Also, this doesn’t have anything from YouTube Red, which is a recently launched premium service. The scattered data we’ve gotten on YouTube Red shows higher per-stream payouts, but total subscriber levels are rumored to be extremely low. The same applies to SoundCloud Go, which is SoundCloud’s premium attempt, though interestingly, GO is now starting to appear on royalty reports.
Keep in mind that Apple Music is entirely subscription, though payouts on the three-month free trial are markedly lower. Spotify also has a free and paid tier, with the paid tier paying multiples over the free tier. Unfortunately, those tiers weren’t broken out in this royalty statement.
