Samsung - Milk Music Service

Samsung To Close Milk Music Service

First of all thanks to my friend Bobby Owsinski for this article.

Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of Samsung's Milk Music service - not many people have. Even though the company launched Milk Music to great fanfare a couple of years ago, the service managed to gain little traction since.

That's why Samsung has decided to shutter the service, according to various reports.

Milk Music was originally meant to be a competitor to Pandora that would play exclusively on Samsung mobile phones. When phone users mostly ignored it, Samsung then opened it up online, then brought it to their smart televisions as well.

In 2014 the company launched the Milk Video version of the service specializing in short form videos as part of a greater media strategy that included sports and an advertising platform. Needless to say, that failed to gain traction as well.

Actually Milk Music did gain some users on the free tier, but the company wasn't able to upsell them to the paid premium tier, which is a continuing problem with many other platforms as well.

This just goes to show that just having deep pockets doesn't guarantee success of a music streaming service. Look for more smaller services to either shutter or be acquired soon.

LiveList Oferece em "lifestream" os Melhores Festivais

LiveList shows you how to lifestream the biggest music festivals

When LiveList launched in December, it offered a listing of available livestreaming music performances, but with only a bit of curation. Today the company unveiled Channels, a playlist aimed at providing an “even more immersive experience.” It takes a look at music festivals, starting with South by Southwest and the Ultra Music Festival, and lists which musical acts are broadcasting their sets online and when.

Functioning as the TV Guide for livestreamed performances, LiveList aims to offer context as well as scheduling information. With Channels, you will not only see which acts are streamed online, but also be able to read the social chatter around the event.

“Our aim with Channels is to build something that connects the live performance world to the recorded video world and give artists, festivals, and brands a designated place to create a storyline,” explained company cofounder and CEO Allen Sanford. “We are dedicated to creating a product that helps artists better monetise their valuable content and provide the platform that enables their stories to be told.”

The company said that its latest feature offers an easier way for users to find the music they enjoy and “immerse themselves in the live experience.”

Channels can be curated by not only LiveList, but also by its users. You can add multiple live concerts to a personalized list of shows you want to be notified about — similar to a Spotify playlist. The company said that when someone adds a channel to their account, all of the live shows in that channel are automatically added to the list of shows they’re interested in watching.

While it’s focusing on South by Southwest and the Ultra Music Festival, the app offers other official channels as well. You can search for performances within Audiotree, Coachella, Red Rocks, Live for Live Music, and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

LiveList is available on iOS, Android, and the Web.

Sony Desenvolve "Streaming" Em Tempo Real Relatórios de "Royalty"

Sony Develops Real-Time Streaming Royalty Reports

In what may be a real breakthrough for artists, Sony Music has developed an app that shows exactly what their daily streaming royalty earnings are. The app also includes information about how these earnings impact their label advances as well.

Other features include other key information in real time, such as streaming volume across all platforms, airplay data, profiles by age, gender and location of listeners, and a heat map of areas of the world where the artist is currently popular. It also offers insight to the artist's popularity on social networks as well, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The app is only available to Sony artists in Sweden (where the app was developed) at the moment, but is expected to be rolled out to Sony artists globally later in the year.

This is a first for a major label, since it makes earnings a lot more transparent than in the past. Artist royalty statements have always been viewed with some suspicion as labels have traditionally used a variety of accounting tricks to limit the royalties owed, but the new Sony app gives at least some hope that this position may change in the future.

Although the Sony real-time app is a revolution for a major label, it's not the first of its kind. Kobalt has offered these features to artists and songwriters for some time.

Facebook Messenger Se Integra com Spotify Para Compartilhar Links

Facebook Messenger Integrates Spotify Sharing

Messenger, the "new" (released in April, 2015) central nervous system of Facebook's person-to-person communication, has announced the app will now allow users to share links to songs and playlists on Spotify.

Users can click the "More" button in Messenger, click Spotify, click on something they'd like to share in Spotify and a link will appear in the chat. It's far from the most seamless integration Messenger has cooked up so far -- chatting about going somewhere with a friend will present an option to call an Uber and go there, for example. Licensing issues may play a part as well in the "shunting" over to the Spotify app proper when playing music, though Billboard is waiting for clarification on that point.

It's not the first Spotify integration to appear in a Facebook-related product; the company was fairly maligned several years ago for showing peoples' friends what they were listening to. Apparently, music is quite personal.

Less than a year after its introduction the app has 800 million monthly active users, giving a serious incentive for heavy users outside of Spotify's 75-plus million user base to give the freemium streaming platform a shot. 

Executivos Da Música! Mudanças: UMG, Berkley, Warner Music, Three Six Zero

Executive Turntable: UMG Exec Departs; Moves at Berkley, Warner Music, Three Six Zero

-- Heath Kudler has been appointed to a newly created position as executive vice president, global repertoire acquisition, for Warner Music Group (WMG). He served business & legal affairs at Epic Records from 2011 to 2014 and at Island Def Jam for 15 years.

-- Tom Bennett is departing from Universal Music Group (UMG) as global boss of merchandising: the third UMG executive to leave this month. He has served as CEO of Bravado for eight years and will continue to work with UMG as a consultant to the major. Matt Vlasic, former leader in the merchandising division at Sony Music, will succeed Bennett as Bravado CEO.

-- Music management and entertainment firm Three Six Zero appointed Amy Wheatley as head of UK Marketing. She previously served as marketing manager for Columbia Records UK, for acts including Calvin Harris and Leon Bridges.

-- Mark Kaczor will join Los Angeles station KCSN as the new music director, starting March 14.

-- SESAC has promoted Cathy Grizzell from vice president to senior vice president, human resources and administration, and Ellen Bligh Truley from vice president to senior vice president of Corporate Relations. Grizzell joined the company in 1981 and Truley joined in 1996.

-- Atlas Music Publishing has added Iris Pagan-Frank to its expanding team as a controller. She was previously controller for Razor and Tie for 15 years.

-- Richard James Burgess, chief executive office of A2IM (the American Association of Independent Music), has been appointed to board of directors at non-profit collective management organization SoundExchange.

-- BMG has appointed Alistair Norbury as executive vice president international artists. He is a former music publisher-turned-artist manager and most recently manager of Bryan Ferry and co-manager of James and Texas.

-- B2B technology platform SourceAudio has named Douglas Reed as the new executive vice president, business development, radio and library services. Reed had served as vice president/creative director with Premiere Networks, in partnership with SourceAudio.

-- Berklee College of Music has named Miky Lee, vice chair of leading Korean entertainment group CJ Group, to its board of trustees. 

-- Jim Shelby has been appointed as the new general manager of the growing music rights company Concord Music Group. He was CEO of Naxos of America from 2007 to the end of 2013 and was previously SVP of Digital at Canada-based music rights firm Ole. 

Sua Música Não Será Tocada Tão Cedo na China - Escute um Hip Hop Chinês!

Your Music Won't Be Played In China Anytime Soon

First of all thanks to my friend Bobby Owsinsk for this article.



China is one of the most populated countries in the world with over 1.3 billion people, 75% of which listen to music regularly.

That said, the revenue generated by music is stunningly small (see the chart composed of data from the IFPI) and it looks like it's not going to increase anytime soon, at least for Western artists.

Only 10% of the population currently listens to non-Chinese music and that's going to drop, thanks to the government's recent declaration that any kind of content from foreign media companies will be blocked starting March 10th.

Companies like Apple and the New York Times who have invested millions in China just may be out of luck, and if your music or content was aimed that way, so will you. The big windfall that China promised may never take place after all, thanks to the protectionist policies of the Chinese government.

Then again, if the video above is what they consider hip, then maybe we're not missing anything anyway. It's a communist corruption rap featuring president Xi JinPing.

Um Instrumento De Madeira Com Manivela Funciona com 2.000 "Bolinhas de Gude" - Som Incrível ! Vídeo!

Wooden Hand-Cranked Instrument Runs on 2,000 Marbles

After two years of prototyping, tweaking, and building, Martin Molin of the Swedish band Wintergatan finally debuted his enormous musical marble machine.

The melody is primarily carried by a vibraphone whose bars are hit by falling marbles, but it also includes small percussion and cymbals, as well as a bass guitar neck. It even has a “breakdown” arm, which is a literal brake that kills the instrument’s flywheel—that huge spinning circle that’s primarily responsible for the marble machine keeping time accurately. Maybe most importantly, the song Martin programmed it to play is actually really freaking great.