Taylor Swift, the last streaming holdout among major musical artists, embraced the technology by releasing her seventh studio album, “Lover,” on Spotify and other streaming services. She had pulled her music from Spotify in 2014, and, in 2017, withheld her sixth album, “Redemption,” from streaming services for three weeks. According to Nielsen, in that year, streaming accounted for about 60 percent of all U.S. music consumption; this year it’s up to 80 percent. Spotify is making the most of Swift’s move with a very visible marketing campaign. Meanwhile, Swift has also helped launch an industry-wide conversation about copyright. Continue reading Taylor Swift Returns to Streaming with Her Seventh Album

Debuting a year ago, Stem has become successful distributing the music of independent artists to streaming services and divvying up royalties among the multiple collaborators that are typical in indie music. Up until Stem’s appearance, alternative distribution companies like TuneCore and CD Baby distributed indie music, but weren’t able to split royalties between artists and producers, leaving that onerous task to the main performer. Instead, Stem requires each collaborator to agree on percentage splits. Continue reading Stem’s Royalty Model Finds Popularity with Indie Music Scene

More than 100,000 music producers and artists are reportedly now using a cloud-based service called Splice to produce music tracks on-the-go. Users store their tracks in the cloud and provide collaborators with access to edit the tracks with compatible music editing software such as GarageBand or Ableton Live. Splice’s technology helps manage how each user has tweaked the tracks. The startup, which officially launched in September, makes money by selling add-ons for music editing software. Continue reading Splice Fosters Music Collaboration with its New Cloud Service