Tag: music

  • Sell Me Personal Use Music Rights

    I like making the odd video, and invariable, I prefer to use music on the soundtrack. Given that I’m not about to commission my own music for my little projects, I have two choices. I can either use a music track I already know, or I can go to a music library and for a…

  • Amazon Prime Music – Filling A Hole

    Back over the summer, Amazon launched its Prime Music offering in the UK. Anybody who pays Amazon £79 a year, for it’s free next day delivery service, and video streaming service, now also has access to more than a million tracks and hundreds of playlists to stream via the web, Fire TV or a mobile…

  • Not Predicting the Mercury Music Prize

    Here’s an oddity. Music Week has published a list of albums that Google Play Music says represent the volume of streams that albums eligible for the Mercury Music Prize have achieved. So they’ve looked at acts that released albums between September, 9 2014 and September 25, 2015. The official shortlist is published in a couple…

  • Super-serving Men 20-44

    Today we finally heard a few details* about the relaunch of Xfm as Radio X. The much mooted re-branding sees Chris Moyles take over breakfast, with Vernon Kay on mid-mornings and Johnny Vaughan on drive. Jon Holmes will move to weekend breakfast, when Ricky Wilson from the Kaiser Chiefs (and The Voice) will have a…

  • A Curious Case of Google Play Music

    Note: See multiple updates on this story at the end. I use Google Play Music as my primary music service. That is, Google Play Music hosts my audio files allowing me to play them back via my phone, the Chrome browser or a Chromecast. I’ve never felt the need to subscribe to a music service…

  • How Should Spotify Pay For Its Music?

    Yesterday I got into a bit of a discussion with James Cridland on Facebook about the rights and wrongs of how services like Spotify distribute their revenues. And I thought it was worth sharing and expanding on some of my thoughts on the matter. This comes off the back of a Medium piece from Sharky…

  • Releasing a Soundtrack Album

    This is a small frustration, and quite possibly it’s specific to me, but why are record labels so tardy in releasing soundtrack albums. Everyone knows that for most films, the opening weekend is key. The largest number of people tend to see a film on its opening weekend, and in many instances, the film gets…

  • Apple, Spotify and a Binary Way of Selling Music

    Apple Music is now up and running. If you have an iPhone, you’ll be pestered to update your device, and a new Music app will appear that on first open is desperate to give you a 90 day free trial of Apple’s Spotify-like experience. So I dusted off an iPod Touch (mainly bought to use…

  • Music Tourists

    There’s been a new report published by UK Music, the consortium that supports the UK music industry’s political needs. Wish You Were Here 2015 highlights the importance of the music industry to tourism and that audience’s spending power. It was released on Monday and has generated a decent amount of press coverage. It’s a chunky…

  • Apple Music

    So now we finally know the details of Apple Music. I won’t go through all the details because every site on the planet has already done so, breathlessly live-blogging the full announcement. So go elsewhere for those. To be honest, as The Verge reports there are probably some sighs of relief around the rest of…

  • Thoughts on Tidal and Streaming Music Services

    I’m still not really clear about Tidal – the music streaming service. There was some kind of hideous press conference with lots of very successful – i.e. rich – artists talking banalities earlier this week in New York. But at this stage, a streaming music service really needs to have a point of difference compared…

  • A Portable Music Player

    When I was thinking about my future options for a home for my digital music library once I’ve breached Google’s 20,000 song limit, I also mentioned in passing the sad death of the iPod Classic – i.e. the iPod. If reports are to be believed, the remaining iPod Classics in the retail system were swiftly…

  • 19,013 Songs

    That is what it says on my Google Play Music account. 19,013 songs. Look, I realise that all the cool kids are renting their music on Spotify. It might not actually make any money, but it’s so much more convenient paying £10 a month and having access to all your music. Except when the album…