music industry

Will.i.am’s new startup Sound Drive wants you to reboot the music industry in your car

You can spend all day long curating custom playlists for every mood, picking tracks based on tempo or intensity, but whether you’re corner-carving or just commuting, you’ll never perfectly

KIT Plugins, an audio software startup that helps producers and musicians enhance their sound, raises $1 million

KIT Plugins, a music software development startup, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Copycat Holdings. The Nashville-based startup offers digital audio emulations of rare analog gear to hel

From DrakeGPT to Infinite Grimes, AI-generated music strikes a chord

Last week, a song using AI deepfakes of Drake and the Weeknd’s voices went viral, but neither major artist was involved in its creation. Meanwhile, Grimes has taken to Twitter to offer 50% royal

Livestream platform Mandolin adds custom artist pages and a fan data analytics hub

Mandolin, the digital fan engagement platform, launched two new products today with the aim of assisting artists with turning fans into superfans and maximizing revenue. Fan Navigator helps artists co

Warner Music Group signs on to SoundCloud’s artist-friendly payment model

When SoundCloud launched its artist-friendly fan-powered royalty system last year, the model was only available for independent artists subscribed to the streamer’s paid tiers. Now, SoundCloud h

Music distributor DistroKid expands into music video distribution with ‘DistroVid’

Record labels used to be the one ticket into the music industry. Now, it’s easier than ever for struggling musicians to get their music and video content out there. DistroKid, an independent music d

Sound.xyz raises $5M from a16z to explore how web3 can upend the economics of the music business

This year, we’ve seen plenty of evidence that NFTs can shake up the economics of selling visual art, but there’s been less activity when it comes to web3 upending the economics of differen

Apple Music expands Chinese music reservoir via Tencent deal

Apple Music users around the world will soon have access to more Chinese musicians. Tencent Music Entertainment, the online music subsidiary of Tencent, said Tuesday that “record labels and arti

Apple Music is using Shazam to solve the streaming industry’s problem with DJ mixes

Apple Music announced today that it’s created a process to properly identify and compensate all of the individual creators involved in making a DJ mix. Using technology from the audio-recognitio

Apple invests $50M into music distributor UnitedMasters alongside a16z and Alphabet

Independent music distribution platform and tool factory UnitedMasters has raised a $50 million series B round led by Apple. A16z and Alphabet are participating again in this raise. United Masters is

Troy Carter and Suzy Ryoo’s music tech startup Q&A launches software group, Venice Innovation Labs

Q&A, a startup developing tech for the music industry co-founded by industry insiders Troy Carter (Lady Gaga’s first manager) and Suzy Ryoo (Carter’s longtime collaborator), has launch

Science Inc. is getting into the music business with incubator Heavy Sound Labs

Jason Geter, who previously co-founded Grand Hustle Records, told me that he’s looking to “redefine what a record label is today” with his new startup Heavy Sound Labs. Geter said he

How Kobalt is betting on music’s middle class and DIY stars

Streaming services have made music ubiquitous, driving more exploration by consumers who don’t have to pay for each song or album individually. Musicians are correspondingly able to find their own n

How a Swedish saxophonist built Kobalt, the world’s next music unicorn

You may not have heard of Kobalt before, but you probably engage with the music it oversees every day, if not almost every hour. Combining a technology platform to better track ownership rights and ro

Songtrust adds another 55,000 artists to its rights management service

Over the past year, Songtrust has added another 55,000 artists and songwriters to its rights management service. The company, a subsidiary of Downtown Music, a publishing and rights management firm t

Spotify’s new ad metrics show what listeners do after they click

Spotify is launching new analytics tools to help artists and their teams better understand how well their ads are working. The company today says it’s rolling out new streaming conversion metric

Streaming accounted for nearly half of music revenues worldwide in 2018

The scales are about to tip in favor of streaming music becoming the number one driver of global recorded music revenues — a shift that appears to be on track for sometime this year. According t

Spotify settles the $1.6B copyright lawsuit filed by music publisher Wixen

Spotify has settled the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by music publisher Wixen Music Publishing in December 2017. The publisher, which represented artists like Tom Petty, Missy Elliot, Stevie Nicks and

How to build STEM toys

On chilly Saturday mornings my father would fire up the kerosene heater and get the back of our garage warm. He’d turn on the old radio, constantly tuned to the local public radio station, and W

Music payments startup Exactuals debuts R.AI, a ‘Palantir for music royalties’

Exactuals, a software service offering payments management for the music industry, is debuting R.AI, a new tool that it’s dubbed the “Palantir for music.” It’s a service that
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