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The BIG Reason

Music, opinions, and portfolio of Mark Eagleton, musician and web developer in Northern CA.

Link List

Comentary about things I have found around the web.

Viewing articles tagged with “music industry.”

  1. Physical sales outsell digital downloads in US for first time since 2011

    Which is to say that digital downloads decrease much more dramatically than physical media, thanks to vinyl record sales.

    Will Butler for NME:

    That said, the difference between physical and digital sales is a mere 2% between 17% and 15% respectively. Streaming still dominates the music market taking up 65% of the total listenership.
    This isn’t to say, also, that physical sales are growing. In fact, physical sale [sic] dropped 4% last year while downloads fell 25%. The report notes that this is “a lower rate of decline than recent years”. This is due to vinyl sales’ growth of 10%, while other formats saw a decline…

    The Bottom Dwellers will be releasing our new record on vinyl this year. It is quite expensive. Too bad the RIAA doesn’t track t-shirt sales, which is the way most touring bands make money.

  2. Discovering New Music

    Federico Viticci has an endearing account of his history discovering new music. I have many of the same frustrations with discovering new music on modern streaming services (I have a rant brewing on this).

    I need to fire up Spotify and check out this Discover Weekly business.

  3. Previously Unlicensed Remixes Go Legit in Apple Music

    Glen Peoples with the Scoop:

    Dubset Media Holdings has announced a partnership that will allow Apple Music to stream remixes and DJ mixes that had previous been absent from licensed services due to copyright issues.

    Algorithms: It’s what music craves!

    MixBank matches the recordings used in the remix or DJ mix against a database of three-second audio snippets from Gracenote, where White was CEO prior to joining Dubset. He says fingerprinting is a “brute force” tool that can provide MixBank with up to 100 possible matches for each three-second match. The more difficult final step is performed by MixScan, proprietary piece of software that pulls apart the mixes and figures out what’s inside. MixScan identifies the recording and its stop and start point in each mix, then finds the corresponding rights holders in a dataset together through multiple partnerships and direct feeds.

    Pretty cool to see this form of expression get some legitimacy.

  4. Calendar Worship and the Jack of All Trades

    Bret Alexnder in a succinct piece for Indie on the Move:

    Most, I’d dare say almost all, of my musician friends don’t play with one band anymore. They play with several. That includes me. Off of the top of my head here I just thought of 13 formats that I play in (various bands, duo formations, solo, etc). ’Tis the way of things now.

    His experience mirrors mine almost exactly. Almost. I do manage to hold onto the good old days with the Bottom Dwellers and Pleasant Valley Boys. I’ve been with both groups for over ten years. In a good year, we might break even. We do it because…

    [...] there is nothing like a group of guys1 that live with each other every day and can read each others minds.

    I sit in with my share of bands, but there is nothing like your home band, where you know (and like) the other players so well they are more of an extension of your chops than they are individuals. This is why we hang on.


    1. And girls. I actually play music with some of those, too.  â†©
  5. Steve Albini Face the Music

    I can’t believe I missed this last year, but Steve Albini officially won the Internet music argument I frequently find my self in. And he did it with the graphically long-winded, and surgical precision only he can muster.

    Imagine a great hall of fetishes where whatever you felt like fucking or being fucked by, however often your tastes might change, no matter what hardware or harnesses were required, you could open the gates and have at it on a comfy mattress at any time of day. That’s what the internet has become for music fans. Plus bleacher seats for a cheering section.
  6. Chord Intelligence

    There is a Grammy in Chris Liscio’s future.

    When I returned from NAMM and came down from all the excitement of the show, I decided that enough was enough and I needed to tackle all the research I was uncomfortable and afraid of. I had never taken an Artificial Intelligence or higher level Statistics courses at school, but all the research papers I was reading over the years made frequent references to concepts that I was completely unfamiliar with.

    I re-read all the papers I’ve used over the years for reference, and read them again. I got in touch with Taemin Cho to get some clarification on some of his work, and he led me to newer papers which required additional learning on my part. For a solid 6 weeks I was doing nothing but reading papers and exploring in MATLAB.

    When Newton was asked to explain why planetary orbits were ellipsis, he invented calculus. Chord intelligence is not as critical to life on earth as understanding planetary motion, but this is the kind of drive that pushes our species forward. Chris Liscio is the kind of people who needs to pass on his genes.

    By the way, Capo Touch is worth buying an iPad for.