Ahead of their new album, Voices In The Sky, Brymir chats with Haulix about the secret to their global success.
Finding your sound takes time. For Brymir, the Finnish metal greats spent multiple records pursuing a sonic direction that didn’t fit their personal aspirations. The band believed a ‘folk’ friendly sound would help them find success, but in recent years found a much more powerful marketing tool in honest and personal storytelling.
With their latest release, Voices In The Sky, Brymir tackle the world around them and the chaos it breeds. The material touches on everything from our relationship with nature to interpersonal conflicts and the wide range of feelings they can produce.
In this Fast Five interview, Brymir frontman Viktor Storm Gullichsen chats with Music Biz host James Shotwell about his band’s ongoing evolution and how embracing change has made all the difference in their career. The pair also discuss song length, Brymir’s writing process, and what the rest of 2022 holds for these wide-eyed metal masters.
Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.
With social media app BeReal gaining popularity, it’s time artists rethink their approach to engaging fans online.
What if social media was simple? No filters, no videos, and definitely no ads—just you and the people you want to see sharing content with one another. If that sounds like something you want, then BeReal is for you.
As our friends at Hypebot succinctly explain, BeReal is a photo-sharing app that prompts users to post one unfiltered photo daily.
The app sends a push notification [ Time to BeReal.] to all users at a random time daily. Users in the same time zone get it simultaneously and have two minutes to take a picture and share it with their followers.
BeReal uses the front and back cameras of the user’s phone to chronicle the user and what they are doing simultaneously.
In addition to the two-minute window, the app has no filters, thus forcing you to—you guessed it—BeReal.
New social media platforms rarely garner global attention, so that alone warrants giving BeReal a moment of consideration. Beyond that, the app has garnered more than 30 million downloads worldwide, many of which are Gen Z users. Analysts suspect this is due to an underlying need for genuine personal connection in an increasingly fragmented and filtered world.
How can BeReal help me?
BeReal offers all users the simplest path to recurring content creation.
Users do not worry about lighting, filters, or trending sounds. The only thing that matters is capturing the present moment.
For artists, that means a once-daily opportunity to share your activity with fans. No more, no less. The two minutes you have to capture a photo is all the effort you must put into remaining active on BeReal.
Compare that to expert suggestions that people on TikTok post multiple times daily, and BeReal suddenly likes far more appealing.
Let’s talk strategy. How do I maximize the impact of my presence?
To be clear: BeReal does not have native advertising.
There are no promoted posts or explore pages packed with influencer content meant to sell false ideas of high-quality fast food or overnight weight loss.
To succeed on BeReal, you must play by the rules.
In other words, be real. Be as real as humanly possible. Share your journey, warts and all, anytime the opportunity presents itself.
Chipotle is a great example. Most people wouldn’t suspect a fast-casual chain to participate in a filter-free social media world, but the burrito company is one of the biggest brands on BeReal.
Don’t you have any tips and tricks?
Serendipity is the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
BeReal may seek to capture the mundane, but your life is not mundane! Depending on when the prompt arrives, you may be able to capture tour life, studio life, the writing process, video shoots, or any one of a hundred important but small moments in your career. Those microdoses of your life and career will help your fans feel closer to you, and that bond will strengthen your community.
The best BeReal strategy is essentially no strategy. Be yourself. Be vulnerable like you are through your craft, and people will respond.
From the end of Spotify’s Car Thing to the impending launch of TikTok Music, we’ve gathered all the music news you need to know.
Can you believe it’s August? We are seven full months into 2022, and most haven’t had enough time to catch their breath, let alone catch up on music news. If you have been reading, it’s most likely related to your work. That’s understandable. We do the same.
We cannot ease your workload or give you more hours in the day, but we can help you stay informed. Below you’ll find the biggest stories of the week, all covered by the best outlets in tech and entertainment. Click around, learn what’s happening, and use the weekend to prepare for the end of the month.
But let’s be honest. There is no way we can hope to cover everything that happens. If you see a headline we missed that people need to know, please do not hesitate to send james@haulix.com an email. We’ll include your links in the next update.
Spotify has unceremoniously stopped making the dash-mounted “Car Thing,” its first hardware device, the company announced this week.
The change was announced as part of Spotify’s latest earnings release for shareholders, which said that developing the Car Thing cost €31 million (approximately $32 million USD) and that its overall gross margin was “negatively impacted by our decision to stop manufacturing Car Thing.” Spotify told TechCrunch:
Based on several factors, including product demand and supply chain issues, we have decided to stop further production of Car Thing units. Existing devices will perform as intended. This initiative has unlocked helpful learnings, and we remain focused on the car as an important place for audio.
Announced in April last year, the short-lived device first went on sale in the United States in February for $89.99. It was designed to be an in-car dash-mounted music and podcast player to provide a more seamless and personalized listening experience, especially in the large number of cars that do not support modern in-car infotainment systems or Apple CarPlay.
Concord is expanding its interests in the Australasian market by acquiring a key independent music publisher in the region, Native Tongue.
With offices in both Australia and New Zealand, Native Tongue has its own roster of songwriters and also represents a significant network of other publishers from around the world in the Australasian market. And for more than ten years now, that has included Concord Music.
The company’s founder, Chris Gough, went into semi-retirement in 2014, with the business being managed day to day by his children Jaime and Chelsea. They will now head up what will be known as Concord Music Publishing ANZ, as Managing Director and Senior VP respectively.
Confirming the deal, Chris Gough says: “Jaime and Chelsea along with our wonderful team of people have grown the company significantly in recent years. This is the next step, providing our home-grown writers with a truly international organisation capable of maximising their potential worldwide”.
SoundCloud will be laying off approximately 20% of its global workforce citing “a significant company transformation” and the current economic and financial landscape.
“During this difficult time, we are focused on providing the support and resources to those transitioning while reinforcing our commitment to executing our mission to lead what’s next in music,” reads a statement by a rep for SoundCloud.
Earlier this year, SoundCloud began detailing changes to the company with the aim of providing increased levels of artist-focused support by incrementally upping monetization and providing additional distribution tools for artists at all levels of their careers. In this year alone, the company has teamed up with Pandora and Splice, acquired artificial intelligence company, Musiio, and also entered a joint venture with management and creative services company, Solid Foundation.
The music industry is paying tribute to powerhouse record executive Mo Ostin who died “peacefully in his sleep” on Sunday evening, according to a statement from Warner Records. He was 95 years old.
Ostin oversaw the careers of a long list of marquee talent: The Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Prince among them.
Born in New York to Russian immigrants, Ostin’s early years in the business were spent at the jazz label Verve. In 1960, when Frank Sinatra started his own record label, Reprise, he hired Ostin as its administrative vice president. Reprise was eventually bought by Warner Records.
In 1970, Ostin became president of Warner Bros. Records. Under his leadership, the company was home to both mainstream pop stars like James Taylor and Fleetwood Mac to edgier artists such as Frank Zappa and The Sex Pistols.
ByteDance may be preparing for a global launch of TikTok Music service, according to trademarks filed in several countries found by TechCrunch. The China-based conglomerate has filed TikTok Music trademark in countries like the U.K., Singapore, New Zealand, Mexico, Malaysia and Costa Rica.
All of these trademark filings include similar text about the application’s functionality of listening to music, creating playlists, commenting on songs and participating in karaoke.
The trademark application says it would allow “users to purchase, play, share, download music, songs, albums, lyrics, quotes, create, recommend, share his/her playlists, lyrics, quotes, take, edit and upload photographs as the cover of playlists, comment on music, songs and albums.”
ByteDance already operates a music streaming service called Resso in India, Brazil and Indonesia, and a former ByteDance employee told us it had previously considered bringing this service to more markets under a “TikTok Music” title. Specifically, it had been considering launches in mature markets like the U.K. and Australia, the source said.
A new partnership with Ticketmaster pushes TikTok further into the musical space, and fans everywhere are reaping the rewards.
TikTok is where the vast majority of human beings go to discover music.
There is no typo in that sentence. TikTok is a global phenomenon, and in three short years, it has helped hundreds, maybe even thousands of acts elevate their careers.
Everyone is looking at TikTok for music, meaning everyone selling music wants a piece of the action.
Ticketmaster and TikTok are partnering to launch an in-app feature that lets users discover events through the popular short-form video app. With this new partnership, TikTok users can buy tickets for events they’re interested in directly through TikTok. Creators can now search for relevant Ticketmaster events and add destination links to their videos. Ticketmaster says the new feature will only be available to select creators at launch and will scale to more users over time.
Eligible creators can now select the “Add link” option after tapping and selecting the new Ticketmaster option before posting a video. Creators can search for any event on Ticketmaster and select “Add to video” to add the link. Once creators share their video, it will display the event link on the bottom-left, allowing viewers to click and purchase tickets via an in-app browser.
Many artists and personalities have already signed on to begin using the ticketing mini app including Demi Lovato, OneRepublic, Usher, the Backstreet Boys, WWE and more, Ticketmaster says.
News of Ticketmaster’s partnership with TikTok comes less than six months after a similar partnership was launched with Snapchat. It’s clear the ticketing giant is staying atop trends in consumer behavior, but the adoption rate remains to be seen.
Would you purchase concert tickets on TikTok? Email james@haulix.com and let me know!
A recent trend on TikTok allows users to showcase their favorite artist’s best song, and fans can’t get enough.
Let me set the scene: You’re scrolling through TikTok when suddenly, a video featuring a lone human walking through a doorway as an unfamiliar song begins to play. They pass through the room, grabbing headphones or other objects, as their friends, family, or coworkers slowly circle them. As soon as the song kicks into high gear, the room goes dark but is quickly illuminated by flashing lights as the protagonist begins performing the song, backed by everyone else in the room. It’s the kind of rowdy moment that previously would’ve happened during a sleepover or late night with friends, but in the digital age, it’s called content, and people love to see it unfold.
The #StudioChallenge, which has been blowing up on the video-sharing app, is centered around people acting as if they’re about to record a song. It is usually started by someone walking into a room, dapping people up, and grabbing the necessary equipment they need to deliver their act.
What makes the #StudioChallenge unique is its format. Unlike most TikTok trends involving dances or other act-outs, this challenge does not rely on a specific song. Users can pick a song that makes them feel the most alive. The content they create is an extension of themselves and their tastes, which makes their commitment to the bit more convincing for viewers.
Here are a few examples of the challenge in action.
No marketing rep could have developed a more perfect promotional tool than the #StudioChallenge. Labels and artists want fans to use their songs in content. This challenge presents an opportunity to do so while putting the music front and center. For every viewer, one more person is hearing what is—most likely—one of the best moments in that artist’s catalog. That’s the perfect bait to hook a new listener, and it takes virtually no effort to execute.
As TikTok continues to evolve and music marketers place greater emphasis on navigating its vast community, we will likely see more trends with room for variety emerge. The age of song-specific dances and reenactments is slowly giving way to more personalized user-generated content (UGC).
Why artists need to pay attention
Your fans are on TikTok. Maybe not all of them, but you have a community of followers, and they are likely making content. You can sit idly by, hoping they use your music, or you can encourage them to take action. There are many ways to accomplish this, starting with competitions for the best video, but the key to your success will be engagement, not from outsiders but from you. Listeners want to know you notice them, and they want to interact with you. By engaging your TikTok audience, you encourage them to include you in future creative efforts.
But encouragement alone is not enough.
Every artist with the bandwidth to experiment on a new social network owes it to themselves and their audience to explore TikTok.
I’ve yet to see a rock or metal band participate in the #StudioChallenge, but it seems like an easy win.
Picture a band using the framework of the challenge to tease a new breakdown or highlight one of their biggest hooks. They can keep things simple and follow the blueprint or use their stage production to take the whole affair to an entirely new level. Either way, people will be hooked.
Take a chance on yourself.
It’s easy to understand why people hesitated to make video content three or four years ago. But it’s 2022, and the entire planet is spending free time scrolling through looping videos made by strangers. Everyone is doing it, and you should too!
I know, I know. This sounds like one of those” “if your friends jumped off a bridge” scenarios, but it’s not.
The cultural focus has shifted from still images and written word to video. The artists making waves of any size right now are doing so—at least in some small part—with the aid of video.
It’s no longer a question of “if” you need video content. You absolutely need it. The only question is, how creative are you?
From Facebook’s new revenue-sharing deal with musicians to Joni Mitchell’s return, we’ve gathered the biggest music news stories of the week.
Buckle up, everyone! The final full week of July 2022 was a whirlwind of news and activity. Maybe it’s because we’re nearing the busy fall release schedule, but free time is in short supply. The industry needs this fall to continue its successful recovery from the COVID-19 shutdown, but rising sickness rates—not to mention concerns over the MonkeyPox—have some analysts concerned. As for you and I, our only option is to keep on keeping on. At least we have one another!
We cannot ease your workload or give you more hours in the day, but we can help you stay informed. Below you’ll find the biggest stories of the week, all covered by the best outlets in tech and entertainment. Click around, learn what’s happening, and use the weekend to prepare for the end of the month.
But let’s be honest. There is no way we can hope to cover everything that happens. If you see a headline we missed that people need to know, please do not hesitate to send james@haulix.com an email. We’ll include your links in the next update.
Meta announced today that creators on Facebook can now earn money through their Facebook videos that use licensed music. The company is launching “Music Revenue Sharing” to allow video creators to include licensed music in their videos on Facebook and earn a share of in-stream ad revenue. The company says this opens up a new way for both creators and music rights holders to earn money. Although creators have been able to use licensed music in videos, they haven’t been able to monetize them until now.
With this new feature, whenever a creator uses licensed music in their videos on Facebook that are 60 seconds or longer, they can earn money on certain videos through in-stream ads. Creators will receive 20% revenue share on eligible videos, with a separate share going to rights holders and to Meta, though the company declined to share specifics.
Meta says Facebook Reels are not eligible for monetization through Music Revenue Sharing at this time. It’s possible that the company may expand Music Revenue Sharing to Reels in the future.
HarbourView Equity Partners, the global alternative asset management company founded by Sherrese Clarke Soares, has acquired the recorded music rights catalog of country star Brad Paisley and the publishing catalog of multi-Platinum band Lady A.
Paisley is one of the genre’s most decorated solo artists. Over the past 20 years, Paisley’s songwriting and showmanship have won him numerous awards, including three Grammys, two American Music Awards, 14 CMA Awards and 15 ACM Awards, among others. A member of the Grand Ole Opry since 2001, Paisley has written 21 of his 24 No. 1 hits, and became the first artist to achieve 10 consecutive Billboard Country Airplay No. 1 singles, amassing nearly 4 billion on-demand streams throughout his catalog.
Since their debut over a decade ago, Lady A has ushered more than 18 million album units, 34 million tracks sold, nearly five billion digital streams and 11 No. 1 hits. The trio, which consists of Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood, earned the biggest first week streams of their career with their No. 1 album Ocean. Known for their 9x Platinum hit “Need You Now,” which is the highest certified song by a country group, they have earned CMA Vocal Group of the Year trophies three years in a row, as well as five Grammy awards, Billboard Music Awards, and more, and were recently inducted as members of the Grand Ole Opry.
Since launching nine months ago, HarbourView has acquired over 35 catalogs to date. Paisley and Lady A are the first publicly announced catalog transactions in the country genre. Other catalogs HarbourView has acquired include Hollywood Undead, Dre & Vidal, and Luis Fonsi.
It’s not easy being one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. You’ve got to keep tweaking the formula to stay relevant for new audiences and against new competitors, but every change risks alienating some of those who use the app. Instagram’s been alienating stills photographers for some time buy betting big on video – particularly its TikTok-inspired Reels. But the social media giant has clearly decided this is where its future lies.
It’s just announced a raft of updates for Reels, which is going to make them even more ubiquitous. Almost all video posts will now automatically be shared in the Reels format whether users like it or not. And, unless you opt out, people will be able to use any of your public posts (including still images) in their own Reels. If you’re a creative who uses Instagram to promote your work but haven’t yet adopted Reels, now might be the time to get started with our Instagram Reels tutorial. Or if you’ve decided that you’ve had enough altogether, see how to delete an Instagram account.
Apple Music has raised the subscription price of its student plan in the US, UK, and Canada, as first reported by 9to5Mac (via TechCrunch). While it’s increasing the price from $4.99 to $5.99 / month in the US and Canada, student users in the UK can expect a similar jump from £4.99 to £5.99 / month.
Apple hasn’t acknowledged the changes yet, but the new pricing information is currently available on Apple Music’s webpage. Students subscribed to Apple Music have also started seeing the price increase on their iPhones and iPads’ subscription pages. It’s unclear when exactly Apple implemented these changes, but, as 9to5Mac points out, it was likely rolled out sometime between June 21st and the 23rd — an archived Apple Music webpage shows the old £4.99 student price on the 21st.APPLE QUIETLY UPPED THE SUBSCRIPTION PRICE FOR STUDENTS ACROSS SEVERAL COUNTRIES IN MAY
Apple Music’s student plan, which is reserved for those enrolled in a college or university, was previously the most affordable full-featured plan on offer. Pricing for the $9.99 / month individual and $14.99 / month family plans remain unchanged, and the same goes for the $4.99 / month voice plan. While students might look to the voice plan as a way to save an extra buck, it offers more limited access to Apple Music, as you can only control it through Siri.
Some of the celebrity guests at Joni Mitchell’s private hootenannies have sworn that she has been an enthusiastic participant in the living room sessions in her Santa Barbara-area home. But until now, most fans had to take these reports on faith. At the Newport Folk Festival on Sunday, an all-star Mitchell tribute concert proved to also include a surprisingly full-scale return to public singing by the star herself.
The 13-song “Joni Jam” had Mitchell getting by with a little help from guest vocalists Marcus Mumford, Celisse, Wynonna Judd, Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes and the organizer of the set, Brandi Carlile. But Mitchell was clearly the vocal star of the set as she took on numbers from classic originals “Both Sides Now,” “Big Yellow Taxi” and “The Circle Game” to a few of her favorite songs: “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” Gershwin’s “Summertime” and “Love Potion #9.”
While seated for most of the set — as were those around her, in an ensemble that also included Lucius, Allison Russell, Blake Mills, Shooter Jennings and Phil and Tim Hanseroth — she and the others stood for moments like an extended bit of guitar playing she did on “Just Like This Train.”
BeReal is the hottest social media app on the planet, and musicians everywhere are rushing to catch up.
The hardest thing to find on social media is people you know. Sounds crazy, right? Most started using social media to connect with family and friends, but it is increasingly clear that such connections are no longer the primary focus of most platforms. Twitter is where people go to scream into the void. Facebook is where your parents go to share photos from last Thanksgiving in between advertisements and random posts from that local restaurant you only ever engaged with for a one-time 10% discount. Even Instagram—the onetime hub of all things personal life—is pivoting more and more to resemble TikTok, a platform that emphasizes entertainment over individual connections.
BeReal may be a solution.
What Is BeReal?
As our friends at Hypebot succinctly explain, BeReal is a photo-sharing app that prompts users to post one unfiltered photo daily.
The app sends a push notification [⚠️ Time to BeReal. ⚠️] to all users at a random time daily. Users in the same time zone get it simultaneously and have two minutes to take a picture and share it with their followers.
BeReal uses the front and back cameras of the user’s phone to chronicle the user and what they are doing simultaneously.
In addition to the two-minute window, the app has no filters, thus forcing you to—you guessed it—BeReal.
New social media platforms rarely garner global attention, so that alone warrants giving BeReal a moment of consideration. Beyond that, the app has garnered more than 30 million downloads worldwide, many of which are Gen Z users. Analysts suspect this is due to an underlying need for genuine personal connection in an increasingly fragmented and filtered world.
How can BeReal help me?
BeReal offers all users the simplest path to recurring content creation.
Users do not worry about lighting, filters, or trending sounds. The only thing that matters is capturing the present moment.
For artists, that means a once-daily opportunity to share your activity with fans. No more, no less. The two minutes you have to capture a photo is all the effort you must put into remaining active on BeReal.
Compare that to expert suggestions that people on TikTok post multiple times daily, and BeReal suddenly likes far more appealing.
Let’s talk strategy. How do I maximize the impact of my presence?
To be clear: BeReal does not have native advertising.
There are no promoted posts or explore pages packed with influencer content meant to sell false ideas of high-quality fast food or overnight weight loss.
To succeed on BeReal, you must play by the rules.
In other words, be real. Be as real as humanly possible. Share your journey, warts and all, anytime the opportunity presents itself.
Chipotle is a great example. Most people wouldn’t suspect a fast-casual chain to participate in a filter-free social media world, but the burrito company is one of the biggest brands on BeReal.
Don’t you have any tips and tricks?
Serendipity is the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
BeReal may seek to capture the mundane, but your life is not mundane! Depending on when the prompt arrives, you may be able to capture tour life, studio life, the writing process, video shoots, or any one of a hundred important but small moments in your career. Those microdoses of your life and career will help your fans feel closer to you, and that bond will strengthen your community.
The best BeReal strategy is essentially no strategy. Be yourself. Be vulnerable like you are through your craft, and people will respond.
A new report from Luminate proves what analysts have been suspecting for some time: that popular music is no longer popular.
A midyear report by US market monitor Luminate—the same company behind the Billboard charts—has revealed the alarming fact that “new”/”current” music is becoming less popular in the country, and this statement can be backed up by facts and statistics, as first reported by Music Business Worldwide.
In the first half of 2022, Total Album Consumption (all streams and downloads, as well as physical album sales) of “Current” music (which means released in the 18 months before being streamed or purchased) dropped by 1.4% when compared to 2021.
With 131.3 million album sale-equivalent units reported for this year, “Current” music dropped almost 2 million units from the first half of 2021, which means that new music is not only selling less but is also being less popular in terms of streaming platforms. There was a drop of 3.7 between 2020 and 2021, which officially makes this a downward trend.
This tendency is opposed to the Total Album Consumption for “All” music in the US, which grew by 9.3% in comparison with 2021, standing at 475.4 million units sold.
Even more surprising is the news that “Catalog” music, which includes any release older than 18 months, grew by 14% in the year’s first half.
The report also found that “Current” music’s on-demand audio streams dropped by 2.6% this year, with an even more drastic decrease of 10.4% in video streaming platforms versus a 19% increase by “Catalog” music.
In his latest update, Music Biz host James Shotwell examines the possible contributing factors to our declining interest in current music. As he touches on the inherent lucrative nature of legacy acts, he also ponders who—if anyone—will become the next generation of “timeless” musicians.
A lack of blockbuster releases is potentially contributing to the decline in current music consumption. Over twenty fewer albums from the first half of 2022 debuted on the Billboard 200 chart compared to the same period in 2021.
The pandemic is another potential explanation. As the industry shut down, listeners turned to the artists and albums that brought them a sense of peace. So-called “comfort listening” became common while many big artists delayed their records until their teams could implement a more traditional promotional cycle.
There’s also a mathematical explanation. There is far more catalog music and much more written, created, shared, posted, and said about those artists and their material than anything released in the last 18 months. Even Harry Styles can’t outpace Paul McCartney when it comes to press.
But the problem we obsess over is two-fold.
The first is a lack of clear pathways to long-term industry success in the modern era. How does a new musician starting today become the next Aerosmith or Madonna? Will we ever see another world-changing talent like Elvis? Will they emerge from a platform like TikTok? Can streaming services create ecosystems that support sustaining one’s career and nurturing it into a long-term (decade-plus) run of success?
Until we can succinctly explain how anyone goes from unknown to arena headlining in 2022 (or 2023, etc), we as an industry have work to accomplish, which leads us to the second point:
Very few artists are afforded the support system or time needed to flourish nationally or internationally. The margins in music have become so slim that the slightest deviation from an upward trajectory can send any musician’s career into turmoil. Fans want more content than ever at a rate the traditional industry workflows were not designed to meet. When artists come alone and deliver on consumers’ expectations, they only have a short distance to grow before aging industry architecture prevents them from meaningful growth (in other words, festival appearances, world tours, radio promotion, physical distribution). A select few have found workarounds, but they are always exceptions to the rule, not the norm.
If we want people to care about new music more, we must do more to support it.
Go to your local Target tonight after work. When you get to the clothing section, scan the t-shirts to see which musicians are promoted on the shelves. Carrying rock band merchandise is still relatively new for the company, but it’s lucrative. Target stores nationwide often have a half dozen rock shirt designs for all ages and genders, if not more. But you’re unlikely to find anything resembling a current artist: no Post Malone shirts or Justin Bieber sweatpants. You won’t find anything related to Kendrick Lamar or Drake, but there will probably be at least one Wu-Tang Clan design.
The music section in Target or any other box store is equally bleak.
In everyday life, most people encountering music branding do so through legacy acts. Most kids of rock fans know “Welcome To The Jungle” and “Enter Sandman” before anything from the catalog of Shinedown or Three Days Grace (the two bands tied for the most #1 singles in modern rock radio history).
Music must celebrate its current successes with the same effort it does in its cornerstone acts. When that happens, maybe—and that is a big maybe—everyday people will also start to care about the new stuff.
From Springsteen’s ticket prices to a lack of interest in new music, we’ve gathered the biggest music news stories of the week.
July is chugging along, the hot temperature isn’t the only thing heating up. Artists from all walks of life are experiencing a boom of interest thanks to better weather, and professionals are hard at work making the most of the moment. Consider this a reminder to go outside and touch the grass. You deserve to feel the wind in your hair while your favorite songs play at a loud volume. Don’t let the consumer have all the fun.
We cannot ease your workload or give you more hours in the day, but we can help you stay informed. Below you’ll find the biggest stories of the week, all covered by the best outlets in tech and entertainment. Click around, learn what’s happening, and use the weekend to prepare for the end of the month.
But let’s be honest. There is no way we can hope to cover everything that happens. If you see a headline we missed that people need to know, please do not hesitate to send james@haulix.com an email. We’ll include your links in the next update.
Fans buying tickets for Bruce Springsteen’s US arena tour were shocked to find many seats halfway back in each venue selling for $4,000-5,000 and even less desirable seats priced at $1000-$2000.
These were not scalped or resale tickets, but rather primary tickets sold by Live Nation its owned ticketing company Ticketmaster and their new Platinum dynamic pricing system.
“Platinum” tickets, which can be placed by the promoter anywhere in the arena from the front section to the back rows, fluctuate in price much like an airline ticket in reaction to supply and demand.
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 has inked its first major label partnership with Warner Music Group, whose artists can now earn fan-powered royalties on the platform too.
Since the early 2000s, artists and record labels alike have struggled to figure out how musicians can make a living when it’s so easy to download .mp3s online. New models like music streaming on Spotify can feel like a stop-gap, though, since payouts from these services can be paltry if you’re not Lizzo or Olivia Rodrigo.
Spotify pays artists via a pro-rata model, which means there is a large pot of money that gets divided among all artists depending on how many streams they each get. But that means that the success of superstar musicians can inadvertently take away from the payouts of up-and-coming performers.
The user-centric model, or what SoundCloud calls fan-powered royalties (FPR), is designed to level the playing field for smaller artists.
Amid the endless gun violence in the United States, Pat Benatar is taking a stand by choosing not to sing her 1980 hit, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” on her current tour.
“We’re not doing ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot’ and fans are having a heart attack and I’m like, I’m sorry, in deference to the victims of the families of these mass shootings, I’m not singing it,” she said in a new interview with USA Today. “I tell them, if you want to hear the song, go home and listen to it. [The title] is tongue in cheek, but you have to draw the line. I can’t say those words out loud with a smile on my face, I just can’t. I’m not going to go on stage and soap box – I go to my legislators – but that’s my small contribution to protesting. I’m not going to sing it. Tough.”
The torrent of catalog acquisitions continues and this time, its BMG who announced it has acquired the entire music publishing back catalogue of pioneering French electronic musician Jean-Michel Jarre.
The deal includes the rights to Jarre’s classic hits such as Oxygene and Equinoxe along with Jarre’s writer’s income stream. The agreement expands upon BMG’s previous acquisition of the sound recordings for Jarre’s first three albums that came as part of their purchase of the indie label Francis Dreyfus Music in 2012.
A towering figure in the French electronic music scene, Jarre has generated 85m album sales over his career and has performed in front of some of the biggest audiences in history, including the Paris Bastille Day concert 1979 (1m people), Houston 1986 (1.3m people), Paris-La Défense 1990 (2.5m people) and Moscow 1997 (3.5m people).
“This partnership with BMG means a lot to me. Hartwig Masuch and the entire team have been part of my family for many years. Moreover, I am pleased that my publishing back catalogue is sheltered here in Europe and that my work will continue to grow in such good hands. Today is a new start allowing me to develop fresh ideas and giving me the means to explore new territories. Together we will thrive,” Jean-Michel Jarre said.
Music Business Worldwide reports on the results of this new mid-year report from Luminate, the market monitor formerly known as MRC Data/Nielsen Music. The report looks at a metric called total album consumption, which takes into account streams, downloads, and digital and physical music sales. According to Luminate, the consumption of new music — defined as anything that came out within the last 18 months — is down 1.4%, or about two million equivalent album-sales, compared to the first six months of 2021. This is during a time when total album consumption went up 9.3%. So it’s not just the market share of new music that’s going down; it’s the actual consumption of the stuff.
By contrast, consumption of catalog music, defined as anything that’s at least 18 months old, doing great; it’s up 14% compared to last year. Thus far in 2022, catalog music accounts for 72.4% of the market, compared to 27.6% for new stuff. Even with hyped-up new releases from big stars like Drake, the Weeknd, and Kendrick Lamar, new records just aren’t making the same kind of cultural impact.
There are a couple of other factors worth considering here. For one thing, a lot of the old music that’s doing well isn’t really that old; more than a third of that catalog consumption is of music that came out between 2017 and 2019. Also, streaming offers us a chance to see what people actually listen to, rather than just what they buy; in the pre-streaming era, these data collectors couldn’t tell if you were just listening to the old records that you already owned. And old music has always been popular; the Beatles’ 1 is still the biggest-selling album of the 21st century. Still, it’s pretty striking that nostalgic consumption is completely overwhelming the hunger for anything new.
The first step to winning fans and building a community on social media is knowing what to post and where to post it. We can help.
I don’t know of any artist making a living today without social media. They may not run it themselves, but every musician must have an online presence. More often than not, most musicians need multiple profiles spread across numerous platforms requiring all types of content in various sizes and shapes.
If you want to make the most of an Instagram account, for example, you need to know the following information:
Profile picture size
Photo thumbnail sizes for Story highlights
Photo and video sizes/aspect ratio for posts to a user’s feed
Photo and video sizes/aspect ratio for Instagram stories
Video sizes/aspect ratio for Instagram Reels
And that’s before we even discuss effectively marketing through the platform.
Between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, not to mention YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Linktree, Tumblr (it still exists), and the platforms we are no doubt forgetting, it’s practically impossible for anyone to remember every size and aspect ratio required to make high-quality posts everywhere an artist is expected to exist online. We know because we’ve tried it ourselves, and we bet you have.
We scoured the internet for the best guides to social media sizing, and to the surprise of nobody, countless examples exist. We tried to find the most straightforward, easy-to-follow options available and gather them here to live in perpetuity.
Facebook
Content
Size
Aspect Ratio
Facebook Profile Picture
400 x 400 px
1:1
Facebook Event Cover Photo
1920 x 1005 px
1.91:1
Facebook Group Cover Photo
1920 x 1005 px
1.91:1
Facebook Business Page Cover
1200 x 674 px
16:9
Facebook Profile Cover Photo
1125 x 633 px
2.7:1
Facebook Photo Post
1200 x 630 px
1.91:1
Facebook Video Post
1280 x 720 px
16:9
Facebook Linked Image
1200 x 630 px
1.91:1
Facebook Stories
1080 x 1920 px
9:16
Facebook “Our Story” Cover
1200 x 445 px
2.7:1
Facebook Ad (Carousel)
1080 x 1080 px
1:1
Facebook Ad (Single Image)
1200 x 628 px
1.91:1
Facebook Catalog Image
1080 x 1080
1:1
Instagram:
Type of Instagram Post
Aspect Ratio
Instagram Post Size
Square Photo
1:1
1080 x 1080px
Landscape Photo
1.91:1
1080 x 608px
Portrait Photo
4:5
1080 x 1350px
Instagram Stories
9:16
1080 x 1920px
Instagram Reels
9:16
1080 x 1920px
IGTV Cover Photo
1:1.55
420 x 654px
Instagram Square Video
1:1
1080x1080px
Instagram Landscape Video
1.91:1
1080x608px
Instagram Portrait Video
4:5
1080x1350px
Soundcloud:
GRAPHIC
SIZE
Profile Photo
1000 × 1000 px
Album Cover
800 × 800 px
Minimum Header
2480 × 520 px
TikTok
TikTok video dimensions should be 1080×1920. Aspect ratio: The aspect ratio should be that of a standard smartphone screen, 9:16. 1:1 is also possible, but it won’t take up the whole screen.
Twitch
GRAPHIC
SIZE
Profile Photo
800 × 800 px
Profile Banner
1920 × 480 px
Video Player Banner
1920 × 1080 px
Video Thumbnail
1280 × 720 px
Cover Image
380 × 1200 px
Info Panels
320 × 200 px
Twitter
Finding information about Twitter’s content options proves slightly more difficult than options for Facebook and Instagram.
Profile Photo: 400×400
Header Photo: 1500×500
Image from a Tweet with shared link: 1200 x 628 pixels
Tweet sharing a single image: 1200 x 675 pixels (recommended, but most images with standard aspect ratios will not be cropped)
Tweet sharing two images: 700 x 800 pixels (both images)
Tweet sharing three images:
Left image: 700 x 800 pixels
Right images: 1200 x 686 pixels
Tweet sharing four images: 1200 x 600 pixels (per image)
Four is the maximum number of images available on one Tweet
Recommended aspect ratio is 16:9.
Can edit images if tweeting from Twitter iOS or Android app.
Maximum file size of 5 MB for photos, and 5 MB for animated GIFs on mobile and 15 MB on web.
YouTube
TYPE
SIZE
Channel Icon
800 × 800 px
Channel Art
2560 × 1440 px
Desktop Display
2560 × 423 px
Tablet Display
1855 × 423 px
Desktop and Mobile Display
1546 × 423 px
Video Thumbnail
1280 × 720 px
Video Guidelines
Recommended dimensions: 426 x 240 (240p), 640 x 360 (360p), 854 x 480 (480p), 1280 x 720 (720p), 1920 x 1080 (1080p), 2560 x 1440 (1440p) and 3840 x 2160 (2160p).
Aspect ratio is 16:9 (auto adds pillarboxing if 4:3).
Max file size is 128GB or 12 hours, whichever is less.
Accepted video formats include: .MOV, .MPEG4, MP4, .AVI, .WMV, .MPEGPS, .FLV, 3GPP, and WebM.
