Friday, January 22, 2016

Adele Fastest To 1 Billion YouTube Views

Adele 1 Billion Views imageWhile everyone has marveled at Adele's physical sales power, her online video views are nothing to sneeze at either. Her "Hello" video has now been crowned the fastest to 1 billion views (that's with a "b") ever, reaching the landmark in just 88 days.

Psy's "Gangham Style" was the previous leader at 159 days, followed by Wiz Kahlifa's "See You Again" at 186 days, and Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" at 238 days.

"Hello" has been an online video powerhouse ever since it was released, hitting a record-breaking 27.7 million views within the first 24 hours, then hitting 100 million just 5 days later. The video has added around 10 million views a day almost every day of November and December.

Only 14 artists have songs that have reached the billion view mark, and most have taken anywhere from 6 months to 5 years to do so. Taylor Swift is the only artist to have 2 songs at the billion view level, with the other song being "Shake It Off."

This just goes to prove that a million views (or a million of anything) just isn't that much in our new Music 4.0 world. A song only becomes a hit when it reaches 50 million (and a minor hit at that), and a real hit at a 100 million. It's only the superstars that hit that coveted 1 billion mark.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Pollstar's Top 20 Club Venues

House of Blues BostonIf you ever wondered what the best clubs to play were, Pollstar has that info for you. Here are the top 20 clubs in the world according to attendance in 2015.

1. 302,211- House Of Blues, Boston Boston, MA

2. 287,085 - Webster Hall, New York, NY

3. 286,530 - Terminal 5, New York, NY

4. 258,323 - 9:30 Club, Washington, DC

5. 215,169 - Ancienne Belgique, Brussels, BELGIUM

6. 190,317 - The Wilbur, Boston, MA

7. 187,330 - The Pageant, St. Louis, MO

8. 183,335 - First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN

9. 162,080 - Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn, NY

10. 141,363 - Metropolis, Montreal, CANADA

11. 139,473 - Starland Ballroom, Sayreville, NJ

12. 137,293 - Arvest Bank Theatre At The Midland, Kansas City, MO

13. 136,830 - Ogden Theatre, Denver, CO

14. 136,662 - The Paramount, Huntington, NY

15. 135,850 - Roseland Theater, Portland, OR

16. 133,553 - The Joint @ Hard Rock Hotel / Casino, Las Vegas, NV

17. 130,641 - Cain’s Ballroom, Tulsa, OK

18. 130,262 - McMenamins Crystal Ballroom, Portland, OR

19. 126,477 - Stubb’s Bar-B-Q, Austin, TX

20. 121,140 - Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV

Take notice that there are only 2 clubs in the top 20 that are outside the US, and that New York has the most clubs in the area with 5.

It's also interesting that the top clubs are fairly well spread out around the country, with venues in Missouri, Minnesota and Oklahoma being represented.


Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Greacenote Automatically Sets Your Playback EQ

Dynamic EQ imageThe "Internet of Things" has everything in our lives connected, and while that might make it OK for your toaster to talk to your refrigerator, there are some things that many music listeners consider sacred.

That's why there's some initial backlash over Gracenote's new Dynamic EQ, which automatically shapes the EQ in your car for each song that the app detects.

This is actually a complicated piece of technology that measures everything in a song from frequency bands, beat density, tempo and 170 other factors, then assigns an EQ profile to it. These profiles are assigned to "buckets," or groups of 10 to 100 prominent recordings within a genre to determine a target EQ profile, which is then fine-tuned per song.

Gracenote's in-car software operates as a layer above the app that plays the music, so the EQ can be applied to any song coming from any source, such as Spotify, Apple Music, etc.

While this interesting piece of technology might be cool on the face of it, I still prefer to set my own EQ. The last thing I want is it changing with each song. Then again, I'm not the average listener, so Dynamic EQ may indeed be a welcome part of the future of listening.

What do you think?

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Old Albums Now Outsell Current Ones

Old albums outsell newAccording to the latest Nielsen report on the music business of 2015, catalog albums (defined as any album more than 18 months old) outsold newly released albums, which is the first time that's ever happened. That's even despite the huge sales numbers of Adele's 25.

In 2015, catalog albums sold 122.8 million units, while new albums sold 118.5 million, a drop of more than 9% from the previous year. Adele amount for around 7.5 million of those 118.5 million, which means that the figures would have been really lopsided had she waited until this year to release 25.

This is actually disturbing in that it means that new music is much less marketable than music of the past, a fact that will have A&R execs cringing in their boots.

It is good news for labels in general though, as they make far more profit from catalog sales than from current releases, since there's no production or marketing expenses involved.

If you really think about it, this really means is that we need a new trend in music, and the sooner the better.


Monday, January 18, 2016

Engineer Phil Rohr On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

I'm pleased to have engineer/producer/bass player Phil Rohr on my latest podcast. Phil specializes in recording both audiobooks and long distance (like from LA to Australia) film and TV ADR, a couple of jobs that few in the audio business are ever exposed to.

In the intro I'll discuss the passing of the legend David Bowie, and let you in on some of the amazing facts about the man and his recordings that I learned over the course of co-writing the Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust book with producer/engineer Ken Scott.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes, Stitcher and now on Mixcloud and Google Play.

Apple To Charge For iTunes Radio

iTunes Radio no longer freeI you like listening to iTunes Radio, it's going to cost you soon. Apple just announced that as of January 28th, the service will become part of Apple Music and will no longer be free.

The upside to this is that it will also become commercial-free, even though it didn't run many commercials in its free form at only 1 per 30 minutes or so.

This makes sense for Apple for a couple of reasons. First, it consolidates almost all of its programming under one a single Apple Music banner. Secondly, since the platform is beginning to gain some traction with paid subscribers, why give it away for free if people are willing to pay?

Of course this might have been the plan all along, with a merge of the free and paid services 6 months or so after Apple Music's launch (iTunes Radio has been around for a couple of years).

And artists, bands, songwriters, labels and publishers will rejoice as another free service bits the dust.

All that being said, Beats 1, it's ambitious world-wide radio station, will still remain free of charge.


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