The Digital Music News Podcast

Guenter Loibl and Nermina Mumic are trying to figure out a way to detect fraud and irregularities in royalty accounting statements.   I asked Guenter: how big of a problem is this iceberg? It's a lot bigger than we all think, he told me. Here's a discussion on what these guys have found, and how they're parsing though the data for errors using the latest data analytics methodologies.

Invest in the right music startup, and you're a billionaire.  Make the wrong bet, and you're out of $5 million (or in court for five years). But that's true for any investment risk involving new ideas and sectors.  So why are investors still gun-shy around music startups and concepts? I assembled three experts in Hamburg, Germany to help me answer this very topic. 

And if it's not one of these three startups, it will likely be one of their competitors. In this episode, we dive deeply into the future of live music with three entrepreneurs attacking decentralized music gigs (SofaConcerts), live performance content recognization (Flits Music), and music concert VR (Noys VR). All three have won startup awards and startup capital in Hamburg, Germany, where we conducted this roundtable. 

The number of streaming music subscribers is soaring: according to one report, more than 235 million will be paying for a streaming music service by the end of 2018. But most of those gains are happening in North America and Western Europe, while regions like Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East are seriously lagging behind. According to Oscar Castellano, CEO of Americas for Deezer, fewer than 5% of Latin Americans are paying for streaming. So who's going to figure out this monstrous opportunity? 

It's an argument with no right answers. Comparing Gloria Gaynor's 1978 smash "I Will Survive" against The Bee Gees "Stayin' Alive" from 1977 is like asking a parent to pick a favorite child.  And these are the indeed amongst the greatest offspring of Papa Disco.  

If you haven't heard of quadraphonic sound, join the club. The early-stage surround sound technology quietly died in the late 1970s, and was ultimately supplanted by innumerable other spatial audio technologies. So why is somebody bringing quad back? In this edition of the Digital Music News Podcast, audiophile/entrepreneur/tinkerer KamranV explained why he's bringing this retro technology back, and the process of releasing the first quad LP in nearly 40 years.

An Insanely Detailed Discussion About the Music Modernization Act

The public performance license generates $6 billion annually, according to Audiam founder Jeff Price, yet it's one of the most insanely complex and misunderstood revenue generators in the music industry.  In this episode, we talk to Scott Schreer, one of the most successful jingle writers in history - and one of the best people to talk to about this hair-brained license.

An epic face-off between two songs that almost completely destroyed hip hop.

"There are no rules for success," says Bibi McGill, leader of Beyonce’s band, Suga Mama. But these principles just might change your musical career. This is the person that Beyonce trusts to manage, direct, and coordinate her backing band on tour.   We asked Bibi how she became one of the top guitarists in the world today, not to mention a professional yogi and Beyonce’s collaborator. Here’s what she told us.

Oasis' "Wonderwall" vs. Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)": which is the most epic?  In this episode, Todd Nathanson and Danny Roth pick it all apart with scant facts and little hard data.

It's the most contentious music copyright battle of the past decade. And despite howls of protests from artists, the U.S. Court of Appeals just upheld a copyright infringement decision ordering Robin Thicke and Pharrell to pay millions in damages to the Marvin Gaye Estate for plagiarizing 'Blurred Lines'. But was that fair? We interviewed the lawyer for the Marvin Gaye Estate, who just scored the major victory against Thicke and Pharrell. We asked him: is this the first of many similar lawsuits ahead?