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Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Welcome to Trakr!!


Welcome to Trakr!!

Here’s your monthly dose of what we at DigitalRadioTracker.com are finding interesting this month. Hope these articles help you improve your music industry life and your life in the world as a whole. And remember, DigitalRadioTracker.com can help you see where any song is being played, worldwide, at digital (internet) radio...and some terrestrial stations too, as an added plus!  Did we mention Worldwide??  Woo hoo!!

Allow the awesomeness to wash over you like a kid with a sled and brand new mittens on a snow day with no school.... 

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The Top 200 Most Influential Music Blogs Of 2019 Looking to get your music out there amongst the tastemakers? Well first you need amazing music, because contacting top blogs with mediocre recordings that get thousands of submissions a month never makes an impact. This is insider information from professionals working at the top of the music industry. And as the saying goes, “information is power”. https://artistdevelopmentandproduction.com/the-top-200-most-influential-music-blogs-of-2019/

The Economics Of Streaming Is Making Songs Shorter Popular music is shrinking. From 2013 to 2018, the average song on the Billboard Hot 100 fell from 3 minutes and 50 seconds to about 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Six percent of hit songs were 2 minutes 30 seconds or shorter in 2018, up from just 1% five years before. https://qz.com/1519823/is-spotify-making-songs-shorter/

Increase your Pandora plays with the Artist Audio Message Tool  How does an artist get people to listen to their music? It’s one of the most-asked questions of the streaming era. Streaming is a unique animal. Artists who grew up in the download era, and especially those old enough to remember selling CDs, are adjusting to a dramatically different way of reaching listeners. The same challenge also exists for the streaming generation that knows no CD sales. Your new music deserves to be heard. The trick is taking advantage of the right tools to reach the right listeners. https://diymusician.cdbaby.com/music-promotion/increase-pandora-plays-artist-audio-message-aam-tool/

Why Today's Artists Fail! A couple years back, I ended up sitting next to someone from Spotify on a flight to Austin for SxSW. I had no idea who she was at the time but decided to pick her brain for an article I was working on. Ironically, the article was about the possibility of streaming services replacing major labels. As we discussed the huge door that streaming services opened for independents, she made a statement that I totally agreed with but still found completely unnerving. https://www.makinitmag.com/blog/features/why-todays-artists-fail

How To Take Advantage Of Memes, Memes, Memes, Memes... As the realities of content and distribution continue to transform in the contemporary media economy, many artists and distributors have been forced to rethink their marketing strategy entirely. Here we look at memes have and could potentially be tapped as an effective marketing platform. https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/01/how-can-radio-stations-take-advantage-of-memes.html

Music And Lifestyle Companies Are Jockeying For Each Other's Audiences Who will win? As with many previous newsletters, I’m going to open today’s installment with a perspective from the startup and tech world. In their blog post “The Customer Acquisition Pricing Parade,” startup marketing experts David Perell and Nik Sharma argue that “digitally-native vertical brands”—i.e. direct-to-consumer retail brands like Allbirds, Away, Casper, Glossier and Warby Parker—will increasingly build and compete around audiences, rather than around industries. https://www.getrevue.co/profile/cheriehu42/issues/music-and-lifestyle-companies-are-jockeying-for-each-other-s-audiences-who-will-win-151191

The Price, Cost and Value of Digital Music  He laughs, recalling one student who announced, in a rehearsal, that an Andrew Hill record Moran had discussed was not available to stream. “I clapped in that moment and said ‘Yeah, how free do we think we are when we’re told that everything is in one place, and then when it’s not, we believe it doesn’t exist?’ That’s dangerous. It’s a death sentence.” New Amsterdam’s Brittelle adds: “We need people to understand that in order to keep going, we need more support than people just liking and streaming our music. We don’t want to have a divide in our thinking between someone who’s a fan, a donor, a friend. We want to try to merge all that together.” Douglas, meanwhile, reports that, at Greenleaf, his experimental model is working—to a point. http://downbeat.com/news/detail/the-price-cost-value-of-digital-music/P2

Is Spotify’s Model Wiping Out Music’s Middle Class? Among the glut of lists on the internet toward the end of last year, Spotify’s Wrapped 2018 broke through, perhaps landing on more social media feeds than any other. Instagram-ready graphics detailing every user’s most streamed songs and artists became empirical proof of fandom, a dorm-room poster for the digital age. Artists got in on the action, too, sharing their own versions of the Wrapped graphic with data on total streams, number of listeners, and the countries where those listeners resided. The data collectively reinforced the power of Spotify’s brand: It’s global, it’s personalized, and it’s increasingly omnipresent. https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/1/16/18184314/spotify-music-streaming-service-royalty-payout-model

5 Things You’re Not Doing Right With Music Hashtags On Instagram By now, social media has become important and widespread enough that everyone understands what hashtags are what that they do, but there are still plenty of people who don’t fully grasp what they should and should not be doing when it comes to the Instagram add-ons. Here’s a quick look at five things you might not be doing quite right with hashtags on Instagram, how you can be better, and why any of this matters at all. http://blog.sonicbids.com/music-hashtags-instagram

Deezer's New App Serves Up 30,000 Radio Stations For Free Deezer has unveiled a new app that will give users access to 30,000 radio stations around the world. "Radio by Deezer," only available on Android in the UK for now, offers up music, live sports, news and talk, including stations like BBC Radio, Classic FM and talkSport. All of that is served up without any ads, apart from those on the radio stations themselves. https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/16/radio-by-deezer-30000-stations-uk/

Album-Merch Bundles Don’t Make Much Money, But Rappers Like Them Anyway Bundling has become increasingly pervasive, even on a modest scale. The goal is to boost both chart position — Billboard counts bundled sales in many cases — and revenue: In the streaming era, the margin on selling music has shrunk, but there is still profit to be made from selling clothing. But some artists are bundling albums with merchandise at such low prices that it’s hard to see how they’re making any money at all. Minaj, for example, was selling a T-shirt and album bundle for $15. “Let’s say for $15, you’re selling the album for the lowest retail price of $6.99 and then the T-shirt — at cost — is what, $5?” asks Amir Kashani, co-founder of media and strategy consultancy Salt + Vinegar https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/album-merch-bundles-dont-make-much-money-but-rappers-like-them-anyway-776067/

The Liberation of Music Sampling Today’s music makers are inspired by the music of the past. They want to use small parts of older recordings in the music they are making today. Unfortunately, the slow, expensive, and difficult sample clearance process has forced today’s music makers to re-record similar sounding song sections, use samples without permission or rights, or skip sampling altogether. This robs the original artists and songwriters of both their share of recognition and revenue for the contribution they made to the future of music. https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/01/the-liberation-of-music-sampling-op-ed.html

7digital Deputy CEO Talks Music And ‘The Rise Of The Super Aggregator’ The music industry may be enjoying its return to growth fueled by streaming subscriptions, but it should not get carried away. That warning came from Pete Downton, deputy CEO at 7digital, speaking at Music Ally and Music Biz’s NY:LON Connect conference in London yesterday. “Whilst it may feel like a wonderful time in the music industry – we are in a period of growth – but everything is relative,” he said, showing a chart that emphasised how recorded-music revenues are still a long way from their peak in the mid-1990s. https://musically.com/2019/01/23/7digital-deputy-ceo-talks-music-and-the-rise-of-the-super-aggregator/

Warren Buffett: “Really Successful People Say No To Almost Everything"  When I tell people that Warren Buffett follows the 5-Hour Rule and spends 80% of his time reading and thinking, they have an immediate and predictable reaction: “Well, he can do that because he’s Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in the world. I could never do that.” While this response may help people feel better about themselves, it certainly won’t make them smarter. Because the reality is: Buffett has spent most of his time reading and thinking since he was in grade school. Having more money or managing a large company doesn’t magically give you free time. https://medium.com/accelerated-intelligence/warren-buffett-really-successful-people-say-no-to-almost-everything-ab78832ffebc

400 free Ivy League university courses you can take online in 2019 The eight Ivy League schools are among the most prestigious colleges in the world. They include Brown, Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale, and Columbia universities, and the University of Pennsylvania. All eight schools place in the top fifteen of the US News and World Report 2017 national university rankings https://qz.com/1514408/400-free-ivy-league-university-courses-you-can-take-online-in-2019/


Thanks for tuning in to this month’s DRT feeding of your mind!  Remember, DigitalRadioTracker.com is the leading broadcast monitoring company in the world that monitors Internet Radio stations streaming in cars, smart TV’s, smart refrigerators, airplanes, cell phones, tablets and other electronic devices such as smart speakers like Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod, & Google Home.
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DigitalRadioTracker.com  is committed to this newsletter, Trakr, as a way of sharing helpful industry information and useful ideas to help our music community be the best we can be as recording artists, songwriters, producers, musicians, publishers, industry professionals, etc. 

DigitalRadioTracker.com exclusively monitors and provides personalized and individual DRT Reports for artists and songs from over 5,000 radio stations, internationally, with a focus on digital radio airplay.  The DRT Global Charts excel for marketing, promoting and supplying information for growth.  Trakr keeps its viewers informed as to industry changes impacting airplay and revenue through other related links.  We thank you for tuning-in and look forward to your continued interest. 

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Thursday, January 17, 2019

Tanya Wills Quartet


promo packshot
Artist: Tanya Wills Quartet
Title: It's Time
Genre: Vocal Jazz
Label: Indie

Tanya Wills is a Toronto based Jazz singer.
With the TANYA WILLS QUARTET she brings her sensual and evocative sound to this album with three of her favourite gentlemen – master musicians, Bill Bridges, Jordan Klapman and Ron Johnston.

Tanya’s repertoire ranges from European Cabaret, to the Great American Songbook to contemporary pieces, including original works.

www.tanyawills.ca