Music Industry notes

BLUE LIPS - TOVE LO Albums like Blue Lips are very important in the music industry at the moment.  Aesthetics are an on going playing card in the distribution of albums.  With both the actual imagery and the music Tove Lo is always creating a picture, almost an alternative world that's ever so dark and dreary, but romantic. Recently I have discovered Tove Lo's new album. This was one of those albums where as soon as I heard it, I connected with it and felt the urge to discuss it with everyone- hens the blog post. Tove Lo is huge in the music industry at the moment, not only as a successful chart topping pop artist but also as a songwriter.  She currently has 8,318,154 monthly listeners on spotify.  She was also a collab writer in one of my favourite Lorde tracks 'Homemade Dynamite.'  And personally I could really hear that Tove Lo was part of the writing process- with the up front, brutally honest vibe. I was very happy to realise that there was anothe

Unless you've been living under a rock when it comes to the news, you have probably heard about the lawsuit reports between alternative singer Lana Del Rey and alternative rock band Radiohead. This was of great interest to me as I am a big fan of each of these artists. Radiohead are requesting 100% publishing revenues of Lana's song 'Get Free' featuring on her new album 'Lust for Life.' This being because they claim that Lana's song uses the same melody and chord progression as their song 'Creep.' Lana has said in her recent Denver concert that it is a possibility the song will be removed from any future made physical copies of the album- however it was her 'personal manifesto' and she plans to live by the lyrics onwards from now.  Lana Del Rey tweeted her opinions: "Although I know my song wasn't inspired by Creep, Radiohead feel it was and want 100 per cent of the publishing – I offered up to 40 per cent over

One of my favourite new albums this year has been Kesha's new release Rainbow.  Kesha was unable to release music for 4 years prior to this album due to her court battle with Doctor Luke.  I was first excited about this album when I heard it's first single 'Praying.'  The lyrics really hit hard as I listened, knowing the context of the story and situation she was singing about.  Kesha sued Dr. Luke for sexual assault, and even worse- he countersued her for defamation.  The case was a huge event in the press and many other music artists backed up Kesha and feminism in the music industry.  The album contains a real mixture of songs.  Some tracks are similar to Kesha's original sound we all know her for such as the songs 'Woman', 'Boots' and 'Boogie feet.'  Others are emotional balads, containing some surprising influences from country and folk music into songs such as 'Spaceship' and 'Old Flames (can't hold a candle

What is streaming and how does it benefit the music industry? Streaming is listening to music via the internet through apps such as Spotify, Apple music and soundcloud.  When streaming music you are not downloading it in file format therefore there is an endless stream of data. The concept of legally streaming music has overall saved the music industry of today.  For example… Due to Apple music and Spotify reached 100 million paying subscribers last year which was a huge milestone for the industry as it means that artists and songwriters and finally starting to get fairly paid revenue for the streams of their music.  Artists such as Drake brought in 4.7 Billion streams last year, and spotify collected royalties from each and every one of these streams which was then handed to Universal Music Group.  Just from Drake’s streaming income Universal Music gained £1.1 Billion, so streaming is now seriously counteracting the worrying fall in sales of digital downloads a

Since December 2015 I have been a member on the infamous music streaming app Spotify.  I joined as my ambition for a career in the music industry was heightening rapidly, I was happy to start paying/signing up to subscriptions that were necessary for an aspiring music industry worker. For the first half a year that I was paying for Spotify, I was always unsure about keeping my subscription.  This is because although I very much enjoyed the experience of listening to new and old music offline for the first time, that was the only thing I would gain for £10.00 pm whilst all my other friends were getting the same thing illegally downloaded for free.   Of course it was brilliant to have so many albums available to me without the adds, but I fel t as such a famous music app, Spotify could of given a bit more features-wise. As another year went by and it was now the end of 2016, I noticed that a lot of my friends were now subscribed to Spotify or Apple music, no one was illegally down

Now that it is coming to the end of the year 2017, I am aware of which bands and artists have grown into my favourites over the year.  There has been a mixture of genres I have become a lot more aware of due to the positive influence of many different characters around me encouraging me to listen to new, more underground styles of music.  All of the people in my life have varied music tastes meaning that each year I have more and more influences.   I delved deeper into genres this year such as emo (and emo rap), rock, indie, blues, alternative R&/B/Hip Hop and even Tropical House just from being around fans of the genres and catching on to their interest. The first band I became a new fan of this year/end of last year is Wolf Alice ... Wolf Alice are a four-piece Australian alternative rock band who bring a completely new sound to the music scene.  Lead singer Ellie Rowsell has become a huge musical inspiration to me personally because her vocals at times are calming a