ESMG Crew

Billboard Magazine recently posted the Nielsen Soundscan year-end 2013 music sales numbers, and while they may not correspond exactly with the upcoming figures from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) or IFPI (International Federation of the Phonograph Industry), I don’t think they’re far off the mark. I’m sure music execs everywhere are looking at the stats and wringing their hands, and in some ways, they should be, because it’s the first year since iTunes was introduced that digital music has suffered a decline.

In what should be a huge red flag for the industry, 2013 digital track sales fell 5.7% from 1.34 billion units to 1.26 billion. Soundscan hasn’t yet released their streaming numbers for the year, but it should be clear to everyone that streaming is the reason for the downturn. In fact, it’s been widely noted that the digital download sales decline has been offset by the rise in streaming income, which we should see quantified when the numbers are made available.

Perhaps a larger problem is that the album, the cash cow of the industry (although less so than ever), has seen its sales decline for yet another year. Album sales for 2014 dipped to 289.4 million units, an 8.4% reduction from the prior year, although digital album sales fell a nominal 0.1% to 117.6 units from the previous year’s 117.7 million.

We’re in the era of the single song, as albums mean less and less to today’s consumers. It’s a different time where the attention span is much shorter, multitasking abounds, and there are more media choices than ever, which are less than ideal conditions for a medium that requires a long time commitment. Albums won’t die, but hopefully they’ll be altered for the times, with fewer songs and less running time. That’s not going to bring the format back to prominence, but it might slow its decline. This is one time where quality trumps quantity for sure.

“Of course we all knew that CD sales would fall again, the question was only by how much.”

Of course we all knew that CD sales would fall again, the question was only by how much. Last year the sales of that round piece of shinny plastic was down 14.5% to 165.4 million units. Keep in mind that these were only the units that Soundscan could count. The number of CDs that are directly sold by artists at gigs, events and online is unknown and could easily push that total considerably higher.

But who’s selling these albums? In the end, it’s still the same players, but the marketshare has shifted a bit. iTunes gained slightly to 40.6% last year, while the big retailers Target and Walmart declined to around 27%, Best Buy and Trans World to 13.5%, and mom and pop retailers down to 6.3%. Non-traditional retailers like Amazon and Starbucks are the only ones that saw an increase to 12.6%.

About the only format besides streaming that showed any growth was the vinyl LP, which grew last year by 32% from 4.55 million units to 6 million units. Save your cheering though, since those numbers, while now about 2% of all album sales, are still insignificant to the industry at large. No matter how much growth the format shows, vinyl will not energize the business.

“While people don’t need music to live, they need it all the same.”

So should the music industry be worried? In a word, no. While people don’t need music to live, they need it all the same. It’s in our DNA and we’re always going to consume it in one form or another. What we see now is the business morphing as music streaming becomes the consumption method of choice for listeners. It seems like just yesterday we were living through the first digital music revolution; keep your eyes open because we’re living it again.

Believe it or not, a new drug has been developed that helps you achieve perfect pitch. A new study published in Frontiers shows that the FDA-approved drug Valproate, which is normally used as an anticonvulsant and mood stabilizer for epilepsy, anorexia, migraine, and post traumatic stress disorder, really has such a unique unexpected affect.

Researchers from the US, the UK, Canada and France gave the drug to adult men who were then able to identify pitches they couldn’t previously, after first experimenting on mice. Now how they could tell if the mice had perfect pitch is beyond me, but the human tests seem pretty impressive.

In case you’re wondering, perfect pitch (absolute pitch is the scientific term) is the ability to identify a musical pitch without a reference point, and only .01% of the general population has it. It’s also been discovered that it’s usually acquired by those who begin musical training by age 6, although it can be genetically transmitted as well.

Valproate is like most drugs in that it does have some unpleasant side effects unfortunately. Users can suffer from tiredness, tremor, sedation, gastrointestinal disturbances, and about 10% experience reversible hair loss.

So now the question – Would you take a drug that would give you perfect pitch, given the potential side effects?

Read more: http://bobbyowsinski.blogspot.com/2014/01/would-you-take-perfect-pitch-drug.html#ixzz2pjhTyeEC

As the current year slowly grinds to a soft and mellow halt, it’s a good time to gaze into the crystal ball to see what possibilities the music business might have in store for us in 2014. Here are nine predictions for the upcoming year (in no particular order) that are anything but safe, but are still based on the events that 2013 bestowed upon us.

1. The tipping point finally comes for streaming music. Users discover the convenience of streaming as more and more convert to paid subscriptions. New streaming services cause confusion in the marketplace at first, but there are clear winners and losers by the end of the year.

2. Spotify turns a profit. The company fights off advances from new and old competition alike as it expands its global footprint and increases its active users. The service finally becomes barely profitable by year’s end.

3. Musicians earn more, complain less. As the number of streaming users grow, artists and songwriters discover that those hundredths of a cent payments are actually adding up into real money. Plus, with new streaming services coming online, money flows from more sources than before, causing more smiles than frowns.

4. And they concentrate on YouTube. Record labels discovered YouTube as a revenue source in 2013, musicians and songwriters discover it in 2014, as they monetize their channels either manually or via multichannel networks, and post more videos in order to create a new revenue stream.

5. The major labels hire out their services. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis set the precedent of hiring the radio promo services of Warner Music Group for a small piece of the action. In 2014, more indie artists will try the same strategy as major labels decide that a small piece of the pie is better than none.

6. Las Vegas music residencies run their course. Britney Spears brings an end to the trend as she starts out strong, then falters badly, making artists and casinos alike think twice about giving it a try in the future.

7. One indie label starts to look like a new major. An indie label will gather enough market strength to begin the challenge for the title of the fourth major label. The three existing major labels take their eye off the ball with their own artists in order to fight the new threat, leaving open the door for even more competition from other indie labels that grow larger by the month.

8. Musicians online marketing expands to new platforms and away from old. Acts that cater to a sub-age 21 audience switch their efforts away from Facebook and Twitter to lessor known networks like Snapchat, Instagram, Ask.fm, WeChat, and Vine to follow their audiences. The major social networks continue to grow steadily in the first half of the year, but seem like they’ve peaked by the end.

9. The next new trend in music surfaces. While EDM stays strong with its core audience, it’s influence on music begins to decrease as the next trend in music starts to take hold toward the end of the year. As always, the trend begins underground and gestates, but comes to the public forefront more quickly than usual, as artists who’s careers are based on older genres see their popularity begin to wane in favor of the latest flavor.

Yes, some of these predictions are far out, but more than you think actually have a chance of occurring. Crystal balls are always somewhat foggy, and they’re difficult to successfully gaze even with glasses (or Google GOOG -0.81% Glass for that matter). We’ll just have to wait until this time next year to see how these predictions turn out.

Vibe Magazine recently released outtakes of a 2013 interview with Drake in which he speaks on his approach to making music and the viability of concept albums in Hip Hop.

“I feel like the music that I write is utilized in life,” he said. “It would be tough for me to go in conceptual storytelling. The last great concept album was [Kendrick Lamar’s] good kid, m.A.A.d city—still obviously true to his life but very conceptual. Very specific stories that need to be told. I always say hats off to that album. That album’s incredible, what an undertaking. For me, I would never want to be restricted to that.”

Drake, who released his third album, Nothing Was The Same, in September, added that he looks at that effort in a similar light. “I feel like I just made a concept album about a kid from Toronto that’s on,” he said. “I’m not good at telling fictional stories, so I would never be able to do that. There are rappers that are good at telling stories about people that aren’t themselves. There are people that have vast imaginations to go and make up a story just to achieve a point. I draw off life experiences.”

Vibe’s interview also finds the emcee vaguely referencing the possibility of a new album and commenting on his lack of social media activity. “I think the next album I do is gonna be different,” he said, “I don’t know if I’ll necessarily return to family stuff and stuff that I feel I really summed up well on Nothing Was The Same. The problem is I don’t participate too much in social media, so my music is always the update that you’re looking for in my life. Twitter is not my outlet to get my message out there. My outlet is the music so my music always ends up becoming my life. I don’t know how to stop that.”

Given his comments that his music are drawn from lived experiences, Drake also talked briefly about his state-of-mind with respect to each album he’s released. “20-whatever years to make So Far Gone, then one year to make Thank Me Later,” he said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, let me get a bunch of features and make some good music.’

“I went back home and wrote Take Care, got influenced by the city but I was in a dark place,” he added in reference to his second album. “I don’t know if I was coming back home with the best energy in the world. I was coming off a record where I loved that album with all my heart but I knew I wanted to do better. I was just getting more money than I had ever seen. I was like in this indulgent state of mind. It was a weird time for me.”

Ending with a note on his latest album, Drake referred to Nothing Was The Same as his “first time [having] no strife.” “This album is probably the most aware of self that I’ve ever been,” he said. “I did this album all over the place but for the first time have no strife. I’m here. I’m gonna own this now.”

Drake recently released a song pulled from the Nothing Was The Same sessions called “Trophies.” The Hit-Boy produced track was used in a preview for the album though only released in full shortly before the New Year.

[HipHopDX]

1. Triad Orbit Mic Stands: Mic stand technology has remained pretty stagnant for 50 years or so until the Triad Orbit articulating mic stands were introduced. What makes the Triad-Orbit stands different is that each leg of the base has four ratcheted positions that provide up to 65 degrees of pitch. The Orbital boom is built around a stainless steel ball swivel mechanism to deliver a very wide range of motion (360 x 220 degrees), and the Orbital 2 boom is also way different than anything you’ve seen since it’s basically 2 booms on one stand. Triad Orbit stands aren’t cheap at $179 for a standard stand, $139 for the standard arm boom and $259 for the dual boom, but they’re built like tanks and very well may last a lifetime.

2. SoundRadix SurferEQ: Here’s an idea that could totally change the way we think about equalization. The SoundRadix SurferEQ plugin is different from other equalizers in that it tracks the pitch of an instrument or vocal and changes the EQ on the fly, staying relevant to the music or program.
SurferEQ uses a real-time pitch detection engine that triggers a low pass, high pass, bell, shape or harmonic filter (that’s a new one) to make sure that the EQ is working at the right frequency during the song. It’s available for Mac or PC in RTAS, VST and AU, and retails for $199.

3. Apple Logic Pro X: The latest version of Logic may not overtake Pro Tools in the pro world, but there not much that can beat it when it comes to creating music. There’s a lot to like in this new version, including a new streamlined look, a new collection of virtual instruments (including the incredible virtual Drummer, with sounds from Bob Clearmountain), built-in pitch correction and remote control from an iPad. Best of all, Logic Pro X is only $199

4. Sennheiser Laser Drum Mics: This isn’t actually a product yet, but just the idea of it gets points for innovation. Actually, the laser mic is a misnomer. It’s actually a laser mic clip for Sennheiser’s e904 and e604 clip-on mics that’s the innovative piece. By placing a laser and a sensor in the mic clip, the laser can then precisely measure when the drum head is struck and open up a noise gate, so what you’re actually hearing is a laser-controlled mic (we’ll get to those real “laser mics” someday soon, as this is the just a glimpse into the future).

The laser drum clips are still in the prototype stage, so there’s no pricing yet, but you can see and hear how well they work in this video.

5. UAD Ocean Way Studios Plugin: The Ocean Way Studios plugin takes room simulation to the next step by modeling the sound of two of the studio’s famous Bill Putnum-designed tracking rooms (Putnam was the original owner of both United Studios (now Ocean Way) and Universal Audio when it manufactured hardware starting back in the 1960s. Bill Putnam jr. runs Universal Audio today). You’re able to choose from a number of Ocean Way owner Allen Sides’ great vintage mic emulations and place them any distance in the room, as well as mix and EQ multiple combination of mics.

This could be a great addition to a home studio owner who only has a small room to record in, but wants it to realistically sound like a larger one – and with the Ocean Way sound to boot. The Universal Audio Ocean Way Studios plugin works on the UAD platform and can be purchased for $279.

Winter NAMM is coming up in less than a month, and I’ll probably have a new list afterward, but for now, this list above are the products that caught my attention in 2013.