Backstage Promotion

01/05/2019

Swedish music-streaming service reports 32% growth in subscribers and 26% growth in total monthly active users, year over year

17/03/2019

Apple: "We feel an obligation to respond when Spotify wraps its financial motivations in misleading rhetoric."

20/02/2019

New research shows the musically unexpected activates the reward center of our brains, and makes us learn about the music as we listen - the first evidence that musically elicited reward prediction errors cause musical pleasure. It is also the first time an aesthetic reward such as music has been sh...

06/07/2018

Apple Music has now surpassed Spotify's US-based subscriber tally — and plans to widen the lead by Christmas. Here's the latest data.

11/06/2018

“Once you find yourself, maybe you’ve found your life’s playlists as well.”

According to new research commissioned by Deezer, one day, you'll be too bored to discover new artists and tracks to listen to.

17/07/2017

While streaming continues to bring in record revenue for major labels, most artists, like Beyonce and Guns N' Roses, make their money from concerts.

26/04/2017

26/04/2017

"A vi****or and a career, or a sexual partner and parenthood: That’s a choice The Beatles likely never had to make."

Women aren’t rejecting rock. Rock is rejecting women.

25/02/2017

"One amusing dynamic from a PR's perspective is when a band that has been slagged off by a title are then asked to cosy up with the very same magazine due to the now quite considerable market forces they have at their disposal. I remember one very famous rock act were asked to appear on a cover by an editor backstage at Glastonbury. The editor, who had previously written some highly entertaining yet totally damning copy on said band, now had to persuade them to sell some copies of his mag.
“Only if he gets down on his knees and begs!” said the lead singer. Dutifully, the editor got down on his knees and begged: “I want you to appear on the front cover.”
“Only if you say 'pretty please,'” the singer replied.
“Pretty please!”
The lead singer then turned on his heel with a “F*** off, pal!”
There have been many occasions where journalists have been courted however. I know of at least one PR company that would regularly insert little 'sweeteners' inside the record sleeves. I guess if your review copy arrives with a couple of grams inside, you might be more prone to bumping the album up a star or two. I believe it reaped some healthy results. Ying and most definitely yang."

From petty fights to bowls filled with white powder: an anonymous music PR lifts the lid on the secret side of the industry

17/01/2017

13/01/2017

“Promoters are interesting not simply in economic terms, but because the economics of promotion rests on the promoter’s ability to broker the relationship between musician and audience through the personal relationships they have with both.”

Why Concert Promoters Matter

11/01/2017

"This egocentric and essentially lonely aesthetic is shaped, though, by an equally passionate drive to share our musical tastes. Music has become more important too for our social in*******se, in gift relations and the understanding of collective identities, to intimacy and our reading of our own and other people’s feelings. Live musical performance matters, then, for two reasons. On the one hand, it is a public celebration of musical commitment, a deeply pleasurable event at which our understanding of ourselves through music is socially recog- nised. On the other hand, it is a site in which to explore - for ourselves - how performance works. And, of course, where there are social desires, there will be entrepreneurs - promoters, ready, at a price, to meet them."

Live Music Matters