Berklee’s Music Business Journal Talks Music Intelligence, Beyoncé, Beats vs. Spotify, Crowdfunding, and more!

Interested in learning about what’s been happening in the music industry lately? Look no further! Berklee’s Music Business Journal (MBJ) recently released its April issue! Led by intelligent and driven students at Berklee, the MBJ includes articles about diverse aspects of the world of music business. The MBJ explores issues including music streaming, the brains behind music discovery, and crowdfunding.

In the cover story, Editor-in-Chief Kyle Billings delves deep into the world of music intelligence. Billings discusses streaming services and how they see gold in the figures that fuel recommendation algorithms and content companies.  Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, and YouTube are only a fraction of many services running numbers to create playlists depending on the listeners’ moods and tastes. Since these streaming services are in competition with each other, recommendations are a desired commodity. The Echo Nest, an MIT startup from Cambridge, MA, is the leading provider of musical data that has nearly 1.2 trillion data points about the songs in its library. Billings talks further about data and content creation, and poses the question of whether or not tweets and scans can replace the ears of traditional A&R scouts. To read more on music intelligence and what the future holds for music discovery here.

Is a creative marketing campaign necessary to increase album sales? In the past year, we have had surprise and innovative album releases, which include Pharrell’s surprise album G I R L, Justin Timberlake’s release of two albums within a year, Jay-Z releasing Magna Carta Holy Grail through Samsung Galaxy devices, and, of course, Beyoncé’s unexpected self-titled “visual album,” exclusively available on iTunes. In “The Hit that Broke the Mold,” student Dan Servantes explores Beyoncé’s album release strategy and whether or not it is a viable album release model, as it is so contrary to the norm. Servantes discusses how the album was supposed to be about the music and the “art that occurs at the intersection of music and video.” However, because of her unique and creative release strategy, Beyoncé shifted the conversation towards her marketing strategy, rather than the content of the album. To delve deeper into the article to learn more about the retailers’ reaction and whether this strategy is repeatable for other artists, click here.

Another article in the MBJ compared new streaming service Beats Music with Spotify. John Lahr discusses the common features between the two services and how they differ. Both Beats Music and Spotify have a library of over 20 million songs to choose from. Beats Music, though, offers more advanced features when it comes to music discovery, in addition to providing better audio quality than Spotify. Beats Music also presents a different business model in being a paid only service. This is very different from the “Freemium” model services of Spotify and Rdio. Without this “Freemium” model, Beats Music hopes to make a profit early on rather than increase their cost of sales, like Spotify. Click here if you’re interested in reading more about the two streaming services. 

Are you a musician or entrepreneur hoping to raise money for an upcoming album or project? If yes, you’re in luck! Faculty advisor Peter Alhadeff and Luiz Augusto Buff published a paper on budgeting for crowdfunding rewards. The paper suggests a methodology on how to prepare a professional crowdfunding budget that includes taxes, service fees, and contingency arrears through the analysis of Kickstarter data.  The main takeaway from the paper is that it isn’t wise to ask for the exact amount you need, as there are other costs, which may include hidden fees and unforeseen expenses. Read more on budgeting for crowdfunding here.

This is only a small sample of what the April 2014 Music Business Journal has to offer, so check out the full issue here. If this issue sparks an interest in music business, you can browse through older articles at thembj.org!