Gifts Under a Grand 2024Boss Katana Artist Gen 3 1 x 12-inch 100-watt Combo AmplifierThe BOSS Katana Artist Gen 3 leads the charge of BOSS’s revamped line of Katana amplifiers, taking the series to fresh new sonic heights complete with the company’s evolved Tube Logic technology. This 100-watt, 12-inch combo amplifier is equipped with a sweeping sonic arsenal of six amplifier voices (including a new Pushed voice), six voice variations, and the Gen 3 addition of a Bloom switch to sharpen up your sound. boss.info $599.99 Fender Player II Stratocaster HSS Electric GuitarThe Player II Stratocaster HSS is a stage-ready guitar with contemporary updates to power your performance and inspire your playing. Features include a contoured alder, chambered ash or chambered mahogany Body, modern "C" neck profile, and 9.5“-radius maple or rosewood fingerboard with rolled edges. fender.com$929Roland JUNO-D6 61-key SynthesizerFeature-packed and ready to rock, Roland’s next-generation JUNO-D is a sleek synthesizer that’s ideal for working keyboardists who need instant access to a vast library of professional-grade sounds in a lightweight, budget-friendly instrument. Powered by Roland’s flagship-class ZEN-Core engine, JUNO-D provides a massive arsenal of sounds for instant deployment—plus the expansion opportunities of Sound Packs and Wave Expansions on Roland Cloud. roland.com$899.99Joe Bonamassa 1955 Les Paul Standard Copper IridescentThe Epiphone Joe Bonamassa 1955 Les Paul Standard was inspired by one of Joe’s rarer finds: a 1955 Les Paul Standard he nicknamed “The Brown Thing.” The original axe is a prime mid-’50s specimen, boasting typical Les Paul Standard specs, including P-90 pickups and a custom iridescent finish. epiphone.com$849Radial Nuance Select Studio Monitor ControllerThe Nuance Select is Radial’s flagship studio monitor controller, offering a sleek and ergonomic design with extremely low distortion for complete transparency. The result is a pristine signal path for seamless switching between two audio sources and two sets of powered speakers. radialeng.com$699.99Walrus Audio Mako MKII ACS1 Amp and Cab Simulator PedalEquipped with true-to-life amp models, pro-designed cab IRs, and truckloads of performance-ready features, the Walrus Audio Mako MKII ACS1 packs a full-fledged guitar rig into a compact, easy-to-use a stompbox. The MKII ACS1 contains Fender-style cleans, Marshall-flavored crunch, and Vox-flavored chime, plus three additional high-gain models, putting a total of six fan-favorite sonic options at your feet.  walrusaudio.com$449.99Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 4th Gen USB Audio InterfaceThe fourth-generation Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 offers a significant upgrade over previous generations, boasting updated mic preamps, RedNet-derived AD/DA conversion, Auto Gain and Clip Safe features, a Dynamic Metering display, and more. This 18-in/20-out USB-C audio interface includes guitar-friendly hi-Z inputs, a custom-designed headphone amp, loopback, Focusrite's acclaimed Air Mode, and enough outputs to accommodate two sets of studio monitors or your favorite piece of outboard gear. focusrite.com$649.99Fender Player II Jazz Bass Fenders Player II Jazz Bass radiates timeless Fender charm, but under the hood, it's primed for today's players. Everything about the neck is designed for fast and fluid playability, from the Modern “C”-profile with silky satin urethane finish on the back to the comfy 9.5”-radius slab rosewood or maple fingerboard with smooth rolled edges and 20 medium jumbo frets. A classic alder body is available in both timeless Fender finishes and never-before-seen colors unearthed from the archives. Player Series Alnico V Single-Coil J bass® pickups offer sweet highs, growling mids and seismic lows that elevate any genre. fender.com$799.99JBL IRX OneBoasting legendary JBL fidelity and performance, IRX ONE utilizes concert line array-inspired directivity control, resulting in a custom-tuned, C-shaped array. Featuring six 2” high-frequency drivers, the array delivers rich clarity, a wide sweet spot and seamless front-to-back coverage. The advanced 8” woofer features a bass-reflex design that ensures low-frequency response down to 40 Hz. jbl.com$699Alesis Nitro Max Mesh Electronic Drum SetNitro Max raises the bar for both beginner and more advanced drummers, delivering an authentic playing experience with ultra-quiet Alesis mesh drum heads, all in a compact design. Featuring 32 different kits from the renowned BFD drum sample library, Nitro Max offers seamless play along with music streaming services via Bluetooth, a host of built-in learning features, and three months of Drumeo for unlimited lessons.  alesis.com$399AEA R92 Ribbon MicrophoneOffering a classic ribbon character in the form of a near-field, the dual-tone R92 functions as a versatile creative tool with innumerable possibilities. Similar in sound to the AEA R84, but with a more pronounced midrange and minimized proximity effect, the R92 performs brilliantly when up close to brass, guitar amps, kick drum, and percussion. aearibbonmics.com$989Universal Audio Enigmatic '82 Overdrive Special Amplifier PedalBuilt on powerful dual engine processing and world-class UAD modeling, Enigmatic ‘82 Overdrive Special Amp gives guitarists the mythical "D style" tube tones made famous by John Mayer, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robben Ford, Larry Carlton, Joe Bonamassa, and Carlos Santana. uaudio.com$399Audigo Wireless mic and iOS appAudigo is the first of its kind integrated solution—a high quality midside smart microphone, an audio+video iPhone app, and bundled cloud services that create a streamlined mobile multitrack recording solution that works anywhere your creativity strikes—not to mention can effortlessly increase the overall audio quality of iPhone videos. audigolabs.com$449Arturia KeyLab 61 mk3 61-key Keyboard ControllerArturia’s KeyLab mk3 is an advanced MIDI controller designed to meet the demands of professional use and integrate seamlessly with software and hardware instruments. With a pro-grade semi-weighted keybed, touch-sensitive controls and innovative creative features encased in a durable, high-quality construction, discover a keyboard built without compromise that musicians can rely on at every turn. arturia.com$549The post Gifts Under a Grand 2024 first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Believe unveils new leadership structure in MENA regionLiliana Abudalo appointed Head of Label & Artist Solutions, MENA and Celine Hitti named Head of Artist Services, MENA
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Warner’s ADA appoints Rasti Sryantoro to head up Indonesia, Arisa Maruekatat to lead Thailand, inks deals with DPM, GMM Music“Expanding our operations in Indonesia and Thailand is a crucial step in our strategy to empower artists and elevate their music on the world stage"
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Bandsintown’s Fabrice Sergent joins NIVA Advisory BoardBandsintown's Fabrice Sergent joins the NIVA Advisory Board expanding on the collaboration that launched the innovative Live Independent certification and marketing initiative earlier this year.
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Music Streaming Fraud Guide For ArtistsMusic streaming fraud is a growing issue that can derail a career. Learn how to recognize, prevent, and protect from fraudulent practices with this music streaming fraud guide for artists.. Continue reading
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2024 Music Trends: Deezer shares data ahead of Spotify WrappedDeezer unveils 2024 music trends, top artists, songs and albums of the year with the release of My Deezer Year. Explore the data shaping the future of music.
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2025 P&E Wing GRAMMY Week Celebration to Honor Jimmy DouglassOn Wed, Jan. 29, 2025, the Recording Academy® Producers & Engineers Wing® will honor producer, engineer, mixer, and five-time GRAMMY® winner Jimmy Douglass at its annual GRAMMY Week Celebration. Also known as “The Senator,” Douglass’ prolific career spans over four decades, and his credits include musical icons like Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones and Roxy Music, as well as a partnership with four-time GRAMMY winner Timbaland that led to award-winning projects by Aaliyah, Missy Elliott, John Legend, Justin Timberlake, and more. The P&E Wing GRAMMY Week Celebration will take place at The Preserve LA in East Hollywood and will salute Douglass’ accomplishments and impact on the music industry.“Our P&E Wing proudly celebrates GRAMMY Week each year with a special evening that unites producers, engineers and artistic professionals to honor a truly deserving creator,” said Harvey Mason jr., CEO of the Recording Academy. “This year, we’re thrilled to pay tribute to the extraordinary Jimmy Douglass, who has led groundbreaking creative and technical efforts in the recording industry, encouraging artists to transcend genre boundaries and contributing to iconic musical projects that will resonate for generations.”“Throughout his illustrious career spanning more than four decades, Jimmy’s visionary approach to producing, engineering and mixing has shaped some of music’s most iconic recordings. Jimmy consistently pushes the boundaries of sound by bringing unconventional techniques into the studio while inspiring countless artists along the way,” said Maureen Droney, Vice President of the Producers & Engineers Wing. “On behalf of the Producers & Engineers Wing, we are delighted to dedicate our 2025 event to Jimmy and his amazing career.”Along with paying homage to Douglass, the event will also celebrate the year-round work of the Producers & Engineers Wing and its members, who work together to advise the Recording Academy on technical best practices, advocate for the rights of music creators, and shape the future of the recording field.GRAMMY Week culminates with the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards® at Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena on Sun, Feb. 2, 2025, broadcasting live on the CBS Television Network and streaming live and on-demand on Paramount+ at 8-11:30 p.m. ET/5-8:30 p.m. PT. Prior to the Telecast, the GRAMMY Awards Premiere Ceremony® will be held at the Peacock Theater at 12:30 p.m. PT and will be streamed live on live.GRAMMY.com and the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel. The post 2025 P&E Wing GRAMMY Week Celebration to Honor Jimmy Douglass first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Concord unveils inaugural advisory boardDarien Dash, Marc Geiger, Tom Whalley and Jake Wisely will be among the members of the advisory board headed up by Scott Pascucci
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‘Super-Premium’ music subscription tiers coming in 2025, and 3 other things we learned from Universal Music’s Boyd Muir at the Morgan Stanley conferenceUMG has 1,300 stores in its direct-to-consumer business, and the profit margins are huge
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Stick or twist time – streaming’s innovation dilemmaAs Clayton Christensen identified in The Innovator’s Dilemma, there are two types of innovation: sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. Sustaining innovation is what companies do to enhance existing business models, while disruptive innovation is typically driven by new entrants – insurgents looking to make markets by turning established ones upside down. Of course, if they are successful, eventually they switch to sustaining innovation, too. Streaming is now at the ‘you were the future once too’ stage. In the West at least, the focus is now firmly on optimisation.  This is all very sensible and absolutely the safe thing to do. However, music innovation must go beyond simply fine-tuning existing models. As it stands, streaming is perfectly poised for disruptors to come along and turn it upside down.

Sustaining innovation is how more growth will be extracted from streaming. Subscriber growth is slowing in the West. Because this is where majors have most market share (MIDiA’s “State of the independent music economy” report found that majors’ market share in ‘Rest of World’ is just 31%) and most revenue, it is where they are focusing their optimisation efforts. Thus far, this innovation has taken the form of streaming price increases, two tier licensing, and the forthcoming superfan tier (per TechCrunch). Of course, you could make a case that a superfan tier is disruptive innovation, but that will depend upon whether it really pushes the boundaries of what streaming is. Otherwise, it may only be as ‘disruptive’ as mobile carriers having premium plans for higher spending consumers.Type of innovation notwithstanding, these sustaining innovations all give music rightsholders (bigger ones especially) a route to more revenue per user. This is optimisation. However, in a streaming value chain where a finite pot of money gets divided among constituents competing for share, optimisation can go both ways. 

Take a look at things from Spotify’s perspective. Perennially under pressure from shareholders to improve margin, Spotify has neatly implemented four, margin improving, sustaining innovations:

Discovery mode which can give Spotify around 15% additional share (per Billboard)

Fraud fines issued to labels and distributors effectively means Spotify retains more revenue

Spotify’s “modernised” two-tier licensing means a big chunk of songs will not be paid royalties.If Spotify retains just a small portion of that, it is more margin. Even if Spotify gets to keep $0.00, two-tier licensing and anti-fraud measures will disincentivise the longtail, which will mean a slowdown in the number of low-revenue bearing tracks. This in turn will slow the rocketing of hosting fees, which means easing margin pressure

The infamous audio books bundle sees less share going to music rightsholders, which in turn could (depending on book rightsholder payments) also mean more share to Spotify (per Variety)

On top of all this, Spotify has two mid-to-long term accelerators:

1.    Spotify is growing its userbase in Global South markets, meaning it does not face the same growth slowdown concerns as its Western rightsholder partners

2.    By building creator networks in non-music formats, it has a path to higher margin content

Herein lies the problem with sustaining innovation: when it means optimising at the expense of other members of the value chain, one person’s optimisation can be another’s de-optimisation.

Appetite for disruption

Sustaining innovation is so appealing because it brings the promise of low-risk growth.  However, little new is ever built without risk. Streaming was risky once, too. In fact, back in 2010 it seriously looked like Spotify might have to launch in the US without the major labels (per The Guardian).

There are many ways in which the streaming model can be seriously innovated but thus far, caution has held that back. China’s streaming services show just how radically the user experience can be changed, but rather than innovating upwards, Western DSPs have had to innovate sideways, into new audio formats (Amazon Music Unlimited’s Audible integration is the latest case in point).

Sometimes you need to disrupt yourself before someone else does. Facebook is the textbook example. In 2012 it was still the dominant global social network, but a small photo sharing app named Instagram was beginning to gain momentum. Facebook bought it for, what at the time looked like a staggering $1 billion (per The New York Times). Swiftly adding WhatsApp and Messenger, Facebook pivoted towards mobile photo and video sharing. Nowadays, this is what we understand social media to be. Back then it looked like a different planet compared to the desktop world Facebook occupied. When you do it right, turning disruptive innovation in on yourself pays dividends.

Party like it’s 1999 – a little warning from history

In the late 1990s the CD reigned supreme. Annual growth was not as stellar as it had been earlier in the decade, but it was still holding its own, mainly because the record labels had hit upon a new growth strategy: price increases. There was no clear new format. The CD was both today’s format and tomorrow’s. The outlook was steady with   unremarkable growth underpinned by price increases. Sound familiar?

But that is not all, look at the spookily similar growth trends in the ‘growth through pricing’ phases of the CD and streaming:

To be clear, there is as much correlation as there is causality here. 2024 will almost certainly be a positive growth year, but the similarities are still important. In the late ‘90s, repeated price increases created the fertile breeding ground for peer-to-peer (P2P) piracy. It took a decade and a half for the music industry to really start to monetise the digital lane P2P had opened. Social music is at least somewhat monetised now, but still dramatically less so than streaming. The danger of optimisation pushing more consumers and creators to social is a real and present one. As MIDiA’s “Bifurcation theory” posits: social will not kill off streaming like P2P did the CD, instead it will coexist, but only as long as – you guessed it – streaming innovates.

Also, this time around, the labels are much better prepared for managing change. Label short-sightedness gave piracy a helping hand, as The Guardian’s Dorian Lynskey puts it: “‘90s executives were too busy worrying about the next quarter to consider the next decade”. Nowadays, labels spend a lot of time, resource and energy thinking about long-term strategy, as recently evidenced by UMG’s Capital Markets Day.

However, prepared or not, the streaming side of the music business needs to think hard about whether sustaining innovation is enough. To be blunt, if streaming doesn’t disrupt itself, social will.

LAST DAY for Spotify Wrapped Updates: Musicians Get Ready!Today, Wednesday November 20 is the last day for Spotify Wrapped updates by musicians who want to make the most of Spotify Wrapped 2024.
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Hangout: Social Music platform debuts with Major Labels, group listeningHangout social music platform offers a new way for music fans and artists to connect online. Explore its unique features and how it could reshape the social music experience.
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Token Economy for Musicians: Monetize a fanbase with $AMPSThere are dozens of startups creating new and better ways for artists to connect with a monetize fans Learn how $AMPS is creating a token economy for musicians to connect with and monetize fans while retaining control of the data.
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Stephen Pearcy Discusses 40th Anniversary Reissue of Ratt's Out of the CellarStephen Pearcy Discusses 40th Anniversary Reissue of Ratt's Out of the Cellar, the Musical Importance of 1984, and Why the Surviving Ratt Members Haven't Reunited Recently.

PRS Guitars Announces Kanami Limited Edition Custom 24-08PRS Guitars today announced the Kanami Limited Edition Custom 24-08. This is the first signature model for guitarist Kanami Tono of Japan’s hard-rock band: BAND-MAID. Kanami is BAND-MAID’s lead guitarist and has been playing PRS for more than a decade. This limited edition is based off her most recent PRS Custom 24-08 guitar but, most notably, boasts PRS’s 85/15 humbuckers and PRS Brushstroke birds."PRS has always been an essential part of BAND-MAID's sound ever since I started playing the Custom 24,” said Kanami Tono. “When thinking about the specs of my signature model, the control layout of the Custom 24-08 was the best choice as a base, because many BAND-MAID songs require the high E note on the 24th fret, and I often switch between humbucker and single-coil sounds. As for the color, I chose Trampas Green Burst. This is the color of my first PRS I bought when I decided to become a professional guitarist with BAND-MAID. One of my dreams to have my own signature model has come true here, and I would say this guitar is an extension of my first PRS. What an honor it is!"The PRS Kanami Limited Edition was soft launched at this weekend’s PRS Guitars & American Vintage Guitar Show in Shibuya, Tokyo. Only 200 of these instruments will be made. Each guitar is hand-signed by Kanami on the guitar’s backplate.For complete specifications, video, and more, please visit https://prsguitars.com/ and follow @prsguitars on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and X to stay in the conversation.The post PRS Guitars Announces Kanami Limited Edition Custom 24-08 first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.