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.

Court asked to review Ed Sheeran ‘Thinking Out Loud’ legal victoryThe owner of part of the rights to Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On is arguing in front of an appeals court to reinstate a case against Ed Sheeran
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Lucy Huang appointed Chief Technology & Product Officer at TuneCoreExec will be responsible for the company’s development and strategic direction of new technology and products
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SoundCloud expands AI toolkit with new Partnerships and FeaturesSoundCloud expands AI toolkit with partnerships that will integrate new assistive AI tools directly into the platform.
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Get your Spotify Artists page ready for Spotify Wrapped 2024: 2 DAYS LEFT!Musicians have just two days left to get their Spotify For Artists page ready for Spotify Wrapped 2024.
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Understanding the Boundaries of Fair Use in AIAI companies’ reliance on “fair use” to train their models is under fire, with lawsuits pushing for stricter copyright protection. If fair use fails, some models may even face complete shutdown, marking a major turning point for the industry.
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MusiCares & Moms in Music Partner to Host Free Women’s Wellness ClinicMusiCares, the leading charity supporting the health and wellbeing of the music community, is partnering with Moms in Music to host a free Women’s Wellness Clinic on Thursday, November 21, 2024, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at MusiCares HQ, 3030 Olympic Blvd in Santa Monica, CA. The clinic will offer essential health and wellness services to women working in the music industry, including mental health resources and support in navigating the unique demands of balancing career and family life. The event will feature a range of wellness services, including: Mental health screenings 

Physical therapy screenings 

Holistic chiropractic services 

Custom ear molds for hearing protection 

Massage therapy 

Yoga 

Information about MusiCares and Moms in Music services 

A chance to connect with other women in music Throughout the event, information about MusiCares services specifically for women, covering areas such as mammogram support, cervical cancer screenings, childcare, and more will be available. MusiCares is proud to partner with women-owned businesses and providers to offer these services. The upcoming Women’s Wellness Clinic represents a significant step in making wellness accessible for women at all stages of their careers in the music industry, where they often face distinctive challenges. This clinic is a natural extension of MusiCares' mission to create a supportive environment for women to prioritize their health. In collaboration with Brittney Brock, founder of Moms in Music and a prominent advocate for working mothers in the industry, MusiCares aims to address gaps in women’s access to preventive care, mental health support, and other vital wellness resources, making this event both meaningful and impactful. Together, MusiCares and Moms in Music are creating a nurturing, accessible environment for women in music. Both Theresa Wolters of MusiCares and Brittney Brock of Moms in Music are available for interviews to discuss the event and the importance of fostering support systems that allow women to thrive in the music industry. Event Details What: MusiCares Women’s Wellness Clinic, in partnership with Moms in Music When: Thursday, November 21, 2024, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. PST Where: 3030 Olympic Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90404  The post MusiCares & Moms in Music Partner to Host Free Women’s Wellness Clinic first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.