PRS Announces Special John McLaughlin GuitarPRS Guitars has announced a Limited-Edition Private Stock John McLaughlin Signature model. Only 200 of these instruments will be made in 2023.

The PRS Private Stock John McLaughlin is a classic instrument that has been meticulously spec’d by Paul Reed Smith to honor John McLaughlin. All of the woods were specially chosen by Smith for their tone, figure, and weight. The specs are fairly straightforward: maple top, mahogany back, hormigo neck (a tone wood used on marimbas for sound-producing tines) with an African blackwood fretboard, 22 frets, 25” scale length, Pattern neck, PRS’s patented Gen III tremolo, and PRS Phase III tuners.

Some of the more particular details on this model are in the finish, pickups, and electronics. The guitar is finished in high-gloss nitro with an unfinished neck with clear grain filler for a smooth, natural playing feel. The TCI pickups feature American Alnico and are paired with volume and tone controls with a 3-way toggle pickup switch and two mini-toggle EQ switches. The mini-toggles act as tuned high-pass filters when engaged (in the up position), removing shelved low-end and allowing the high frequencies through for more clarity and musical highs.

“Playing music is a way of being. Playing an instrument requires you to move out of the normal level of consciousness. If you’re thinking, you’re not playing. If you’re playing, you’re not thinking. If you have problems with your instrument, you’re not going to move out of the thinking zone and into your own world. This is why I love my guitar. For me, it’s perfect.” – John McLaughlin

“Being John’s guitar maker is an honor I fought decades for, and to now be able to give him a signature model is a special moment for me and hopefully the industry,” said Paul Reed Smith. “These guitars were designed to both feel like magic when you pick them up but also disappear in your hands so you can just focus on playing. John is capable of playing at extraordinary speed and with this instrument, you hear every note. Finding that balance as a guitar maker and coaxing every bit of sound out of the guitar was the key.”

Paul Reed Smith and Paul Miles have signed each Private Stock John McLaughlin model on the back of the headstock. As an added detail, John McLaughlin has autographed the backplate of each instrument.

For complete specifications and a video from John McLaughlin, please visit www.prsguitars.com.

About PRS Guitars:

PRS Guitars is a leading manufacturer of high-quality instruments in Stevensville, Maryland and has provided some of the world’s most renowned musicians with instruments since 1985. The PRS team of highly skilled craftspeople design and build a wide variety of musical instruments and gear for worldwide distribution, including electric, acoustic, and bass guitars as well as boutique-style guitar amplifiers and effects pedals. The PRS SE Series complements the Maryland-made PRS line by offering highly approachable and more affordable electric, acoustic, and bass guitars. Carlos Santana, Mark Tremonti, John Mayer, Jimmy Herring, Myles Kennedy, Zach Myers, Mark Holcomb, Tim Pierce, Orianthi, David Grissom, Mark Lettieri, and Rhonda Smith are among the artists currently playing PRS instruments and/or amplifiers.

PRS Guitars Info: www.prsguitars.com

From TikTok and Warner’s licensing deal to Jungkook’s global streaming success… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThis week's biggest stories...
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Musician Jackie Venson calls out predatory behavior by venues, promotersBy many measures, independent musician Jackie Venson is having a great year. But shifts in booking, venue, and merch policies are threatening the one source of income she and most. Continue reading
The post Musician Jackie Venson calls out predatory behavior by venues, promoters appeared first on Hypebot.

Why TikTok launching a music streaming service matters so muchWe’ve heard whispers in the industry of TikTok launching its own music streaming service for a while now. Finally, they’ve just rolled out the first iterations of it in select. Continue reading
The post Why TikTok launching a music streaming service matters so much appeared first on Hypebot.

8 Tips to help you successfully pre-promote your next releaseMaking the music is only half the battle, now that it’s time for promoting you may have a lot to learn when it comes to getting the word out about. Continue reading
The post 8 Tips to help you successfully pre-promote your next release appeared first on Hypebot.

John Lennon Songwriting Contest Presents: SUMMER SONGSIf you’re like us, you’re dripping sweat and bargaining, if not fighting, over who gets to sit closest to the air conditioning. Temperatures are HIGH. And that means it’s time for a SUMMER SONGS contest.

Summer songs connect us to some of the most memorable times of our lives.Hot, steamy, lazy, funny, or revolutionary.Pool parties, ocean breezes, BBQs, sweltering streets and ice cream treats. Summer is a vibe.

SUMMER SONGS is a weekly contest. 1 winner is selected each week. Entry deadlines are each SUNDAY at 11:59pm PDT. Winners will be announced on Monday.

Follow @lennonbus on Instagram and @theJLSC on Facebook for the hottest news.

You could win from the following Summer Songs prizes:

Epiphone Casino guitar

Apogee BOOM audio interface

SSL Native Essentials plugins

Audio-Technica wireless headphones

Reason+

Sonicbids Gig-Seeker Pro

Neutrik *Special Edition* John Lennon Educational Tour Bus instrument cable

All Summer Songs entries will also compete in Session II of the 2023 contest. 1 Song = 2 ways to win.

Bad Bunny and Shakira collaborators Albert Hype and Jota Rosas sign to Neon16 Publishing; Gaby Morales extends dealNEON16 was founded by music exec Lex Borrero in 2019 alongside hit producer Tainy
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Bandsintown passes 80M registered live music fans, 589K artistsTop global live music discovery platform Bandsintown announced today that it has passed 80 million registered users, an increase of 10 million in the last year. The rise reflects the. Continue reading
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Netflix just added 6m subscribers. Should Spotify copy its password crackdown?Netflix subs growth beat analysts’ expectations
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How to market your music like Taylor SwiftWith her worldwide success, Taylor’s team must be doing something right. Here are seven different T-Swift brand strategies to use to market your music. by Janelle Borg from Amplify You Taylor. Continue reading
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How to grow your YouTube channel with YouTube Shorts and ClipsShort-form video content is the key to social media success these days. So here’s how to use Youtube’s features to grow your music career. by Randi Zimmerman of Symphonic Blog. Continue reading
The post How to grow your YouTube channel with YouTube Shorts and Clips appeared first on Hypebot.

Making sense of global music forecastsMIDiA has been building global music forecasts for nearly a decade now, and I personally have been building them for nearly two decades. Throughout those years there have been many calls for the numbers to be bigger and bolder. Experience, though, has shown that realism most often trumps optimism. 

The simple truth is that there are no facts about the future. Instead, forecasts are, at least in MIDiA’s worldview, a structured, numerical representation of analyst thinking. We do not aspire to be cheerleaders for any market, however much we may believe in it. Instead, we strive to be trusted partners, aspiring to provide a view of where things are most likely heading. 

With those health warnings out of the way, I am proud to announce the ninth edition of MIDiA’s global recorded music forecasts (If you are a MIDiA client, you can find the report and the 38 sheet Excel data set here).

How we did

To start, I think it is worth a quick look back at how we have done over the years. In our first edition (2015), we forecasted global music revenues (in label trade terms) to reach $20.1 billion by 2020. The actual figure proved to $22.5 billion. So that translates into a 10% variance for a five-year forecast, which isn’t too shabby. Over the course of the previous five years, our forecasts for 2022 had an average variance of -2.5%. Again, a decent track record. 

That’s the good news. 2022, though, was an anomalous year, and 2023 is shaping up to be similarly volatile. Shaped as it is, by a cost-of-living crisis, soaring interest rates, economic slowdown, a softening ad market, global food and energy shortages, and a war in Europe. When we built the 2022 edition, we knew these factors might disrupt the music industry’s trajectory, so we built both a base case and bear case forecast. Our base case proved to be too optimistic ($30.7 billion) while our bear case ($28.3 billion) proved to be depressingly precise (just 0.8% above the actual figure of $28.1 billion).

Why currency matters

That $28.1 billion represented just 3.2% growth on 2021 – the slowest growth since the global market return to growth in 2015. On the surface, this might look like serious cause for concern, evidence of the long anticipated streaming slowdown. But, while a streaming slowdown is indeed happening, it is only a minor contributor to the bigger picture. Not only is 3.2% respectable growth in the midst of economic and geo-political chaos, currency volatility has, to put it bluntly, played havoc with the global picture.

MIDiA always builds its market models with US dollar values and, crucially, in current currency terms. Simply put, that means the values we present for any historical year represent what the market was actually worth in that year. In a year of global currency volatility, this means that some markets that reported strong growth in local currency terms saw much weaker, sometimes even negative, growth in US dollar terms. It is an analytical inconvenience but, in our view, a necessary one to present a meaningful and accurate view of global value.

Other entities try to mask the inconvenience by restating their entire historical dataset based on the currency conversion rates for the most recent year, i.e., constant currency conversion. Hence, the IFPI reported 9.0% growth in 2022, yet if you compare their 2022 figure to their previously reported 2021 figure, you end up with just 0.9% growth (i.e., a growth rate that is ten times slower). MIDiA’s base case forecast would have looked a lot more optimistic if we had used constant currency conversion rates!

All of these complexities make the job of forecasting particularly challenging. Which is why we focused on more stable metrics, such as local currency values and subscribers, to help us estimate future growth. Subscription revenue grew by just 4% in 2022, but subscribers grew by 16%, illustrating strong, underlying market demand and momentum. However, as is so often the case with market sizing, the picture is more nuanced and complex. Emerging markets grew subscribers far faster in 2022 than North American and European markets, but because they have lower ARPU, the contribution to revenue growth was far smaller. 

A decoupling of global growth

What we are seeing is a regional decoupling of global growth, to the extent that the global picture can be misleading. For example, by 2030, there will be 1.1 billion subscribers, up from 663 million in 2022, but Asia Pacific, Latin America and Rest of World will account for four fifths of that growth. Crucially, most Western rightsholders have relatively low repertoire share in much of these regions, so they will not benefit from this next wave of subscriber growth in the same way they did in the first, largely Western, wave. 

Yet Europe and North America will account for more than half of the global subscriptions revenue growth, due to higher ARPU and average subscriber months (a result of slower growth). Which means that Western rightsholders will accrue most revenue upside, despite losing out on audience growth.

Growth that is both impressive and eminently achievable 

Despite all of today’s market headwinds, MIDiA’s underlying assumptions about long-term growth remain largely unchanged. While we are forecasting slower growth over the next two years, we expect the global market to return to full momentum between mid-2024 and early 2025. This will result in global revenues growing by 51.0% to reach $32.4 billion in trade terms by 2030, and a slightly faster growth in retail terms (due to growing DSP share) to reach $87.1 billion.

As much as we would have liked to report that the market will double in value by 2030, we consider 51.0% growth to be both an impressive performance and eminently achievable. We would have liked to have forecasted a doubling of growth back in 2015 as well, but if we had, we would not have ended up being within 10% of the actual market, half a decade down the line. 

The thing about forecasts is they are always updated, so it can be easy to forget anything other than how the latest edition racks up compared to the previous one. Which makes it depressingly easy to build overly-bullish forecasts that have the benefit of aiding ulterior business objectives. MIDiA, of course, has many of the exact same companies as paying clients as the other entities do, but our clients pay to subscribe because they rely on us to provide an objective and useful view of the market. To tell them what they need to hear, even if that is not always what they want to hear.

Rhodes Announces Limited Edition Electric PianoIconic musical instrument manufacturer Rhodes announced that it has completed manufacturing of its first strictly limited edition MK8/75AE electric piano. The MK8/7AE — anchored on the design of the classic Rhodes MK8 — has been painstakingly created from the ground up and is a stunning accomplishment of technical craftsmanship and aesthetic design. Each of the 75 new instruments, which have been assembled by hand at the Rhodes factory in Leeds, England, are now shipping to customers around the world and represent an important milestone in musical instrument design and the very fabric of broader musical culture.

"Each of these instruments contain the very essence of Rhodes — the legacy of our 75-year history as a brand, and the inspiring craftsmanship of our modern engineers and product designers," commented Matt Pelling, CEO of Rhodes Music. "The MK8/75AE comprises exacting attention to detail and componentry, superior mechanical engineering and an exquisite aesthetic design. We hope these unique instruments inspire many years of music making among our customers."​

​A classic instrument for the ages​The MK8/75AE is the result of a collaboration between Rhodes Chief Product Officer Dan Goldman and famed industrial designer Axel Hartmann, whose work has touched some of the greatest instruments of our time. The MK8/75AE is based on the foundation of the critically acclaimed Rhodes MK8, but reaches even greater heights with its painstaking aesthetic and performance details, such as analogue effects, a special dark matte finish, and gold accented controls and encasement flourishes.

Following its unveiling at Superbooth and The NAMM Show, the MK8/75AE was met with immediate adulation in the musical instrument community with all 75 instruments selling out within 30 minutes. The company has started shipping these instruments to those who managed to secure one. ​

Rhodes is grateful to its community of loyal customers around the world. For more information on the MK8 or the MK8/75AE, or to learn about our new Rhodes V8 plug-in — the only official Rhodes electric piano software — please visit www.rhodesmusic.com. ​

​About Rhodes​For Rhodes loyalists around the world, this is a new chapter in Rhodes history; not a new book. ​ With the Rhodes MK8, we’re returning to the principles, aesthetic, craftsmanship and pride of Harold Rhodes’ originals. We’re paying homage to the past with our gaze fixed firmly on what lies ahead. 

 Jeff TouzeauHummingbird Media, Inc.Email: jeff@hummingbirdmedia.comWebsite: hummingbirdmedia.com

 Hunter WilliamsPublic Relations, Hummingbird Media, Inc.Email: hunter@hummingbirdmedia.comWebsite: hummingbirdmedia.com

15% of the general population in the US are ‘superfans.’ Here’s what that means for the music business.Recent sats published by US market monitor Luminate highlight the impact that superfans are having on the music business
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HarbourView acquires again, snapping up select music assets of artist, songwriter and producer, BlackbearBlackbear co-wrote Justin Bieber's six-time platinum single, Boyfriend
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