Music Tech UK asked me to contribute an opinion piece for their blog. You can find it on their site https://musictechnology.uk/where-are-the-creators/ along with a lot of other interesting stuff. Where are the Creators?By John Maxwell Hobbs, CEO, Streamline Media Over the past year, I’ve attended a number of music panels focussed on everything from the impact of AI to the challenges of having a career in the music business for people from under-supported demographics. They al

My startup Streamline Media Limited has launched a podcast. We’ll be talking to a wide variety of people in the creative industries about their work. The second episode features Tim Boggs. Listen to episode 2 with Tim Boggs Timothy Boggs is an award winning filmmaker, Artist and songwriter who lives and works in Los Angeles. His 30 year career as a sound supervisor and sound editor include notable television shows - “The Sopranos,” “Breaking Bad,” “The Good Wife,” “Queen Su

My startup Streamline Media Limited has launched a podcast. We’ll be talking to a wide variety of people in the creative industries about their work. The first episode features my old friend Eric Liljestrand.

My latest column is up at IBC365.  I give my views on the increasing hype around the potential for AI in media. https://www.ibc.org/tech-advances/i-for-one-welcome-our-robot-overlords/2625.article

A post I wrote for the National Film and Television School https://nfts.co.uk/news/engineers-creative-partners-–-how-film-tv-industry-can-learn-music-production NFTS Head of Technology, John Maxwell Hobbs, believes the film and television industry should view and work with engineers as creative partners as the music industry does and has designed the School’s new Production Technology MA to do just that. Why it is that broadcast engineers have long been viewed as boffins w

Years ago in New York City, I had a funk band called, Your Monkey's Not Funny. At various times it was called, Calamity Jane, Magnetic Dog Sisters, Spiny Norman (and once Spiny Richard due to confusion on the part of the booker at CBGB.) Various members at times included Steffen Franz, David Azarch, Tom Hamilton, Marc Solomon, and at a couple of rehearsals, Jim Fourniadis of Rats of Unusual Size. The final line up (before crashing and burning) was: John Maxwell Hobbs: key

Published earlier today on MediumThere are a lot of articles analysing Apple’s new music service. (James Cridland’s got a good list of them here.) The majority of them are coming from tech journalists, and unfortunately, they suffer from a major lack of knowledge of how the music business actually works. They are worth reading, but prepare yourself for a lot of confusing the tray for the meal. Where most of the current analysis falls down is by treating the three elements of

More news on the Apple music front - Radio 1 DJ, Zane Lowe is leaving the corporation to work for Apple. Jimmy Iovine, and now Zane. Apple's lining up some heavyweight A&R talent.

Rumours floating around that Apple is going to move into the label business, as I predicted a few months ago:  http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/08/exclusive-streaming/ Although the TechCrunch article shows a remarkable lack of understanding of how the music industry works and what exactly a record label does, the information at its heart leads to some interesting possibilities. More info here: http://hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=294560

It seems clear now that the headphones and the streaming music service are secondary acquisitions for Apple - with the Beats deal, they've just acquired the head of Interscope records. I would expect an announcement of an Apple record label fairly soon.

An article from Digg on audio vs. video on the internet.  Worth a read. Why Audio Never Goes Viral.

An interesting take on the nature of radio promo in the brave new world of the music business.  Is this a new version of payola or the only way to stay in business? Music acts fear they wont make waves if they dont play radio events for free | Helienne Lindvall | Media | theguardian.com.

Only 15 shows booked so far, but an interesting idea - sort of the Air BnB of concert booking.  If this could be combined with the new trend in concerts in private homes, it could get really interesting. Helping Bands Play to the Crowd, Long Before the Show - NYTimes.com.

And yet another take on the Spotify/streaming payment story. Because of the complexities of musical ownership and royalties, as well as the myriad ways of listening to and buying music, this story will always be like the story of the blind men trying to describe an elephant through the sense of touch.  Except in this case, some of the blind men are touching something other than the elephant. Spotify and Pandora artist payments: Not as exploitative as they’re made out to be.

Are we about to see an extension of the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act?" Will copyright be extended 20 more years? An old debate returns — Tech News and Analysis.

More musicians weigh in on the subject of the financial side of online streaming: Streaming Shakes Up Music Industry’s Model for Royalties - NYTimes.com.

Cellist and independant musician Zoë Keating on the realities of making money from online music. A blog about an email about a blog about a news article about music streaming | Zoë Keating.

An easy to follow essay on how we got into this mess: Who killed the music industry? An interactive explainer | PandoDaily.

In my previous post, I discussed the recent announcement by Thom Yorke of Radiohead that he was pulling his music from Spotify. This announcement has caused quite a stir, with lots of people taking pro and anti Spotify positions.  It's important to have this sort of debate, but the focus on Spotify is causing people to miss the real point. Although his target was Spotify, ProducerNigel Godrich defined the real problem when he posted, “Making new recorded music needs funding

Reflecting on the link I posted about Thom Yorke quitting Spotify, I kept thinking about the statement in the article that, "The industry average offers slightly less than 0.4p a stream – meaning that 1m streams of a song would generate about £3,800. Most songs receive far fewer streams." The problem with this statement is that it equates streaming with sales, instead of viewing it as the modern equivalent of spins on radio, which is far more apt an analogy. People stream th