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

My latest opinion piece is up at IBC365.  I give my views on outsourcing and the broadcasting industry. https://www.ibc.org/content-management/focusing-on-the-core-the-importance-of-outsourcing/2582.article

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

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 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