All posts by Back Porch Group

First things first: we’re a music business podcast, not a history podcast. As you can see.

Second: Amazon launched a streaming music service. And we’re here to talk about it. Seemingly everything in this episode ties back to Amazon, but we also talk Bitcoin, Grammys, Bad Company, and whether or not an iPhone belongs inside a guitar.

As always you can hit us up via email or Twitter.

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Show Notes:

• James K. Polk was, in fact, nicknamed “Young Hickory” after his Tennessean presidential predecessor Andrew Jackson, whose nickname was “Old Hickory.” Mike was confused based on a mishearing of the song “James K. Polk” by They Might Be Giants. Lyrics here. The town of Old Hickory, Tennessee is in fact named after Andrew Jackson, who is buried nearby at his estate, The Hermitage.
• Amazon Prime Music
• Amazon launches free streaming music service just for Prime members (GigaOm)
• Adobe Air, does, in fact, still exist
• Recording Academy To Allow Samples For All Grammy Award Songwriting Categories | Billboard
• Correction: The Spice Girls song “If U Can’t Dance” samples “Humpty Dance” by Digital Underground, which in turn samples “Sing A Simple Song” by Sly & the Family Stone and “Theme from the Black Hole” by Parliament.
• MASTODON // ONCE MORE ROUND THE SUN // JUNE 24TH – Preorder with Bitcoin
• Rock Group Mastodon Latest Music Act to Accept Bitcoin
• Since we mentioned media fragmentation
• How Streaming Services are Screwing Lady Gaga (and Every Other Artist) | Digital Music News
• Seriously, Paul, we need to talk. Email us: hello@backporchgroup.com
• Orphan Black Season 1 on Amazon Prime
• To be clear: there are a lot of awesome smart instruments that should continue to flourish; its just that the guitar doesn’t need the iPhone to be awesome..

In this episode we ALMOST manage to not talk about Apple. Almost.

But seriously, folks, how about that improved sound quality? We purchased some new gear and upped the ante. After 35 episodes, it just felt like it was time to get our act together. We’re still fiddling with the knobs and you might hear the level jump around a little, but we promise it’s getting better all the time.

On today’s episode: Amazon v. Hatchette, Rolling Stone Country, Pandora numbers, and Kickstarter’s updated rules. And Brian takes a minute to share an awesome story about Deep Purple.

Please let us know what you think! Did you like Storytime With Brian? Should we add a new segment? Take out an old one? Any special guests you’d like us to welcome? Let us know via email or Twitter.

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Show notes:

• Turns out we were pronouncing Hatchette wrong this whole time
• Kickstarter’s next campaign | The Verge
• Introducing Launch Now and Simplified Rules » The Kickstarter Blog
• As we’ve discussed, Brian loves gatekeepers
• Kickstarter uses a variety of payment processors outside the United States. More info at their FAQ.
• Bring Reading Rainbow Back for Every Child, Everywhere. by LeVar Burton & Reading Rainbow — Kickstarter
• Amazon and Hachette: The dispute in 13 easy steps – Los Angeles Times
• Publishers’ Deal with the Devil | stratechery by Ben Thompson
• Here’s a kind of a different take: Here’s Why I Won’t Boycott Amazon over Its Fight with Hachette | BostInno
• Rolling Stone Country
• Cover Of The Rolling Stone – Dr.Hook – YouTube
• Like we said, country is growing fast. It’s bigger than Top 40, at least on the radio: Young, Rich and Ruling Radio, Country Walks a Broader Line – NYTimes.com
• Pandora Stock Falls On News Of Dept. Of Justice Review, Slowing Growth – hypebot
• Side note: after complaining about Zazzle on Twitter, they made good. Twitter is the new customer service.

Pete and Re-Pete were on a boat. Pete fell off. Who’s left?

In this episode of Conversely, we hopefully put to rest the entire Beats/Apple conversation, at least for the time being. We also jettison common sense and discuss the ridiculousness of piracy, another topic we hope to never talk about again. And this time, instead of our usual Here’s An Idea segment, we switch gears and talk about a couple of our deeply held unpopular opinions about the music world – and hopefully that’s the most original conversation in this episode.

Not to say this episode isn’t good, because it’s freaking awesome. There I said it.

Side note: we just got a bunch of new recording gear! So hopefully this is the last episode where you’ll have to hear the terrible sound quality of a Macbook Pro built-in microphone.

Side note #2: Mike apologizes for contradicting himself in this episode. If you don’t catch it, well then Mike is happier for that.

Side note #3: We changed our logo. Just because.

As always, feel free to email us with your comments or thoughts, or hit us up on Twitter.

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Show Notes:

• The video that Shawn talks about all the time
• Price War: Beats Music Drops Price, Extends Trial | Billboard
• Honey App: Beats Music and the Great UI Swindle — Shallow Rewards — Medium
• Jimmy Iovine, a Master of Beats, Lends Apple a Skilled Ear – NYTimes.com
• FYI, Winamp was purchased by AOL for $80M in stock, according to Wikipedia
• And for your daily dose of Winamp nostalgia
• Also: subscribe to The Flashlight!
• One last Beats/Apple link: Beats by Apple | Om Malik
• Center for Copyright Information | CCI Provides First Copyright Alert System Progress Report Highlighting Initial Accomplishments
• RIAA – Recording Industry Association of America – May 31, 2014
• In case you were wondering:

• “Six Strikes” Results Show High Number of Persistent Pirates | TorrentFreak
• Barely Anyone Bothered to Have Their ‘Six Strikes’ Piracy Cases Reviewed | Motherboard
• Sonos offers 6 months of Google Play Music with purchase of any player – CNET
• Google is building a hardware empire, and this is what it looks like | The Verge
• “Android is the thing you get your Spotify on”
• We looked it up.

Today we welcome David M. Ross, Founder of MusicRow Magazine and President of Nekst.biz, to talk about his upcoming book, the ramifications of a music tax, better models for streaming services, and just what exactly happened to publishing in the last 10 years. We also dive into the crazy world of competitive video gaming, a subject that, quite frankly, none of us knows much about :)

As always, feel free to email us with your comments or thoughts, or hit us up on Twitter.

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Linkety links:

• Nekst.biz
• Spotify now has 40 million users — but just 10 million pay to stream songs | VentureBeat
• Beats Music subscriber numbers leak: low numbers but strong engagement (Music Ally)
• As it turns out, there’s a couple of Beats lawsuits happening, including a co-founder looking for past royalties and  MOG founder David Hyman who claims he was unlawfully dismissed from the company to avoid his equity payout
• Apple’s dividend history. Note that didn’t pay out dividends at all between 2005-2012, i.e. the Steve Jobs years.
• Everything You Need to Know About YouTube Buying Twitch
• Why Twitch could be the best $1 billion Google ever spends | The Verge
• If you still have no idea what the hell we’re talking about, go visit Twitch.tv and see for yourself
• By the way, it’s true, Michael Bolton has sold more than 75 million albums. Let that sink in for a second.
• ESPN + Major League Gaming
• To get an idea of just how big competitive gaming really is, check this out:

• A billion was not always a billion
• NMPA Launches Suits Against Infringing Lyric Sites | Billboard
• As it turns out, the same company that makes the Roomba makes a robot that cleans gutters
• Yahoo used to have this thing called IntoNow. Nobody used it.

Shazam! Seriously, what a great name for a company. It’s just so fun to say.

Well, we got better sound quality on this episode, but unfortunately the recording crapped out a couple of times. Pardon the edits.

As always, email us or hit us on Twitter.

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Show Notes:

• Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music All Take Cash Stakes in Shazam, Betting on IPO | Billboard
• Interns Win Class Certification in Lawsuit Against WMG (Updated) | Billboard
• Related, from last year: Sony, Columbia Records Next In Line for Internship Lawsuit | Billboard
• On starting at the bottom: The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up
• Two Kickstarter Campaigns Compete Over Wu-Tang’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin”… | Digital Music NewsDigital Music News
• Campaign #1: Once Upon A Time In Shaolin – For Wu Fans, For Wu People by Fans of Wu Tang the World Over — Kickstarter
• Campaign #2: Open Wu-Tang by Marcus Scott Wallace — Kickstarter

We’ll leave you with this:

I shot this with my @Leica_Camera M Monochrom. #Batman #Batmobile #Gotham http://t.co/WPHKLxgBLM pic.twitter.com/p5DEf6fLzJ

— ZackSnyder (@ZackSnyder) May 13, 2014

I think we can sum up the entire show notes thusly:

As always, email us or hit us on Twitter.

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And on to the show notes….

• Apple Closing in on $3.2 Billion Purchase of Beats Electronics (Report) | Billboard
• Dr. Dre Appears to Confirm Apple-Beats Deal in Facebook Video
• Daring Fireball: The Financial Times: ‘Apple in Talks to Buy Beats Electronics for $3.2B’
• What Apple is really buying with Beats | The Verge (mostly a summary of what everyone else is saying, which is that nobody has any idea what’s going on here)
• Muve Music To Be Sold Or Shuttered By AT&T – hypebot
• Olivia Newton-John – Physical – YouTube
• Nashville vinyl records maker key to Jack White’s fastest single expands
• LAZARETTO ULTRA LP & VINYL PRE-ORDER | Jack White
• Google Is Now Getting 1,000,000 Takedown Requests a Day… | Digital Music NewsDigital Music News
• Copyright Removal Requests – Google Transparency Report
• CANADALAND | Old Canada vs. New Canada
• This company in the 2014 Jumpstart Foundry class boggles the mind, if for no other reason than…. uh…. take a look at their marketing: Beyond Right Now Technologies (note: yes, they kill pigs)

AND! You can subscribe to our brand new email newsletter, The Flashlight, by clickety clicking right on this gigantic link.

Today we welcome very special guest Chris Moon of Noisetrade! We talk streaming, discovery, and…. physical? Yep, physical music. You know, vinyl rekkids. Also on this podcast: candle makers, app annoyances, HD-DVD, Sumatran tigers, and Portugal. The Man.

Pardon the echo. Shawn has a big condo.

As always, email us or hit us on Twitter.

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Show Notes:

• The giant Pitchfork streaming music history and omnibus
• Möbius strip
• Prince settles 18-year dispute with record company  – NY Daily News
• Reversion Rights: Will 2013 Be A Game-Changer? | Billboard
• Beats Music Starts Selling In-App Subscriptions From Apple iOS Apps | Re/code
• Apple has ‘nearly’ 800 million iTunes accounts | VentureBeat | Media | by Eric Blattberg
• Apple has all the ingredients to cook up a massive mobile payment system, Morgan Stanley says | VentureBeat
• Spotify Likely to Surge Past iTunes in Europe (Report) | Billboard
• Semi-related: Comixology removes in-app purchases to avoid paying fees to Apple | The Verge
• We also talked about bundled subscriptions in the last episode

• Record Store Day Retailers Report Big Spikes, Best-Ever Sales | Billboard
• RECORD STORE DAY – Home
• Inside Jack White’s World’s Fastest Record | Music News | Rolling Stone
• The Electric Fetus, one of the greatest record stores in the world
• Endangered Song – A song manufactured to go extinct unless it’s reproduced – The Smithsonian National Zoological Park
• And you can hear the Endangered Song on Soundcloud here
• Have you been to MySpace lately?
• Vic Gundotra’s final post as a Googler
• Report: Google to end forced G+ integration, drastically cut division resources | Ars Technica
• Google+ Is Walking Dead | TechCrunch
• Valentina Lisitsa: Chasing Pianos And YouTube Fans : Deceptive Cadence : NPR (this was mentioned somewhere, I think)

In this episode: Spotify, Sprint, Apple, Amazon…. you know, the usual.

As always, contact us via email or Twitter.

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Show Notes:

• Business Matters: Five Ways Sprint Will Help Spotify | Billboard (70% conversion rate for Beats? Really?)
• Spotify, Sprint Plan Music Bundle To Be Unveiled This Month | Billboard
• Last episode, in which we talk about Deezer+Samsung
• Spotify does not, in fact, have a family plan. Rdio does.
• Business Matters: How Amazon Could Have ‘Tens of Millions’ of Paid Streaming Music Subscribers Instantly | Billboard
• Amazon Prime (One Year Membership)
• Spotify Starts Shutting Down Its Massive P2P Network | TorrentFreak
• Cinefi | First torrent streaming client in da web! (whoa.)
• iOS 8 Will Let Users Ask Siri, ‘What Song Is Playing?’ [Rumor] | Cult of Mac
• Pair of Detroit EDM Festivals Called Off | Billboard
• It’s not Lefsetz, but read it anyway: Why It’s EDM’s Fault Outkast Flopped
• iOS 8 Will Let Users Ask Siri, ‘What Song Is Playing?’ [Rumor] | Cult of Mac
• Google Play: Captain Phillips – YouTube
• Shazam now has real-time lyrics scrolling: Better Sharing, Lyrics and Video on Shazam iOS App
• Dropbox CEO defends adding Condoleezza Rice to board | The Verge
• SpiderOak | Online File Sharing & Cloud Backup Software
• BitTorrent Sync Beta
• But seriously, just go use Dropbox
• Automatic: An Auto Accessory to Make You a Smarter Driver
• car-ux (an excellent rundown of user experience problems in automobiles)
• If you go pledge on Anderson East’s new album, you can hear the tunes that Shawn has had the privilege of previewing.

Heartbleed! Deezer! Sonos! Deeeeeeeeeezer!

Ok, that’s enough of that.

We’ve got big news this week. We also talk about the news (no, the other news). We also talk about bleeding hearts. And heartless capitalism.

Show notes:

• Eastbound and Down: We’re taking on Knoxville’s digital media entrepreneurs in MediaWorks | Back Porch Group
• Samsung Partners with Deezer for Galaxy Streaming Deal | Billboard
• AT&T + Beats Music
• Underwhelming Start to iTunes Radio Lights Fire Under Apple | Billboard
• Business Matters: How Amazon Could Have ‘Tens of Millions’ of Paid Streaming Music Subscribers Instantly | Billboard
• Download Sales Are Already Down 13.3 Percent In 2014… | Digital Music News
• The Innovator’s Dilemma
• Google Play Music adds built-in Sonos support on Android | The Verge
• Exclusive: this is Android TV | The Verge
• Amazon Fire TV
• Think different – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (direct link to grammar discussion)
• J&R Music World Closing | Billboard (correction: the company was always called J&R Music World)
• Walmart to Cut Its CD Stock By Nearly Half | Billboard
• Colbert Will Host ‘Late Show,’ Playing Himself for a Change – NYTimes.com
• 21 times Stephen Colbert has dropped his act and been himself – Vox
• Heartbleed Bug
• The Heartbleed Hit List: The Passwords You Need to Change Right Now
• With a Web built on free code, Heartbleed bug magnifies online world’s messy nature | CJOnline.com
• Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore | Gadget Lab | WIRED