BMAT offers scholarships to IMB for the next generation of talent in the music business

Madeleine Amosin
Artist / Label News

Image Credit: BMAT

Fancy studying to become an expert in the music business world? €90,000 worth of scholarships for IMB International Music Business School are up for grabs for young aspiring music business leaders.

Music technology company BMAT Music Innovators are offering a unique chance for students and professionals to access scholarships to Barcelona-based IMB International Music Business School.

IMB is the first school to specialise in music business training. They’re looking to attract talented candidates keen to change the music industry for the better – specifically: “Music nerds and tech fanatics with curious and creative minds.”

Dubbed the “BMAT Challenge,” the scholarships are worth €3000 each, for students and professionals on IMB School’s Challenges Module for the academic year 2021-22. The students will be given the opportunity to work on solutions for global companies including Sony Music and YouTube Music.

The course is an intense training experience in music tech innovation, and global business problem solving. Students must solve seven real challenges from the global music world, in order to gain a deeper understanding of how business models in the music ecosystem interconnect and how they link with other industries beyond the music sector.

BMAT Music Innovators said: “Our goal is to empower a fresh new generation of innovative leaders for the blossoming music sector. The resolution of strategic challenges is usually postponed in major companies’ agendas. The fact that for the first time this process could be outsourced to highly motivated students or professionals, with a solid understanding of the music business, means the music sector is open to innovative solutions from fresh minds and committed to talent development.”

Candidates don’t have to have experience in the music sector, but they should have experience in related areas. This could include: Marketing, data analytics, legal affairs, business management, project and product management, people management, communications, or content creation and distribution. They need to have applied to the Challenges module, IMB School’s Masters or Advanced Masters in Music Business Innovation, or the Postgraduate Diploma in Music Business Innovation.

BMAT recently helped to launch the first international chart system of streaming data in India, the IMI International Top 20 Singles Chart.

The talent scholarships have two application deadlines – the first is August 22 for Master’s students and the second round closes on October 10 2021 for Postgraduate students. Thirty scholarships will be available for the first round, and any remaining scholarships will be carried over to the second.

Find out more here.

Fortnite’s ‘Rift Tour’ to begin next week

Kieran Webberin
Artist / Label News
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Digital Music News
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Music News

Image credit: Epic Games

Fortnite’s ‘Rift Tour’ is set to begin next and is rumoured to have performances from Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, and more.

Epic Games are teasing the biggest in-game event since Travis Scott’s performance saw a staggering 45.8 million (including replays) people view the event. According to Nielsen SuperData, the official stream for the premiere on Twitch had an average minute audience of 2.3 million.

It’s rumoured that Travis Scott received an eye-watering half a million dollars for the 10-minute performance, neither Epic nor Travis was confirmed this. 

The new event, that is currently shrouded in mystery called the ‘Rift Tour’ will kick off on Friday 6th August and run through to Sunday 8th August. In the teaser announcement, Epic invite players to “take a musical journey into magical new realities where Fortnite and a record-breaking superstar collide.”

Whilst players wait for the ‘Rift Tour’ players can expect a run of mysterious in-game events to run from July 29th through to August 8th. This will give players access to rift themed events and rewards. The ‘Rift Tour’ will be available multiple times throughout the three days, making it easier for players to watch and be a part of the event. More news onset times and who’s playing will be announced on Monday 2nd August. 

The big question is who exactly is performing? There are many rumours (so do take them with a pinch of salt), but signs are pointing towards Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga. The reason being that during the court battle between Epic and Apple there were documents that detailed plans for in-game events with both Grande and Gaga. There have also been visual cues throughout her music videos and a reference in-game to her pet pig, Piggy Smalls. 

There are also rumours of Kanye West performing in the virtual space as his new album ‘Donda’ is penned to release on August 6th. This is very much speculation though, either way, we are likely to find out Monday 2nd August via Epic’s official announcement. 

RouteNote’s New Music Releases 30th July, 2021: 12 huge tunes to kickstart the weekend

Tom Newmanin
Artist / Label News

The latest and greatest tracks from RouteNote’s top artists and labels making their way into our new playlists.

If you need some fresh sounding tracks to ignite the party or zone out to, we’ve got twelve brand new releases below. This week’s pick includes something for everyone, from top artists such as Mark Mendy, Paradigm, Razihel, SP3CTRUM, golden era, Henry Dell, Murdbrain and many more.

These tracks have been hand picked by the RouteNote team to make their way into our top playlists: Hooked for high tempo, motivational dance and party music; Catalyst for the best dance, house and chill house music; and Lo-Fi with hip-hop and chillhop tunes to relax to.

To get your own music featured on a future round up, distribute your music to RouteNote today. It’s free!

SP3CTRUM, Henry Dell – Round & Round

Going straight into our high tempo, dance and party playlist Hooked, Round & Round from Italian duo SP3CTRUM and London-based vocalist Henry Dell, is a future house, EDM anthem that’s catchy chorus will be going round and round in your head all day.

Razihel – Corazon Espinado

Also being added to Hooked, Corazon Espinado (Thorned Heart in English) is a Latin dance pop banger from Italian DJ and producer Razihel.

Mark Mendy, Paradigm – Emotions

From its smooth synth hooks, to its pop EDM production, Emotions will light up the commute or party alike, from Italian artist Mark Mendy and duo Paradigm.

Feel S.Y – Endless

The last track to be added to our Hooked playlist this week is the latest melodic house, EDM, feel good track from Korean electro producer Feel S.Y.

Aspecte, NO-VA – Love Again

Love Again from electronic producer Aspecte and French musician NO-VA, fits right in with RouteNote’s dance and house playlist Catalyst.

Roamy – Time

Joining Catalyst is deep house, club, EDM track Time from Mexican house producer Roamy.

Murdbrain, Savrokks – Bad Habit

Bad Habit will have clubs around the world bouncing to the electronic, future house anthem from Murdbrain and American songwriter Savrokks.

obi mani – diamonds

Catalyst also covers the chill house tracks sent through our doors. diamonds from obi mani shines with its chilled production and vocals.

Heads Over Dreams – you mean the world to me

As we take a turn into Lo-Fi, our playlist full of chilled hip-hop beats, you mean the world to me from Heads Over Dreams is perfect for studying or relaxing.

Gehen – Everything Stays

Everything Stays, complete with its lo-fi piano and hip-hop beat, comes from up-and-coming Mexican producer Gehen.

golden era – Lucid Dreams (lofi version)

golden era is no stranger to covering and remixing 90s tracks. Lucid Dreams (lofi version) is no different, coming from Sting’s Shape of My Heart, which has been sampled countless times, including in Juice WRLD’s Lucid Dreams.

simmerdown – smallie biggs

simmerdown, the hip-hop producer based in Cornwall, had this to say about her track smallie biggs from the EP lamp signs:

“I produce handfuls of instrumentals with no title, emotion or feeling in mind; in order to distinguish each one they’re usually named after an artist it reminds me most of. The delayed brass stabs instantly reminded me of Biggie Smalls and thus, smallie biggs was born.”

Doppler HiFi music player launches for Mac with iOS integration

Kieran Webberin
Artist / Label News
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Digital Music News
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Music News

Image credit: Doppler

Doppler for iPhone has become popular among music listeners who want to own their music in hi-res formats, now its coming to MacOS.

Doppler for iPhone has grown in popularity among music fans who like to own their music in hi-res formats such as FLAC files. Now the popular mobile version is heading to Mac after being teased back in June. 

Doppler for Mac boasts a clean and simple UI to organize and listen to your personally owned media collection. It features a seamless drag and drop design that allows the user to add music to their library with ease. It also makes it easy to transfer music and playlists between iPhone and Mac over WiFi or USB. In addition to this, there is a one-click artwork search feature, simple multi-disc merging, metadata editing, a playback queue, and so much more. 

If you have Sleeve installed on your Mac you will also be able to integrate the apps, making for a fluid music playing experience.

Doppler for Mac is a free download with a 7-day trial and then it is a $25 one-time purchase afterward. 

Universal Music Group signs licensing deal with TikTok rival Lomotif

Kieran Webberin
Artist / Label News
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Digital Music News
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Music News

Image credit: Lomotif

Universal Music Group has officially inked a licensing deal with Singapore based Lomotif, a TikTok rival.

Universal Music Group (UMG) has officially signed a licensing deal with TikTok rival Lomotif. Under the agreement, Lomotif users will be able to “create clips using songs from the big three record label and easily add UMG’s music to a clip right from the app”, according to the agreement. 

Lomotif is one of several short-form video platforms that are taking on TikTok. So far, Lomotif has racked up roughly 225 million installations, is available across over 200 countries and in 300+ languages. The platform is especially popular in Brazil, which houses 210 million residents, not to mention an ever-growing music industry that is stream-driven. Lomotif also boasts a sizeable user base, consisting of roughly 31 million MAU’s (monthly active users), according to their report. In addition to this, their audience watches approximately 300 million videos per month with a total of some 740 on-platform videos. 

Speaking on the UMG licensing deal, Lomotiff founder and CEO Paul Yang said: “Our deal with Universal Music Group will continue to grow users and increase engagement within our platform, a destination for emerging artists, and will significantly expand the types of music our community can utilize, collaborate with and share.” He adds: “With nearly 800 million videos created to date, we are heading in a great direction as a platform, and making high-value content, functionality, and features available to our community will only help us grow exponentially.”

Tencent Music fined and ordered to end its exclusive label deals in China

Madeleine Amosin
Artist / Label News

Image Credit: Tencent Music

Chinese music giant Tencent Music is being forced by regulators to give up exclusive music rights in China – coupled with a hefty fine.

A competition regulator has given Tencent Music 30 days to end exclusive deals it holds with labels in China. The music giant has also been fined 500,000 yuan ($77,143) by China’s State Administration of Market Regulation.

Tencent Music, the biggest music streaming company in China, holds a number of exclusive rights to record label catalogues in the region. It must now give up the exclusive global deals, though it can keep the exclusive deals with independent artists.

Already under scrutiny for its dominance of the Chinese music market, Tencent had faced being forced to sell its three music streaming services Kuwo, QQ Music, and KuGou, a threat it has dodged.

Tencent said it would “comply with all the regulatory requirements, fulfil our social responsibilities and contribute to healthy competition in the market.” The company will have to report to the regulator for the next three years to check it is completing its obligations.

We’ve spoken a lot recently about the re-emergence of music streaming exclusives – deals between platforms and artists to release music that is available only on one streaming service. Great for the streaming company, giving the platform a unique selling point, but historically loathed by labels and government officials; by listeners, too, who resent being unable to listen to a release without signing up to another subscription.

Exclusives ebbed away around 2017 following warnings that the practice would drive up prices and after music piracy began to rocket. In 2021 however, streaming exclusives have begun to creep back, with the likes of Deezer launching exclusive covers of ‘80s songs, Kanye West’s new album Donda debuting as a livestream premiere on Apple Music. There doesn’t seem to be a return however to the purchase of rights, which means that entire official releases will be out everywhere and not just shackled to one streaming service.

Tencent Music had already began to draw back from exclusive deals – it no longer holds exclusive licensing agreement with Sony Music, for example, which allowed the company to sign a deal with NetEase Cloud Music. Tencent no longer has exclusive deals with any of the “Big Three” record labels, potentially opening up the door for a fairer market in the Chinese music industry.  

Amazon Music partners Metropolis Studios to expand on spatial audio offerings

Kieran Webberin
Artist / Label News
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Digital Music News
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Music News

Image credit: Campaign

Amazon Music continues its push into immersive and spatial audio with partnership with Metropolis Studios.

Amazon Music has shown it’s looking to expand its immersive sounds and spatial audio capabilities by forming a content partnership with Metropolis Studios, an independent studio based in West London. The studio has recently added a 3D audio facility and will become the streaming services UK-based HQ for immersive mixing.

Metropolis worked with content expert Sonosphere on the design of the new studio as well as the specifications to help support its creative mix workflow. Loudspeakers have been installed around the room at 30 degrees separation with the studio having immersive audio monitoring designed to cater for all surround formats, including Dolby Atmos. The placement of the speakers helps create the 360-degree spatial audio, meaning that the sound of each instrument will come from its location, meaning the listener will feel surrounded by the music.

Artists who have partnered with Amazon Music to create immersive mixes are The Amazons, Emma McGrath, James Ried, and many more. The aforementioned mixes will be available late summer and boast Amazon Music‘s continued expansion and investment into 3D audio formats.

Speaking on the partnership Patrick Clifton, head of music, Amazon Music UK, told Campaign: “We have a belief that music fans want to listen to music in the highest quality possible. Any work we do to ask fans what they want always tells us that high-quality audio is really important to them and this technology now allows us to offer that.

“We also know that artists want their fans to hear music in the best quality possible and are always excited to deliver their music as it’s intended to be heard. It blows me away, its ability to capture so much more emotion in the music than we’re able to do in stereo.”

Kanye West’s ‘Donda’ Apple Music exclusive livestream breaks records

Kieran Webberin
Artist / Label News
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Digital Music News
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Music News

Image credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Universal Music Group via Pitchfrok

Kanye West’s exclusive Applke Music livestream of his tenth studio album ‘Donda’ was viewed by 3.3 million people.

Apple Music is ramping up its exclusive content in recent months, firstly by adding a weekly segment called ‘This Week in Apple Music’, which features exclusive interviews and previews. And more recently the global livestream event that premiered Kanye West’s hotly-anticipated new album ‘Donda’. The exclusive event was hosted at the Mercedez-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, which Kanye is now rumored to be living at until the album is complete.

According to TMZ, the livestream saw 3.3 million people tune, an Apple Music record. The previous record-holder was 1.8 million viewers for a Verzuz battle between Gucci Mane and Jeezy that was livestreamed last year.

The album is yet to be released and was recently delayed but according to a tweet from a former basketball player and social media personality Justin LaBoy ‘Donda’ will be available on August 6th.

What is Audiomack?

Madeleine Amosin
Artist / Label News
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Digital Music News

Image Credit: Audiomack

Step this way to learn more about free music app Audiomack.

Similar to SoundCloud in that anyone can upload music and anyone can listen for free, Audiomack aims to promote emerging artists. Since 2012 Audiomack has been primarily a free music streaming service, and now has over 17 million monthly active users. Even as it has grown in popularity the platform still has a focus on boosting the online presence and careers of independent artists.

whats audiomack
Image Credit: Audiomack

Concentrating on select genres including hip-hop and EDM, Audiomack includes free mixtapes from new young artists trying to find an audience. On the platform are albums, podcasts, songs and mixtapes, with trending charts and curated playlists. Audiomack also offers an ad-free Premium tier for $4.99 a month.

Audiomack is available as an iOS and Android app as well as on desktop. Free features for artists include unlimited uploads, stats, monetisation, scheduling tools and embeddable players to share uploads elsewhere online.

It’s not just new artists on the platform – there’s also big-name artists like Eminem, who chose to release his 2018 Machine Gun Kelly diss track “Killshot” on Audiomack. Eminem’s spontaneous release also highlights the continued organic DIY nature of the platform, despite licensing deals with the Big Three record labels of Warner, Sony and Universal Music. At the start of this year, Billboard announced that Audiomack streaming data would be included in its charts.

Audiomack’s accessible and forward-thinking platform make it one to watch in the streaming world for the future.

‘Sleeve’ is the all-new widget for Apple Music or Spotify for your Mac

Kieran Webberin
Artist / Label News
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Digital Music News
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Music News

Image credit: Sleeve

‘Sleeve’ is a fantastic app to brighten up the now playing function for Apple Music or Spotify.

‘Sleeve’ is a fun and simple app that lives on your Mac desktop, designed to brighten up the what’s playing functionality of music players such as Apple Music or Spotify. The widget shows the album artwork of what you’re playing, the song, and playback controls. 

It’s a super simple app that offers up a number of customization options depending on your preferences. You can customize the size, rounded corners on the artwork, day/night mode, text size, alignment, and much more. 

Adding to its simplicity Sleeve doesn’t need authentication from your music streaming accounts to work. It also comes in at the healthy price of $5 and has no ads or other in-app purchases, making it an inexpensive and easy app to use. Sleeve looks great on a multitude of displays and is a great way to spice up your playback screen. 

You can purchase Sleeve directly from the developer here.