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The Biz

Singer-songwritter Tori Kelly is among the artists who have participated in performances on the Capitol Records rooftop.

Revisiting the Rooftop Concert – A Capitol Idea

The last concert the Beatles ever played was on a rooftop. Now Capitol Records, the label that distributed the Fab Four’s records in the U.S., is bringing that moment full circle. In addition to a refresh of the recording studio at the iconic platter-shaped building that sits on Vine St., near its legendary intersection with Hollywood Blvd., the label is also hosting live music performances on the roof. It’s another indicator of how the narrative arc of the music business has changed, with live music now the dominant revenue generator.

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Screen capture from the algorithm-based mixing software developed at London's Center for Digital Mixing

The Mixing Algorithm

The recent crash of a German airliner — a disaster brought about, apparently, by the willful act of one of its pilots — triggered a predictable discussion about the role that automation might play in avoiding such catastrophes in the future. But it also underscores just how much robotic automation — i.e., machines that can adaptively reconfigure their actions to changing circumstances — we already have in our daily lives.

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In this YouTube video, trucker Bryan Celestine outlines his routine for sating in shape while on the road.

Please Don’t Go – Not Just Yet

Years ago, when I was still getting on buses and planes to play music instead of write about it, I happened to mention to Allan Pepper (my manager at the time, and owner of the much-missed Bottom Line club in New York) that a lot of people I knew were getting married right around then. I remember myself saying something to the effect of, “Seems like this is the year for marriages.” To which Allan, after waiting the standard two-beat Jewish pre-punch line comedy interval, replied, “Wait ten years — it’ll seem like the year everyone’s getting divorced.”

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Joel Singer, outside the Music Mix Mobile M3 recording rig, holds a Focusrite RedNet 6 MADI Bridge recently added to their recording arsenal.

Live Loses its Luster Inside an MP3

You’re all aware of the oil glut. Great if you have gas tanks to fill, not so much if you have retirement accounts loaded with petroleum stocks. Overcapacity is all around us — we’ve had gluts of airline seats and houses in the past. Today, we have surfeits of airliners, copper and PhD’s in the news. As with all shortages and surpluses, there are winners and losers, new opportunities and missed chances for every miscalculation of supply and demand.

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New speakers seem to be on everyone’s mind, such as these attendees at 2014 Prolight+Sound/Musikmesse in Frankfurt.

Speakers Dominate the Conversation These Days

If the first decade of this century was about microphones, this next one seems to be about speakers. Neither trend fits exactly into such a neat chronology, of course; the explosive growth of the boutique microphone category was already underway when Prince was singing about the future of “1999.” But it certainly became fully formed in the aughts, when blinged-out handheld wireless mics became the must-have accessory for the fashion-conscious at the edge of the stage.

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The Dave Matthews Band was among the first artists to begin streaming with Yahoo!

Got Live (Streaming) If You Want It

Streaming live concerts seems to be the greatest idea that’s never gotten off the ground. Dozens of companies stream live music in bits and pieces, with ISPs like AOL and Yahoo creating online shows around the concept. Live Nation’s partnership with Yahoo to stream one live concert every day, which began with the Dave Matthews Band last July, continues offering free, high-definition concert footage. Start-up Bulldog Digital Media is looking to expand its nascent business beyond festivals such as Outside Lands, Bonnaroo and South by Southwest to full-on tours. But the widespread live streaming of entire concerts or tours on a consistent basis remains elusive, despite more than a decade’s worth of predictions that this is the next logical step for the music industry.

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The Biz, FOH, Jan 2015. Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Resident (NOT) Evil

Three years ago, Celine Dion was named by Pollstar as the 10th highest-grossing North American touring artist of 2011. In doing so, Ms. Dion barely moved a muscle, figuratively speaking. The $41.2 million she took in from live shows that year were virtually all attributable to the first year of a three-year residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which ended late last year, her second long-term stand there.

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Solid State Logic unveils its L500 live console at Musikmesse 2013

When It Comes to Trade Shows, Sound Reinforcement Has a Lot of Choices

You may (or may not) have noticed that the recent AES Show, which took place in Los Angeles in October, threw one hell of a big bone to the live sound community, in the form of its first-ever Live Sound Expo, a mini-event within the larger one. I say “may or may not” because — prior to this year’s edition — the show tended to elicit a big “meh” from many live-sound pros. That’s in light of the fact that the organization itself says that, historically, as much as a quarter — or more — of the shows’ attendees identify themselves as working in live sound.

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Fig. 1: This 1952 ad for RCA’s BA-6A vari-mu compressor emphasizes specs, features and a sepia-toned product shot.

Mad Men

Pro audio advertising hasn’t exactly lived at the cutting edge over the last half century but it has been evolving. When you look back at ads in the trade publications from the 1970s and earlier (like everything else, they’re up there online), you’ll see pretty staid graphics and copy, mostly nerdy product shots and verbiage that consisted mainly of dry data taken directly from spec sheets, such as the 1952 RCA BA-6A vari-mu compressor ad shown in Fig. 1. No CLIO Awards for this bunch.

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Among VER’s many clients is Bassnectar, for whom the company supplied a 360° Meyer Sound LEO array (with ample LF, of course) for 17,000 fans at this 2013 New Year’s Eve arena show.

VER Adds Audio

In consolidating industries, a natural response is scaling up in order to bring more services and capabilities to the table. That’s certainly what we’re seeing with a recent raft of merger and acquisition activity, with Comcast’s purchase of Time-Warner Cable and AT&T’s move on DirecTV — just the biggest of what’s shaping up to be the busiest deal-making season since 2008, with a reported $2.2 trillion in deals done so far this year globally, a 67-percent increase from the same period last year.

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IFPI’s report on the state of the digital music market can be downloaded from ifpi.org.

Streaming Concerts: Will This Time Be Different?

Even if you’re not Jimmy Iovine or Dr. Dre, chances are streamed music is becoming part of your life. Streaming services such as Spotify, Rdio and Pandora are becoming a critical part of music payouts, with a 51-percent increase in revenue from subscription services reported in 2013, through which revenues exceeded $1 billion for the first time, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry reported. About 28 million people around the world pay for access to them, up from eight million just three years earlier, according to The New York Times.

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Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, 2014. Photo by Adam Kaplan/ASK Media Productions

Is Festival Fever Fading?

Music festivals are big business. Coachella, Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo — the three largest franchises in the U.S. — took in over $20 million in ticket sales each, contributing to what’s become a $4.3 billion live music market here, representing way more than half of the entire music industry’s total value in an age of still-declining recorded-music sales.

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