SEM Weekly News Round-Up
December 22nd 2017
This week; the definitive RA roundup of music trends this year, Mixcloud’s new game-changing hookup with Gracenote, Pete Tong’s orchestra comes to Mcr and meet the women behind Bjork’s Utopia.
2017 in electronic music
It’s that time again when annual charts, trends and roundups help us look back at the year. The Resident Advisor blog (SEM’s preferred source of musical news as it happens) has released its 2017 in electronic music feature, a must read for musos, industry insiders and students looking to break into the industry.
Highlights include the return of Electro, our obsession with ‘old’ music samples, the rise of Minimal beyond Berlin and EBM, the new European sound invading clubs. Well worth a read to see the bigger picture in this year in music.
Mixcloud & Gracenote partnership could mean dollar dollar bills more for artists
Streaming site Mixcloud has announced a partnership with Gracenote MusicID, meaning advanced music recognition and the ability to identify copyrighted audio content. This is both good and bad for artists, depending on where you are on the creative production scale.
Mixcloud has grown to 1.2 million creators of music mixes, radio shows and podcasts with more than 12 million DJ sets, radio shows and podcasts and ingests more than 1,000 hours of user-generated content every day. “Mixcloud has emerged as the destination for both established and emerging radio presenters and DJs to present their shows and mixes to fans around the world,” said Brian Hamilton, General Manager of Music and Auto for Gracenote. “Being a platform that focuses on helping curators breakout and find new audiences, Mixcloud recognizes the importance of being able to connect royalty payments to the proper rights holders.”
The move, although an unsurprising one, could mean hassle when uploading mixes or tracks (something users of Soundcloud and Youtube can attest to) as overzealous copyright ID can mean tracks get flagged, even when it’s your own content – something that is fixed easily but is annoying. For PRS registered artists however it will mean more royalties where tracks of theirs are played in mixes and radio shows, which as producers we can only agree is a good thing.
“We’re living in a world where user generated content is growing exponentially, but most traditional catalogue streaming services are not focusing on this enormous area,” said Nico Perez, Co-Founder and Director of Content at Mixcloud. “At Mixcloud, we’ve invested a lot of energy in the technology around user generated content to properly identify and pay the creators what they’re owed, and we’re thrilled to add Gracenote as a new partner to help solve this difficult problem.”
The women who engineered Bjork’s Utopia
We’re pretty sure by now that everyone is in agreement; Bjork is an otherworldly advanced species from the future who has come to enlighten us, the poor unevolved plankton of Planet Earth with her often beguiling kookiness and sometimes inaccessibly off-beat musical output. 2017 was another ace year in this regard for our favourite Icelandic musician.
Her latest album ‘Utopia’ was released last month with a statement saying everyone who bought the record would receive Audiocoins, a form of crypto-currency aimed at the music industry, in return. However it was this article in The Fader showcasing the all female team that engineered ‘Utopia’ that caught our imagination. In a year that was the best of times and worst of times for women across the globe it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the new wave of women behind the mixing desk, as they give us an enchanting insight into working with the lady herself. Magic.
If you have seen some music news in your streams that you’d like us to feature email elle@semmanchester.com.
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