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Listen to an audio version of this story below: When Bob Donnelly entered the music business as a lawyer in 1976, payola, or pay-for-play, was standard in the radio industry. “When I first started, it was hookers and blow [to help get songs on the air],” Donnelly says. “Then that …

On Wednesday, Spotify reported its second-quarter earnings with both happy and unhappy news alike: The Swedish music-streaming giant now has around 232 million people around the world using its service each month, marking a 29 percent increase in audience from last year — but the number of paying subscribers within …

“Consensus is the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no-one believes, but to which no-one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead.” This quote didn’t …

The vinyl revival of the last few years is still going strong, but the crazy pace is finally showing signs of slowing down. Vinyl album sales were up around 12 percent from 2017 to 2018, according to year-end figures from data company BuzzAngle, which tracks U.S. music consumption, representing a …

Paul McCartney easily took the top spot on the Billboard 200 this week when his new albumEgypt Stationblew past 153,000 equivalent album units — a forceful 147,000 of which were traditional album sales. Eminem’sKamikaze,now two weeks old,slotted in at Number Two with 136,000 units. But just under those two, and …

Editor’s note (9/21): The original headline of this article implied that Ticketmaster called CBC and the Toronto Star‘s report “categorically untrue.” In its statement, the company was referring to “any program in place to enable resellers to acquire large volumes of tickets at the expense of consumers” as untrue and …

In two of the biggest music markets in the world, getting a Number One record is not merely about the quantity of plays and sales now – but the quality of the play.Earlier this year, Billboard, which publishes the definitive album and song charts for the U.S. music industry,revamped its …