Beatseeker

In today’s episode we speak with Matt Boerum who joins us from Boston, Massachusetts. Matt is a musician and recording engineer with a PhD in sound technology. He is co-founder and CEO of Audible Reality, an immersive audio technology company revolutionizing music engagement through unique and interactive AI-driven 3D audio software.

When itunes launched 20 years ago, the MP3 took over from Cds. We gained convenience but lost audio quality. Now things are about to change. Spotify, Apple and others are all launching new features to improve audio quality. We sit down with Matt to help educate us on the basics of audio and whether these upgrades are worth it. We also talk with Matt about his startup and how they are taking audio to the next level with 3D vibes and other cool features. You might notice that this episode sounds different. Matt graciously upgraded our podcast recording to 3D using his tech.

Learn more about Audible Reality at audiblereality.com and reach out to Matt on LinkedIn: @mattboerum

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Beatseeker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 10 Music Technology Podcasts on the web: https://blog.feedspot.com/music_technology_podcasts/

Learn more: beatseeker.fm

Insta: @beatseekerpod Twitter: @beatseekerpod  Facebook: facebook.com/beatseekerpod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beatseeker

Beatseeker is sponsored by the Boombox Music League: boomboxsoftware.com

In this episode Steve Caldwell joins us from Louisville, Kentucky. Steve is a lifelong musician, hip-hop junkie, and one of the founders of Mandolin. When COVID struck and the live music industry was turned upside-down, Steve and his partners saw the opportunity to revolutionize live-streaming.

Steve tells the story of Mandolin and how they responded to the situation in a matter of weeks and how they produce their live-streamed shows. We talk about the lasting changes that this type of technology is going to have long after the pandemic and what new opportunities it presents to venues and artists. Fans can anticipate new ways to engage with artists online as a silver lining that emerged when live shows were not possible.

Check out Mandolin at mandolin.com or on Twitter @mandolinlive and Instagram @watchmandolin. Find Steve on Twitter at @stevecaldwell

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Beatseeker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 10 Music Technology Podcasts on the web: https://blog.feedspot.com/music_technology_podcasts/

Learn more: beatseeker.fm

Insta: @beatseekerpod Twitter: @beatseekerpod  Facebook: facebook.com/beatseekerpod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beatseeker

Beatseeker is sponsored by the Boombox Music League: boomboxsoftware.com

In this episode we discuss the future of concerts and festivals with Mark Monahan. Mark is the CEO of Bluesfest, one of Canada’s largest festivals drawing over 300,000 concertgoers each year.

When COVID struck, Mark’s organization needed to make the hard decision to cancel their summer event. They moved quickly to pivot their events to online. We chat with Mark about how the online experiment went down, their results and whether online concerts are a temporary workaround or permanent part of our concert experiences moving forward.

Check out Bluesfest at https://ottawabluesfest.ca/ and on Twitter: @ottawabluesfest

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Beatseeker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 10 Music Technology Podcasts on the web: https://blog.feedspot.com/music_technology_podcasts/

Learn more: beatseeker.fm

Insta: @beatseekerpod Twitter: @beatseekerpod  Facebook: facebook.com/beatseekerpod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beatseeker

Beatseeker is sponsored by the Boombox Music League: boomboxsoftware.com

What do artists think about new technologies that are changing the industry, for better or worse?  In this Artist Perspective episode we speak to Dan Kurtz and Jamie Shields. Longtime members of the Toronto music scene, Jamie and Dan (along with Darren Shearer) formed the New Deal in 1998  fusing electronic music with live improvisation. Dan also formed the electro-pop band Dragonette with singer/songwriter Martina Sorbara.

In past Beatseeker episodes we’ve covered how new technologies like streaming, social media and online concerts are changing the industry. In this episode we get an artists take on these trends. We sit down with Dan and Jamie to discuss how technology is impacting everything from how they make a living, how they make music and how they interact with fans.

Find their music and stay up to date at: http://www.thenewdeal.com and http://www.dragonette.com

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Beatseeker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 10 Music Technology Podcasts on the web: https://blog.feedspot.com/music_technology_podcasts/

Learn more: beatseeker.fm

Insta: @beatseekerpod Twitter: @beatseekerpod  Facebook: facebook.com/beatseekerpod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beatseeker

Beatseeker is sponsored by the Boombox Music League: boomboxsoftware.com

What can you do with an insane amount of data about an artist? Can you use that data to predict hitmakers? In this episode we speak to Jason Joven, Manager for Content and Insights at Chartmetric. A former US Navy cryptologic intelligence officer, Jason helps create actionable insights for Chartmetric via special client projects, deep-dive articles, podcast episodes and product development.

Chartmetric is a music analytics company that is measuring unbelievable amounts of data about digital music. They track how many streams each artist and song gets. How many followers they have on social media. Who’s trending up or down and much more. We sit down with Jason to discuss how insights and data are changing the music industry at large.

Learn all about how it works and sign up for a free trial at https://www.chartmetric.com/ and follow on social media @chartmetric

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Beatseeker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 10 Music Technology Podcasts on the web: https://blog.feedspot.com/music_technology_podcasts/

Learn more: beatseeker.fm

Insta: @beatseekerpod Twitter: @beatseekerpod  Facebook: facebook.com/beatseekerpod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beatseeker

Beatseeker is sponsored by the Boombox Music League: boomboxsoftware.com

Does anyone still listen to albums? Is the album format dead? In this episode we discuss the rise and fall of the album format with Jeff Breithaupt. Jeff is the lyricist half of the award-winning Breithaupt Brothers songwriting team; the co-author of two books on pop music in the 1970s; and Vice President for Media and Communications at Manhattan School of Music.

With streaming now accounting for well over 80% of music consumption, most consumers are not buying physical albums anymore. Beyond that, they are not consuming digital albums either. More and more, consumers are listening to singles and playlists and bypassing the album altogether. We sit down with Jeff to discuss the origins of the album and whether it will survive in the modern digital era.

Find the Breithaupt Brothers on Alma Records at: http://www.almarecords.com/artists/the-breithaupt-brothers/ and look for Jeff’s (and brother Don’s) books about 70s pop music: “Precious and Few” and “Night Moves” on Amazon.

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Beatseeker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 10 Music Technology Podcasts on the web: https://blog.feedspot.com/music_technology_podcasts/

Learn more: beatseeker.fm

Insta: @beatseekerpod Twitter: @beatseekerpod  Facebook: facebook.com/beatseekerpod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beatseeker

WTF is an NFT and WTF does it have to do with music? What are social tokens? In this episode we speak to George Howard, Professor of Music Business Management at Berklee College of Music, and the founder of GHS, a strategic consulting firm. George is a columnist for Forbes, and has authored a book called “Everything In Its Right Place: How Blockchain Technology Will Lead To A More Transparent Music Industry.”

George is a passionate champion of the independent artist. He is critical of the negative impacts of centralized power in the music industry from labels to now streaming platforms. In this fascinating discussion, we sit down with George to discuss how decentralized technologies like NFTs and Social tokens might be the key to enabling artists to make it on their own in the creator economy.

George’s commencement speech from Berklee college is the stuff of legend and a must-watch.You can find it pinned to his twitter: @gah650. Check out TuneCore at: https://www.tunecore.com/.

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Beatseeker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 10 Music Technology Podcasts on the web: https://blog.feedspot.com/music_technology_podcasts/

Learn more: beatseeker.fm

Insta: @beatseekerpod Twitter: @beatseekerpod  Facebook: facebook.com/beatseekerpod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beatseeker

Beatseeker is sponsored by the Boombox Music League: boomboxsoftware.com

How can musicians make a living in the age of streaming when they earn fractions of a penny per Spotify play? In this episode we talk about the changing economics of making music with musician, poet and writer Damon Krukowski.

Streaming platforms have been a great innovation for consumers but this invention is not universally loved by musicians.  We speak to Damon about what it was like to make a living in the pre-digital era and how challenging it is to live off royalties in the age of streaming. We also discuss his work with the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) which aims to organize music workers to fight for a more just music industry. He suggests some alternative models that might be more friendly for many artists going forward.

Find Damon’s books, music and other work at http://www.daddrummer.com

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Beatseeker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 10 Music Technology Podcasts on the web: https://blog.feedspot.com/music_technology_podcasts/

Learn more: beatseeker.fm

Insta: @beatseekerpod Twitter: @beatseekerpod  Facebook: facebook.com/beatseekerpod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beatseeker

Learn how companies like Musiio are making tools that automatically tag tracks with descriptive data, like: mood, genre, tempo, key, instrument and energy. A human might painstakingly tag a few tracks or even a few albums, but what about hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of tracks? Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI) to do what it does best: automating the tagging process.

We speak with Hazel Savage, music tech lifer and the Co-founder and CEO of Musiio. We trace Hazel’s storied career from her playing in a punk band and working in a London HMV to launching her own Singapore-based Musiio with key stops along the way.

Hazel joined a young Shazam as employee number 25, pre-smartphone when you dialed #2580 and paid £0.50 per search (UK-only at the time), mostly to buy the ringtone. After a stint in Sidney with Universal Music, she joined Pandora, another true pioneer in music tech. In many ways, Hazel’s career trajectory reflects the journey of the music industry, from album sales in the record store to sophisticated high tech software. Try Musio’s demos and learn more at http://www.musiio.com 

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Beatseeker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 10 Music Technology Podcasts on the web: https://blog.feedspot.com/music_technology_podcasts/

Learn more: beatseeker.fm

Insta: @beatseekerpod Twitter: @beatseekerpod  Facebook: facebook.com/beatseekerpod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beatseeker

Beatseeker is sponsored by the Boombox Music League: boomboxsoftware.com

How do music charts work? How does a song get on Billboard’s Hot100? How have the charts had to adapt over the years to stay relevant as new ways of listening to and purchasing music have come into play?

We speak with chart analyst Chris Molanphy, who explains the charts, how they are always evolving and why they are so important to the industry. We discuss a variety of charts, focusing mostly on  Billboard and their Hot100. Chris carries deep insights into the fascinating history and evolution of music charts, from formulas used to determine how many streams are deemed to equal an album purchase to how a hit song becomes a hit - and then travels through our collective awareness as it jumps from for example TikTok to streaming services to radio play.

The interview goes deep into chart controversies over the years: like the removal of Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road from the country charts and attempts to cheat the charts over the years from commercial radio payola to spoofing streaming services with fake plays. Hear more of Chris on his Slate podcast Hit Parade and read his Slate column Why Is This Song No. 1? 

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Beatseeker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 10 Music Technology Podcasts on the web: https://blog.feedspot.com/music_technology_podcasts/

Learn more: beatseeker.fm

Insta: @beatseekerpod Twitter: @beatseekerpod  Facebook: facebook.com/beatseekerpod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beatseeker

Beatseeker is sponsored by the Boombox Music League: boomboxsoftware.com