My Funky Year in Music: 18,599 tracks, 4,188 artists, 5,533 albums (according to Last.FM)

Because I am very much into statistics, I still like using Last.FM, a music database which keeps track of the songs I enjoy via iTunes, Internet radiostations and iPod/smartphone. According to Last.FM’s summary for 2016, I listened to 18,599 tracks by 4,188 different artists and from 5,533 different albums. That makes 55 songs a day and a total listening time of 45 days, 5 hours. Top music genres: funk, soul, country, pop, and blues.

Everything you always wanted to know about music genres but were afraid to ask!

On the amazing website Every Noise at Once you find samples of 1436 styles on one map:

R.I.P., Maurice White – let’s pay tribute with a collective playlist on Spotify!

Maurice White performing with Earth, Wind, and Fire at the Ahoy Rotterdam; 1982 (Photo: Chris Hakkens / This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

I was saddened to read the following news earlier tonight:

Maurice White always was particularly close to my heart because he was both a musician’s musician and managed to achieve pop hits. I think I hated „Boogie Wonderland“ when it first came out, but it grew on me. Especially after reading the great story behind it which songwriter Allee Willis made me aware of on Facebook (check the comments section). 😉

I started to compile a Spotify playlist with my favorite Maurice White songs right after hearing the bad news. So far, it contains 4 hours 28 minutes of great funk, soul and jazz (use it in shuffle mode). Artists include (in alphabetical order) Barbra Streisand, Billy Stewart, Brian Culbertson, Deniece Williams, Earth Wind & Fire, El DeBarge, The Emotions, Fontella Bass, James Ingram, Ramsey Lewis, Ramsey Lewis Trio, The Salty Peppers, The Tubes:

I configured the playlist to be a collaborative effort. Feel free to add your personal favorites on Spotify. If you don’t have a Spotify account, post your music links (YouTube & Co.) in the comments section of this blog entry. And please retweet/repost this tribute in your social media circles!

My 200,000th play on Last.FM – or: 50 songs a day keep the doctor away!

Last.FM is not as much fun as it used to be when it was the top music portal, but – as a fan of statistics – I still try to scrobble the music I am listening to. And I was happy to see that I just hit the 200,000th song mark. Since I have been a member since February 23, 2005, this means that – statistically speaking – I listen to at least 50 songs a day.

While writing this, a playlist with my 1,695 favourite Spotify songs is running in shuffle mode. It just reached song #200,000: Marcia Griffiths, „Run Up and Down“ – which brings back nice memories of my Jamaica visits in the ’80s.

Detailed statistics
There is an interesting division: My top artists are funk-dominated, there is a lot of country among my top albums, and Bollywood seems to rule my top tracks,

Top artists (among 17,512 scrobbled)

Favorite Funk of 2015 … Including Glorious Soul by Judith Hill

Judith Hill (Photo: Medill DC / This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. / Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Judith_Hill_crop.jpg)

Listening to entries on fellow funkateers‘ „Best of 2015“ lists made me realize that I missed several great new albums last year. My instant favorite was „Back in Time“, the October release by Judith Hill whose funky soul adds justification to her middle name „Glory“. Her debut was produced by Prince who has a spotty history with regard to picking female protegées who are worth of his musical genius and whose own talents equal their looks.

With Judith, Prince apparently found the perfect match. „Back in Time“ contains many of the elements which I liked during Prince’s heyday (and I am not a full-fledged fan – I am not to keen on many of his greatest non-funky hits; e. g., „Purple Rain“ and „Let’s Get Crazy“). It has raw funk, sultry soul (without the „sexcesses“ we are used to), irresistible grooves, punchy horns annd intricate arrangements.

Pandora Buys Rdio To Become A Global Streaming Powerhouse

I am very glad to see that Pandora – which has been my favorite music recommendation service for at least ten years – is expanding its reach. Maybe it will even be officially available in Germany some day …

My previous praise of Pandora (in German): „Wie man das Top-Empfehlungsradio Pandora auch in Deutschland komfortabel nutzen kann“.

Music Industry Blog

Pandora today announced that it was acquiring the assets of now failed subscription service Rdio.  While the whispers about Rdio’s future had been building for some time, the deal is more interesting for what it says about Pandora’s plans than what it says about the state of the subscription business.

Rdio Battled Bravely And Set Innovation Standards But Fell Short

For what Rdio lacked in subscriber numbers it made up for in innovation.  It continually set product and feature precedents that Spotify and others subsequently aped, and its $75 million dollar ad inventory deal with US radio giant Cumulus sets a business model blueprint that other streaming services will follow. But for all its efforts and extensive marketing efforts Rdio was simply not able to get to the same sort of level as Spotify’s 2nd tier competitors, let alone to seriously challenge Spotify itself.  The music subscription business is not…

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Making YouTube Pay: YouTubers Versus Bands

Interesting analysis of YouTube phenomenon PewDiePie. The figures are fascinating: The figures are fascinating: Forbes has named Felix Kjellberg (aka PDP), as the top-earning YouTube star on the planet after earning $12 million in the past year (details in an Independent article).

Music Industry Blog

This is the second in a series of YouTube generation posts. See the first one here.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Generation Edge – the under 16 millennials – and how they are driving an entire new subculture of YouTube stars that throw the traditional fandom rulebook out of the window. One of the intriguing paradoxes (or at least apparent paradoxes) is how a generation of native YouTube stars can create both vast audiences and revenue while for music artists YouTube is simply a place to build awareness and probably lose net revenue due to YouTube streams cannibalizing paid streams. So how can the model both be broken (for music) and yet buoyant for native YouTuber creators?

PewDiePie And Taylor Swift

Compare and contrast the biggest earner in music with the biggest earner on YouTube.   Taylor Swift netted $39.7 million in 2014, compared to $7.4 million…

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The 64-bit iTunes vs. Last.FM Scrobbler problem has finally been solved!

If you don’t use the music website Last.FM (old blog post in German), you don’t need to read any further. The current good news only apply to those who use the Last.FM Scrobbler with iTunes for Windows. Since Apple updated the music player of our choice to a version that is fully 64-bit (12.1.0.71, Windows 7), the Scrobbler did not detect songs that were played by iTunes anymore. Last.FM members have been complaining about it in the website’s forum since January 30, 2015.

When I just opened the Last.FM Scrobbler to check my Spotify scrobbles I finally received the notice for an update that had been promised by Last.FM for a weeks. I installed the update, and this did solve the problem. My 64-bit iTunes (12.1.2.27, Windows 7) scrobbles its plays again (including songs played on my iPod). For whatever reason, Last.FM did not consider it necessary (yet) to announce this major ‚bug fix‘ in its Twitter feed.

What The Music Industry Can Learn From The Beer Industry

Von Freude @INTERNORGA: Stoppt Massenbierhaltung! (Photo: Peter Jebsen – all rights reserved)

Interesting food (drink) for thought:

• The dynamics of the beer industry bear remarkable similarity to the recorded music business and there are some lessons that can be learned.
• Craft beer is like the music industry’s indie sector and vinyl sales rolled into one.
• The beer aficionado and the music aficionado are more important to their respective industries now than they have ever been and this will only increase.

Music Industry Blog

Over the next few weeks I will be writing a series of posts that illustrate what lessons the music business can heed from other industries. This is the first of these posts. Beer sales have been in steady decline for many years with the big brewers coming to terms with changing consumption habits of consumers and the impact of disruptive new models. Sound familiar? The dynamics of the beer industry bear remarkable similarity to the recorded music business and there are some lessons that can be learned. Beer sales have been declining since 2008 with the core baby boomer consumer base changing consumption habits and drinking more hard liquor and wine. In the UK the amount of beer drunk has fallen by 20% over the last 10 years while US beer sales have been falling since 2008. The number of new breweries went into decline and after years of acquisitions…

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Crowdfunkin‘: Best of Current Funk (Spotify Playlist)

„Uptown Funk“ by Mark Ronson (feat. Bruno Mars) is one of the best current funk releases I have heard in a long time:

After mentioning this on Facebook, my funky friends recommended many other great acts to me. I threw in some additional favorites of mine and started a Spotify playlist. Put it into shuffle mode … and enjoy!

Alternatively, try this Spotify link.