On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me: twelve drummers drumming! And they were pounding out a beat to celebrate Music Ally sticking to this ill-advised article-intros concept for the full 12 days of our end-of-2023 roundups. B’dum tish!
Our final roundup of the year looks back at some of the guest columns that we have published in 2023, ranked by pageviews. Read on for the top five; see our other Christmas roundup posts here; and have a very merry holiday whatever you’re celebrating…
1. Indie views on artist-centric payouts
Martin Mills of Beggars Group, Darius Van Arman of Secretly Distribution, Stephan Bourdoiseau of Wagram Stories, and Emmanuel de Buretel of Because Music teamed up to offer their opinions on Deezer’s new artist-centric payouts, welcoming some aspects while expressing concerns about others. The column was a good primer on why the independent music community has some reservations about the new model. Read the piece.
2. Dispelling the Utopian dream
Veteran tech and music executive Virginie Berger wrote a post for us breaking down in detail the individual elements that the challenge of rebuilding and updating the music industryās royalty system presents, and offering recommendations on how it could happen. Her views turned out to be popular with our readers: the second biggest guest column of 2023 on our site. Read the piece.
3. HiFi streaming as the way forward
Deezer may have been on the end of some criticism in our most popular op-ed, but in third place we have a guest post from the streaming service’s VP of artist relations Nigel Harding. He was talking about hi-res audio ā HiFi as Deezer brands it ā and why it should be a fundamental part of the music-streaming experience rather than just a luxury extra. Read the piece.
4. Fan-focused strategies for success
Ahead of the NY:LON Connect conference that we co-organised in January, analytics firm Viberate’s co-founder Vasja Veber wrote a guest post for us looking at the underlying data from his company’s annual ‘State of Music’ report. He explored fan-first artist approaches and the importance of Spotify in “sealing the deal” even for artists for whom TikTok has been a launchpad. Read the piece.
5. Music streaming heads for maturity
The fifth most-popular guest column on Music Ally this year came from Phil Bird, head of sales, rights and royalties (media) at Vistex. He looked ahead to what 2023 might bring for music rightsholders, and argued that big catalogue purchases would continue to be an industry trend, even if the prices paid for them were not quite as big as before. Read the piece.
