Sonos Black Friday deals present good opportunities to upgrade your home audio setup. A number of Sonos speakers and soundbars are on sale right now, including the Era 300 speaker, which is $100 off and down to $379. Engadget’s Nathan Ingraham called it “a great speaker, whether or not it is playing songs in Dolby Atmos.”
That Dolby reference points to the Era 300’s core novelty. It produces spatial audio without requiring additional speakers. (You can use Apple Music or Amazon Music to stream compatible tracks.) Expect those Dolby Atmos tracks to sound better with newer music than older songs remixed for Dolby’s tech.
Sonos
Save $100 on the Sonos’ standalone spatial speaker.
Even if you don’t bother with its spatial tricks, the Era 300 is a terrific-sounding speaker. It delivers rich, detailed and balanced audio that can hang with just about anything else Sonos offers.
The speaker supports voice control via Alexa or Sonos Voice Control. It also offers Trueplay tuning, which listens to how your room shapes the sound and adjusts accordingly. In this model, you don’t need to use your phone: Its built-in mics scan your room for you. That’s especially handy for Android users, since phone-based Trueplay (from other models) is iOS-only.
If the Era 300 is a bit out of your budget, Sonos has loads of other products on sale for Black Friday. You can get the smaller — but still mighty — Era 100 for $169 (23 percent off). The portable Move 2 is down to $399 (20 percent off). Even the company’s headphones, Sonos Ace, are on sale for $279 (30 percent off).
Sonos home theater products are discounted, too. You can get the Arc Ultra soundbar for $879 (20 percent off), or the Sub 4 subwoofer for $719 (also 20 percent off). Or, if you’re in the market for both and have the budget, save even more on a bundle: Get the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 for $1,499 (25 percent off).
Sonos Black Friday deals present good opportunities to upgrade your home audio setup. A number of Sonos speakers and soundbars are on sale right now, including the Era 300 speaker, which is $100 off and down to $379. Engadget’s Nathan Ingraham called it “a great speaker, whether or not it is playing songs in Dolby Atmos.”
That Dolby reference points to the Era 300’s core novelty. It produces spatial audio without requiring additional speakers. (You can use Apple Music or Amazon Music to stream compatible tracks.) Expect those Dolby Atmos tracks to sound better with newer music than older songs remixed for Dolby’s tech.
Sonos
Save $100 on the Sonos’ standalone spatial speaker.
Even if you don’t bother with its spatial tricks, the Era 300 is a terrific-sounding speaker. It delivers rich, detailed and balanced audio that can hang with just about anything else Sonos offers.
The speaker supports voice control via Alexa or Sonos Voice Control. It also offers Trueplay tuning, which listens to how your room shapes the sound and adjusts accordingly. In this model, you don’t need to use your phone: Its built-in mics scan your room for you. That’s especially handy for Android users, since phone-based Trueplay (from other models) is iOS-only.
If the Era 300 is a bit out of your budget, Sonos has loads of other products on sale for Black Friday. You can get the smaller — but still mighty — Era 100 for $169 (23 percent off). The portable Move 2 is down to $399 (20 percent off). Even the company’s headphones, Sonos Ace, are on sale for $279 (30 percent off).
Sonos home theater products are discounted, too. You can get the Arc Ultra soundbar for $879 (20 percent off), or the Sub 4 subwoofer for $719 (also 20 percent off). Or, if you’re in the market for both and have the budget, save even more on a bundle: Get the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 for $1,499 (25 percent off).
Amazon Music has just launched new AI-powered weekly playlists based on the “preferences and mood” of listeners. This just means it scrapes what you’ve already been listening to and extrapolates further. It doesn’t apply modern technology to gauge the actual mood of users.
The company says the playlists include “a curated mix of familiar favorites from their most listened-to artists and latest favorites to new discoveries.” I’m not exactly sure how this is different from what music streaming platforms have always done to create personalized playlists, other than these are made using Amazon’s Bedrock generative AI platform.
They do arrive with snappy names to suggest the type of songs included, like “Empowerment Anthems” and “Melodic Flex.” This seems similar to Spotify’s Daylists, which also use cute little names. The Amazon playlists can be saved to the library or shared with friends via text or social media.
“The feature represents another way we’re harnessing AI to help fans connect with more music that resonates with them,” said Ryan Redington, General Manager of Amazon Music. He also said this brings a “new dimension” to the service by “creating personalized playlists celebrating their favorite artists while introducing new music that matches their unique tastes.” Again, personalized playlists are nothing new.
Download the latest update to the app to get started. These weekly playlists are currently only available to US listeners and drop on Mondays.
This is just the latest AI-forward move by a music-streaming platform. Spotify recently and an . This isn’t even Amazon Music’s first dip into AI-infested waters. The platform already uses that can be used to create playlists.
If you thought Billie Eilish couldn’t get any more angelic, you were wrong. After weeks and weeks of fans begging for live performances of their favorite tracks from the singer’s latest album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, prayers have been answered. Thanks to Amazon Music, we now have the most perfect performances of album favorites like ‘WILDFLOWER,’ ‘BIRDS OF A FEATHER,’ ‘SKINNY,’ and ‘L’AMOUR DE MA VIE.’ Narrowing down our favorites is just simply impossible, but we’ll do our best…
Image Source: Courtesy of The Oriel Co.
Amazon Music’s Songline
Going behind the scenes to listen to our favorite artists’ most special songs is one of the most exciting parts of being a fan. Amazon Music’s new digital series, Songline, allows artists to strip down their songs in an intimate setting that really showcases the art. With just a few microphones and instruments, the artists’ voices get to shine through in a new way we’ve never heard before. In this new series, fans also get a chance to learn a bit more about the featured songs through documentary-style dialogue, which fans often don’t get the chance to hear otherwise.
“Songline offers an opportunity for artist songwriters and their collaborators to showcase their songwriting process, detail their artistic journey, and reveal the stories behind songs typically hidden away in studios; by placing songwriters and their craft at the forefront of culture, fans can learn how their favorite songs and records were made, driving deeper connection with their favorite artists.”
Tom Winkler, head of publisher, songwriter, and society relations at Amazon Music, stated.
Billie Eilish and FINNEAS
To welcome the start of this new music series, Songline’s first guest is none other than Billie Eilish. Her voice needs no introduction or autotune, so she’s the perfect guest to kickstart this new series. Joined by her brother, producer, and co-songwriter, FINNEAS, and Billie (along with a handful of their friends on backup vocals) give the fans what they’ve been pleading for – acoustic sets of fan-favorite HMHAS songs and behind-the-scenes looks at the makings of each of the songs.
Up first? The devastatingly, hauntingly beautiful ‘WILDFLOWER.’ If we had to narrow the entire album down to just one favorite, this track would come out on top. One of the world’s favorite attributes about Billie Eilish is her vocals, which really shine through on this track. Believe it or not, they shine through even more in the Songline live set.
Watch it below and thank us later.
We love how Billie decided to bring in some backup vocalists – they all sound so perfect together! This may just be our new favorite version of ‘WILDFLOWER,’ but hey, who’s complaining?
If you end up in tears by the end of this performance (don’t worry, we did, too), then you’ll be happy to know Billie performed three other songs in the same style. You can watch her acoustic sets of ‘SKINNY,’ ‘L’AMOUR DE MA VIE,’ and ‘BIRDS OF A FEATHER’ on Amazon Music right now, or if you’re like us, you can re-watch them over and over and over again until we get to hear them live on the HIT ME HARD AND SOFT World Tour later this year.
Did you love the Songline episodes with Billie? Good news! There are more artists to come! Let us know which artists you’d like to see on the next episodes by dropping a comment or chatting with us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook 🐝
Spotify isn’t the only one to dabble with AI playlists — on Tuesday, Amazon announced it would do the same. Amazon Music is now testing Maestro, an AI playlist generator, allowing U.S. customers on both iOS and Android to create playlists using spoken or written prompts, which can even contain emojis.
Amazon suggests that in addition to emojis, customers can write prompts that include activities, sounds, or emotions. They can also choose from prompt suggestions at the bottom of the screen if they don’t know what to write. Seconds later, an AI-generated playlist will appear with songs that — in theory — will match your input.
The product is launching in beta, so Amazon warns that the technology behind Maestro “won’t always get it right the first time.” Like Spotify, it’s also added some guardrails to the experience to proactively block offensive language and other inappropriate prompts, it says. (We’re guessing people will try to break through those barriers in time!)
Image Credits: Amazon
Maestro is not yet broadly available. While Spotify’s AI generator is starting its tests in the U.K. and Australia, Amazon’s product is launching to a “subset” of free Amazon Music users, as well as Prime customers and Unlimited Amazon Music subscribers on iOS and Android in the U.S. for the time being.
Subscribers will gain access to more functionality, however. For instance, they’ll be able to listen to playlists instantly and save them for later, but Prime members and ad-supported users will only be able to listen to 30-second previews of the songs before saving them. This could potentially push more users to upgrade to the paid subscription if they like the AI functionality. The move also follows the general trend of making premiumAI experiences a paid offering.
Image Credits: Amazon
To access Maestro, users will need the latest version of the Amazon Music mobile app and will tap on the option for Maestro on their home screen. They may also see the option when they tap on the plus sign to create a new playlist. From there, users can either talk or write out their playlist prompt idea, then tap “Let’s go!” to start streaming it. The playlist can also be saved and shared with friends.
Amazon suggests playlists like “😭 and eating 🍝,” “Make my 👶 a genius,” “Myspace era hip-hop, “🏜️🌵🤠,” “Music my grandparents made out to,” “🎤🚿🧼”, and “I tracked my friends and they’re all hanging out without me,” to give you an idea of how silly the prompts can be for this new experience.
The company didn’t say when the beta would roll out more broadly, only that it would expand to more customers over time.
Following the Buccaneers-Bills Game on Thursday Night, veteran rockers Green Day took the Amazon Music Live stage.
They started the set with their new single “The American Dream is Killing Me” followed by the Dookie classic “Basket Case.” Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong then stumbled over the lyrics near the end of “Longview,” but laughed it off and kept going. It was one of several moments that made the show feel like a regular concert more than a made-for-streaming event.
He later played the “When I Come Around” guitar solo with his butt pointed at the audience. Bassist Mike Dirnt played to fans the whole show, posing during the bass-heavy parts and throwing several picks into the crowd. Drummer Tré Cool was perched on platforms high above the band. It’s impressive that he didn’t seemed phased by the frequent pyrotechnics igniting beside him.
Outside of Dookie, the most visited album was 2004’s American Idiot. They covered hits including “Holiday,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and a passionate version of the title track.
Jerritt Clark/Amazon Music
The band squeezed in a second new song “Look Ma, No Brains!” before diving back into the hits with “Minority,” complete with a harmonica solo. Although there were missing fan favorites (“Hitchin’ a Ride” would have been nice), it must be hard to encompass a 30+ year career while also touching on new material.
The show ended with Armstrong performing “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” solo with acoustic guitar. Like the rest of the hits they played, it was faithful to the studio version while still feeling special. Confetti cannons blasted over the final chords, and the band waved goodnight to the crowd.
Jerritt Clark/Amazon Music
Throughout the evening, two things became obvious. The trio, now in their early 50s, absolutely still got it. And despite their place among the rock establish and mainstream culture, they still reject authority with middle fingers high in the air.
Maybe most important, they had a blast on stage. After all the these years, Armstrong seems genuinely thrilled when the audience sings back a lyric.
Next week’s show with Latto is the season finale of Amazon Music Live, which is a shame given that Thursday Night Football still has several weeks to go. Hopefully next year we’ll get more concerts. This season has been a lot of fun.
The big question when Lil Durk took the Amazon Music Live stage on Thursday was who might join him during the show. Would “All My Life” feature an appearance by J. Cole? Would 21 Savage walk out for “War Bout It?” While neither of those happened, a few big name guests elevated the evening.
After an intro from 2 Chainz, Durk started the set with the throwback “Dis Ain’t What U Want,” and transitioned into the more recent hit “AHHH HA.” Moving between eras, he performed tracks like “L’s Anthem,” “When We Shoot,” “Back in Blood,” and of course, his portion of “Laugh Now Cry Later.”
A welcome surprise was Trippie Redd, who received enthusiastic cheers from the crowd. He occupied the stage himself for “Taking A Walk” and the Diplo produced “Wish.” And of course, his outfit and hair were amazing.
Jerritt Clark/Amazon Music
Perhaps the highlight of the show was an appearance from Machine Gun Kelly. The pop punk revival king didn’t sing or address the crowd. He just played guitar on “The Voice” (watch below). Known for his brash persona, MGK seemed grateful to be onstage. His priority was nailing his guitar solo, not mugging for the cameras.
The show ended with “All My Life.” Without J. Cole, it became a sing-along with phone flashlights in the air. It was a nice moment, reflecting the positive vibes that dominated the concert.
Jerritt Clark/Amazon Music
Overall, the show was packed with both recent hits and fan favorites that reached back a decade into Lil Durk’s catalog. With few of his star collaborators available, he turned the performance into a journey through his diverse career.
The “Who Will Show Up?” game continues this week with superstar producer Metro Boomin. “Special guests” are slated to join him Thursday night after the Chiefs-Broncos matchup on Amazon Prime. We’ll see who walks out.
Last night in Los Angeles, Ed Sheeran kicked off the new season of Amazon Music Live, and we were there to see it. The superstar played a mix of hits and new tracks from his upcoming album Autumn Variations. While a full band accompanied him throughout the night, much of the show featured the singer-songwriter alone on stage.
After being introduced by 2 Chainz, Sheeran started the set with fan favorite “Castle on the Hill,” followed by hits “Shivers” and “The A Team.” He then transitioned into material from Autumn Variations, due out Sept. 29. The new songs received a positive reaction from the crowd, particularly “American Town.”
Ed Sheeran on Amazon Music LiveJerritt Clark/Courtesy of Amazon Music
The lighting and video displays were impressive (as they should have been). Above Sheeran, a giant softbox shaped like the Prime Video logo tilted and changed colors to match the mood of each song. The animations behind him added to the experience without being distracting.
Of course, the real highlight was Sheeran himself. Despite all the fancy effects, the performance felt organic and spontaneous. When musicians joined him, it was a full band with live percussion, not just a couple guitar players playing to a drum track. Purists just wanting to see and hear a straight Ed Sheeran show got their wish. It was refreshing to attend a TV concert that catered to the live audience in attendance.
Sheeran closed the 13-song set with two of his biggest hits. “Shape of You,” performed solo with simple lighting, was a great opportunity to see him work his famous looping station. “Bad Habits” served a giant sing-along and a perfect way to end the night.
Ed Sheeran with Amazon Music Live host 2 ChainzJerritt Clark/Courtesy of Amazon Music
The concert series, which follows Thursday Night Football on Prime Video, continues next week with Feid. Prime members can stream live after the game, or watch the full concert the next day.
In the old days of physical music formats — CDs, vinyl, tapes — a collection was considered big if you had more than 100 of anything. Completists and obsessives might have upwards of a thousand or so records. If this sounds like you, I’ll bet that you knew the title of every song you owned and were familiar with each album on the shelf.
Record stores were wondrous places, too. The biggest ones — think Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street in Toronto or any of the HMV superstores in major cities around the world — might stock 100,000 titles or more. A full browse of the shelves took days.
Then came the internet and the illegal filing-sharing that began in the late 1990s. People went nuts, accumulating as much free music as they could. Others began ripping their CDs to digital files where they lived alongside purchased downloads from storefronts like iTunes. Hard drives were filled to capacity with thousands and thousands of songs. A buddy of mine purchased a super-sized iPod Classic just so he could say that he carried 40,000 songs in his pocket.
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Very impressive. But then came the era of streaming platforms (Digital Service Providers or DSPs) like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and all the others. Suddenly, artists didn’t need a record label to get their music out to the world. For a very modest fee (or free for new artists), companies like TuneCore, DistroKid, CD Baby, and United Masters will see that any musician anywhere on the planet is uploaded to all the libraries used by the world’s music streamers. Hit “enter” and a song is available globally.
Music distribution had been democratized. Artists were in charge of their own destinies and not beholden to some record company. Great, right?
Well, hang on sunshine. What we have now is too much music. WAY too much. Let’s look at some numbers.
Luminate, a company that tracks worldwide consumption of music and follows the habits of music fans, looked at new ISRCs coming into the system. An International Standard Recording Code is assigned to every song that gets released. Think of it as a Dewey Decimal System for books in a library. Better yet, it’s more like the ISBN code assigned to each and every book that gets published. Or you can think of it as the song equivalent of a social insurance number.
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Luminate published data early this month that shows somewhere around 98,500 ISRCs are uploaded to DSPs each day. In 2022, a total of 34.1 million songs/ISRCs were uploaded. Today we have the equivalent of a jukebox that holds 196 million songs and videos. And the number keeps climbing every second.
And it’s not the major labels. The same scan of the data showed that only four per cent of daily uploads — 3,940 songs, which is still a lot — come from the big three record labels, Universal, Sony, and Warner. That’s way too much for the music consumer to even begin to process and for the majors to properly market and promote. But it pales in comparison to what’s uploaded by indie labels and DIY musicians. That’s another 90,000 songs. Daily. Music Business Worldwide points out that for every song released by one of the Big Three, 24 come from other sources.
What happens to all these songs? In the case of about 20 per cent of them (39.2 million tracks or roughly one for each living person in Canada) nothing. Nothing at all. They’re completely lost and never heard by anyone, ever.
Another interesting stat: A full third of the 196 million new audio and video tracks were created during the pandemic. If we back up one more year, we see that half of all the music available today was created since 2020. Musicians obviously took COVID-19 lockdowns as an opportunity to write songs. And even though things have returned to normal, that firehose of DIY uploads shows zero signs of slowing down.
First, with so much choice out there, it’s tempting to default to listening to songs and artists you already know. Sorting through new music is just too overwhelming. Could this skew overall listening to older songs rather than new ones? Maybe.
Second, there’s an environmental component to all this. Digital files take up space on servers. Servers require electricity. A lot of it. What’s the point of DSPs spending money on electricity to harbour songs that no one listens to? There are some suggestions that if your song doesn’t attract X plays over a certain number, it should be expunged from the global jukebox. Either that or you’ll be asked to pay a storage fee until such time your song takes off. I’ve seen discussions about what to do with these “junk” songs that are nothing more than flotsam and jetsam in the ocean of music available.
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I’ll throw a third point in here just for fun. With artificial intelligence now being used to create even more music, uploads to the DSPs will soon be much higher. Maybe exponentially higher.
If you’re a musician, none of this is encouraging. How is your music supposed to rise above all this noise that just keeps getting louder every day? Beats me. If you’re a curator of playlists, be it for Spotify or a radio station, what does your future look like? No clue, but it’s going to be overwhelming.
Want to sample some of that 20 per cent of the music universe that’s never been heard by anyone? If you have a Spotify account, use it to sign into Forgotify and get a stream of unheard songs, tracks with ZERO streams. You may be there for a while.
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Alan Cross is a broadcaster with Q107 and 102.1 the Edge and a commentator for Global News.
When Steve Jobs made the rounds of major record labels in 2000, he knew he had them over a barrel.
Music piracy, kicked into high gear by the original Napster the previous June, was a threat to the recorded music industry. The new frontier for music was online and the labels were completely ill-equipped to deal with the greatest shift in music distribution in a century. They had to get in on the business of selling music digitally, but how?
Oh, the labels tried to build their own download stores, but Pressplay (originally called Duet and owned by Universal and Sony) and Musicnet (all the other majors) were miserable failures. First, they were expensive. For $15 a month, fans could stream 500 songs each month, get 50 song downloads and the ability to burn each of those songs to CD 10 times.
Second, it was chaotic for the consumer. You needed to know what label a song or artist was on before. The terms of use were confusing and digital rights management (DRM) locks on the files made moving them around difficult and frustrating. It was much, much easier to just steal music.
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Third, the labels couldn’t work together on a unified platform because that would have violated all kinds of anti-trust rules, a legal situation that also help scupper the labels’ proposed purchase of Napster.
The labels had all the digital products but no way to distribute and sell them. Apple’s iTunes offered a way out of this bind.
Jobs convinced the labels that allowing him to sell individual songs for 99 cents each was the way to go. And because the labels had no idea what they were doing — and because Apple was committed to spending millions on marketing (not to mention they had this new gadget called an iPod) — the labels all signed on with the iTunes Music Store.
His pitch worked, and boom — the music industry changed forever.
There had been other attempts at creating digital music stores. Cductive was founded in 1996 and sold MP3 downloads for 99 cents (it was acquired by eMusic in 1999). Sony debuted Bitmusic in Japan in 1999, offering mostly singles from Japanese artists (it failed). Factory Records launched Music33, which offered downloads for 33 pence each (ditto). There was even a Canadian digital music store called Puretracks that lasted for about a nanosecond.
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Nothing beat iTunes, especially when the labels agreed to remove all DRM locks in 2007. (I still have songs on my computer in the old .mp4a format that are locked up and can’t be freely transferred from one place to another.) It soon became de rigueur for all releases to be available through iTunes.
And because the iTunes Music Store was so easy to use on all computers (offering a Windows version was a huge deal), it became the favourite destination for buying digital albums and tracks. At one point, iTunes was responsible for 70 per cent of all digital music sales. Almost every would-be challenger was crushed. Hey, anyone remember hmvdigital.com?
But the whole shift from selling pieces of plastic to digital tracks left a bad taste in the mouths of the labels. They’d completely ceded distribution of their product to an outsider who charged a 30 per cent commission on each file sold. They vowed never to let that happen again.
Fast forward to today. Streaming, not downloads, is king and the labels have firm control over how streamers may do business. They made more than US$10 billion from streaming in 2022. They also continuously receive petabytes and petabytes of data on how music fans consume music.
And because streaming is so cheap — or even free — music piracy is a fraction of what it used to be.
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As a result, sales of digital tracks and albums continue to plummet. In Canada, the sales of digital albums are down 15.9 per cent from this time last year and digital track sales have fallen by 7.5 per cent. Meanwhile, streaming is up 13.9 per cent from a year ago as Canadians reliably stream somewhere around 2.3 billion songs a week.
I can make the situation sound even more dire. In 2012, we bought 1.3 billion digital tracks. Last year, we bought 152 million. That’s a crash of 88.6 per cent in a decade. These numbers obviously aren’t good. Paid downloads are quickly becoming the next cassette.
Sales were once front-and-centre on the iTunes home page. Now you have to hunt a bit for the iTunes Music Store when you open the app. If you go to Amazon, a search for MP3s takes you to a page that pushes streaming and physical product. Neither company breaks out how much digital music they sell in their financial reports.
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So here’s the question: How long will Apple support iTunes? Heck, how much longer do all digital tracks/albums sales have? Let me issue a plea that this never happens.
Tech Talk: Twitter may have a rival & vinyl record sales take-off
I desperately need iTunes to continue because of my work. I need to gain full and legal access to songs to produce my radio show, The Ongoing History of New Music, so I buy up to a dozen songs a week. My Mac tells me I have 79,655 items taking up 564.65 gigabytes in my library. A non-insignificant number of those songs are iTunes downloads.
There are many uses for downloads. DJs need files they can mix as part of their sets. Older music fans brought up on a diet of purchasing CDs and vinyl also like iTunes because it offers permanent ownership instead of renting music from streamers. Insiders know that if downloads for an artist increase, it may show that the artist has crossed over to an older demo.
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Artists can also see decent revenue from iTunes, especially after they’re in the news for something. Paid downloads spike up and they pay out far, far more than streams. Artists, labels and managers also monitor iTunes for songs that may pop on iTunes’ charts, a possible indication that something interesting is happening.
What are the options if iTunes goes away as Google Play Music did? Well, there are other digital music storefronts. There’s the aforementioned eMusic, which came online selling DRM-free MP3s in January 1998, three years before iTunes debuted. It has contracts with the major labels and dozens of indies. Unlike iTunes and Amazon Music, it’s a download-to-own site that requires the purchase of a monthly membership. Its library isn’t as deep as iTunes (15 million songs vs at least 60 million) but it can do the job for some people.
The most interesting digital music storefronts are those selling hi-res lossless files for people who demand the highest in audio quality. For example, 7 Digital will sell you all kinds of digital music, including plenty of 24-bit FLAC files. That’s fantastic — if you have the necessary hardware.
The same goes for Pro Studio Masters (I used it quite a bit for buying FLAC files). If that’s your jam, be sure to check out HDTracks and France’s Qobuz. which will debut in Canada later this year.
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DJs and dance music fans have long known about Beatport. If you’re into the indie side of things, you’ve probably purchased a download or two from Bandcamp. And then there’s Bleep, which focuses on independent artists and labels.
Still, though, it’s hard to beat iTunes for selection and functionality. I really, really hope Apple doesn’t do something stupid like kill it. But with each week’s music industry sales numbers, you have to wonder how far things can drop before it’s time to move on.
If that day comes, it will be very, very sad.
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Alan Cross is a broadcaster with Q107 and 102.1 the Edge and a commentator for Global News.
Alicia Carol announced this morning that her first single “Never Enough” is now available for pre-order on ITunes. This soulful song by singer Alicia Carol, a native of Carroll County, Tennessee, is an emotionally charged song about a woman that gives a man everything, but it is never enough.
Press Release –
Nov 16, 2015
Medina, TN, November 16, 2015 (Newswire.com)
– Alicia Carol announced this morning that her first single “Never Enough” is now available for pre-order on ITunes. This soulful song by singer Alicia Carol, a native of Carroll County, Tennessee, is an emotionally charged song about a woman that gives a man everything, but it is never enough.
Alicia is a versatile country pop artist. She has always had a passion for music since she was a child. Working as a manicurist is her day job now. But her true passion is music. She stays active in her church band. There are many more other events she does as well, all are designed to hone her voice and perfect her talent.
Noted publisher and guitarist Skip Mitchell will be publishing Alicia’s music. Mitchell is well known for winning multiple awards. He has won a Grammy Award in Gospel for his song “Have a Little Talk with Jesus.” He has also won awards for Country Music Association Band of the Year in 1978 and 1986, Music City News Band of the Year award in 1979. Being in the award winning band the Oak Ridge Boys, Mitchell knows an artist when he sees one. When it comes to Alicia’s music Skip says, “I have been in the music business for over 40 years and Alicia has a voice that has all of the qualities of a superstar.” He also says this about working on Alicia’s song, “It was a pleasure to work on and I am looking forward to being back in the studio with her in the very near future.”
Mitchell is not the only one who has high praises for Alicia. Consultant Michael Nachtigal of September Productions says this, “It is a pleasure to consult with Alicia’s team as she begins her journey in the music business. Her voice has a great texture that many country and pop music fans will appreciate once it debuts on the radio, and when she performs live in venues across the country.”
Her manager is Jay Hassman and he also loves Alicia’s work. He says, “Alicia’s voice has impressed me for a number of years now and it was just a matter of time before we found the right opportunity to bring her voice to the world. This debut release will attract worldwide distribution due to her voice and the words of the song.”
Alicia has this to say about her song, “It is an emotionally charged love song about a woman that gives everything she has to a man, but at the end of the day, it is not enough to continue. This is a song that a lot of women and men can comprehend the words that I am singing and words that mean the world to me as I have lived that life previously.”
Many people have picked up on Alicia’s talent, and many also think she will be a star singer in the near future. A sample of “Never Enough” can be found on Carol’s website, www.aliciacarol.com or on her You Tube channel located at https://youtu.be/XRKy6HLKnXQ.
“Never Enough”, written by Chris Rowe and Lenny Lamb and published by Music of Radar; Rowe-Dar; and String Monkey, will be available for pre-order on ITunes beginning today at http://itunes.apple.com/album/id1057772397?ls=1&app=itunes and is scheduled for release on December 5, 2015 through ITunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Play and over 30 other distributors.
Jerritt Clark/Amazon Music
Jerritt Clark/Amazon Music
Ed Sheeran with Amazon Music Live host 2 ChainzJerritt Clark/Courtesy of Amazon Music
