Flickr lets you turn other people's photos into wall art for your home

Flickr lets you turn other people's photos into wall art for your home

Remember that Wall Art service Flickr launched in October that gave you a way to buy big prints of your own snapshots (or, you know, selfies)? Well, now you can also buy wall-size versions of other people's photographs, though, that doesn't mean you can choose random images posted on the website. The only photos you can purchase from the expanded Wall Art service are those that come from Flickr's licensed artists (who also sell their work through the Marketplace) or from the company's hand-selected list of Creative Commons images.

You can have any of those photos printed as a modest 8 x 10-inch portrait or as a much larger 20 x 30-inch wall art. And, like we've mentioned before, you can opt for a wrap-around canvas print if you think frames would ruin the beauty of exceptional works, such as one of NASA Goddard's images of the sky and celestial bodies. Of course, having Flickr blow up a picture that means something to you personally will always be the best choice. But if you find yourself lacking in artistic talent or decent camera equipment, this beats buying mass-produced prints from the mall.

Original Article at: Engadget

Bandcamp lets artists create their own music subscriptions

Bandcamp lets artists create their own music subscriptions

Thanks to Ms. Swift's recent actions, artist compensation from music streaming is quite the hot topic, and one company has a new option to lend a hand. Bandcamp has been a choice for musicians to sell their music and merchandise for years, and now it's looking to help sort streaming subscriptions as well. Each artist will be able to create a subscription-based plan for their music, allowing fans to access new tunes as they become available through the Bandcamp app. Listeners can download the tracks too, and acts can decide to offer parts of their existing catalog as a perk for opting in. New albums or songs can be released to subscribers only for a certain amount of time or remain exclusive, and the musicians themselves can set the cost of the plan. For its efforts, Bandcamp takes the same 15 percent cut that it does for regular sales -- a fee that drops to 10 percent once the $5,000 sales mark is reached. "The whole motivation here is that when you get to a point that you love an artist -- when you go from liking them to being a real true fan of theirs -- at some point you just want everything they make," the company's chief executive Ethan Diamond told The Guardian.

Original Article at www.engadget.com

Spotify CEO says it pays $6 million a year to a top artist like Taylor Swift

Spotify CEO says it pays $6 million a year to a top artist like Taylor Swift

In the wake of Taylor Swift clarifying her reasons for opting out of Spotify, the streaming service's CEO took to the company blog to offer a rebuttal. Daniel Ek says that "a top artist like Taylor Swift" can earn more than $6 million per year from the outfit, and that number only stands to rise. Of course, labels are the ones who arrange licensing agreements, so we can't be sure how much of the money is actually making it to Ms. Swift and her cohorts. Spotify on the whole has shelled out over $2 billion in royalties thus far, and its looking to be clear about how it works. "We will do anything we can to work with the industry to increase transparency, improve speed of payments, and give artists the opportunity to promote themselves and connect with fans," says Ek. "That's our responsibility as a leader in this industry; and it's the right thing to do." So where is that money coming from? Of its 50 million users, 12.5 million are paid subscribers, accounting for $120 each per year in monthly fees. Some quick arithmetic indicates that sum to be $1.5 billion, and the rest of the lot are generating revenue from ad-supported streaming.

Ek also takes on the argument that streaming options like his are hurting album sales. In the post, there are several examples of artists that held both the number one spot and were available on Spotify at the same time. He's also quick to point out that album sales/downloads on the whole continue to decline, citing slumping numbers in Canada before the service was available there. Sure, Taylor Swift sold over 1.2 million copies of 1989 in a week, but that hadn't been done in over ten years, and she has the first platinum album in the US of 2014... in November. "We're getting fans to pay for music again. We're connecting artists to fans they would never have otherwise found, and we're paying them for every single listen," Ek explains.

Original Article at www.engadget.com

Pandora lets artists know just how well their music is doing

Pandora lets artists know just how well their music is doing

Many musicians put their tunes on Pandora in the hopes that they'll build an audience, but how are they supposed to know it's working? That's what the streaming service's new Artist Marketing Platform (AMP) aims to solve. The initiative gives performers data on not just how many plays and thumbs-up ratings their songs get, but the demographics of who's listening and where the music is taking off -- very handy for planning a national tour. It won't guarantee that your indie band catches a big break, but it could help you focus your musical talents where they matter the most.

Original Article at www.engadget.com