Ailing recording industry unfairly targeting satellite, Internet music platforms

I can’t remember the last time I bought an actual music CD. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I bought a song on iTunes. Like most young adults, I listen (legally) to music through Internet radio or via the cloud.

While most Internet music platforms, like Pandora and Spotify, offer users music for free, the services still have to pay royalties to the copyright holders. The royalty rates that the services have to pay are set by a panel of three copyright judges and are based on the “marketplace” rate for musical license.

Under this scheme, music webcasters pay a higher royalty rate than other digital music broadcasters. “Last year,” says Pandora’s Chief Strategy Officer Tim Westergren, “ Pandora paid roughly 50 percent of its total revenue in royalties, more than six times the percentage paid by SiriusXM.”

By /// November 10, 2012

New Google tool helps voters find election day polling stations, candidate information

On Tuesday, if someone asks you where they’re supposed to vote, you can now say “Let Me Google That For You.”

As part of the Voting Information Project, Google has released its Voter Information Tool, which allows a user to enter his or her address and find the official polling place and the hours it will be open on Election Day. If early voting options are available, those are displayed as well.

In addition to voting locations and times, the VIT provides links to each candidate’s website and social networks as well as any statewide ballot questions. The tool is designed to equip voters with the information they need about their candidates, all the way from the president and vice president to local officials.

By /// November 5, 2012

Eventbrite: a Fast-Rising Political Star

If you’ve RSVP’d to a political event in the last few months, there’s a good chance you did so via the platform, Eventbrite. What’s behind the platform’s dominance of the political event space this cycle?

Chad Barth, who heads up Republican outreach for Eventbrite’s Political Team, says the platform’s features make it a natural fit for campaigns and organizations. Managing an event for a campaign can be a hassle: you’ve got to send the invites, get the RSVPs, collect payments, generate tickets, and check everyone in.

With Eventbrite, this is all done within a single platform through a very simple interface that anyone can set up in a matter of minutes.

By /// October 9, 2012

Advice for First Time RNC Convention Attendees

An estimated 50,000 politicians, delegates, operatives, volunteers, and members of the media are preparing to make the trek to Tampa, FL for the 2012 Republican National Convention. For a first-timer, like myself, the whole thing can seem a daunting experience, so I turned to some convention veterans for advice on surviving the GOP’s big week.

By /// August 23, 2012

New Polls Spell Bad News for Obama as Republican Voting Enthusiasm Soars

Republicans have a major advantage over Democrats in voter enthusiasm heading into November and President Obama’s greatest challenge will be getting his base to turnout.

In June, Gallup found that Democrats’ enthusiasm about voting was “down sharply” when compared to 2004 and 2008. In the summer of 2004, 68 percent of Democrats were “more enthusiastic than usual” about voting compared with 51 percent of Republicans.

When President Obama was first elected in 2008, that number was a 61 percent – 35 percent split. In June 2012, the numbers had flipped and Democrats’ enthusiasm bottomed out at just 39 percent. By comparison, 51 percent of Republicans were more enthusiastic.

By /// August 15, 2012

Peek Analytics Finds Romney Twitter Followers Generally Older Than Obama Followers

Not much surprised Michael Hussey, founder of PeekAnalytics, when his team analyzed Mitt Romney’s followers on Twitter and found that they are generally older and wealthier than Barack Obama’s followers.

In addition to age and income levels, PeekAnalytics follower reports include gender, geography, education, interests, and industry. As Hussey explains “we know quite a bit more about Twitter users than Twitter does.”

By /// August 2, 2012

#FixYoungAmerica Says Key To Ending Youth Unemployment is Removing Barriers To Entrepreneurship

With 50 percent of new college grads out of work or underemployed, the Young Entrepreneur Council believes that the key to ending youth unemployment is to make it easier for young adults to start their own businesses.

#FixYoungAmerica is a YEC initiative that has culminated in an eBook containing their solutions for solving our nation’s youth unemployment crisis. The solutions include student loan forgiveness for young entrepreneurs, opening up crowdfunding to small businesses, and increasing access to capital for young founders.

By /// July 19, 2012

Managing Millennials in the workplace

Would you turn down a job because they wouldn’t let you Tweet or use Facebook at work? How about making you use a BlackBerry instead of an iPhone? For many Millennials, these questions are increasingly more important than salary when it comes to finding work.

According to a recent study, Millennials (Young people the study defines as having been born between 1976 and 2001.) prioritize “meaningful work” over salary when it comes to employment.  And one in three said freedom to use social media, use the devices of their preference and “work mobility” are more important than salary when it comes to accepting a job offer.

The University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School teamed up with the Young Entrepreneurs Council and their #FixYoungAmerica campaign to develop an infographic intended to guide employers on how to successfully manage Millennials.

By /// July 3, 2012