Are you collecting all the royalties you’re owed from Spotify? If you don’t have a publishing administrator working on your behalf, the answer is probably NO. But I should make it clear upfront that this isn’t Spotify’s fault. It’s not like they’re holding out on you! It’s just one of those crazy things about how the world of music publishing works (or doesn’t) for indie artists.

Apple announced earlier this week it has 575 million iTunes accounts, up from about 100 million iTunes accounts in September 2009. Analyst Horace Dediu matched account growth to revenue growth and found  a sharp decline in iTunes revenue per account over the last four years. “Each of the current 575 million accounts generates about half the revenue of the 100 million accounts of 2009,” he explains. From an average of roughly $74, on an annual basis, of September 2009, average revenue per iTunes account has fallen to around $40.

Media giants appear to be doing little to halt sites offering apps that can be used for converting videos and streams into MP3s Spotify hit the headlines recently after an app surfaced on the Chrome Web Store that allowed users to permanently download any song on the music service. This prompted headlines such as "Spotify's nightmare realised" – but the publicity about the problem might be the real headache for the company. According to a source familiar with the issue, Apple has had similar problems. This may explain why its "exclusive" pre-release streams of albums such as Bowie's The Next Day and Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience appeared on user-generated music services such as Grooveshark and YouTube as soon as iTunes featured the streams.

Now they’ve been blindsided by another major artist, Rihanna, who this week overtook Bieber to become the most-viewed musician on YouTube. Both artists’ Vevo-branded channels round down to 3.78bn total views, but Rihanna is 2m ahead. Gaga, meanwhile, is some distance behind on 2.25bn views. Why does this matter? They’re all popular after all. But there’s a useful lesson when you examine why Rihanna has surged past Justin Bieber: it’s seemingly all about the subscribers. Rihanna’s channel has 8.75m subscribers, while Bieber’s channel has 4.96m and Gaga’s channel 2.68m. With YouTube having shifted its design in recent months to place more emphasis on channels and subscriptions, Rihanna has been the biggest beneficiary in the music world.

Facebook has apparently hit pause on rumored auto-play video ads in the News Feed. Reports from December suggested that sometime this spring, Facebook would start selling video advertisements in its marquee space, but a story in Ad Age notes that Facebook will likely delay this product until the Fall. Users were understandably enraged upon learning that Facebook might adopt this controversial ad unit. It was reported back in December that the company was still debating whether or not to have the sound automatically play with the video, which would probably lead to fewer time spent on News Feed. However, it could be a huge boom for Facebook’s bottom line, as reports suggested that these ad units would have roughly the cost of a TV commercial.

Digital services have effectively been turning away first-time digital consumers, says Scott Ambrose Reilly, CEO of North America at X5 Music Group and a former Amazon executive. He worries that crossover hits like the O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Buena Vista Social Club soundtracks won’t happen because the occasional CD buyer lacks the friction-free digital experience on par with a mainstream brick-and-mortar retailer. “If you haven’t engaged with digital yet, your first step is pretty brutal right now—except for YouTube,” he says. Digital services can focus on three areas to tap into the larger market: create cleaner user interfaces and better user experiences, improve how users discover music, and provide services and bundles with better value.

On 9th July 2013 Harkive will ask music fans to tell the story of how, where and why they listen to music on that day. The aim is to capture for posterity a global snapshot of the way in which we interact with the sounds and technology of today. So, ten years from now, if you find yourself wondering how we listened in 2013, Harkive will tell you. Furthermore, by aiming to capture the complex and highly individualised ways in which people listen to music, and by asking people to explore the reasons why they listen in the way that they do, it is my hope that Harkive could begin to steer the music consumption debate in some new and fruitful directions.

The new video product is something that the service said it was planning to do for two years now, and there have been numerous rumors about it in recent weeks. As was first reported by TechCrunch, it’s actually going to happen this week. Sources said that Thursday’s event will solely be focused on Instagram’s new video product and there will be no other Facebook product reveals. While details of the product have been kept under wraps, sources said Facebook is seeking to differentiate itself from Vine, the popular instant video app from Twitter, which is now available on both Apple iPhone and Google Android. It recently announced that Vine has 13 million users. The worry, said sources, is that this late-to-the-video-app-party offering will be seen as a copy of that, much as Facebook’s Poke service was received as a copycat to the explosively growing SnapChat.

Pushing buttons and navigating through the radio section of the former "iPod" app, everything isn't just smooth and responsive, it’s also pleasant to use. While this is partly due to iOS 7's redesigned music player, everything about Radio is intuitive from the layout of featured stations to digging into a current song and seeing what other music the band has to offer. The design and goal is clearly focused on listeners purchasing music--but even so, iTunes Radio feels like the first truly modern take on what terrestrial radio wishes it could be. Radio was always meant to be a promotion tool, a way to sell more music, but without being built directly on top of the world's biggest music retailer, it was always too distant from the marketplace to be more effectual. Now a "buy" button lives next to every song, or a wish list one for those hesitant, and it feels like this is how modern radio should function.

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, seeking to boost advertising sales from mobile devices, discussed potential partnerships with Samsung Electronics Co., according to the head of the South Korean company’s handset division. Zuckerberg and Samsung President Shin Jong Kyun also discussed the state of the information-technology industry, Shin said outside the company’s Seoul offices. Zuckerberg left the building without answering questions. The Facebook founder has pledged to invest in products that will reward investors disappointed by the 37 percent slump in shares since the Menlo Park, California-based company’s initial public offering in May 2012.