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CMU’s One Liners: A streaming service called Milk, and non-milk related news

By Andy Malt and Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 8 April 2015

Other notable announcements and developments today…

• Tim Kelly, who previously worked for indies like One Little Indian and Rough Trade in the UK, before stints at Universal and Sony in Australia, is returning to indie-ville, as MD of Sydney-based artist and label services outfit Inertia Music. He starts there later this month.

• Matador Records has hired Shira Knishkowy, formerly with Partisan Records, for the role of Director Of Publicity, working out of the indie’s New York office.

• Absolute Marketing & Distribution announced last week that it had rebranded as Absolute Label Services. Oh, and it’s also launched a new analytics hub for clients called Absolute Project.

• Data man David McCandless last week updated an infographic he first made five years ago looking at how much labels and artists earn from different kinds of music sales, with the all important talking-point-blob that asks how many sales/streams an artist needs to earn the US monthly minimum wage. There are quite a few assumptions and estimates around DSP and artist contracts, but it’s well worth checking out if you haven’t already.

• Omnifone will power Samsung’s Milk Music service in Australia and New Zealand, with Gracenote providing its music recommendation and discovery tools, it was announced yesterday. “Leveraging”, explained Nicholas Wodtke, Samsung Electronics’ Vice President Media Solution Centre Southeast Asia And Oceania.

• Rdio has hired Iain Morris, formerly digital geezer at Warner/Chappell, to manage the streaming service’s relationships with all those music publishers and collecting societies. What fun. He’ll be known as VP Global Music Publishing. “Equitable”, says his new boss Jim Rondinelli.

• Lucy Jones will step down as NME.com’s Deputy Editor on 10 Apr, in order to go freelance. She took on the role in 2012, joining from The Daily Telegraph.

• Frank Ocean posted this to his website yesterday, which suggested he’s got a new album coming out soon. And then someone confirmed to Billboard that a new Frank Ocean is coming out in July.

• The excellent CGIV – fka Clean George IV – has announced a new single, ‘Remorse’, which will be released on 27 Apr. Watch the video here.

• Conor Oberst’s Desaparecidos will release a new album, ‘Payola’, on 22 Jun. A song from it is ‘City On The Hill’, which you can listen to here.

• Kali Uchis will play The Victoria in Dalston on 13 May, ahead of her appearance at The Great Escape.

• The final Ja Ja Ja before the Nordic showcase night goes on its summer break will feature Baby In Vain, Jonas Alaska, and The Deer Tracks. That’s a great line-up, you should go. More info here.

• Emilie Nicolas will play a headline show at the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen on 30 Apr. She will also re-release her debut single, ‘Pstereo’, on 31 May. Have a listen (it is ace).