Today’s the day for TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s appearance at a US congressional hearing. Ahead of that, the Washington Post published a poll. The post Washington Post poll finds 41% of Americans support a TikTok ban appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The latest effort focusing on the wellbeing of musicians comes from the US, with an open letter to the music industry from 1 Million Strong. The post 1 Million Strong: ‘We can expand music culture to include sobriety’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

A survey by the charity Help Musicians has found 98% of musicians are ‘concerned’ about their ability to earn enough income in the next six months. The post Musicians to suffer from ‘cost of working’ crisis this winter appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

British charity Help Musicians has launched a new website called Music Minds Matter Explore. The post Help Musicians launches Music Minds Matter Explore site appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s Mental Health Awareness Month in the USA, and a new “testimonial awareness campaign” called “999 Stories of Mental Health” has been launched by Carmela Wallace The post “999 Stories of Mental Health” campaign launched in memory of Juice WRLD appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Sony Music Publishing has launched a ‘Songwriter Assistance’ program offering counselling services and wellbeing resources. The post Sony Music Publishing launches ‘Songwriter Assistance’ program appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We are now more than 13 years into the music streaming era, but its workings continue to evolve. The post Music, socials and burnout: ‘We’re asking artists to do a lot’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Sensor Tower and App Annie are the two most high-profile research firms tracking the apps market. By a quirk of fate, both published some new stats yesterday around wellness and fitness apps – a current area of hot interest from the music industry. Sensor Tower predicted that ‘mental wellness’ apps will be downloaded more than 1bn times […]

If you want our tip for making life instantly 78% less stressful, mute the words ‘Harry’, ‘Meghan’ and ‘Piers Morgan’ on all your social apps. But if that fails, perhaps a new app called Sona is worth a try. Developed by a US startup of the same name, it’s a ‘music therapy’ app offering a catalogue of […]

Lead: Always-on my mind: Artists have long accepted – sometimes reluctantly – that their role includes intimate direct-to-fan digital connectivity, usually via Social Media. Grinding out content on multiple platforms, each with unique creative, time, and emotional pressures, was a stressful enough existence before Coronavirus made the need to be always-online seem all the more urgent. […]

A year in to the Covid-19 global pandemic, and in many countries there are still huge swathes of industries working from home – music included. Both there and in countries where control measures have enabled more of a ‘normal’ life to resume, though, thoughts are turning to the longer term changes to working patterns that the […]

Former YouTube executive Hunter Walk, who’s now an investor, has published an interesting article with some suggestions for dealing with ‘creator burnout’ on platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. We think it may have some useful ideas for the music industry too, where many artists feel like they’re on a similar algorithm-driven treadmill of content creation. “What’s […]

BAPAM is the British organisation that provides ‘performing arts medicine’ in the UK, supporting musicians and other performers in their physical and mental health. Its latest initiative focuses on the latter for a specific group: Black, Asian and minority ethic (BAME) musicians. It’s a bursary scheme jointly funded by charity Help Musicians and collecting society […]

We’ve been writing a fair amount about music’s intersection with the ‘wellness’ industry, from mindfulness apps like Calm and Headspace to fitness startups like Peloton. Now there’s a new report that’s trying to quantify the global ‘mental wellness’ market. The topline: it could be worth $120.8bn, which breaks down into four categories: senses, spaces and […]

‘Can Music Make You Sick?’ is a new book by Sally Anne Gross and Dr George Musgrave, with its roots in a study of the same name commissioned by charity Help Musicians UK in 2017, about mental health in the music industry. Gross and Musgrave have shared an excerpt from the book with Music Ally, […]

There are a lot of exciting things happening around music, wellbeing and fitness in 2020: from artists working with meditation services like Calm and Headspace, to the growth of Peloton and other fitness startups who make licensed music a key part of their offerings. The BPI and Music Ally are holding an online event on […]

Even before Covid-19 and its lockdowns around the world, there was a growing amount of talk about wellbeing in and around the music industry. The pandemic has only sharpened the sense that as an industry, we could be doing more to protect our mental health. One example of action being taken comes from distributor Record […]

Apple has quietly been becoming a digital health and fitness company for a while now, with wellbeing becoming a key selling point for its Apple Watch smartwatch. Now Amazon wants in on the fitness-wearables game. It has unveiled a device called Halo, which is a fitness band (sadly not one that hovers above your head) […]

We’re big fans of famous artists being given spurious job titles as part of partnerships with tech companies, dating back to the glory days of Lady Gaga as Polaroid creative director and Will·I·Am as director of creative innovation at Intel. But perhaps meditation app Headspace really did need a ‘chief music officer’ and John Legend […]

Julianna Barwick is the latest artist to release music through meditation app Calm, following in the footsteps of Moby, Above & Beyond and Kygo. Barwick, who’s signed to Ninja Tune, is releasing three extended versions of tracks from her latest album ‘Healing Is A Miracle’, with Calm getting a 30-day exclusive on the new versions. […]

“Hello. I’m Harry Styles…” Those four words have set off some social-media excitement overnight, spoken by Styles himself in a promo video for meditation app Calm. He’s going to be reading one of the ‘sleep stories’ that have been so popular in the app, with the idea being that Harry’s voice will send fans off to […]

Canadian startup Lucid has launched its first music app, called Vibe. The app “draws upon cognitive science, music theory, and artificial intelligence to develop a personalised profile for each user” before offering them playlists “to help you reach a mental goal”. Said goals including calm, focus, sleep, energise and ambience – the latter is a mixture […]

Spotify and other streaming services have been luring talent away from radio for a long time now, with British public-service broadcaster the BBC suffering particularly from the brain drain. However, it’s also making its own moves that encroach onto what streaming services do. Witness last week’s announcement that it is expanding the ‘Mindful’ and ‘Pace Setter’ […]

Start today with YouTube’s announcement of a slate of Covid-19 related original shows, with several involving music. Stay Home With: Yungblud will explore the UK artist’s quarantine life, with viewers encouraged to donate to the No Kid Hungry charity, for example. Also positive is Abbey Road Studios’ new Topline Songwriting Competition, with songwriters, artists and producers invited to […]

We haven’t written about Safe In Our World before, but it’s essentially the British games industry’s equivalent of Help Musicians: a charity focusing on mental health and wellbeing for people in that industry. Like that organisation, Safe In Our World has launched a ‘hub’ focused on Covid-19 / coronavirus, and while it’s aimed at games-industry people, […]

Meditation apps is a space that we’ve been following for a while now, as more of those apps license music and form partnerships with the music industry in other ways. Given the current global situation, it should come as no surprise that mindfulness apps of all kinds are seeing a spike in downloads. Analytics firm […]

Last year, we reported on a study by distributor Record Union into mental health and wellbeing for independent musicians. The results made for concerning reading. Now the company is launching something new as a result: a ‘wellness starter pack’ which it describes as a “toolbox for wellbeing” aimed at musicians. It’s a collection of videos focusing on […]

Some people have been working from home regularly for years, and others take to it like ducks to water. But others may struggle, especially if they’re cooped up alone (or with housemates / family) for what’s looking like an indeterminate period of time. In the knowledge that many of our readers will be thinking hard […]

Stuff we’re heartened by today includes Resident Advisor’s ‘Save Our Scene‘ campaign, which is mustering collecting action from the electronic music community. There’s an open letter that fans, musicians and other people in the industry can sign – more than 3,000 people so far have – with encouragement for people who want to do their […]

“I was having panic attacks. I was completely anxious and stuck, because I wasn’t doing the thing I wanted to do. I struggled to write songs: I judged every idea as boring and not good enough, and that stopped me writing altogether. Four songs a year was all I could manage at one point…” Australian […]

Australian manager Maggie Collins, of Morning Belle, has published a social-media post (which The Industry Observer has reported on) warning of a “crisis point” for modern artist managers. “We are not super humans. We are f***ing exhausted. An alarming amount are suffering serious mental health problems due to burn-out because we have to do so much […]

As part of a collaboration between UMG, the EMI Trust and youth-community charity The eXceL Project, the three-day education programme Secret Studio has resulted in the release of two new original tracks. The eXceL Project’s (XLP) community leaders picked six individuals, aged between 16 and 20, from different backgrounds across London to harness their creativity […]

Four musicians are taking part in a new mental-health campaign aimed at teenagers and young adults. Lindsey Stirling, Hayley Kiyoko, Aminé, and Christina Perri are the stars of the latest ‘Seize the Awkward’ campaign, which is being run by the Ad Council in the US. Each artist features in their own short video released through the […]

We’ve been writing about the monster funding rounds and music activities (e.g. an exclusive Moby album) for mindfulness startup Calm recently, while rival Headspace was one of the first companies to partner with Spotify on bundled subscriptions. Now there’s another player in the music+meditation sector: Wave. It has raised just under $5.7m in seed funding to […]

With 153 million followers, Selena Gomez is one of the most popular stars on Instagram – only Ariana Grande and Cristiano Ronaldo are ahead of her, plus Instagram’s own official account.  Yet in June 2019, Gomez revealed that she’d deleted the app from her own phone, because “it would make me feel not good about myself, and look […]

There’s a new music-focused podcast in town, and it wants to help musicians safeguard their wellbeing and health. The podcast is called Elevate Music Podcast, and it’s the result of a partnership between production firm Wisebuddah; health and wellbeing service Elevate Music; and charity Help Musicians. The first season is due to tun to 15 […]

Every generation has its folk devil – the one thing that is apparently going to corrupt and destroy “the young people”. The hula hoop, radio, Hollywood, TV, rock ’n’ roll, Cabbage Patch Kids (maybe), acid house, computer games. On and on the list will roll. The current one (apart from Fortnite) is social media. But a […]

Music distributor Record Union has joined the debate around mental health within the music industry, with a survey of nearly 1,500 independent musicians conducted in late March and early April this year. It’s the latest snapshot into a career that can take a toll on people’s wellbeing. One headline: 73% of musicians surveyed said they had ever […]

Charity Help Musicians UK is planning a new fundraising drive, after increasing its spending to support individuals and organisations in the British music industry with wellbeing and mental-health issues. The charity spent £6.2m on its ‘Creative and Health & Welfare’ program in 2018, a rise of 23%, while its payments were made to 14,255 individuals […]

Quitting specific social networks – temporarily or permanently – is an increasingly-common pastime. But does it improve your life? A study at Stanford University has been finding out, focusing on Facebook with a study of 2,844 of its users in the US. A subset of them deactivated their accounts for four weeks. And the main […]

Darren Hemmings is the head of British marketing agency Motive Unknown, but he’s also been prominent in the public discussions about wellbeing in the music industry, and some of the pressures that people face. Now he’s written a blog post about his personal experience of 2018 as “the year when I finally decided to Get My Shit […]