How to make money from streaming: Have your label, or your label's distributor, acquire a stake in a major streaming company early in the game, wait for them to sell it a decade later for three-quarters of a billion dollars, then sit back and wait for a letter like the ones SONY MUSIC has started sending to managers and distributed labels. MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE and BILLBOARD fill in some of the details of how Sony plans to share its SPOTIFY windfall with labels and around 100,000 artists who generated revenue for the company during the period when it held that SPOT stock. Two headlines that presumably sent smiles across the artist universe: All artists will be eligible for payouts regardless of what their contracts specify, and the payouts will be made without regard to unrecouped balances. One imagines there are one or two unreported "but"s somewhere in there, but for now, happy Friday... Cross HIGH FIDELITY with JOHN HUGHES and you might get HEARTS BEAT LOUD, a sweet Father's Day movie starring NICK OFFERMAN as a struggling Brooklyn record-store owner who forms an improbable band with his teenage daughter. It may be the first music movie in which the fledgling rock stars' goal isn't to get on the radio or onstage at MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, but to get on a Spotify playlist. High fidelity streaming, as it were. The film had a solid opening last weekend and goes wider today. Congrats to our friend VAN TOFFLER, whose company GUNPOWDER & SKY is distributing, and KIERSEY CLEMONS, who's fantastic as the reluctant singer in her dad's little band. And a special shoutout to my friend and bandmate CHRIS MCBURNEY, who has a star turn as LANCE, a featured extra who gives Offerman several knowing looks in the climactic record-store scene. There's an Oscar for that, yes?... NETFLIX has a new edition of the BARBRA STREISAND/KRIS KRISTOFFERSON version of A STAR IS BORN with never-before-seen footage of Streisand playing "EVERGREEN" on guitar. She got an ACADEMY AWARD for co-writing it, making her the first woman to win one for composing... Streisand wanted ELVIS PRESLEY to play the male lead, but COL. TOM PARKER cost his client the role with excessive demands. On Wednesday, we lost the last member of Presley's classic '50s band with the death of drummer DJ FONTANA. This is both understatement and overstatement: Fontana's swing-influenced playing established one of the basic templates for decades of rock and pop. The CLIFFSNOTES version of the history of rock says Elvis shattered the established order in a matter of minutes, which is wrong on a number of levels, my favorite of which is the level that contains the continuum that is popular music. Fontana developed his style "by listening to recordings of big bands fronted by the likes of STAN KENTON, WOODY HERMAN and the DORSEY BROTHERS." Elvis, DJ and their peers didn't upend swing and big band and jump blues and pop so much as they carried them forward and modernized them, part of a neverending revolution that's still in motion. But also, he was great, duh. RIP... Do not give your new boyfriend or girlfriend your email password at the same time you're trying to start your career as a clarinetist. Just don't... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from JAY ROCK, NAS, CHRISTINA AGUILERA, R+R=NOW, RICO NASTY, SOPHIE, CHROMEO, WILLIAM PARKER, MAYDAY PARADE, MELODY'S ECHO CHAMBER, MIKE SHINODA, DNCE, JOHNNY MARR, OLIVIA CHANEY, FANTASTIC NEGRITO, BLACK PINK, LEON VYNEHALL, LOCKSMITH & APOLLO BROWN, ROLLING BLACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER, BUDDY GUY, CHUCK AUERBACH, ARTHUR BUCK (JOSEPH ARTHUR & PETER BUCK), KING PRINCESS, 5 SECONDS OF SUMMER, LIZZY BORDEN, WELLES, JACQUEES, JOHN PARISH, MARISA ANDERSON, REBELUTION, GIN BLOSSOMS, THE BEAT STARRING DAVE WAKELING, WILKO JOHNSON and S&S PRESENTS: DREAMS featuring tracks by KAITLYN AURELIA SMITH, JULIE BYRNE, YUMI ZOUMA and more.
