It’s a good time to be an online musician. | | | | The marquee at the Neighborhood Theatre, Charlotte, N.C., March 13, 2020. The next scheduled show is April 3.
(Jeff Hahne/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “It’s a good time to be an online musician.”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// "Livestreaming at Leeds." "Kiss Alivestreaming!" "The Complete Livestream at the Plugged Nickel." Potential album titles, or playlist titles, for an era in which clubs, theaters and arenas went dark and the internet lit up. ALEJANDRO SANZ and JUANES on YOUTUBE. CODE ORANGE on TWITCH. CHRISTINE AND THE QUEENS on INSTAGRAM. This sprawling Americana festival on STAGEIT. FRANK TURNER on FACEBOOK. Seemingly the entire city of Berlin here. So. Many. More. For 25 years, tech fans and futurists have been trying to persuade us that livestreaming is the new live, or would eventually be the new live, or would even be better. But as long as it had to compete with actual live, that was a difficult pitch, for reasons that seem rather obvious. Instead, as CHERIE HU writes for PITCHFORK, "it served as a low-stakes, supplemental tool for increasing fan engagement and reach." Now it's the only show in town—there's nothing to supplement right now—and with musicians and fans alike trapped at home (hopefully!), it's a perfect meeting ground for everybody. This mirrors a social trend that's happening all over the global isolation village. Friends are hanging out virtually on FACETIME. They can now watch movies together while apart on NETFLIX. And while there are options aplenty for engaging with music at home, from traditional streaming to traditional radio to MIXCLOUD to SOUNDCLOUD and beyond, the need to engage with each other—and to feel real air moving through real soundsystems—is as strong as ever. And even if each other means avatars in a chatroom and the soundsystems have to squeeze through your laptop speakers, it's still a live music experience, and it may be the only one for a while. In Pitchfork, Hu asks the followup question: How to monetize this? That may still be a long-road issue for music companies, but Hu notes that some lesser-known artists who committed to the idea early on have figured out how to make a decent income on it. StageIt's EVAN LOWENSTEIN, who considers his site a bit of an outsider in paid livestreaming ("We are that basement club that reeks of urine and beer"), tells ROLLING STONE's ETHAN MILLMAN it pulled in $100,000 on Sunday—more than a third of what the company made in its best *month* ever. Tuesday, the company announced a new initiative, StageIt Local, in which it's inviting artists to play shows to raise money for the local bar or restaurant of their choice—for the very businesses, that is, whose temporary disappearance has handed the spotlight to StageIt and its peers. That's how a community monetizes, and that's a good sign... MOOG and KORG are giving away (really good) mobile synth apps for free, as is the maker of this classic Optigan app... A CARDI B coronavirus rant becomes a song, hits the charts... KATY PERRY "DARK HORSE" plagiarism verdict is reversed—in her favor—on appeal... London club STUDIO 338 is transforming into a food distribution center... BANDCAMP is waiving its revenue for all music purchased this Friday, so artists get more... MICHAEL STIPE feels fine, doesn't want you to sing "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" while washing your hands... BONO livestreams a new "little tune, made up here about an hour ago," it's raw and lovely... Bacteria can make music. No word on whether viruses can... RIP JASON RAINEY and DORIOT ANTHONY DWYER. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | “We are absolutely overloaded -- we’ve never had this much interest in our entire existence,” says one livestreaming-company founder, as the previously shunned technology gains steam. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | The burgeoning technology has the potential to reinvent the music industry as we know it. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | How to keep Coronavirus stress at bay: Listen, really listen, to your favorite albums, front to back, without distraction. | | | |  | NPR Music | | The coronavirus pandemic shut down SXSW this year, so we're bringing SXSW to you. Meet 100 of the bands and artists we intended to see at the 2020 music festival. | | | |  | Hollywood Reporter | | More than a half a year after a California jury stunned the music world by punishing Perry for ripping off a Christian rapper's song, a judge finds there was nothing protectable to infringe. | | | |  | Texas Monthly | | Hip-hop mainstay Lil Keke tells the story of how he earned his musical chops driving around Houston. | | | |  | Stereogum | | "The pope must be drunk!" Camae Ayewa announces. "Stumbling through the streets, spitting out 'Hail Mary'/ The pope must be drunk, eyes closed, nose in the air/ Not saying nothin', not doin' nothin/ Just stumbling in the street/ Mumbling, mumbling, spitting/ Manufacturing god in his own image/ Feeding the flesh of lies to little boys." | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | FNAC shuts down physical stores in France, as Germany begins "far-reaching" measures. | | | |  | The New York Times | | Sound engineers, lighting technicians and more gig-to-gig employees who fuel the touring industry are “preparing for the worst” as the coronavirus puts a halt to live shows. | | | |  | Complex | | Will Tekashi 6ix9ine still make music once he's out of prison this summer? Will anyone still care? | | | |  | Resident Advisor | | From Discogs rabbitholes to YouTube tutorials, RA's writers offer some tips on what to watch, read and do at home this week. | | | | | Pitchfork | | Liang Yi, lead singer of the Sichuan rock group, shares what he has seen-including moments of genuine camaraderie-as the pandemic has spread through China. | | | |  | Billboard | | One in four jobs in the Greater Palm Springs region are linked to the tourism industry. "Our phone lines have stopped," says one cab company manager. | | | |  | The Ringer | | A website featuring new songs from Childish Gambino appeared over the weekend as much of America shuttered. By Sunday evening, it was gone. | | | | | The New York Times | | It started as a 46-second monologue. It got remixed into a dancey track. Now the rapper and the D.J. who transformed her clip are promising it’ll help the needy. | | | |  | Disgraceland | | Real life "Rocket Queen," raging press, recovered memories and the Riverport riot. | | | |  | Afropunk | | It is an aphorism that people’s true colors are clearest in a crisis. Often, we can see personal values coming into view from afar - race, gender and class contempt underpinning “free speech” “opinions” and “points of view” which had been projected in one way or another beforehand, and what-not. | | | |  | NPR | | When Bad Bunny released "YHLQMDLG," he coined a new term: "bichiyal." It fuses two Puerto Rican slang words--"bicha" and "yal"--and illustrates reggaeton's complicated relationship with class and women. | | | |  | Innovating Music | | Karen Allen helps decode and make simpler streaming music for artists on Twitch. Twitch is a live streaming service, bought by Amazon in 2014, and has 2.2 million daily broadcasters and 15 million daily average viewers. It is mostly gamers, but also has creative and music channels for its highly creative audience. | | | | | Los Angeles Times | | The music community has been hit especially hard by the coronavirus outbreak, with the cancellation or postponement of festivals large and small, entire concert tours and individual performances nationwide. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
