When I sell 59,000 copies of that record, I've recouped, and that means that I start getting paid. | | | | Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires at City Winery, New York, Dec. 17, 2019.
(Al Pereira/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “When I sell 59,000 copies of that record, I've recouped, and that means that I start getting paid.”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// It's FRIDAY and that means two MusicREDEF thumbs up to JASON ISBELL, whose seventh album, REUNIONS, is being released seven days early as an exclusive to indie record stores in the US and Canada. Everyone else, including streaming sites, gets it next Friday, which is the official release day for anyone who still believes in such things. I've never been a big fan of windowing, which can be confusing and costly for fans, but hell yes to this pane of glass. More artists should do this. Record stores are being clobbered by the pandemic and this is an easy and potentially profitable way to give back. It's a win-win-win. The retailers get badly needed business and Isbell gets an opening week where every transaction is either a vinyl or CD sale or a digital download (those will go through recordstoreday.com), which is good for both his chart position and his wallet. So simple even I understand it. It helps that Isbell is his own label and it helps, too, that this dovetails with a moment where complaints about streaming service royalties are gaining new life. With other sources of income, especially touring, having disappeared, there's been a surge in both streaming usage and in conversations about how artists are, or aren't, benefiting from that usage. Are SPOTIFY and other services charging enough for subscriptions, and are they returning enough of that revenue to the musicians who supply almost all of their content? Is the way those payouts are split between artists, labels and publishers fair? Is the way they're divvied up between artists and songwriters fair? Should subscribers' money go the artists they actually listen to instead of into a shared pot that favors the richest, most popular artists at the expense of music's middle class? Is it time to renegotiate everything? These are the questions being raised anew by ANNABELLA COLDRICK of the UK's MUSIC MANAGERS FORUM, by musician and PRS director TOM GRAY, by analyst MARK MULLIGAN, by CHARLATANS frontman and TWITTER album-listening guru TIM BURGESS and by sundry others feeling newly emboldened to just come out and say "Pull Your Music Off Spotify." MUSICALLY's STUART DREDGE writes a long piece about whether "Spotify Should Pay Musicians More" and gets a retweet from DANIEL EK. So we're at one of those moments. The floor is open. And one of the items on today's agenda is the elegantly simple "Buy Jason Isbell's album at your local record shop." The motion is approved... As for that flatlining touring industry, you didn't need to be on LIVE NATION's Q1 earnings call Thursday to know that revenues and everything else is down. But if you were on the call, you were served a few side dishes of optimism, too. The company says it has enough cash to survive the rest of this bleak year "without any concern," it will be testing a number of alternatives to traditional concerts this summer and, with the help of professional sports, it expects large-scale ticket sales to return in Q4. And CEO MICHAEL RAPINO said 90 percent of fans with tickets to postponed concerts have held onto their tickets rather than seek refunds. Rapino said a Live Nation survey found that the same percentage of fans "can't wait to get back to the show," but on that point, other surveys may agree to disagree... Speaking of alternatives, FORTNITE is following up its mega-successful TRAVIS SCOTT in-game event with a virtual show featuring STEVE AOKI and DEADMAU5 tonight... And ERYKAH BADU and JILL SCOTT will square off Saturday in the next edition of INSTAGRAM LIVE's VERZUZ battle series. It will be the first time women have entered the Verzuz ring... Oh, and remember a week ago when Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund bought a 5.7 stake in Live Nation on the open market, a sale of shares that the company said it didn't know about in advance and would have been powerless to stop? Now the Saudis are offering to buy WARNER MUSIC GROUP, according to the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. A "source close to WMG owner LEN BLAVATNIK" tells the magazine there's one other bid and "and it will come down to a number"—presumably not the number of journalists dismembered on Saudi diplomatic property, but I guess we'll see... Anyway, as previously mentioned, it's Friday and, besides Jason Isbell, that means new music HAYLEY WILLIAMS, KEHLANI, LIL DURK, NAV, HAILEE STEINFELD, MARK LANEGAN, BUTCH WALKER, NATALIA LAFOURCADE, RAC, BISHOP NEHRU, LIL TJAY, GREEN CARNATION, WINTERFYLLETH, FAKE NAMES, the HIRSCH EFFEKT, NAGLFAR, MILTON NASCIMENTO & CRIOLO, BUSCABULLA, BLAKE MILLS, I BREAK HORSES, EVE OWEN, KURT ROSENWINKEL TRIO, E-40, TAKAYUKI SHIRAISHI, JAI UTTAL, LETTUCE, STEVE FORBERT, CHOIR BOY and MAJETIC... RIP TY, JOHN ERHARDT, BRIAN HOWE and İBRAHIM GÖKÇEK. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | British GQ | | Talking beginnings, business and billion-dollar Beats, Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine reveal how their partnership kickstarted a digital revolution. | | | |  | Variety | | Streaming is considered to be the savior of the music business, but what really saved it - until recently, anyway - was concerts. Yes, the meteoric rise of legal streaming services during the 2010s provided a way for artists to earn some money from recorded music - after years of making nothing due to illegal downloading. | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | Staying inside keeps us safe. It also costs us the greatest communal experience a music fan has access to -- packing into a sweaty club or stadium for a concert. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | After 16 years as the frontwoman for Paramore, and following a broken marriage and a lot of therapy, Hayley Williams is releasing her first solo album. | | | |  | NPR Music | | Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter met while studying piano and flute at university in Germany. Before too long, they'd redrawn the entire outline of pop music for the late 20th century. | | | |  | Medium | | For music fans in COVID-19 lockdown the #TimsTwitterListeningParty initiative, started by The Charlatan's frontman Tim Burgess, has been a godsend. In the absence of live shows and festivals, every evening an online audience gathers on Twitter to enjoy 2 or 3 classic albums from start to finish. | | | |  | The Guardian | | Her freaky, filthy tracks frequently break the internet - most recently with a guest spot from Beyoncé - but the Houston rapper won’t let the internet break her. | | | |  | Dissect Podcast | | We continue our serialized analysis of Beyoncé’s "Lemonade" by dissecting its third chapter “Anger,” which features the song “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” Beyoncé flips stereotypical gender roles to command the respect of her partner and reclaim her agency. But how long can her anger sustain?. | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | MBW delves deeper into Warner's calendar Q1 results. | | | |  | 8Sided Blog | | Not only is Handwash Jukebox a brilliant use of Amazon Alexa to make washing hands fun, but there’s also an embedded element of music discovery. | | | | | Rolling Stone | | “We’ve got no shareholders, no corporate funding and no income coming in whatsoever,” says Christine Karayan. “But the bills are still coming.” | | | |  | Trapital | | Many artists are eager to use their platform to give back, but effective philanthropy takes focus and alignment. | | | |  | Billboard | | On the eve of her first musical project in five years, the singer/actress is ready to find a different level of focus. "I used to think that I could do it all," she says. "And then I started losing sleep over it." | | | |  | American Songwriter | | In three separate interviews with American Songwriter about their 1980 album "Autoamerican," Blondie's Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke each volunteered one similar, specific memory: Harry: "When we turned it in, I don't think it was accepted right away by the label." | | | | | Variety | | Music Cities Together, a joint initiative between Washington D.C.-based Music Policy Forum (Michael Bracy) and Austin-based Sound Music Cities (Don Pitts) committed to helping local officials in cities across America improve their music ecosystems, is stepping up efforts to save music venues and clubs nationwide. | | | |  | VICE | | “This will hurt them, but it won’t destroy the networks.” | | | |  | CDM Create Digital Music | | Every price point in Apple's notebook lineup has recently gotten an update, with revisions to the 13" MacBook Pro this week. And they've fixed the keyboards. So if you're in the market for a Mac, which should you get? | | | |  | Going Off Track | | Legendary master of the glass – photographer Danny Clinch joins us to talk about how he captured some of the most iconic images in music. From Tupac’s tattoos to Saint Springsteen, Danny not only creates stunning visual images of his subjects, but somehow manages to reveal a bit of their soul as well. | | | |  | The New York Times | | An I.C.U. doctor felt despair at how little could be done for the sick. Soon, she had musicians playing over the phone in hospital rooms. | | | |  | The Bitter Southerner | | Roughly translated, the word means considering with empathy. The indie-rock musician who goes by Kishi Bashi grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, and lives in Athens, Georgia. He opens up about racism, his long journey toward embracing his Japanese American identity, and his visits to WWII internment camps, which gave birth to a new project that took his music around a fresh bend. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit | | | | From "Reunions" (Southeastern Records), available today in indie record stores in the US and Canada. Available everywhere else May 15. | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
