| We're making Black history right now, through globalization. It's a reunion. Caribbean fans and American fans and Nigerian fans and Kenyan fans and YouTube fans are all getting to discover each other and reconnect. The ancestors are seeing their descendants reunite through music and technology. |
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Tidal teammates: Madonna, Deadmau5, Kanye West and Jay-Z at Tidal's launch event in New York, March 30, 2015.
(Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
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“We're making Black history right now, through globalization. It's a reunion. Caribbean fans and American fans and Nigerian fans and Kenyan fans and YouTube fans are all getting to discover each other and reconnect. The ancestors are seeing their descendants reunite through music and technology.”
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Tidal Track
JACK, who runs Twitter, was just trying to get JAY, who has 3 million followers on Twitter but hadn't uttered a word to them in more than two years, to say something. A $297 million payment in exchange for a little engagement. And it worked.
That's what Thursday's blockbuster music tech deal was about, right?
It certainly wasn't just about streaming music, was it?
The basic deets; Jack's other company, SQUARE, paid $297 million for a "significant majority" of TIDAL, which Jay bought from its Norwegian founders for $56 million in 2015. Jay reportedly gave nearly half the company, in equity chunks of 3 percent each, to 16 artist partners including KANYE WEST, RIHANNA, JACK WHITE and DAFT PUNK in exchange for access to exclusive music. Tidal didn't get all that much exclusive stuff in the end and most of it, including BEYONCÉ's LEMONADE and Jay's own catalog, has long ceased to be exclusive. Those artists got a hell of a deal, and they'll still have an ownership stake when the deal closes. Jay sold a third of the company to SPRINT in 2017 and, per the Wall Street Journal, bought that 33 percent back (price not disclosed) before selling to Square, which paid, to quote TECHCRUNCH, "a minute fraction of a single percent of its market capitalization."
For that piece of change, Square gets a minor player in streaming music, which the market is valuing at a significantly lower figure than it did a few years ago. But it also gets Jay, hip-hop's smartest artist/businessman (he'll join Square's board), a continuing relationship with his A-list partners and a brand that understands how to connect hip-hop artists and hip-hop fans. In interviews Thursday, JESSE DOROGUSKER, the Square exec who'll run Tidal for now, talked less about Tidal's core streaming business than about ancillary opportunities like concert tickets and merchandise and coming up with new ways for artists to monetize their music. Artist services, too. The Journal reported that Dorogusker mentioned the idea of making loans based on Tidal data, which conceivably could add Square/Tidal to the list of companies disrupting the traditional label system by offering artists an alternative way to finance their music.
Jack, in his own series of tweets, gave streaming its due: "We’ll work on entirely new listening experiences to bring fans closer together." Which, weirdly, sounds like the most ambitious, and most difficult, item on the agenda. The market's a lot more saturated than it was just a few years ago and competition is fierce. And it might not matter. Jay might have entered with a streaming service and exited with something else altogether. Then again—read that first tweet again—maybe he knew all along.
Two Turntables, No Microphone
And in social music news, TURNTABLE.FM, an app that music fans have been wishing back from the grave for years, appears to have heard them. And it appears to have cloned itself. More on this soon, but a potentially huge development for social-starved music fans.
It's Friday
And that means there's new music from DRAKE, who surprise-dropped his SCARY HOURS 2 EP (there's a proper album somewhere on the horizon)... LIL DURK, via a compilation album spotlighting his OTF label... KINGS OF LEON, which you're welcome to bid a few Bitcoins on at your local NFT gallery if streaming it on SPOTIFY is a little too bourgeois for your tastes... Colombian singer/songwriter CAMILO... Congolese-American percussionist KIAZI MALONGA... Swedish pop singer ZARA LARSSON... Jazz great PAT METHENY, stepping outside his comfort zone with an album of classical guitar compositions... The VACCINES, who have FDA approval to cover songs by KACEY MUSGRAVES and WAXAHATCHEE on their new EP but are not yet approved for medical use... And albums by JANE WEAVER, ADULT MOM, DENZEL CURRY & KENNY BEATS, OMB PEEZY, YBN ALMIGHTY JAY, WARHOL.SS, CHASE ATLANTIC, JUDITH HILL, VISIONIST, PHOTAY, JIMBO MATHUS & ANDREW BIRD, FRUIT BATS, MOTHER OF MARS (new band feat. VITO ROCCOFORTE and GABRIEL ANDRUZZI of the RAPTURE), ARAB STRAP (first album in 16 years), JOE DYSON, GRETCHEN PARLATO, HILARY HAHN, NEIL COWLEY, BERNICE, the MICROPHONES (vinyl-only release of ambient noise), REGIONAL JUSTICE CENTER, A DAY TO REMEMBER, PAUL STANLEY & SOUL STATION, DEMON HUNTER, WITHERFALL, WORN, AZITA, PAINTED SHRINES (JEREMY EARL of WOODS and GLENN DONALDSON of the SKYGREEN LEOPARDS), TIGERS JAW, IAN SWEET, GARRISON STARR, GABRIELLE, JAZ ELISE, ALEX BLEEKER (solo album from REAL ESTATE bassist), JAY GONZALEZ (of DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS), JOHN SHARKEY III, TORY LANEZ, the SPILL CANVAS, CHEVELLE... And the COMING 2 AMERICA soundtrack, featuring BOBBY SESSIONS & MEGAN THEE STALLION, YG & BIG SEAN, TEYANA TAYLOR and TIWA SAVAGE, but no new music, I'm terribly sorry to report, from SEXUAL CHOCOLATE.
Rest in Peace
HENRY GOLDRICH, longtime owner of MANNY'S MUSIC, the absolute, unchallenged king of New York music retail. The prime minister of West 48th Street. The man who sold JIMI HENDRIX and ERIC CLAPTON their first wah-wah pedals, who said GUNS N' ROSES were welcome to shoot a video in the store "but we’re not shutting down for them," and who advised every young star who came through his doors (which was basically all of them) to be careful with their money. May all of you live to have an obituary like this one day. I still regret not buying that pink lefty Les Paul, the only one I've ever seen. But I, too, was being careful with my money... No Wave musician and photographer BARBARA ESS, whose bands included Y PANTS, DISBAND and the STATIC... JOSH HUMISTON, an agent and partner at AGENCY FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Vox |
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| Why did Jack Dorsey buy Tidal, Jay-Z’s failed music service? |
| by Peter Kafka |
| A speculative explainer of the Square/Tidal deal that includes cryptokitties and Grimes. |
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Variety |
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| Beyonce, Rihanna, Kanye: How Much Do Tidal’s Artist Partners Stand to Make? |
| by Jem Aswad and Shirley Halperin |
| It appears that the big winners in the Square investment are Jay-Z and his 15 initial artist partners, who were each act gifted 3% in equity in Tidal in an effort to provide exclusive content that would help drive value for the subscription price. But who else wins with this move, and what did Tidal get for giving away that equity? |
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Vulture |
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| Tuma Basa Changed Spotify With a Playlist. YouTube’s Next |
| by Craig Jenkins |
| The veteran music exec on trying to make the industry’s gatekeeping obsolete. |
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The Ringer |
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| Meet Arlo Parks, the Singer Poised to Be the Reluctant Voice of Gen Z |
| by Logan Murdock |
| ‘Collapsed in Sunbeams,’ the London-born Arlo Parks’s debut full-length, establishes her as one of the most promising young songwriters in music. |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| How Chase Hudson, TikTok heartthrob, became Lil Huddy, snarling pop-punk rocker |
| by Suzy Exposito |
| Chase Hudson, aka Lil Huddy, is best known as the TikTok influencer who dated Charli D'Amelio. Now, he's reinvented himself as a fledgling pop-punk star. |
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VICE |
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| How TikTok Turned Into a Viral Popstar Factory |
| by Nana Baah |
| In a matter of months, breakout stars can go from posting acoustic covers to securing record contracts, brand deals and national tours. |
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The Verge |
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| Turntable.fm is back from the dead -- and now there are two |
| by Mitchell Clark |
| A tale of two turntables. |
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VAN Magazine |
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| The Premieres Lost to Covid-19 |
| by Jeffrey Arlo Brown |
| Over the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has nearly eliminated performances of newly composed music. |
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The New Yorker |
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| Saving Birdland—and Jazz History |
| by Adam Gopnik |
| The legendary New York City venue has struggled during the pandemic. |
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Music Industry Blog |
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| The music business in 2021: Joining the dots |
| by Mark Mulligan |
| It has been one of those weeks, with impactful music business announcements coming thick and fast. As is often the case, a succession of apparently unrelated events actually have a connecting thread. |
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| green grass and high tides |
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The New York Times |
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| The Artists Dismantling the Barriers Between Rap and Poetry |
| by Adam Bradley |
| Though the two forms remain distinct, today’s rising stars in both genres are creating a shared literary ideal that gives voice to the Black and brown experience. |
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The Guardian |
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| St Vincent: ‘I’d been feral for so long. I was sort of in outer space’ |
| by Laura Snapes |
| Inspired by her father’s release from prison, Annie Clark’s new album asks where to run when ‘the outlaw’s inside you’. She discusses his incarceration, the delusions of love - and why she remains as perverse as ever. |
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Star Tribune |
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| The new Har Mar Superstar: sober, engaged and employed by the Postal Service |
| by Chris Riemenschneider |
| Har Mar Superstar is delivering mail by day, but on record he's still carrying a nighttime party vibe. |
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Forbes |
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| Clubhouse Is Fast Becoming A Music Mecca ... And A Hot Mess |
| by Bill Hochberg |
| Clubhouse is many things to musicians and music pros: a virtual music conference with panels day and night, a marketplace for promoters of bands and brands, a jam session room, a musical theater for the ears, and a late-night hang. |
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Fronteras |
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| Don’t Kill My Vibe: Arizona Inmate Alleges Kendrick Lamar CD Ban Is Unconstitutional In Appeal To 9th Circuit |
| by Jimmy Jenkins |
| Johnny Cash famously sang about shooting a man in Reno, “just to watch him die'' in “Folsom Prison Blues.” In the song “Money Trees,” Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar proclaims “the one in front of the gun lives forever.” While both songs depict gun violence, only one is banned in Arizona prisons. |
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Variety |
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| Composers of Color Crash Through Awards Conversation |
| by Jon Burlingame |
| Has the social and political upheaval of the past year brought about change in the film music community? Are composers of color now being considered more frequently for films that don't focus on Black issues? The answer appears to be yes, and the beneficiaries are not only the composers but also viewers, who are hearing fresh voices in both films and TV shows. |
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The New Yorker |
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| Billie Eilish's Unconventional Pop-Star Documentary |
| by Carrie Battan |
| “The World’s a Little Blurry” provides a stark portrait of how music celebrity has changed--or, at least, how it has appeared to change. |
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Lyrical Lemonade |
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| Duke Deuce Interview: The Resurrection Of A Crunk Star |
| by Lee Mcintosh |
| "I'm just doing me and that's the only thing I know how to do. I know one day that I want to be bigger than the legends that came before me. I want to be the biggest from the city of Memphis, which I will be very soon." |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| David Crosby on dinner with Joni, Phoebe Bridgers and the 50th anniversary of his haunted solo debut |
| by Joe Hagan |
| David Crosby’s story of addiction, prison and recovery, his years-long interpersonal warfare with former bandmates and his arrests for drugs and firearms, is the stuff of legend, but suffice to say the singer-songwriter, now 79, remains feisty and stubbornly countercultural |
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Level |
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| We Should Have Held T.I. Accountable Years Ago |
| by David Dennis Jr. |
| What’s it going to take for us to see the red flags for what they are? |
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| Music of the day |
| "Leave the Door Open" |
| Silk Sonic |
| First single from Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak's new thing. Wishing you rose petals in the bathtub this weekend. You deserve it. We all do. |
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YouTube |
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First single from Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak's new thing. Wishing you rose petals in the bathtub this weekend. You deserve it. We all do.
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In lieu of the concerts you still can't go to, one of the greatest concert films ever made.
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| Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech |
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“REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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| Jason Hirschhorn |
| CEO & Chief Curator |
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