| Producers, labels, and artists have focused on how to make their song compete with other songs, rather than consider how music will compete with other forms of entertainment. Meanwhile, streaming services know exactly who their competitors are: Roblox, Fortnite, and other video games. |
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Leon Bridges at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, Sept. 5, 2021.
(Erika Goldring/Getty Images)
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“Producers, labels, and artists have focused on how to make their song compete with other songs, rather than consider how music will compete with other forms of entertainment. Meanwhile, streaming services know exactly who their competitors are: Roblox, Fortnite, and other video games.”
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Twitch House
It's shouldn't come as a surprise that TWITCH, whose payouts to creators were exposed in a massive data breach this week, is paying a lot more to gamers than to the musicians who've found it to be a crucial promotional platform. It's a gaming service. Still, this thread by analyst CHERIE HU, pulling some artist earning figures from that breach, has no doubt raised some eyebrows. The big Twitch music winners include producer/songwriter KENNY BEATS, who's made at least $677,000 in Twitch subscriptions and tips in the past two years; rapper TEE GRIZZLEY, who uses the service to stream his gameplay and has been rewarded with at least $209k; and the married singer/songwriter duo AESEAES, who have 4,000 followers on TWITTER, 12,000 on YOUTUBE, one modestly performing album on SPOTIFY, and have pulled in $166,000 for their live acoustic videos on Twitch in those two years.
Nice work if you can get it. But maybe not as nice as being an actual gamer: "the top gamer on Twitch," Hu writes, "earns ~10x more per year from direct tips and subs than the top music artist on the platform." (And maybe not as nice as it would be if Twitch had better formal relations with labels and publishers. Just two weeks ago, Twitch agreed to a financial settlement with the NATIONAL MUSIC PUBLISHERS' ASSOCIATION for its past use of unlicensed music and announced an agreement with the publishers to build future partnerships. But it still doesn't have a working licensing deal for songwriters and publishers.)
The Twitch data is echoed in a sense by DAVE EDWARDS, head of revenue at the music streaming platform AUDIOMACK, who notes in an analysis for tech blog FUTURE that "three of the top four most followed TWITTER accounts and 23 of the top 50 INSTAGRAM accounts are musicians, while just six are athletes." And yet the gaming market is swamping the music market in annual revenues. Edwards goes on at length to wonder why that is, and his thesis is that the music industry's copyright and licensing practices haven't caught up with the way people use the internet these days, and that its creative game isn't so hot either. He's far from the only voice suggesting the music biz basically throw out its streaming financial model and start over from scratch. One of his diagnoses/suggestions: "The true 'unlock' for the music business will come when universal copyright rails allow average users to easily mod, remix, and play with their favorite songs in musically coherent ways via consumer-facing applications." Which is one of many ways Edwards is actually saying: Be more like the gaming business.
Then again, another way to look at his numbers is that musicians aren't underperforming in game revenue but, rather, over-indexing on social media. Why do JUSTIN BIEBER, KATY PERRY and RIHANNA have the three most followed Twitter accounts after BARACK OBAMA? Is it because musicians, unlike role-playing actors and game-playing athletes, are generally thought to be speaking in their own voice when they perform? And that their social media voices are, therefore, an extension of their musical voices? And that the incentive to extend their brand in that direction is unusually high? The question, then, might become: How do you effectively and creatively extend that voice into places like YOUTUBE and TIKTOK, in ROBLOX and FORTNITE? And, of course, Twitch. How do you get a piece of that gamer money?
(Others, some of them Luddites, some of them artists who only want to extend their voice further into their own art, may instead ask: Why can't we leaving gaming to the gamers and TikTok to the TikTokkers and instead figure out how to make a living wage on Spotify and APPLE MUSIC? That will always be a valid question, too.)
Rest in Peace
Long-running British indie pop singer/songwriter PAT FISH, better known as the JAZZ BUTCHER.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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The Guardian |
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| The message: why should hip-hop have to teach us anything? |
| by Kelefa Sanneh |
| Almost since it first emerged on the streets of the Bronx, audiences have expected hip-hop to express a revolutionary purpose. But perhaps this music shouldn’t have to take a political stand. (Excerpted from "Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres" by Kelefa Sanneh.) |
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Passion of the Weiss |
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| 'So Long, See You Honey': Google’s Rapid Shut Down of Discord Music Bots |
| by Will Hagle |
| Rythm Discord music bot offlined on September 15, another sad day of music disappearing from the internet at the whims of corporate interest. |
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Future |
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| The Music Industry Is Built on Artists, but Shuns Creators |
| by Dave Edwards |
| If the music business can revise its draconian approach to copyright and UGC, it will empower tech startups to do for audio what TikTok did for video. |
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The Line of Best Fit |
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| Meet Me @ The Altar’s pop-punk reckoning |
| by Cady Siregar |
| As the first all-female band to sign to Fueled by Ramen, Meet Me At The Altar are helping to carve out a space for people of colour in the archaic and white-washed genre of pop-punk. |
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GQ |
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| The Story of the Grateful Dead’s Gear Is the Story of Rock ‘n’ Roll |
| by Jesse Jarnow |
| A unique Sotheby's auction includes everything from speakers used in the Dead's famous ‘74 Wall of Sound to legendary LSD guru Owsley Stanley’s chemistry set. |
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Okayplayer |
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| Hip-Hop Doesn’t Trust The Covid Vaccine. This Doctor Wants To Change That |
| by Elijah C. Watson |
| Amid hip-hop figures expressing skepticism toward the COVID-19 vaccine, Dr. Uché Blackstock wants to give them and others the opportunity to express their concerns while also assuring them that the vaccine is meant to help them. |
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Atlas Obscura |
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| The Artist Collective That Brings Heavy Metal Fever Dreams to Life |
| by Eric J. Wallace |
| For nearly 40 years, a rotating cast of artists has made costumes and props for Gwar, the band behind one of the world’s wildest stage shows. |
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Apple Music |
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| Metallica: 40th Anniversary Special and Evolution of the Blacklist |
| by Zane Lowe, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich... |
| Metallica's James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo sit down with Zane Lowe to celebrate their 40th anniversary. |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| How Ivy Queen and a Spotify podcast got the history of reggaeton right |
| by Daniel Hernandez |
| Reggaeton, once shunned by music gatekeepers, is now the soundtrack to a brown, youthful Los Angeles and beyond, as the Spotify podcast 'Loud' shows. |
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Billboard |
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| Where Does Music’s Love Affair With Gaming Go? |
| by Micah Singleton |
| The gaming industry last year generated more than $175 billion in revenue, exceeding revenues for the film industry and the American sports leagues combined. The music business wants in on that money. |
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| quit playing games (with my heart) |
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The Atlantic |
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| In Defense of the Insufferable Music Fan |
| by Jack Hamilton |
| What we lose when we “like everything.” |
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Complex |
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| An Evening With Tinashe, Independent Pop Star |
| by Brenton Blanchet |
| I see two sides of Tinashe during her show at Terminal 5 in Manhattan on Sept. 30. |
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Billboard |
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| Neil Dominique Is Ready to Go From All-Star Manager to Top Label Owner |
| by Carl Lamarre |
| Once Puff Daddy's assistant, Neil Dominique evolved into an all-star manager, grooming the skillset of R&B star Bryson Tiller and songwriting savant Pardison Fontaine. Now, he looks to become a music titan with his burgeoning imprint #JUSTAREGULARLABEL. |
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W Magazine |
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| Dolly Parton Simply Doesn't Stop |
| by Lynn Hirschberg |
| At 75, Dolly Parton just keeps shining. Here, the inimitable singer talks her tattoos, new book with James Patterson and good business sense. |
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Song Exploder |
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| Song Exploder: John Lennon – 'God' |
| by Hrishikesh Hirway |
| Through archival interviews, John Lennon tells the story of making his song "God." |
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Penny Fractions |
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| Tidal and the Evolving World of Musician Financing |
| by David Turner |
| Jack Dorsey, founder of Square and Twitter, did his alleged friend Jay-Z a favor. Music streaming isn’t a great business—certainly not when your company barely represents 2% of the overall market—but Square decided to pony up $302 million to take Tidal off of Jay-Z’s hands. |
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Paste Magazine |
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| The Insidiousness of 'Afro-Americana' |
| by Jake Blount |
| Black people have always been a part of Americana, because Americana was built with our sounds. Whether "Afro-Americana" is intended to segregate us out or tack us on as an afterthought, the implications are ahistorical and insulting. |
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Afropop Worldwide |
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| Franco Speaks (1985) |
| by Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre |
| In 1985, Sean Barlow made his first trip to Africa to check out musical life there. Afropop Worldwide was still a dream at that point, but the experiences he had on that trip put wind in his sails. One highlight was the afternoon he spent interviewing Luambo Makiadi a.k.a. Franco at the bandleader's home in the Limité neighborhood of Kinshasa. |
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Under the Paving Stones |
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| On the 30th anniversary of my first rave |
| by Jim Poe |
| I’m afraid people won’t believe me when I tell them what a magical, all-time vibe it was; that the mixing styles and and dance styles and fashions were distinctly different from what was the norm at raves just six months later; that the light show featured laser fish floating in a laser sea; that an unbilled Björk performed with 808. Y’all might just assume I hallucinated all that. |
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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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