| Performing [for] 60,000 people, that's easy. The energy's already there. They're already doing most of the work. All you gotta do is not forget the words—and feed them energy too. But performing for two people who are just trying to get a drink and don't even know why there's someone performing is like... That is the hardest performance you'll ever do. |
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The late Mac Miller in New York, July 17, 2013.
(Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
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“Performing [for] 60,000 people, that's easy. The energy's already there. They're already doing most of the work. All you gotta do is not forget the words—and feed them energy too. But performing for two people who are just trying to get a drink and don't even know why there's someone performing is like... That is the hardest performance you'll ever do.”
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Mechanical Bull
The strangest thing about the upcoming fight between streaming services and American music publishers over mechanical royalty rates for the years 2023–2027 is that their fight over mechanical rates for 2018–2022 still isn't over. It's mid-October 2021 and it isn't clear what SPOTIFY and APPLE owe DRAKE, NOAH "40" SHEBIB and their songwriting collaborators for the 68 million times "GOD'S PLAN" was streamed the week it came out in January 2018. The federal COPYRIGHT ROYALTY BOARD, which has the final say, did set an overall rate—it's a complicated system, but effectively songwriters and publishers were to get 11.4 percent of each service's revenues in 2018, gradually scaling up to 15.1 percent in 2022—but Spotify and AMAZON led a challenge to that decision that remains tied up in copyright court, even as proposals for the next five-year period have come due. It's like a baseball playoff series where they've decided to start game three while game two is still in extra innings (and ticket prices for game two, which started several hours ago, still aren't set).
For 2023–27, the NATIONAL MUSIC PUBLISHERS' ASSOCIATION is seeking a significant jump, to 20 percent of each subscription service's revenues. (The actual ask is whichever is highest in any given month—20 percent of revenues, or 40 percent of what labels are getting, or $1.50 per subscriber, or 0.15 cents per play, according to reporting in Billboard and Music Business Worldwide.) The streaming services' proposals haven't been made public, but NMPA president DAVID ISRAELITE, who's seen them, says they're "the lowest royalty rates in history," and "this fight has just begun." GARRETT LEVIN, president of the DIGITAL MEDIA ASSOCIATION, which represents the tech companies, told Billboard the numbers should be viewed through the lens of a business model that requires each company to pay multiple royalty streams ("This CRB proceeding does not happen in a vacuum," he said), and which is driving "ever-growing revenues for publishers and performing rights organizations, massive investments in publishing catalogs, and innovative tools and features that connect songwriters to fans in ways never possible before."
Both arguments allude, in different ways, to the ongoing conversation in the industry about how to equitably split a fixed royalty pie between master recording owners and publishers, or, to put it in more human terms, between artists and songwriters. Are artists getting too big a piece of the existing pie, or does the streaming business need to turn out bigger pies so every kind of creator can get their fair share? Or both? Answers to come in 2027 or 2028, by which time we may also know, if we're lucky, where exactly all the soaring revenues of the streaming-era music business are going and why nobody on any side of the equation seems to have any money.
Dot Dot Dot
In-person music classes are back in schools, more or less... As are principals who love IRON MAIDEN... EVE, ROXANNE SHANTÉ and CITY GIRLS are among the artists featured on the ABC News special THE REAL QUEENS OF HIP-HOP: THE WOMEN WHO CHANGED THE GAME, airing at 10pm ET tonight. It's part of the network's promo for its upcoming scripted series QUEENS... Avid collector PHIL COLLINS is the primary benefactor behind an Alamo museum currently under construction in San Antonio. He has nothing, however, to do with the fight (paywall) currently happening in Texas over what the museum should be. Insert your own "LAND OF CONFUSION" or "MISUNDERSTANDING" joke here... MICHAEL STIPE on the "beautiful queerness" of the VELVET UNDERGROUND... Rolling Stone's new editor, NOAH SHACHTMAN, interviewed on the MEDIA MASTERS podcast.
Rest in Peace
Celebrated session drummer RONNIE TUTT, who played in Elvis Presley's and Jerry Garcia's bands—at the same time. "One night I’d be in Vegas playing with rhinestone two-piece outfits and the next night I’d be out with Garcia with the tie-dye and a pair of jeans," he told Rolling Stone in 2017. "Socially speaking it was *really* different"... ROBIN RUSSELL, a well-recorded R&B/rock session drummer who also played in the bands New Birth and the Nite-Liters and, for many years, in Los Angeles' Griffith Park... Steel guitarist BILLY ROBINSON, who as a member of the Grand Ole Opry house band played with Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Red Foley and other country legends... Guitarist REGI HARGIS, founder of '70s funk band BRICK... British songwriter/producer ALAN HAWKSHAW, best known for his themes to the BBC's "Grange Hill" and several other TV shows.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| Most people agree that Spotify should pay songwriters more. But where’s this money going to come from? |
| by Tim Ingham |
| David Israelite, CEO and President of the National Music Publishers Association, on why he’s fuming over Big Tech’s latest move. |
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The Washington Post |
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| Jazz venues have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. They are hoping the worst is over. |
| by Avery Kleinman |
| "Jazz clubs are probably the most vulnerable to begin with,” says Audrey Fix Schaefer of the National Independent Venue Association. "These are houses of art. If you’re going to open a blues club or a jazz club, it’s because you are devoted to that art form and love it, it’s not because you are an entrepreneur looking to make gobs of money." |
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Vulture |
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| Mac Miller Found Freedom on 'Faces': An oral history of Mac Miller’s 2014 opus |
| by Donna-Claire Chesman |
| "Towards the end of 2014, you had to literally pry him out of The Sanctuary with a crowbar. He was intending to lock himself inside the studio and make music every day, and that’s exactly what he did." |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| Health experts and fans express concern over Coachella's new vaccination policy |
| by August Brown |
| Coachella said it would no longer require proof of vaccination to attend the festival. Health experts and fans have questions. |
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The New Yorker |
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| The First Taste of Adele's Divorce Album |
| by Carrie Battan |
| A new single, “Easy on Me,” reminds us how Adele has succeeded while resisting almost every force of modern pop music. |
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NPR |
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| PinkPantheress reimagines garage music for a new generation |
| by Mano Sundaresan |
| The internet's buzziest new artist talks creating her new mixtape "to hell with it," sample culture, and nostalgia. |
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Billboard |
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| Beatles Royalties & Family Conflicts: We Read UMG’s 300-Page Prospectus. Here’s What We Found |
| by Ed Christman and Glenn Peoples |
| Universal Music Group's prospectus contained a trove of insights into the world's biggest music company, from its borrowing power to a growing global footprint. |
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Trapital |
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| Mary Rahmani on TikTok Artist Strategies, Launching Moon Projects, and Influencer Partnerships |
| by Dan Runcie and Mary Rahmani |
| Mary Rahmani is the founder and CEO of Moon Projects, an innovative agency focused on short-form video content and helping artists, brands, and companies take that to the next level. In this episode, she talks about her three-pronged company and what she has learned from her time as a TikTok executive. |
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Okayplayer |
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| The Rise Of Social Media Accounts Dedicated To Female Rap |
| by Natelegé Whaley |
| Over the last couple of years, a number of social media accounts and platforms have popped up, creating spaces that spark high-level discussion centered around female rap. |
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The New York Times |
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| Bringing Attention to the Maori Language, One Song at a Time |
| by Brian Ng |
| “Waiata/Anthems,” Lorde’s “Te Ao Marama” EP and a host of other projects are aimed at revitalizing the Indigenous language of New Zealand via music. |
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God's Music Is My Life |
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| "With him, everybody could sing" |
| by Tim Dillinger |
| The story of Johnny Whittaker and the Twenty-First Century Singers, foundational players in the construction of Nashville's contemporary Gospel Sound. |
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NPR Music |
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| Meeting Tracy Chapman In The Spaces Between |
| by Francesca T. Royster |
| After Chapman released her 1988 debut, she was everywhere in pop and always on the mind of writer Francesca T. Royster. Hearing that album, she writes, "helped me say what I hadn't yet said out loud." |
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Billboard |
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| Here’s How the Grammys Decided Kacey Musgraves’ ‘Star-Crossed’ Isn’t a Country Album |
| by Melinda Newman |
| Inside three Grammy screening committees' decisions to move Kacey Musgraves's 'Star-Crossed' out of country album eligibility and into the pop album category. |
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Music Industry Blog |
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| Adele’s success will be measured in cultural impact -- not sales |
| by Mark Mulligan |
| The world has moved on a lot since her 2015 album, "25," and the nagging question is whether she can do it again with "30" in the much-changed music world. |
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Slate |
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| Todd Haynes Explains Why 'The Velvet Underground' Couldn’t Be a Typical Documentary |
| by Sam Adams |
| The new documentary is as much about pop art and sexual liberation as it is about a legendary band. |
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Complex |
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| How Lyrical Lemonade’s Cole Bennett Created a Movement |
| by Cole Bennett |
| Cole Bennett breaks down how his passion for the Chicago rap scene and relationships with rappers like Famous Dex and Lil Uzi Vert jump-started his lucrative brand, Lyrical Lemonade. |
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Pitchfork |
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| Is Sample Drill a Dumb Trend or the Future of New York Rap? |
| by Alphonse Pierre |
| Plus more highs and lows from the world of rap this week, including The Rock’s unfortunate foray into hip-hop and a Yeat song that just might give you COVID. |
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Money 4 Nothing |
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| 'Getting Signed' and the Ideology of Record Contracts Featuring David Arditi |
| by Saxon Baird, Sam Backer and David Arditi |
| What happens if you or your band is good, like—really good? You get SIGNED. A record contract! You've made it!....or did you? The fact that major label contracts aren’t particularly fair is well known, but what if they’re doing more than just ripping off artists and an empty promise? |
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VAN Magazine |
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| The Perception of Possibility: Women Conductors Take Equality Into Their Own Hands |
| by Vipasha Aloukik Pai |
| When Marin Alsop broke the female conducting barrier at the Last Night of the BBC Proms in 2013, she famously said she was shocked that there can still be firsts for women. Eight years on, we keep celebrating firsts for women conductors. A new generation is planning to change that. |
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Culture Notes of an Honest Broker |
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| The Music Critic Who Tried to Disappear |
| by Ted Gioia |
| A look back at magical vanishing act of jazz writer Whitney Balliett. |
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| Music of the day |
| "Malibu" |
| Mac Miller |
| From his 2014 "Faces," which hit streaming services for the first time last week. |
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YouTube |
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From his 2014 "Faces," which hit streaming services for the first time last week.
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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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