I could sit at my computer at home and you wouldn’t know that there wasn’t a 100-piece orchestra there. You couldn’t do that 10 years ago.
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Tuesday January 10, 2023
REDEF
Mask on: Future on his One Big Party Tour, Houston, Jan. 7, 2023.
(Prince Williams/WireImage/Getty Images)
quote of the day
I could sit at my computer at home and you wouldn’t know that there wasn’t a 100-piece orchestra there. You couldn’t do that 10 years ago.
- David James Rosen, movie trailer composer
rantnrave://
Sustain

Time for your periodic reminder that when the industry tells us people are listening to more and more old music and, therefore, less and less new music, what they actually mean is people in 2022 were listening to WEEKND songs from 2019, GLASS ANIMALS songs from 2020 and DUA LIPA & ELTON JOHN songs from 2021. I have things in my refrigerator that are older than all of those songs. I don’t call it “catalog” food. I call it lunch. The anecdotes and soft features that get everybody’s attention are about KATE BUSH on “STRANGER THINGS” and FLEETWOOD MAC on TIKTOK, which are honest-to-god hits and legit stories, but the songs driving the music industry’s bottom line are “BLINDING LIGHTS,” “HEAT WAVES” and “COLD HEART.”

This week’s public service journalism award goes to Bloomberg’s LUCAS SHAW for surfacing the phrase “shallow catalog,” which refers to music old enough to be considered catalog by the chartkeepers at LUMINATE but new enough to still be a first-run pop hit. Luminate calls any song released more than 18 months ago catalog. But pop promotion cycles can run a lot longer than that. “What’s getting lost in the lack of details,” WARNER MUSIC GROUP catalog chief KEVIN GORE tells Shaw, “is how more recent catalog is feeding that trend.” It’s not that pop fans are listening to more golden oldies than they used to. It’s that they’re listening to current pop hits longer.

There are other factors feeding recent trends, including the simple fact that people who stream WHITNEY HOUSTON and TUPAC music on SPOTIFY are being counted for chart purposes in a way they couldn’t have been, and weren’t, when they were continuing to listen to that same music on CDs and iPods long after they bought it. Same listening patterns; different data. Where once we charted a song’s attack, now we chart its decay.

Trailing Indicators

One place where old music does keep rearing its more-than-18-month-old head is movie trailers. Two things that fascinate me from ERIC DUCKER’s New York Times feature on the trailerization of older songs by artists from GUNS N’ ROSES to KENDRICK LAMAR to TAYLOR SWIFT, which generally involves a trailer composer/musician remixing, reimagining or “overlaying” the original recording: It can take years to produce a single two- or three-minute trailer. And the composer/musicians often have no access to any of the film footage they’re scoring because, as one trailer-house exec told Ducker, “We’re literally dealing with billions of dollars in unreleased assets. There’s no way we can send that to a composer.” They apparently can, however, show it to the music supervisor and various other people at the trailer house. It’s only the musician who can’t be trusted. You will be shocked, shocked to learn that the musicians also tend to be uncredited.

Still E.T.C. E.T.C. E.T.C.

You can make a TIKTOK video using DR. DRE’s “STILL D.R.E.” and you can cover it on YOUTUBE but you can not, as Billboard legal correspondent BILL DONAHUE notes, use it to soundtrack your political campaign ad on TWITTER or anywhere else without permission from the good doctor. Dre’s lawyer, HOWARD E. KING, FedExes a note to MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE to explain this part of U.S. copyright law... Is APPLE MUSIC SING—Apple’s bottomless virtual karaoke machine—too good to be true? Slate investigates with the help of cocktails and a dodgy AirPlay connection... Serious suggestion for the next VERZUZ: CELINE DION v. ROLLING STONE... Question for the guitar ethicist: I’m a young luthier, still struggling, living in a $500 apartment. I’ve spent six months building a beautiful electric archtop guitar. PRINCE wants it. Do I just, like, give it to him?... STOMP stomps its last stomp in New York (but continues to tour North America and Europe)... Wonderful description of pop songwriting from short story writer GEORGE SAUNDERS, who is not, in his own estimation, particularly good at it: "In my songs, the first verse is, 'I love you so much. You’re so beautiful.' The second verse is, uh, the same, basically. Or it’s the obvious next logical development... With good songwriters, A and B have such a weird relationship, and that’s what makes the brilliance. You are soundly in 'A,' expecting certain things, and then 'B' comes along and is neither too neat nor too out of relation with 'A.'"

Rest in Peace

GORDY HARMON, founding member of R&B group the Whispers... New York club DJ DINO CALVAO... STAN HITCHCOCK, longtime country music TV host and early CMT executive.

- Matty Karas, curator
in the shallow
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‘Shallow Catalog’ is The Fastest-Growing Business in Music
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only shallow
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Hundreds of Artists Push for Copyright Rule Change On Streaming Royalties: ‘We Stand Together’
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Fears for Toomaj Salehi's safety have also grown after Salehi’s official Twitter account posted that despite being in danger of losing his eyesight, he was being repeatedly beaten.
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At least let the CD die with some dignity
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The CD was of enormous significance but its place in history is being lost.
what we're into
Music of the day
“Nothing Left To Lose”
Everything but the Girl
From "Fuse," EBTG's first album in 24 years, out in April on Buzzin' Fly/Virgin.
Video of the day
“Live at Retromedia Sound Studios Pt I”
William Parker & Hamid Drake
Happy birthday William Parker!
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