Touring Europe just won’t be a viable option any more. It would shrink the industry and only privilege the very wealthy and already successful. It would be catastrophic. | | | | Is Georgia on your mind? Ray Charles at the Apollo Theater, New York, Nov. 10, 1990.
(Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “Touring Europe just won’t be a viable option any more. It would shrink the industry and only privilege the very wealthy and already successful. It would be catastrophic.”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// Until the Associated Press and swing state vote counters decide otherwise, I hereby claim that ERIC B is president, as determined by the one-man electoral college known as RAKIM... Here's the Los Angeles Times defining payola in 1990: "to exchange money or other inducements for broadcasting a specific record if the payment is not publicly disclosed." In that sense, which is the US criminal sense, SPOTIFY can't be accused of soliciting payola with its new DISCOVERY MODE program. Spotify isn't a broadcaster and is disclosing what it's doing. But Discovery Mode, in which artists can ask Spotify to play specific songs in automated feeds in exchange for the inducement of a lower loyalty rate, is a form of pay-to-play—legal but problematic—by any reasonable definition. (It's also, as others have noted, a good example of rent-seeking). The idea sounds artist-friendly on the surface: Artists and labels can tell the service which songs they want highlighted when Spotify auto-plays their music in users' feeds, instead of leaving it up to the service's algorithms. Plays aren't guaranteed, but the artist/label's wishes basically become part of the algorithm. This may not always lead to the best experience for users, who generally are better served by selecter/curators than by label promotion departments, but we also want, and expect, curators to be listening to creators. What we don't want is for curators to be charging for that service. Every artist learns this on day one of artist school: If you have to pay to get in the door, find another door or run the other way. Spotify has made a point of noting there's no upfront cost associated with Discovery Mode; artists or labels just have to agree to the reduced royalty for any streams that result from the placement. "There's no barrier to entry," Spotify's CHARLETON LAMB tells Music Business Worldwide. But there is a cost, which is why Lamb also talks about the potential "positive ROI" from increased streams making up for the decreased royalties. And there are inevitable questions. How are other artists to know Spotify's algorithms aren't overlooking them completely if they choose not to participate in the program? (A classic flipside of payola is that while labels get rewarded for paying up, others can be punished for not doing so.) What's to prevent an optional reduced royalty from thereby becoming a mandatory one? What's to stop Spotify from eventually applying it to other corners of the service, beyond automatic feeds? Will labels be able to buy their way onto Spotify's most popular playlists? Onto users' home pages? MIDIA's MARK MULLIGAN makes a good argument for why Spotify might need to appease its investors more than artists or users at this point, meaning anything that lowers the service's costs is a net positive. But at a moment when artists are screaming, increasingly loudly, for better payouts, an initiative that does the opposite comes with obvious risks, which may dent Spotify's own return on this particular investment in unexpected ways... The GRAMMY AWARDS' World Music Album category, which ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO won this year for a third time, is getting a new name: Global Music Album. The change, says the RECORDING ACADEMY, "symbolizes a departure from the connotations of colonialism, folk, and 'non-American.'" Amen—with an asterisk. "World," widely used in the industry as code for music that doesn't originate in a handful of English-speaking countries, has never been a good name and won't be missed. But what makes "global" different? And is the categorization itself being revisited or just the name?... Composer LOULA YORKE and turntablist NIKNAK are the top winners of this year's ORAM AWARDS, for achievements in music and sound by women and gender-minority artists... Arguably the most musically relevant result of Election Day: DRAKEO THE RULER is free... RIP MATEO LAFONTAINE, BARON WOLMAN, CHERYL TIANO and JOHNNY MEADOWS. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | Vulture | | A look at the publisher vs. platform debate. | | | |  | NME | | Figures from the UK music industry have warned of the potentially "catastrophic" impact of a No-Deal Brexit, leaving thousands of British artists unable to afford to tour Europe next year. | | | |  | MusicAlly | | Spotify is testing a new feature that will enable artists and labels to boost specific tracks in the recommendation algorithms. | | | |  | Music Industry Blog | | Spotify's Discovery Mode announcement looked at the very best a poorly timed announcement, coming at a time when artists and songwriters are more concerned about their income than at any other since the music business returned to growth more than half a decade ago. | | | |  | Variety | | Jack White. The Strokes. Foo Fighters - that lineup of " Saturday Night Live " musical guests could easily have come from 2002 instead of 2020 ... and in fact, all three of those artists did perform on the show that year or in 2003 (with White as frontman of the White Stripes). | | | |  | The New York Times | | The Minneapolis newspaper, which closed last week after four decades, was a home and a launchpad for a generation of pop journalists. | | | |  | Paper | | The southern rap star on manifestation, misogyny and Missy Elliott. | | | |  | The New Yorker | | The band, which perfectly evoked a certain strain of American scumbaggery, is not interested in anything as boring as redemption. | | | |  | WeTransfer | | You probably remember the music your parents used to play in the car. Here's how the musical education we have growing up at home can shape our entire lives. | | | |  | Medium | | On America’s Necromarket. | | | | | | | by the time i get to arizona | |  | SPIN | | The Zombies and Moody Blues experienced a big influx of cash following their induction. | | | | | The New York Times | | As he releases a collection of work that has appeared in films, the English musician talked about making functional art, his most ubiquitous composition and why he dislikes wearing headphones on the street. | | | |  | DJ Mag | | Drawing on the explosion of UK drill and contemporary hip-hop sonics, and creating new flows and wordplay out of their native languages, these artists are shaping new, often hyper-localised styles of rap, and bringing stories of racism, politics, gender and poverty into the spotlight. | | | |  | Tone Glow | | Angel Bat Dawid is a composer, clarinetist, singer & spiritual jazz soothsayer based in Chicago. She and Joshua Minsoo Kim discuss her childhood, the act of music as prayer, the racist events she’s experienced throughout the past year, her new albums, and more. | | | |  | Pollstar | | It was my first trip to Nashville, a college kid stringing for The Miami Herald. Like Dorothy in Oz, I’d come to the Emerald City where Fan Fair magically transformed the Fairgrounds into Livestock Barns filled with “booths” where country stars cheerfully signed autographs for well-wishers and performed label-oriented shows on the heat stroke-inducing blacktop of the attached speedway. | | | |  | Penny Fractions | | An eye for Google, what about YouTube? | | | |  | Ars Technica | | We celebrate the life of Google's music service. It shall live forever in our hearts. | | | |  | Song Exploder | | Chino Moreno breaks down how the title track of Deftones' ninth album, "Ohms," came together, and how they literally went back to where things started in order to create it. | | | |  | The Guardian | | He played with the Fab Four in Hamburg, inspired their moptops, drew the famed "Revolver" cover, and gigged with Yoko Ono. As his illustrations are published, the great musician relives his fabulous escapades. | | | |  | Music In Africa | | Half a century after the golden age of Zambian rock, the country still vibrates to the sound of its local cultures blended with the music of the moment. But while many artists are dreaming of fame and fortune, popular rapper Pilato is wading into the socio-political debate - even if it means making enemies in high places. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | Regina Carter Freedom Band | | | | Feat. Jon Batiste, John Daversa and Harvey Mason. From "Swing States: Harmony in the Battleground" (Tiger Turn, 2020). | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
