| I think if we change the way that music is valued, and what aspects of music are encouraged and supported, culture will deepen and broaden, and that would really change society. It's a life or death issue for culture to revalue music. |
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| Release radar: Big Freedia at New Orleans Jazz Fest, May 6, 2022. |
| (Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“I think if we change the way that music is valued, and what aspects of music are encouraged and supported, culture will deepen and broaden, and that would really change society. It's a life or death issue for culture to revalue music.”
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- Zola Jesus
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| rantnrave:// |
Seven Year Ache
Release your anger, release your mind, release your job, release your artists from lengthy record deals, that’s the ask today in Sacramento, where the California Senate will hold its first hearing on a bill that would end the record industry’s exemption from the state’s seven-year limit on personal service contracts.
Labels, not surprisingly, think this is a bad idea and they have economists on their side. Artists and their advocates think it’s a great idea and they have economists on their side.
The bill under discussion is the FAIR (Free Artists from Industry Restrictions) Act, which would repeal a 1987 amendment to the state’s 1944 Seven-Year Statute that says recording artists are technically free to walk away from their contracts after seven years like everyone else in the state—but their labels can then sue them for lost revenue and other damages if they haven’t delivered all the albums they were contractually bound to deliver in those seven years. (Spoiler alert: The typical artist, not being KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD, can’t deliver the number of albums a typical seven-year deal asks them to deliver in seven years.)
The debate is an old one, but updated for the booming streaming music economy. Labels say they won’t be able to invest the way they do now in new artists, most of whom will never pay that investment back, if they can’t be guaranteed the chance to hold onto the ones that do. Some argue that the FAIR act would amount to a giveaway to the most successful artists, who would become free agents relatively earlier in their careers, at the expense of newer and younger artists, who labels will stop supporting. Artists and managers say labels’ overall investments in artists are already paying off many times over in soaring streaming profits, which are enriching record companies faster than they’re enriching artists. A seven-year rule, they say, would give artists needed leverage and restore some balance to the music economy. (And, perhaps, put an end to some messy arguments about what does or does not constitute an album for contractual purposes.)
Labels, it’s worth noting, typically have the upper hand on both ends of a record deal. Artists are often in their teens when they sign their first major contract, hungry for the deal and generally in no position to dictate the terms. And when they walk away, whether it’s after seven years and three albums or 15 years and seven albums, they almost certainly won’t get to take their copyrights with them. They can, to paraphrase one particularly avid advocate of artists’ rights, check out any time they like, but their royalties can never leave.
Not waiting around for the legislature to act is H.E.R., who last week went ahead and sued MBK ENTERTAINMENT, which signed her to a one-album deal with five additional options when she was 14. Her first album came out 10 years later. In her lawsuit, the five-time Grammy winner says her “seven years have run.”
Diane Warren's Oscar
Is a thing that will soon, actually, for real, exist. "I’m gonna put it on my piano and I’m gonna look at it every day," says she songwriter, who got her first Oscar nomination 34 years ago and his been nominated 12 more times without ever winning. She's getting an honorary Oscar in November—the first such honor ever awarded to a songwriter—and "every f***ing thing about this is amazing."
Rest in Peace
DENNIS CAHILL, a Chicago-born Irish American guitarist who played traditional Irish music, often with fiddler Martin Hayes. Together, they “created a Celtic complement to Steve Reich's quartets or Miles Davis's ‘Sketches of Spain,’” the New York Times’ Ann Powers wrote in a 1999 live review. In the 2010s, they released three albums with their Irish supergroup, the Gloaming.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Culture Notes of an Honest Broker |
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| Where Did the Long Tail Go? |
| By Ted Gioia |
| 'The Long Tail' was supposed to boost alternative voices in music, movies, and books--but the exact opposite happened. What went wrong? |
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Cultured Magazine |
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| Why King Princess's 'Hold On Baby' Is Not a Pandemic Album |
| By Brandon Flynn |
| King Princess's new record represents two years of work both on songwriting and on accepting the truths of oneself--the good, the bad, the ugly. In conversation with actor and friend Brandon Flynn, the artist explains why this album was meant to be performed and the different emotional registers it explores, from lust to self-loathing. |
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Money 4 Nothing |
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| Independent Labels and Electronic Music with Chal Ravens |
| By Saxon Baird, Sam Backer and Chal Ravens |
| As it developed from house and techno to today’s endless array of genres, electronic music traded the artist-heavy focus of rap or rock for constellations of high-profile DJs, faceless producers, and—most importantly for today’s episode—a host of iconic independent labels. But...how did that work? |
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The Guardian |
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| The truth about screaming fangirls |
| By Kaitlyn Tiffany |
| Teenage pop fans have long been derided as vacuous victims of marketing. But there is so much more to it than that, explains a Harry Styles aficionado. (Edited extract from Kaitlyn Tiffany's "Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It.") |
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Broken Record |
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| Broken Record: Sonny Rollins |
| By Justin Richmond and Sonny Rollins |
| Sonny Rollins talks about one of his first big gigs in 1949 playing alongside other jazz icons like Bud Powell and Fats Navarro. He also explains why he no longer actively listens to music, and for the first time ever, Rollins talks about how Charlie “Bird” Parker is the reason he kicked drugs. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music | Media |
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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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