| There are [musicians] who might say, 'No, I'm not an activist.' OK, fine, but what you're doing is going to make an impact in one way or another, it will generate something in whoever hears it. |
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| Nilüfer Yanya in Madrid, Oct 29. 2022. |
| (Mariano Regidor/Redferns/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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| rantnrave:// |
Whole Lotta
We’re living in the age of hundreds of thousands and hundreds of millions of songs and it's too much, according to the chief executive of the world’s biggest music company, which is responsible for a fairly large number of them. “When music platforms are ingesting 100,000 tracks a day, the net result of this is a confusing experience for all of us, consumers, everyone,” UNIVERSAL MUSIC chairman/CEO LUCIAN GRAINGE said on the company’s earnings call last week. There’s a good chance you agree even if your reasons aren’t quite the same as his. For him, those thousands and millions are pulling music fans away from the hits he’d prefer they hear. For you, maybe they’re clogging your search results and giving you headaches. But your interests and his would seem to be aligned. A hundred million is a hundred million is a hundred million, and one day it’s going to be a hundred billion and we’re all going to drown under the virtual weight of all those overlapping titles and sloppy metadata. You wouldn’t mind if you never had to see or hear 99 percent of them.
For a label boss like Grainge, the problem with all those tracks is they create more and more ways for streaming algorithms to steer users away from his high-earning superstar artists while making it harder for his newer artists to break through and eventually become superstars themselves. Death by dilution. And, he seemed to be telling analysts and investors, it’s unfair: “We supply more of the superstars, classic catalog and career artists than anybody else [and] we continue to invest in the future,” he said. But users are being “increasingly guided to low-quality content” by algorithms that are as confused as the users are. On the same call, Universal EVP MICHAEL NASH complained that a lot of those songs are delivered to streaming services by “content uploaders... They’re not artists in the sense that we traditionally think of artists. These are hobbyists that are playing to an essentially empty house.”
But what to do about it? Who’s to decide who are the hobbyists and who are tomorrow’s stars doing everything they can today to find a footing and get noticed? Isn’t that how almost everybody, including Universal’s current-day superstars, got started themselves? Was the 2006 version of DRAKE a hobbyist or an artist with room for improvement? Are the artists I’ve been listening to for years who still have no more than 100 or 200 SPOTIFY followers “content uploaders” or DIY musicians making good, worthwhile art for small audiences?
And who’s to decide where the algorithms should direct users? Do the three major labels need more influence than they already have in that arena? Or would subscribers prefer actual smart, free-thinking, unbiased humans, like the mythical radio DJs of yore, to do the curating in place of the algorithms, contracts and rules that do it now? Do we want SPOTIFY and APPLE to be a kind of musical TWITTER with nobody but blue checkmarks on it? Or do we want upstarts and outsiders to be in the conversation, too? Does the money to pay for those kinds of human curators exist? Does it come from the services? Their users? The labels? All of the above? What are the incentives needed to make that happen?
Rest in Peace
Recording engineer and studio owner JOE TARSIA, whose Sigma Sound studios in Philadelphia and New York recorded countless soul and pop classics starting in the 1960s. The vast majority of the Philly soul records produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and their Philadelphia International label were made at Tarsia's studio, with Sigma's house musicians.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Twenty Thousand Hertz |
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| Twenty Thousand Hertz: Synth War |
| By Dallas Taylor, Andrew Anderson, Ryan Gaston... |
| In the United States, the East Coast and West Coast have rivalries across food, sports, music and more. But there’s another rivalry that’s just as important. This standoff created sounds that were unlike anything that had been heard before. It redefined what a musical instrument could be. And it changed the sound of pop music forever. |
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Vulture |
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| Takeoff Was the Glue |
| By Craig Jenkins |
| It’s beyond shocking having tragedy strike a group that forced fair-weather listeners and staunch old-heads alike to appreciate the craft. |
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Penny Fractions |
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| Recession Looms Over the Music Industry (Part 1) |
| By David Turner |
| How inflation, central bank interest rate increases and quantitative tightening, and sell-offs in tech stocks are further reshaping the music industry that was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. |
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Musonomics |
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| How Streaming Has Impacted the Value of Music |
| By Larry S. Miller |
| The transition from music purchasing to subscription and advertising supported streaming has had an enormous economic impact on the music industry, including an increased interest in music royalties as an investment opportunity and the reduction (and even reversal) of the traditional decay curve for music releases. |
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The Daily Beast |
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| The Best Music Festival You’ll Never See Again |
| By Todd Plummer |
| As an average Joe from Boston who has trundled my way through my fare share of European “Must See’s” and “Must Do’s” this was by far one of the coolest things I have ever done. |
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Resident Advisor |
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| How One Man Scammed Nyege Nyege Festival |
| By Whitney Wei |
| Unfinished accommodations, sanitary issues and security concerns converged into what one attendee described as "Fyre Festival—on steroids." And the swindler behind it all, Arthur Jirunda, is still at large. |
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Music Ally |
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| Tidal talks profiles, fandom and why there's more to music than streaming |
| By Stuart Dredge |
| Tidal's launch of a new profiles feature feels like a step in the right direction in terms of how streaming services talk about the value they create for artists, and their role in the process – including the fact that they don’t need to try to control or take a piece of this financial, off-platform support. |
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The Trap Set |
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| The Trap Set with Joe Wong: Questlove |
| By Joe Wong and Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson |
| We return from hiatus with Academy Award-winning filmmaker, author, and entrepreneur Questlove to discuss mental health, race, religion, vulnerability, self love, the hip hop ethos (“Hustle, survive. Hustle, survive.”), J Dilla, and more! |
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The Jazz Session |
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| The Jazz Session: Terri Lyne Carrington |
| By Jason Crane and Terri Lyne Carrington |
| Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington recently released two albums, two books, and curated an exhibit at Detroit's Carr Center. In this interview, we talk about her Jazz Without Patriarchy project; New Standards, a book and album featuring jazz tunes by women; her live album with Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding; and the many-layered exhibit. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “The Journey” |
| Tom Skinner |
| From "Voices of Bishara," out Friday on Nonesuch/Brownswood/International Anthem. |
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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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