Thursday, July 8, 2021

jason hirschhorn's @MusicREDEF: 07/08/2021 - The Price of Discovery, Saweetie, Lil Nas X, Small Town Touring, Jennifer Nettles...

In an era of 'When's the last classic album you've heard?,' music is like toilet water: flushed in, flushed out, flushed in, flushed out. It's either 'You s***tin'?' or 'You done s***tin'?'
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Thursday - July 08, 2021
Saweetie at the Prudential Center, Newark, N.J., Oct. 26, 2019.
(Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)
quote of the day
"In an era of 'When's the last classic album you've heard?,' music is like toilet water: flushed in, flushed out, flushed in, flushed out. It's either 'You s***tin'?' or 'You done s***tin'?'"
Saweetie
rantnrave://
HDL Verzuz LDL

Something's been bugging me about SPOTIFY's Discovery Mode, the controversial program that allows—I should put "allows" in quotes—artists, especially independent ones, to boost specific tracks in the service's playlist algorithms in exchange for lower royalty rates on those tracks. Instead of paying for play, artists get to accept less pay for play. Which is exactly the same thing or totally not the same thing, depending on whether you're A2IM or the ARTIST RIGHTS ALLIANCE, who hate it, or TUNECORE or BELIEVE, who are using it on behalf of their artists and think it's great. Spotify's argument, if I'm hearing it correctly, and please do correct me if I'm wrong, is that it puts indie artists on an equal footing with deeper-pocketed major-label artists by saying no need to pay anything upfront, just tell us what tracks you want to push and if the promotion works and our algorithms pick them up, you'll make it up to us later by letting us pay you a little less. But—and this is what's been bugging me—why is *anybody* paying Spotify, whether upfront or through royalty recoupment, to put their music on playlists? Why are the curated being asked to pay for the curation? And how is that different from a radio station asking artists and labels to pay to get their music in rotation? This is a great thread from the FUTURE OF MUSIC COALITION that looks at Discovery Mode through the lens of the history of payola, which is presumably the same lens Congress will be looking through, and which reminded me of a Billboard guest op-ed from last week in which two law professors tried to make the case that Discovery Mode is "Payola, Just Not the Bad Kind." Sorry, no. There's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, but there isn't good payola and bad payola. There's just payola. And if major labels have a built-in advantage on Spotify playlists, another way to put indie artists on an equal playing field would be to allow them to single out tracks for playlist consideration and *not* charge them for it. Call it Discovery Mode and don't change a thing about it except the price. And if there's a concern that major label artists are still getting a disproportionate amount of algorithmic playlist attention even then, then maybe—call me crazy—just change the algorithm.

Etc Etc Etc

JUVENILE wants you to "VAX THAT THANG UP"... ENGLAND's cinderella football team, which will face Italy Sunday for the Euro 2020 championship, has adopted NEIL DIAMOND's "SWEET CAROLINE," a song that has seen my beloved BOSTON RED SOX through four World Series titles (a fact I'm always happy to repeat; thank you England for the opportunity)... Will post-Covid touring traffic jams in cities like Austin and Philadelphia open up new possibilities in places like San Antonio and Allentown?


Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator
the man from mars
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Everybody's hungry for live music, and smaller concert scenes stand to benefit from the stiff competition for tour dates.
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won't eat up bars
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Forty years ago, Debbie Harry went on network TV to introduce a new musical phenomenon called hip-hop.
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Looking for the Message in Nas's 'It Was Written'
by Paul Thompson
Twenty-five years after it was widely panned at the time of its release, the Queensbridge MC's second album is hailed as a classic. But what did the discourse at the time get right-and what did it miss?
Recording Academy
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by MC Lyte and Jeff Harleston
In the latest episode of the Black Music Collective Podcast, host and two-time GRAMMY nominee MC Lyte chats with Jeff Harleston, one of the most powerful executives in the entertainment industry who has overseen some of the biggest releases in music.
Pollstar
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Victoria Beckham's solo music career wasn't the disaster you remember
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Karen Pittelman On Becoming a Queer Country Pioneer
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Karen Pittelman of Karen & the Sorrows has not only been a pioneer in creating expressly queer, expressly country music, but she also was a driving force in establishing a vibrant queer country scene, starting in her hometown of Brooklyn and eventually expanding to a national circuit of queer country shows, artists, and venues.
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The Murder Of The Lawson Family
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On Christmas Day 1929, Charlie Lawson committed the chilling act of murdering his wife and children. What's darker is the reason why, according to some true crime authors. But are they right, and what do we know today about the rare phenomenon of familicide?
what we're into
Music of the day
"Fast (Motion)"
Saweetie
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Video of the day
"Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over"
B Productions/Kino Lorber
Screening virtually via kinomarquee.com.
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