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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She's not yet the rapper she aspires to be. It's all part of her long fame game.
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Pop star Raye publicly called out Polydor for holding back her debut album, and she's not the first to voice frustrations at detrimental deals, from Charli XCX to Tinashe and Fifth Harmony.
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The Small-Town Touring Boom Is Coming
by Eric R. Danton
Everybody's hungry for live music, and smaller concert scenes stand to benefit from the stiff competition for tour dates.
The Verge
Apple Music is missing one major thing: a classic iPod to go with it
by Mitchell Clark
Apple should make an iPod that's all about the music again.
Chicago Reader
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Azeez Alaka and Brandon Holmes run a music and video production company with a pipeline to the majors and a headquarters shaping up in Little Village.
The New York Times
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PEOPLE.com
Jennifer Nettles on Continuing Her Fight for Equal Play: 'Women in Country Are So Underrepresented It's Gross'
by Jennifer Nettles and Brianne Tracy
"All people hear on radio is men, and one or two women. That's the perspective they're left with."
The Wrap
Van Toffler on Why the Indies Will Survive (Guest Blog)
by Van Toffler
In a world of increasing consolidation, independent creators should be nurtured and amplified, Gunpowder & Sky CEO writes.
won't eat up bars
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MDRCs: the 'Archaic' Contract Clause That's Harmed Many Songwriters
by Geoff Mayfield
It might seem reasonable to expect a professional songwriter to have two songs officially released over the course of a year, and certainly within five or 10 years. But as many have found out, it's not that simple.
NPR Music
How 'The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill' Taught Me To Love Blackness
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The theory of nigrescence describes the process of developing a Black identity. Namwali Serpell says it's like falling in love - and for her, it began when she first heard Lauryn Hill's 1998 album.
New York Post
Blondie looks back on iconic music video 'Rapture' on its 40th anniversary
by Raquel Laneri
Forty years ago, Debbie Harry went on network TV to introduce a new musical phenomenon called hip-hop.
Slate
Was The Merger of Singing and Rapping Inevitable?
by Chris Molanphy and Oliver Wang
The story of singing in rap is more than a single pivot point—hip-hop and R&B have always been intertwined, each genre adapting to the other.
The Ringer
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
Making Change: A Conversation With Jeff Harleston
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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by Andy Gensler
Joel Madden, the 42-year-old co-founder of livestreaming platform Veeps and frontman of pop-punk band Good Charlotte, is recounting his team's reaction upon receiving the news that his company would host very possibly the most iconic living artist on the planet. 
The Independent
Victoria Beckham's solo music career wasn't the disaster you remember
by Adam White
Victoria Beckham was written off as a solo artist before she'd really begun but a mysterious lost album that exists only on YouTube hints at the one-woman supernova she could have become.
Country Queer
Karen Pittelman On Becoming a Queer Country Pioneer
by Rachel Cholst and Karen Pittelman
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.
Songs in the Key of Death
The Murder Of The Lawson Family
by Courtney E. Smith
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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