| We've been thinking a lot about: What does the future of music distro look like? It has to go well beyond just delivering a MP3 file. If we're going to focus on distribution, we have to be able to distribute all types of digital goods. |
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 | | 070 Shake in Miami Beach, May 6, 2022. | | (Aaron Davidson/Getty Images) | | |
| quote of the day |
| "We've been thinking a lot about: What does the future of music distro look like? It has to go well beyond just delivering a MP3 file. If we're going to focus on distribution, we have to be able to distribute all types of digital goods." | | - Troy Carter, co-founder, Venice Music Collective | |
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| rantnrave:// |
Disclosure
A funny thing about payola (at least it's always seemed funny to me): Bribing a radio programmer or DJ to play a certain song or artist has never, on its own, been a crime. It only becomes a crime when the DJ doesn't disclose the payment. If a DJ says, "POST MALONE's people just gave me $10,000 and two round-trip tickets to Paris; here's his new single," the DJ has done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law. But leave out the announcement and the DJ and the artist rep might be committing felonies. The payoffs and kickbacks aren't the crime; the secrecy is.
There are plenty of good things in the first-of-its-kind ticket transparency law that passed the New York state legislature last week and Gov. KATHY HOCHUL is expected to sign. Primary and secondary ticket sellers will both be required to disclose all service charges and other fees to music, sports and theater fans and display an "all-in" final price for any ticket anywhere it's advertised. The price you see on the first page will have to be the same price you see when you click "pay" four or five pages later. And the percentage of the price that represents ancillary fees will have to be disclosed "in a clear and conspicuous manner." If the ticket is a resale, that will have to be disclosed, too. If it was originally a free ticket, reselling it for cash will be illegal.
All good, consumer-friendly measures. But sometimes it's helpful to ask what isn't in a piece of legislation—the hidden fees, you might say, of the legislation itself. Ticket buyers universally hate hidden fees, partly because they don't like expensive surprises at the last moment of a transaction, but also because of how exorbitant the fees can be, sometimes wildly out of proportion to a ticket's face value. After this bill becomes law, they still can be. Adding $100 in fees to each ticket and another $100 for the entire order will continue to not be a crime as long as it's all added upfront. It won't be the price; it will be the timing.
There's no indication legislators ever seriously considered going after the actual markups. But there are other practices the bill originally targeted that didn't make it into the final legislation, which has the support of TICKETMASTER. "This removes all those awful surprises," Ticketmaster president MARK YOVICH told the Wall Street Journal (paywall). The bill's sponsor, state Sen. JAMES SKOUFIS, wanted to limit the number of tickets in any given venue that artists and promoters could withhold from public sale, as well as requiring public disclosure of how many tickets were being held back. Those holdbacks, which include tickets set aside for industry and friends, are a major factor behind lightning fast sellouts and subsequent markups at ticket resale sites. Those provisions didn't make it to the final page of the legislative process.
Also gone missing: requirements that ticket sellers report any "bot" activity they detect to the state, and refund rules for events that are postponed but not canceled. The latter became a big issue during the pandemic when several promoters, facing potentially huge losses, refused to acknowledge concerts had been canceled and to offer refunds. It's reasonable to ask, now, who didn't want all that stuff in the legislation and why, even while applauding the good parts of the bill. And while we do that, here's a not completely unrelated thread on ticket resale regulation from the reliably on-target FUTURE OF MUSIC COALITION about why designing legislation around free market prices and efficiencies isn't always the best idea, especially when dealing with art. "What the market will bear" is not, and should not, always be the answer.
Words & Music
BEGGARS GROUP president NABIL AYERS' memoir, MY LIFE IN THE SUNSHINE: SEARCHING FOR MY FATHER AND DISCOVERING MY FAMILY, was published Tuesday. The father in question is jazz vibraphone great ROY AYERS, with whom Nabil—because of a pre-arrangement between Roy and his mother—has never had a real relationship. This excerpt about one of the few times they've met—a moment when "thirty‑four years of not caring about my father came to a close"—is beautiful writing... KAITLYN TIFFANY's EVERYTHING I NEED I GET FROM YOU: HOW FANGIRLS CREATED THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT is out next week, and this lengthy excerpt delves into the groundbreaking online communities of DEADHEADS (on the Well) and DAVID BOWIE (BowieNet) and ONE DIRECTION (Tumblr) fans. Also, that time HARRY STYLES threw up on the side of the 101 near Calabasas.
Dot Dot Dot
Is it a film fest or a secret summer music fest? Spin's guide to a long slate of music events at the TRIBECA FESTIVAL (née Tribeca Film Festival), which opens today with a slate of screenings including the world premiere of AMANDA MICHELI's JENNIFER LOPEZ documentary, HALFTIME. Shoutout Tribeca's JANE ROSENTHAL... Billboard on the strange rules of the ACADEMY AWARDS music categories, including an Oscar that has existed since 2000 but has never been awarded and a category that refuses to award more than two statuettes even when, as in 2021, there are three winners... Ukrainian artists IVAN DORN, the HARDKISS, ONUKA and ARTEM PIVOVAROV will do a six-city US fundraising tour starting June 28 in Miami... The glass houses, so to speak, that are designed to preserve historic recordings for thousands of years in the Arctic Circle.
Rest in Peace
JIM SEALS, the lead singing (usually) half of '70s soft-rock harmonizers Seals & Crofts, whose 1972 "Summer Breeze"—an ode to Seals' childhood in West Texas—is as soft, breezy and perfect as soft-rock ever got. He was part of an extended family of musicians and songwriters including his brother Dan, a 1980s country star, and cousin Brady, of the band Little Texas... Composer, synthesist and music technology podcaster DARWIN GROSSE.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
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 | | Billboard |
| | Is Troy Carter's New Music Collective the Future of Distribution? | | By Elias Leight | | The veteran exec hopes to foster community by adding a token-gated aspect to Venice Distribution. He describes it as an attempt "to build a community that I could have been a part of when I was trying to get into the music business as a kid." | | |
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 | | The Atlantic |
| | BTS Gets It | | By Lenika Cruz | | Why the world's biggest band visited the White House to speak out against anti-Asian racism. | | |
 | | Complex |
| | A Day With Vory, the Man Behind the Mask | | By Jordan Rose | | We spent a day with Vory as he celebrated the release of his new project 'Lost Souls.' He talks new music, why he gets along so well with Kanye West, and more. | | |
 | | Money 4 Nothing |
| | Hard Landing: The End of Free Money and The Future of the Music Industry | | By Saxon Baird and Sam Backer | | What does a hairy economy mean for the music industry? We try to connect macro-economic upheaval to entertainment activity, puzzling through how a return of market-based reality could remake streaming, the financialization of song-rights, the major labels, and maybe—just maybe—open up some space for limited, tend-your-garden community. | | |
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 | | The Washington Post |
| | Damon Young: I'm still haunted by the U2 spyware on my iPhone | | By Damon Young | | There I am, ready to listen to Pusha T or "Still Processing," and then Bono appears, like a haunted Irish pirate, to scream "YOU'RE GONNA SLEEP LIKE A BABY TONIGHT!" in my ear. No, Bono. I will not sleep like a baby tonight. I will not sleep at all. | | |
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| what we're into |
 | | Music of the day | | "Cocoon" | | 070 Shake | | From "You Can't Kill Me," out now on G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam. | | |
|  | | Video of the day | | "We Are the Thousand" | | Anita Rivaroli | | Learning to learn to fly. In select theaters and on VOD. | | |
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| Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "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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