When you’ve played it as long as I have and are familiar with it, the guitar tends to want to go in certain places—your fingers find where they need to be. It’s not about me forcing my will of a genius composition on top of the instrument. It’s letting go of the idea that I’m in charge. The guitar calls the shots and I sort of f***ing figure it out. | | | | Ariana Grande surprises Coachella with an unannounced performance with Kygo, April 20, 2018.
(Christopher Polk/Getty Images) | | | | | | “When you’ve played it as long as I have and are familiar with it, the guitar tends to want to go in certain places—your fingers find where they need to be. It’s not about me forcing my will of a genius composition on top of the instrument. It’s letting go of the idea that I’m in charge. The guitar calls the shots and I sort of f***ing figure it out.”
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| | rantnrave:// I had the chance a couple weeks ago to sit down with the leadership team at DOWNTOWN MUSIC's SONGTRUST platform, which administers publishing and collects royalties for 100,000-plus songwriters (as well as publishers and labels). The platform is great technology and aggressive administration applied to an ingeniously simple idea: There are scores and scores of potential royalty streams around the world for any given song, which means there are scores and scores of chances for any given songwriter (or publisher or label) to miss out on them. What if it they could all be hunted down, centralized, digitized and put within easy reach of anyone—without asking for a piece of the song in return? That meeting was on my mind as I read DENIS SIMMS' 3,0000-word essay for MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE on the fundamental economic changes wrought by streaming, mostly regarding the abilities and opportunities for artists and songwriters to get paid. It's worth your time, both for Simms' wide view and for his unusually optimistic tone. We could use more of that. But where Simms focuses on newish income-stream opportunities like royalty investment markets and new business models like customizable label services, I'm fascinated by the simple idea of making sure songwriters are paid what they're already owed. From the numerous platforms already using their compositions to the numerous countries where they're being played. No need to mint new money yet. Just find the money that's already been minted in your name. Simms gives love to KOBALT, whose menu of services includes royalty collections. And BILLBOARD's NICK WILLIAMS spotlights CREATE MUSIC GROUP, which started with the narrow goal of helping musicians squeeze money out of YOUTUBE and has grown into a $30-million-a-year company with the goal of mining "overlooked opportunities" throughout the business. The music copyright business, I've always thought, can seem tangled and complicated, and it's easy to understand how a random company that uses music could overlook some payment obligations without companies like these knocking on their doors. Not really, Songtrust co-founder JUSTIN KALIFOWITZ countered when I said that out loud in his office. He says copyright and royalties are a lot more straightforward than they might seem. You've just got to put in the work. And then, maybe, some optimism won't seem so strange and unusual after all... Over the weekend, J. COLE's KOD, an addictive album about addiction, broke SPOTIFY's and APPLE MUSIC's records for most-streamed album in a single day. But were you obsessively listening to it because you love it, you hate it or—this is J. Cole after all—both? Yes, according to reviewers. VERY SMART BROTHAS: "If You Love J. Cole, 'KOD' Is Dope. If You Don’t Love J. Cole, 'KOD' Is Trash." The RINGER: "Fogey MC or a figure of purpose?" WASHINGTON POST: "Where is rap-Switzerland?" NOISEY: You're all wrong. (That last one's a glowing review, btw)... Killer live sessions: Tuareg singer-guitarist BOMBINO on shaky hand-held video for the LINE OF BEST FIT. Jazz saxophonist LOGAN RICHARDSON and band behind NPR MUSIC's TINY DESK... One resounding yes and one big fat no to SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL, which opened Monday on Broadway... Also premiering Monday, with some A-list rock star assistance: the music doc HORSES: PATTI SMITH AND HER BAND... An interactive map of all the crimes committed in PALM SPRINGS during COACHELLA... RIP STUART COLMAN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| The next revolution in the music business will not be a new consumer-facing format or a visionary product. The next revolution is financial and multifaceted with wide implications, and it’s already started. | | |
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| Fifty years since King’s assassination, we find ourselves further from a national consensus to confront and end racial segregation and resegregation than we have ever been. Prince’s journey went in the opposite direction. He did what real leaders do, he subverted the accepted wisdom and what passed for common sense to move us forward. | | |
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| In the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, the teenage cast of "Spring Awakening" prepares to take the stage. | | |
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| Today, Avicii's "Levels" stands as one of the triumphs of the early EDM era, a single riff combined with an Etta James sample and built upwards into the clouds. The song doesn't sound produced so much as discovered, a ball of energy that could neither be created nor destroyed. | | |
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| How the Zedd song cycled through 12 singers and several false starts on its way to the No. 1 spot on pop radio. | | |
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| After revealing a horrific history of abuse last year, the former Crystal Castles frontwoman is starting over again, on her own terms. | | |
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| Brands and agencies, long attuned to ways audio can help them sell products, are increasingly looking to sound to help them market beverages and food in new and unconventional ways. | | |
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| The singing competition, back after a two-year hiatus, is focusing on the fireworks onstage, rather than between the judges. And Lionel Richie is its godfather. | | |
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| The 17-year-old behind @BeyReleases says he'll do almost anything to get the BeyHive what it wants. | | |
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| Willie Nelson talks to us about how he’s able to continuing writing-and touring-well into his eighties. | | |
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| Florida Georgia Line, Garth Brooks and Guy Fieri set to fire up West Coast's first county fest of 2018. | | |
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| Going to Lollapalooza this August? Organizers may be able to tell whether you passed over the Arctic Monkeys for Space Jesus, how many Lime-A-Ritas you bought and how long you had to wait to buy them. | | |
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| It has been 10 years since Katy Perry released I Kissed a Girl, a global hit that fetishised lesbians. Now with mainstream stars from St Vincent and Princess Nokia to Halsey and Marika Hackman singing about their myriad sexual identities, it’s time to put sapphic stereotypes to bed. | | |
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| As weed goes corporate, so might its relationship with musicians and artists. How Canadian pot regulations, marketing laws and criminalization of people of colour will affect music and cannabis. | | |
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| The renowned folk songwriter stops by NPR's Washington D.C. headquarters to play two songs from her latest album and discuss the historical African-American roots of her music and of her instrument. | | |
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| They answer to God, not the politeness or respectability of middle-class society or popular culture. | | |
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| Nearly three years after major record labels reached a $210 million settlement with SiriusXM over the use of sound recordings created before 1972, a new legal fight has erupted over the licensing of classic songs by such artists as Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and Simon & Garfunkel. | | |
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| How Laura Gibson's "terrible-feeling" concert experience led to the birth of the Tiny Desk concert series 10 years ago. | | |
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| Musician Nikki Sixx discusses the connection between creativity and sobriety, challenging yourself in new ways, and why most creative stumbling blocks exist only in your mind. | | |
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| FYF, Fortress Festival, and L.A. Pride: how three different festivals are addressing equal representation of women with their lineups and headliners. | | |
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