Record companies are just not compatible with artists. I’m shocked that they even let us be in the same room sometimes. | | | | Queen King: Beyoncé at the premiere of "The Lion King," Los Angeles, July 9, 2019. Her companion project "Black Is King" debuts today on Disney Plus.
(Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Record companies are just not compatible with artists. I’m shocked that they even let us be in the same room sometimes.”
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| | rantnrave:// "In the entire existence [of SPOTIFY]," chief exec DANIEL EK mentions to MUSICALLY in a telling moment that could launch a shelf full of business books, "I don't think I've ever seen a single artist saying 'I'm happy with all the money I'm getting from streaming.'" But what's the tell? Depending on the context, which I'll get to in a minute, and your prejudices, you could read it as an apology for a decade-plus of underpaying the entire music community, or a boast that the company has been getting away with that behavior, or a complaint that musicians suck at writing thank-you notes to their tech benefactors. A quick point/counterpoint: "Daniel Ek, still unable to get it," tweets GALAXIE 500's DAMON KRUKOWSKI, who goes on to share some math about what a million-plus streams a month (for a band that stopped making records more than 20 years ago) nets him and his two bandmates. But real Spotify stars are doing hundreds of millions of streams and making "beaucoup bucks!," blogs BOB LEFSETZ, adding, "when you have a few million and believe you should be making millions, you’re wrong." (DJ KHALED, DABABY and JACK HARLOW all have single tracks did 25 million-ish streams each last week.) So anyway, back to Ek, who actually seems to be suggesting, in context, that there's some kind of cancel culture that prevents the artists who do make beaucoup bucks on his platform from saying so in public. He doesn't, to his credit, actually use the phrase cancel culture. But he says, "in private, they have done that many times," meaning they've told him how happy they are with the money they get from streaming. Are musicians in fact discouraged from saying nice things about Spotify? (Anecdotally, no.) Is there an army of radicalized middle-class musicians threatening to dox them if they do? Or do they maybe, like most people, not particularly like talking about their income? Is there a silent majority of artists who love their streaming royalties? Khaled? DaBaby? Jack? Bueller?... A bonus complaint from Ek, taking off his tech hat for a minute and putting on his A&R hat: "Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough." ADELE, RIHANNA and, say, FRANK OCEAN, may choose to disagree. But that's another point/counterpoint for another day... In the category of new paradigms for paying artists for live performance, last weekend's TOMORROWLAND livestream festival paid performers a royalty based on ticket sales and views of their individual sets. Bigger artists got a flat fee as well... ARIANA GRANDE, LADY GAGA, BILLIE EILISH and the WEEKND are the top nominees for MTV's VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS, which the network is planning to stage at the BARCLAYS CENTER in Brooklyn on Aug. 30 with a "limited capacity or no audience." For the first time in 22 years, as STEREOGUM notes, there's a Best Alternative category. As before, alternative to what remains unspecified... It's FRIDAY and that means BEYONCÉ's visual album BLACK IS KING, about which much is known and much is not known, arrives to much anticipation on DISNEY PLUS (along with a deluxe version of this plain ol' audio album). And Saturday brings the documentary THE GO-GO'S to SHOWTIME, and it includes the first new Go-Go's song in 19 years. A good weekend to stay in, not that you were planning to go anywhere... It's Friday and that also means new music from MAKAYA MCCRAVEN (an album's worth of outtakes from his 2018 double album masterpiece. UNIVERSAL BEINGS), FONTAINES D.C., ALANIS MORISSETTE, MAX RICHTER, DOMINIC FIKE, SHORELINE MAFIA, BLACK SOPRANO FAMILY, HALSEY, CHARLEY CROCKETT (<--that link is half about him, half a musical history of Dallas' Deep Ellum district, and is great), EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY, BRANDY (her first album in eight years), NYCK CAUTION, BACKXWASH, SLEEPY HALLOW, BLACK THOUGHT, TREY ANASTASIO, GUERRILLA GHOST, CREEPER, ALCATRAZZ, NOFX & FRANK TURNER, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, the CORONAS (Irish rockers who've had the name for more than a decade), GILLIAN WELCH, WYE OAK, MADELINE KENNEY, DANIEL BLUMBERG, ROMARE, FIGUEROA (aka AMON TOBIN), OMAR RODRÍGUEZ-LÓPEZ, PHOTAY, LAND OF TALK, MIKE POLIZZE, !!!, WICCA PHASE SPRINGS ETERNAL, JORDANA, CHARLES TOLLIVER, EDDIE HENDERSON, the PSYCHEDELIC FURS, JON ANDERSON, STEVE HOWE (yes, that Jon Anderson and that Steve Howe) and MIRAH's unique reissue of her debut album, YOU THINK IT'S LIKE THIS BUT REALLY IT'S LIKE THIS... Oh, and this is a hell of a new BILLIE EILISH track (and video)... RIP BALLA SIDIBÉ and RANDY BARLOW. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| Amos Poe lost control of his documentary about the music scene that spawned artists like Blondie and Talking Heads after a dispute with Ivan Kral, the guitarist who made the movie with him. | | |
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| The rising rapper from Mobile, Alabama, spins rhymes that sound like schoolyard taunts. | | |
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| Generations of musicians got their start busking the streets of the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. After a decade of ‘hobo-ing’ around cities like New Orleans, Paris, and New York, Charley Crockett discovered it was his turn. | | |
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| Spotify announced its latest financial results yesterday, with growth in listeners and subscribers at the top end of its forecasts. | | |
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| Today, they write music, perform solo or own restaurants. But 10 years ago, these three men narrowly missed out on becoming a part of the biggest boyband of all time. | | |
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| “Without getting too philosophical about it, its almost as if I was meant to discover this collection.” | | |
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| In the last few years, DJs and producers have been sublimating their societal anxieties into blood-curdling vocals, grating distortion, and pummeling blast beats. | | |
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| Staff from 22 Chicago music venues talk about how far they still are from normal-and what it’ll take to keep them around till we all get there. | | |
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| Tom DeGeorge, owner of Crowbar music venue in Florida, details his struggles to stay afloat through a pandemic and murky government regulations. | | |
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| "Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass" has the singer musing on Jim Morrison, midlife meltdowns, and athleisure wear. | | |
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| | | the whole world lost its head |
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| “Solely focusing on TikTok as a marketing strategy and artist development tool is myopic,” says Max Gredinger, who manages Lauv and mxmtoon and advises more diversification in the music business. | | |
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| K-pop boy band BTS are masterful at creating a separation between their public personas and their private lives. This mythology leaves a void that fans willingly fill. | | |
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| Stay-at-home orders have put a strain on DJs. They have been trying to find their footing and remain creative and sane amid the COVID-19 pandemic. | | |
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| Amazon boss not aware of licensing fallout on his company’s livestreaming platform. | | |
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| Quarantine gave Courtney and Paul Klimson time to create a safe haven for gig workers - helping them combat exhaustion, financial strain, mental health problems, and other touring woes. | | |
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| The jazz drummer records live performances and then manipulates those recordings in creative ways. His new album pulls from the pool of recordings that shaped his 2018 work, "Universal Beings." | | |
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| The singer and songwriter prefers a ballad. But collaborators yanked her out of her comfort zone for “Kyoto,” a breakout from her latest acclaimed album. Here’s how she made it. | | |
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| Attorney Don Passman literally wrote the book on the music business. Here we delve deeply into today's deal landscape, as well as Don's story, how he got to be one of the foremost lawyers in the music business. If you want to know about record deals, and publishing deals, and 360 deals and touring deals...this is the place! | | |
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| Despite being notoriously reclusive, Kate Bush's impact feels as strong as ever. From Big Boi to FKA twigs, here's a look at the influence of a legend. | | |
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| At 10 o’clock on the morning of July 7, 2020, five uniformed police officers rang the doorbell of an apartment in the southwestern German city of Karlsruhe. Erik Maurer (not his real name) answered the door. The police showed him their warrant and began seizing computers, cell phones, and storage drives. | | |
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| | | | | Beyoncé, Shatta Wale and Major Lazer |
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