My music is always going to make a woman feel like a bad b****. When you make a woman feel like she’s the baddest b**** in the room, to me, that’s female empowerment. | | | | The soundtrack of a certain vice presidential candidate's college years: Salt-N-Pepa in the early 1980s.
(Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | | | “My music is always going to make a woman feel like a bad b****. When you make a woman feel like she’s the baddest b**** in the room, to me, that’s female empowerment.”
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| | rantnrave:// Good morning here's your KAMALA HARRIS mood mix for the day. Song she grew up with: ARETHA FRANKLIN's version of "YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK." Song she went to college with: SALT-N-PEPA's "PUSH IT." "Presidential" song: FUNKADELIC's "ONE NATION UNDER A GROOVE." Caveat: If you're reading this first thing in the morning, there's no music in her ears right now because she's working out ("every morning") and watching MORNING JOE... Transcribe this: A federal judge in New York didn't decide whether GOOGLE and LYRICFIND cribbed some of GENIUS' song lyric transcriptions by cutting-and-pasting them—Genius has made a compelling case that *someone* did—but she threw out Genius' $50 million lawsuit Monday, ruling that the company has no standing to sue because it doesn't own the underlying content of its own transcriptions. Can't sue for digital thievery and can't sue for unfair competition either without those copyrights, JUDGE MARGO K. BRODIE wrote in a 36-page ruling that goes deep into the weeds of US copyright law while coming to a seemingly easy decision. But do Google and LyricFind still have some out-of-court explaining to do? A strange thing about internet song lyrics is that music publishers license the lyrics to a variety of services, but in many if not most cases they don't actually provide the lyrics. It's up to the services to source them on their own. Imagine a record company licensing songs to streaming services but not sending the music. Picture an army of musicians crowdsourcing perfect replicas of every song in existence. Genius and other lyric sites do that, but just with the lyrics. A lot of Genius' transcriptions are the work of an unpaid social community (which raises different issues, which I've raised before); some come directly from the songwriters and artists, who often add their own annotations. The transcriptions are Genius' meat; the annotations—fans do those, too—are its differentiator. Judge Brodie's ruling suggests the meat is fair game for anyone else to swipe, but who does that? Legal or not, it's someone else's work. What media company goes to another media company's site and copies the content onto its own site, en masse? (Please don't answer that. I mean legit media companies, and I still don't want to know the answer.) Lost between the lines of the ruling is the smart, vibrant community of music fans that Genius has built. That's its real business. And what's lost if you Google, for example, "JACK HARLOW WHATS POPPIN lyrics" and stop at the first result is the rich context that that community provides. That first search result is a Google information box with the song lyric, licensed from LyricFind, and songwriter credits (with no links). Most searchers will stop there (which was at the heart of Genius' unfair competition claim). Below that box is a row of videos, and below that, if you bother to look for it, is a link to Genius' page for the same song, which includes Harlow's own line-by-line commentary (the line "I'ma spend this holiday locked in" links to a first-person account of what Harlow was doing in and around Christmas 2019) and linked producer credits. That should be the first page a pure search engine takes you to because it's the best and most relevant link for "Whats Poppin" lyrics. You obviously can't go to a federal judge and ask for a ruling on that. But you should be able to go to Google for it, shouldn't you?... Harlow is one of the 12 members of XXL's new FRESHMAN CLASS, along with FIVIO FOREIGN, POLO G, LIL KEED, MULATTO and more... NEIL YOUNG has his own issues with Google (and FACEBOOK)...RIP TRINI LOPEZ. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| August is traditionally a vibrant period for India's music industry, with myriad music festivals announced from October through February and tour dates booked for international artists - all of which provides a crucial boost for the independent community operating outside the film arena. | | |
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| a.k.a. The futility of trying to repair a system that was never meant for independent music. | | |
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| When the Canadian musician was in a dark spot, a friend jokingly suggested she change paths. It ended up being the detour she needed to find her way back to songwriting. | | |
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| Since emerging with the septet Nérija in 2016, saxophonist and composer Nubya Garcia has worked to inject fresh energy into the UK jazz scene. | | |
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| | | | | | | "She's telepathic / Call it Black girl magic / Yeah she scares the government / Déjà vu of Tubman." |
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