Billboard calculated the incomes of the five highest-paid musicians in the world in 2020. Queen are on the top with $48.7 million of total income, followed by Taylor Swift with $41.4 million, Billie Eilish with $32.8 million, BTS with $31.5 million, and finally Post Malone with $29.7 million.
At midnight on Sunday, at least a dozen venues in England celebrated "freedom day", the first night of clubbing since March 2020. The week started with a Monday morning full of clubbing, stuffed clubs, and scores of people queueing outside venues. At no point were clubbers asked to present proof that they had tested negative and vaccination passports were not required, Guardian reports.
Robby Steinhardt, a co-founder and former member of the progressive rock group Kansas, died Saturday at age 71, CJ Online report. Steinhardt shared lead singing duties with Steve Walsh while performing for 18 years with Kansas, while his classically influenced violin playing set Kansas apart from other rock bands.
The electronic music festival Verknipt in the Netherlands has been linked to more than 1,000 new cases of the novel coronavirus, although the organizers have followed all the health guidelines. CNBC reports. In early July Verknipt hosted about 20,000 attendees in Utrecht. Now, 1,050 of those people and counting have tested positive. This is especially discouraging because the electronic music event followed many expert guidelines - the festival was held outdoors, where infections are generally much lower; concert-goers also needed to show a QR code confirming that they were either fully vaccinated, had recently recovered from a COVID-19 infection, or had tested negative within the last 40 hours. That 40 hours window is seen now as the main possible reason for the infection spike.
Olivia Rodrigo’s 'Sour' earned 83,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending July 16, notching the fourth total week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. 'Sour' is the first debut album by a woman to spend four weeks at No. 1 since Susan Boyle’s 'I Dreamed a Dream' spent six weeks in 2009/2010, Billboard reports. Speaking of records, Inhaler’s 'It Won’t Always Be Like This' opens at the top of the Official U.K. Albums Chart, with 18,000 chart sales, and the fastest-selling debut album on vinyl of any band this century.
Irish group Song Collectors Collective is traveling through Ireland, Scotland and England recording the elderly singing songs that exist only as oral tradition. "Those people are sailors, tinsmiths, tinkers, but most are from the reclusive and sometimes difficult-to-approach traveler communities. Their strong culture and tight-knit families make them living goldmines of folklore and Irelesong", Good News Network reports.
"Posing the question 'What makes an image iconic?' the [‘Icon: Music Through the Lens’] series seeks answers through the studio portraits, record sleeves, music magazines, live shows, exhibitions, social media, coffee table books and the fine art world" - PBS' press release reads about the new 6-part series.
Veteran rapper Biz Markie has passed away Friday, July 16th aged 57, due to complications from diabetes, TMZ reports. Hailing from Harlem, New York, Biz Markie first made a name for himself as a beatboxer performing in Manhattan nightclubs in the early 1980s, releasing his first album 'Goin’ Off'. The 1989 single 'Just a Friend' propelled him to superstardom. The hip-hop universe is saying goodbye: The Roots drummer Questlove said “he taught me ALOT. I’m using ALL the education he taught me”; Beastie Boys' Mike D remembers his old friend and colleague - "we are so grateful to have had so many unforgettable experiences with the truly unique and ridiculously talented Biz Markie".
Mega Bog describes her new video 'Maybe You Died' as “dark, leathered, supernatural, horny, evil" - that pretty much applies to the song as well; Britsh folk icon Shirley Collins shares the haunting 'Sailor Boy'; Iron Maiden are back in the saddle - 'The Writing on the Wall' is their first new song in six years and a return to form, accompanied by a mini-film; folk singer-songwriter Shannon Lay starts with a cappella 'Geist' to expand into a waltz called 'Awaken and Allow'.
You sense freedom and youth when listening to Torres' big-sounding new pop-rock single 'Thirstier'. Her album of the same name is due out July 30 via Merge.
Berlin-based musician and sound artist Holly Herndon has released a new artificial intelligence tool Holly+, which she refers to as her “digital twin”, that allows fans to upload any polyphonic audio and receive a new version of that music sung in Herndon’s own voice. Holly+ is as much a technological and artistic experiment, as it is a response to, and embrace of, the rise of deepfake technology, The Fader reports.
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee of the UK parliament is calling for a "complete reset" of the market, with musicians given a "fair share" of the £736.5 million that UK record labels earn from streaming. In a report, they said royalties should be split 50/50, instead of the current rate, where artists receive about 16%, BBC reports. Musician Tom Gray, whose #BrokenRecord campaign prompted the inquiry, said "It feels like a massive vindication. They've really come to the same conclusions that we've been saying for a very long time".
A judge has approved Britney Spears’ request to hire her own private counsel to represent her in her ongoing conservatorship case, after her court appointed attorney, Sam Ingham, tendered his resignation, NBC reports. Spears has already picked Matthew Rosengart, a go-to attorney for A-list clients. Spears appeared in court on Wednesday where she told Judge Penny that she was “extremely scared” of her father Jamie, who remains the sole overseer of the conservatorship. “This conservatorship has allowed my dad to ruin my life,” she said through tears. “I’m here to get rid of my dad and charge him with conservatorship abuse.”
"There were 555.3 billion streams of music on audio and video platforms in the United States in the first six months of 2021 – up by 54.3 billion year-on-year" - MBW reports, and points out to a much more important fact. "Catalog music’s share of total album consumption in the US has rises to 66.4%, whereby ‘catalog’ reflects anything released over 18 months before a consumer made a purchase and/or pressed play. That 66.4% figure was up from 63.9% in the first six months of 2020, and up from 60.8% in the first six months of 2018. Conversely, the percentage of total album consumption claimed by ‘current’ music – that’s music released within the prior 18 months of a consumer making a purchase and/or pressing play – keeps on falling. In the first half of 2021, ‘current’ music claimed just 33.6% of total consumption, down from 36.1% in H1 2020".
Smaller labels and artists who once helped kickstart the vinyl comeback a decade ago are starting to bow out, Pitchfork reports. Production capacity has been especially squeezed since COVID-19 lockdowns disrupted supply chains; the global demand for vinyl albums was recently estimated at twice the available supply, causing the turnaround times for independent artists to expand to a whole year - up from two to three months in times of less demand.
Among dozens of nominees for this year's Emmys, there are some music ones. Apple TV’s 'Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry' documentary is up for three awards, whereas David Byrne’s HBO special 'David Byrne: American Utopia' has been nominated in eight categories. The New York Times’ docu 'Framing Britney Spears' is up for two awards. Elsewhere in the nominations, Cynthia Erivo picked up a nod for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, for her role portraying the late Aretha Franklin in the National Geographic miniseries 'Genius: Aretha', whereas Marcus Mumford is nominated for his 'Ted Lasso' theme, in the category of Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music. Check the full list at EW.
The A.I. Song Contest is an international competition exploring the use of A.I. in songwriting, which started last year and uses the Eurovision Song Contest’s format for inspiration, the New York Times reports. The contest welcomed 38 entries from teams and individuals around the world working at the nexus of music and A.I. They used deep-learning neural networks — computing systems that mimic the operations of a human brain — to analyze massive amounts of music data, identify patterns and generate drumbeats, melodies, chord sequences, lyrics and even vocals. The resulting songs included punk thrash, electronic dance, and folk. After an online ceremony broadcast on Tuesday from Liège in Belgium, a judging panel led by the musician Imogen Heap and including academics, scientists and songwriters praised 'Listen to Your Body Choir' for its “rich and creative use of A.I. throughout the song".
As of May 2021, TikTok surpassed YouTube in both the US and the UK for average time spent per user, per month on Android - US-based TikTok users on Android devices spent an average of 24.5 hours a month on the platform, compared to 22 hours per user, per month on YouTube; in the UK, TikTok users were spending 26 hours a month on the platform, while UK YouTube users were spending just 16 per month. As of October 2020, the TikTok app was reaching 732 million monthly active users globally, whereas YouTube had than 2 billion logged-in users playing music on its service every month, the MBW reports. TikTok announced that it was rolling out the option for its users to create videos of up to three minutes in length – up from what was previously 60 seconds.
“Proud to report that a New Zealand mother has named her children Metallica, Pantera and Slayer. She told me, ‘It’s not easy raising three of the heaviest bands'” - New Zealand documentary filmmaker and actor David Farrier shared via a newsletter article. The daughter named Metallica had a middle name of 'And Justice for All' (no mention of baby named Pantera's meddle name being Cowboy From Hell). In New Zealand, there are no restrictions on naming babies after bands or albums.
Little Simz shares just some James Bond hip-hop with ‘I Love You, I Hate You’; UK jazz tuba player Theon Cross (member of Sons of Kemet) releases 'We Go Again', played almost exclusively on tuba; Moor Mother shares a bit of psychedelic rap with ‘Obsidian', featuring Pink Siifu; Black Dice offer some groovy chaos on ‘White Sugar’; Siiickbrain combines emo, rap, and industrial on ‘Silence’.
"Before Kurt Cobain was getting Rolling Stone cover features, he was just one of many Seattle teenagers enthralled by Seattle band Bam Bam and its late frontwoman, Tina Bell" - the Seattle Times announces a tribute concert to the proto-grunge band. "On July 9, Seattle-area musicians pay tribute to Bell, whom they revere as one of the founders of grunge, by playing a show of her music at the Central Saloon. Matt Cameron, the former Bam Bam and Soundgarden drummer who now plays with Pearl Jam, will hold down the rhythm section. Kendall Jones of Fishbone and singer-songwriter Ayron Jones will play Bam Bam’s chords and leads. And Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard will play a song as a special guest".
Portishead have released their 2015 cover of ABBA’s 'SOS' exclusively on SoundCloud, utilizing SoundCloud’s “fan-powered royalty” system, whereby revenue from its streams is driven directly by the artist’s fan base, Variety reports. The fan-powered system means royalties from each listener’s subscription or advertising revenue are distributed to the artists they actually listened to.
Billie Eilish's older brother Finneas O’Connell topped the list of the most successful artists on Spotify last year, Music Business Worldwide reports. Finneas wrote 50% of hits for his sister, as well as released music as an independent artist himself, and co-wrote/co-produced tracks released in 2020 by the likes of Demi Lovato, Celeste, Halsey, and Justin Bieber/Benny Blanco. The second-placed songwriter on Spotify last year is Kid Harpoon, who collaborated with Harry Styles on the latter’s double-platinum 'Fine Line' album.
MBW goes into some fun music math regarding Queen: the British rock band generated £41.95 million ($58.1 million) in 12 months prior to September 2020, with royalties amounting to £41.67 million ($57.7 million). In FY2019 (the 12 months to the end of September 2019), Queen Productions Ltd generated £72.77 million ($100.8m), of which £71.53 million ($99m) was from royalties. On the other hand, Hipgnosis Songs Fund takes 18 multiple as a reasonable reflection of the market value of gold-standard music publishing rights today. In the past three years, according to Queen Productions Ltd, the band’s rights have generated some £134.5 million ($186 million) in royalties. That’s an average across these three years of $62 million per annum. So, an 18 multiple on $62 million would make Queen’s royalty-bearing rights worth - $1.1 billion today.
Bombay Bicycle Club frontman Jack Steadman - with a new name Mr Jukes - is joined by the relatively unknown East London rapper Barney Artist on the laid-back hip-hop groove 'Check the Pulse'; Manzanita combines surf guitar, garage rock and Latin American cumbia and guaracha on the uplifting 'Shambar'; 'The Angel of 8th Ave' by Gang of Youths is just some straight rock'n'roll; 'Alètheia' is just some straight - post-metal, by the French collective Year of no Light.
Tyler, the Creator has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart as his latest studio offering, 'Call Me If You Get Lost' earned 169,000 equivalent album units in the tracking week ending July 1 in the US, according to Billboard. Of his sales, 114,000 came from streaming and 55,000 from official album sales, largely from deluxe box sets sold exclusively via the artist’s web-store. This is Tyler, the Creator's second No. 1 album - he previously hit No. 1 with his last album, 2019’s 'IGOR'.
A police officer from Oakland, California played a Taylor Swift song on his phone in a bid to prevent activists who were filming him uploading the video to YouTube, since the video platform regularly removes videos that break music copyright rules, Variety reports. The video was filmed by members of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP), which says it is a coalition that seeks to "eradicate police terror in communities of colour". The officer's efforts were in vain as the clip of the encounter in Alameda County promptly went viral and remained on YouTube.
ABBA's greatest hits album 'Gold' reached a landmark 1000 weeks on the Official Albums Chart Top 100, the first album to do so in UK chart history. ABBA's 'Gold' was released in September 1992, debuting at Number 1, and has gone on to be the UK's second best-selling album of all time -behind Queen's 'Greatest Hits' - with pure sales of 5.61 million, according to Official Charts Company data.
Part-punk crooner, part-singer-songwriter, part-experimental rapper, Teezo Touchdown is one of America’s shiniest new enigmas - The Face presents Texan rapper. "The surreal genre collagist re-emerged in 2020 with a series of oddball singles" with a look "that simultaneously references gangsta rap, ’00s Hot Topic punk and ’80s hair metal icons". He says he's just "trekking this journey. “So wherever you hop in, don’t worry, you’re early. This is a long ride that we have here, so wherever you hop in, come on. There’s room for you”.
Rolling Stone explores the power of TikTok on the example of LilyIsThatYou whose song 'FMRN' the popular social media took down due to, well, simple and explicit lyric - “Can you come fuck me right now?”. A snippet of the hither chorus on TikTok drew over a million views in 24 hours, only to be removed by the editors of the social. After RS inquired about the removal of the snippet, TikTok put it back online. "This episode illustrates the power that platforms like TikTok have over artists’ trajectories in 2021. By now, TikTok’s wide reach is the stuff of music industry legend — in select instances, it is capable of delivering a song by an unknown act to legions of new listeners before lunch. But the platform can take away as quickly as it gives. And because services like TikTok are so dominant, they don’t always have to justify their actions, especially regarding smaller, independent artists".
