Approximately 100,000 fresh tracks are now being uploaded to music streaming platforms every day, according to Universal Music Group CEO and Chairman, Sir Lucian Grainge, and the outgoing CEO of Warner Music Group, Steve Cooper, the Music Business Worldwide reports. Another big milestone - Apple Music confirmed that the total number of tracks on its platform has now surpassed 100 million.
ContraBrand Marketing Agency released their latest report How Artists are Going Viral on TikTok in 2022, featuring analysis of all 20 of TikTok’s weekly Top 200 Tracks by country charts. CB's study specifically examined all tracks released in 2022 which went on to become respective artists' most streamed songs in their Spotify catalog, with a minimum of one million streams.
The key takeouts:
Artist-Generated Content (AGC) the most common method for breakout artists to go viral in 2022 (35.5%). It is also the most cost-effective and lowest barrier to entry for artists looking to break into the music industry.
Of the 208 artists analyzed in this report, 117 of them were unsigned (56.2%) — all accumulating more than 1 million Spotify streams thanks to TikTok. 63.1% of these unsigned artists went viral without the need to run ads, pay influencers or hire agencies to develop trends around their tracks.
Read the full reports here.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act, which limits the ways an artist’s lyrics can be used against them as evidence in criminal cases, the LA Times reports. The bill establishes a presumption that lyrics have minimal value as evidence. It covers all forms of creative expression but is especially salient for hip-hop artists, whose slice-of-life lyrics have frequently been cited by prosecutors in criminal trials as proof of guilt. The bill has been championed by the hip-hop community, the music industry and free-speech advocates.
Oud is a guitar-like stringed instrument popular in the Arab world, popularized in the Western world by Yemeni-American musician Ahmed Alshaiba who produced renditions of some of popular culture's most recognisable sounds on the instrument. The 32-year-old died in a car accident in New York in late September. His music will, however, live forever. Middle East Eye selected five of his most recognizable covers.
Music rights company Concord has bought the publishing and recorded music catalogs of Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford, as well as the publishing and recorded music catalog from their years in the band Genesis. The Wall Street Journal reports that the ‘megadeal’ is ‘valued at over $300 million’. These catalogs contain songs such as 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway', 'Sussudio', 'Against All Odds', 'All I Need is a Miracle', 'In the Air Tonight', 'I Can’t Dance', 'That’s All', 'Land of Confusion', 'The Living Years', 'Invisible Touch' and other hits.
Pitchfork is looking back 30 years - they selected "150 albums that... shaped the way music would sound in the decades to come", and "250 songs that would make up Pitchfork’s ultimate ’90s mixtape". Here are the 10 best albums:
Nirvana: Nevermind
A Tribe Called Quest: 'The Low End Theory'
Hole: 'Live Through This'
Janet Jackson: 'The Velvet Rope'
Björk: 'Homogenic'
Wu-Tang Clan: 'Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)'
Liz Phair: 'Exile in Guyville'
Radiohead: 'OK Computer'
Lauryn Hill: 'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill'
My Bloody Valentine: 'Loveless'
Producer Aphex Twin and the engineer Dave Griffiths have launched an app called Samplebrain, which translates inputted sounds into similar samples. The “sample mashing” design software has been in the works for some 20 years. Aphex Twin describes the app: “What if you could reconstruct source audio from a selection of other mp3's/audio on your computer? What if you could build a 303 riff from only acapellas or bubbling mud sounds? What if you could sing a silly tune and rebuild it from classical music files? You can do this with Samplebrain.”
Pitchfork shared a lovely read about jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders who died at 81 this weekend - "a guy who saw music as a means to keep food on the table, as well as a route toward holiness... For Sanders, transcendence didn’t exist only in some rarefied other realm; it was something you worked at here on Earth, with your lungs, and your lips, and a good reed if you could find one". Sanders belonged, the P points out, "to a cohort of musicians who, in the middle 20th Century, threw open the doors of jazz to allow for fierce dissonances, extended instrumental techniques, and a new style of improvisation oriented toward freeform collective expression rather than individual solos". Vulture also shares a beautiful read about the saxophonist: "Sanders not only represented the heart and hustle of New York City, he embodied its communal spirit as well. Be it the volcanic peaks or meditative valleys of his work, Sanders always spoke a very clear message: Love is everywhere, and it always finds a way".
To celebrate their first 15 years, Consequence is releasing a list of their 75 favorite albums of the last decade and a half. Plenty of various albums between Lorde's 'Melodrama' and Kendrick Lamar' 'To Pimp a Butterfly'. Check out the full list.
Consequence made a list of 100 best albums of all-time, It's a list that "assessed the mercurial value attached to art, from perceptions at the moment of creation, to retrospective consideration, to the impact on ever-evolving fashions". Check out what lies between Janes Addiction's 'Nothing's Shocking', and Pr
