The Pudding asks an intriguing question, and offers, for a start, two graphs that compare the success and popularity of solo artists compared to their original bands. The two metrics The Pudding uses are the number of Spotify followers, and their ranking on Billboard Hot 100.
To celebrate his 88th birthday, Willie Nelson has shared his 10 rules for life:
An informative yet fun documentary 'Why Am I Doing This? (A Film ABout Touring)', about underground bands playing small clubs. Steve Albini and members of Bottomless Pit, Helms Alee, Wimps, the Bismarck, Nudity, Conan Neutron, Sun 0))), and Melvins talk about what really is there on tour, beyond the 1-hour pleasure they do get every day.
Billie Eilish has announced her new album with her new song 'Your Power', with a video she self-directed. On the intimate and delicate track, Eilish sings above acoustic guitar riff about power dynamics in relationships, giving a warning to “try not to abuse your power”. The video sees her alone on a mountain. Her new album 'Happier Than Ever', out July 30, was written by Eilish and her brother Finneas.
"If the music industry can get its own house in order, maybe it can set the tone for a journey out of the climate crisis" - Guardian argues in an article about the possible transition of the music industry - everything from recorded to live music - from carbon-exhausting to green, and in doing so, set an example for the society as a whole. Some have already started - British independent label Ninja Tune is divesting its funds and pensions from fossil fuels, it is installing renewable energy systems in its London headquarters and it is encouraging the pressing plants that supply its vinyl to switch to green energy. Brian Eno's Earth Percent is aiming to raise $100m (£72m) by 2030 from the industry itself to transition towards sustainability. Beggars Group also announced major new carbon reduction commitments. The dance music scene is taking steps too - Last Night a DJ Took a Flight report argued that tours could be routed more efficiently, local scenes and artists could be better nurtured to reduce the pull of foreign superstars, and exclusivity clauses (where artists can’t play more than one show locally) could be challenged.
"Everyone wanted to work with her but it was like trying to trap lightning in a bottle" - Nick Cave writes on his Red Hand Files blog about his Birthday Party and Bad Seeds colleague Anita Lane, after the news of her death was published. Cave describes Lane as “the smartest and most talented of all of us, by far”, and chooses 'Stranger Than Kindness' as his favourite Seeds song. Cave describes how "at my kitchen table drawing things, she had a quickness of touch and a clear, light line full of humour, throwing each drawing away and starting another, charged with a rampant, unstable, fatal energy that would follow her all her life. My line, amateur and ponderous... It was both easy and terrifying to love her. Leaves a big crying space".
"It’s like the Kyiv rave scene, taking over the Zone. I thought it was strange at first, when they asked me to play here. But then I thought, why not? Chernobyl is ours, it’s our history" - a DJ who played at Chillnobil, an illegal rave deep in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, told Literary Hub about bringing life back into the heart of the nuclear disaster. The organizers call themselves AVO, Anarkho-Vandalskyy Otryad, a “performance art theatre” whose aim is to "transform Pripyat - not destroy it as some are saying, but to use performance to bring attention to it".
A 27-year-old part-time model and translator Vladislav Ivanov from Vladivostok has been finally voted out of the Chinese reality TV show Produce Camp 2021, after he tried hard to give lousy performances, but the fans still voted for him, Guardian reports. He joined the show because he got bored on the island where it was filmed - he worked as a translator for two Japanese contestants - but soon changed his mind, only, he couldn't get out without paying a fine. Ivanov gave poor performances, but his clear reluctance was winning him fans, viral social media emoji and unwanted votes that have carried him into the final of the boy band competition. He was eventually voted out in the final episode.
Oscar music host Questlove shared his 2021 Oscar Playlist, 144 songs he played before, during, after the show, about 10 hours of music. Plenty of music there - Kendrick Lamar, Rolling Stones, Prince, Donna Summer, Phil Collins, a bit more Prince, Talib Kweli, Beastie Boys, some more Prince...
California-based producer and high school student Jai Beats has recently had hits with Rod Wave and Young Thug. Genius talked to him about his beginnings. He started producing at probably 13, using Instagram to connect with people - "I would hit up producers, artists, engineers, they were the ones who could really get my beats and loops to these artists". His first break was "a PnB Rock placement. I had a whole thing where someone scammed me out of my melody. I made a post about it, people in the industry were sharing it, and I gained a lot of exposure just from getting my loop stolen which was funny". He's 16 now - "a lot of it is really hard to balance trying to get music done and get my homework done on time. It’s a battle". Jai Beats' goal in the next five years - to be a millionaire.
A trial concert in Barcelona with 5,000 attendees resulted in only six new cases of Covid infections, Deutsche Welle reports. The indoor concert by pop-rock band Love of Lesbian was held in The Palau, with a capacity of 17,000 - attendees were not allowed into the stands and instead were restricted to the dance floor. Before the event, they were screened and tested for coronavirus using antigen tests. The crowd was also instructed to wear FFP2 masks, with the organizers limiting bathroom capacity. Social distance was not required. Only six people reported testing positive 15 days later, while transmission in four of these six cases didn't take place during the concert. The six infections are fewer than the average contagion spread for Barcelona at the time.
Spotify's monthly Premium subscriber ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) in the first quarter of 2021 stood at just €4.12, down 7% year-on-year. In Spotify’s prior quarter (Q4 2020), the firm’s ARPU stood at €4.26, while in the prior year quarter (Q1 2020), it was €4.42. Music Business Worldwide recalculated it in US dollars - Q1 2021’s €4.12 per month figure was the equivalent of USD 4.97 per month period based on current exchange rates. Spotify has announced it is set to raise prices in Europe and the US by 1 to 3 euros/pounds/dollars, depending on the plan.
Al Schmitt, one of the most revered engineers and producers in the annals of the music business, winner of record 20 Grammys, has died aged 91. In 2015, he also became the first to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Among his recordings are Henry Mancini's 'Moon River', Neil Young's 'On the Beach', Toto's 'Africa', Ray Charles' 'Genius Loves Company', and 150 other gold or platinum records by Sam Cooke, Frank Sinatra, Natalie Cole, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Josh Groban, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson.
Sons of Kemet share 'To Never Forget The Source', the "central (ideological) axis-point" of their new album 'Black To The Future'; Jhariah are genre-less, operatic, grandiose, and fun on 'Flight Of The Crows'; Kele shares a subtle piano ballad 'Nineveh'; The Felice Brothers go slightly bizarre yet sweet on 'Inferno'; Q-Unique of Arsonists combines rap and rock on grand soul-rap 'Verrazzano Villains' featuring the Wu-Tang Clan's Cappadonna and three members of Taking Back Sunday; duendita goes lightly to surprise with 'bio'; Black Midi display a change of direction with jazzy-rock 'Slow' (not that slow at all).
Foo Fighters, Radiohead art director Stanley Donwood, Phoebe Bridgers, Khruangbin, Dinosaur Jr, Enrique Iglesias, LCD Soundsystem, and Neko Case and more artists have contributed designs to a series of one-of-a-kind folding bicycles from British company Brompton, according to Cycling Weekly. The bikes will be auctioned to raise funds for Live Nation’s Crew Nation, a global relief fund for live music workers. The auction begins May 28 and will run until June 12.
The entertainment industry appears to have massively capitalised on memes - Vice points out in an interesting article about how memes are new songs, and live streams. At first, memes were created using some other content intended for something completely different, but over the last year, there’s been a more formulaic approach where tunes are either made with the focused intention of being recreated as memes on Reels and TikTok, or beats are added to popular memes. What happened was that the audiences now expect memes from the producers now, not music, as few producers attest to. "The advantage is that you have better reach, but then people always expect you to incorporate humour into your music” - Anshuman Sharma said, while Sarthak Sardana added - “after I started making memes, my Instagram interactions went up by 3x, but the kind of following I got wasn’t into music”. Rosh Blazze got 7.2 million views for his remix - “now, my audience only wants to listen to my meme remixes, and sees me more as a video editor than a music producer”.
Australian musician Anita Lane, a flower of Melbourne 1980s post-punk scene, and the former member of The Bad Seeds and The Birthday Party, has died aged 62, Louder Than War reports. Lane co-wrote early Birthday Party tracks ‘A Dead Song’, ‘Dead Joe’ and ‘Kiss Me Black’, as well as Bad Seeds songs ‘From Her To Eternity’ and ‘Stranger Than Kindness’ with her then-boyfriend Nick Cave. Lane went on to have a long and distinguished career, working with the likes of Kid Congo Powers, Gudrun Gut and Einstürzende Neubauten. Lane also released a number of solo albums.
"Genre doesn’t classify the style of music we listen to - it segregates the artists who make it. Our problem is that we’ve conflated these two to mean the same thing" - Sameer Gadhia of the American pop-rock band Young the Giant writes in the Rolling Stone about the issue of "artists of color" in alter-rock. He is about to change the narrative with his SiriusXM Alt Nation feature, 'Point of Origin', where each month, "I spotlight an artist of color from the alternative space and trace their point of origin to their childhood".
New St. Vincent album 'Daddy's Home' sees her looking back at the early 70’s sound which is the music her father played her in her own youth, which makes for a full circle with her father coming out of prison recently (was there for 10 years for stock fraud). In her Consequence interview she talks about the music at the foundation of the album: "The music that was happening there in the early 70s, post the idealism of the flower children, pre the either nihilism or escapism of punk and disco, there was music that was this confluence of people telling it how it was lyrically, and all of this really great fusion of rock music but with jazz harmony into it, and funk in there and soul. It was just really secretly sophisticated, but utterly musical output". The album is out May 14.
Greenwich Village folk musician Eric Andersen was friends with Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Joni Mithcell, Janis Joplin, Andy Warhol, but never had a big career, which a new documentary 'The Songpoet' tries to find an answer to. Rolling Stone interviewed the songpoet about his past, and success that was within his grasp plenty of times but he never managed to get hold of it. Andersen says Warhol once gave him "a beautiful painting and signed it. I sold it dirt cheap to a German buyer. Fast forward, years later, I open The New York Times and there’s a full-page ad with my fucking painting for sale for something like $12.5 million". His album 'Stages' was lost for 20 years, and Andersen believes it was lost intentionally - "instantaneously and unwittingly, not through will or a life choice, you instantly become a Buddhist - because if you get attached to this, it will destroy you. Even though it’s your work". Just when Brian Epstein was about to take him and manage him, the Beatles manager had died. Plenty of his musician friends, however, are dead - "the music business isn’t especially conducive to good health" - Andersen is alive, living with his wife in the Netherlands.
The production team behind the 'Framing Britney Spears' documentary are reportedly at work on a new film about Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s infamous 2004 Super Bowl Halftime show and the "wardrobe malfunction" which had dire consequences for Jackson, Page Six reports. While Timberlake went on to release a smash album in 2006, 'FutureSex/LoveSounds', Jackson was essentially blacklisted from Viacom-owned networks like MTV and CBS and saw her career all but halted. Jackson was also tacitly banned from playing the Super Bowl again, while Timberlake headlined in 2018. The documentary is "going to be all about the fallout and the suits who fucked over Janet [at] Viacom”.
Trapital appreciates how H.E.R. went from a 9-year-old star to a 23-year-old Oscar winner, completely changing her identity on the way: "At nine she was on Nickelodeon’s 'School Gyrls'. When she was 10, she performed on The Today Show and covered Alicia Keys. At 12, she was a finalist on Disney’s Next Big Thing and performed at the BET Awards. She was first signed by Sony when she was 14. She released music under her real name Gabi Wilson. In 2016, she emerged under the new persona, 'H.E.R.'. There was no public connection to Gabi Wilson. H.E.R. added to the allure by wearing sunglasses at all times. This wasn’t like Puff Daddy or Christina Aguilera developing alter ego-type names. This was a brand new artist".
A pair of prototype Nikes worn by Kanye West during his performances of 'Hey Mama' and 'Stronger' at the Grammy Awards in 2008 has been sold for $1.8 million in a private sale, al Jazeera reports. The sale marks the highest publicly recorded price for a sneaker sale and the first pair of sneakers to top $1 million. The buyer was sneaker investing platform RARES, the leader in fractional ownership, allowing users to invest in sneakers by buying and trading shares in them.
Spotify is set to raise prices for its Premium Duo, Premium Family and Student plans in the UK and Europe from the end of this month for new users and starting from June 2021 for existing subscribers. In the US, Spotify will be raising only the monthly price of Premium Family, the Verge reports.
UK:
Student — £4.99 ➡️ £5.99 (+£1)
Duo — £12.99 ➡️ £13.99 (+£1)
Family — £14.99 ➡️ £16.99 (+£2)
EU:
Student — €4.99 ➡️ €5.99 (+€1)
Duo — €11.99 ➡️ €12.99 (+€1)
Family — €14.99 ➡️ €17.99 (+€3)
US:
Family — $14.99 ➡️ $15.99 (+$1)
Inspired by the 'Sound of Metal' movie, Guardian explores the problem of hearing loss among musicians, which, as it appears, is worryingly widespread. “For a musician, losing your hearing is like losing a hand” - says Steve Lukather of Toto, who developed tinnitus in 1986 and also suffers from hearing loss, but thanks to hearing aids he can continue his career. Alter Bridge's Myles Kennedy was diagnosed with tinnitus in 2002, when he left the music business for 18 months only to come back thanks to meditation and the advanced technology of in-ear monitors. It's not only musicians who get it. Eleanor Goodman, deputy editor of Metal Hammer magazine, also has tinnitus - “I used to worry that people would think I couldn’t do my job. But when I started talking about it, I found out that tinnitus is very common in the music industry".
Social media has always been less spontaneous than it appears, but from its inception, TikTok has been even more controlled than competing apps. Company executives help determine which videos go viral, which clips appear on the pages of personalized recommendations, and which trends spill out from the app to flood the rest of the world - Blomberg writes in its article about the mechanisms at work on the popular app.
YouTuber Sabrina explores why lo-fi hip-hop has become the poster child for study music and if it even works. She also tries to teach a machine to generate lo-fi music.
Very charming Jon Batiste gave an interesting speech while accepting his best score Oscar for 'Soul': “God gave us 12 notes. It's the same 12 notes Duke Ellington had, Bach had. It's the same 12, Nina Simone, and all the nominees... I'm just thankful to God for those 12 notes, man, that's so dope".
Concord Music Publishing announced the purchase of Downtown Music Holdings’ entire portfolio of 145,000 owned and co-published music copyrights for an estimated $400 million, Music Business Worldwide reports. Numerous artists are included in the deal: Adele, Aretha Franklin, Beyoncé, Blake Shelton, Bruno Mars, Carrie Underwood, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, the Grateful Dead, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Maroon 5, Marvin Gaye, Mary J. Blige, Mos Def, Mötley Crüe, New Order, Rage Against the Machine, Ray Charles, Santigold, Sam Smith, Stevie Wonder. Also in the songs rights news, financial giant Blackstone is about to acquire Entertainment One Music (eOne Music) $385 million in cash, according to MBW. The eOne music label features artists such as Snoop Dogg, Wu-Tang Clan, the Lumineers, Kaytranada, Cypress Hill, the Game, High on Fire, Tegan and Sara...
Haru Nemuri shares a bit of pop hard-rock with 'Inori Dake Ga Aru'; Illuminati Hotties step into pop-punk chaos on 'MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA'; Musk Ox share beautiful instrumental chamber folk 'Memoriam'; Moonshine shares a bit of afrobeat 'Zaire Space Program | Act I', while the video explores a bit of Congolese tradition; 20-year-old singer-songwriter Uwade shares a simple and pretty 'The Man Who Sees Tomorrrow'; Midwife goes airy on 'Christina's World'; Para One explores the power of dreams on 'Spectre: Alpes'.
Music writer Ted Gioia takes a critical look at today's music magazines which are (supposedly) leaning too much towards nostalgia: "Music writers serve as the conscience of the art form. They don’t simply reflect back to fans what they expect or want to hear. This is always important to remember but especially right now when the dominant platforms reward technocrats at the expense of musicians. Music media outlets have a responsibility to push back against these forces of marginalization and homogenization that not only hurt individual artists but weaken the en
White noise is the music industry’s next big thing. Streaming services have seen an explosion of tracks in the last year consisting entirely of hissing, humming, fizzing and other varieties of radio static, as well as recordings of rainfall, ocean waves and crackling bonfires. Some of the recordings have earned their creators millions of pounds. Record companies and tech firms have taken notice" - Guardian is looking into the into the interesting phenomenon.
How music is being used and its effect on people is the topic of the Anne Helen interview with musicologist Lily E. Hirsch. "The discussion came up among music scholars of whether music used as torture even is music. Can music actually be torture? At first, I was caught up in the discussion, but immediately I started to think, This is not the point. The torture is the point. What this is doing to people is the point, not whether or not it’s music." Hirsch has also written a book about the issue.
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.
"When we try to define what country music is, what could possibly tie together a genre with such wide aesthetic variance and complex history, those two occasionally contradictory arcs—nostalgia for some mythic, bygone rural idyll paired with unapologetic candor and sharp observation—more or less sum it up. When we’re looking at Loretta, we are indeed looking at country" - Esquire writes after the passing of Loretta Lynn. Vulture goes deeper: "She wrote true stories ripped from real rural life about what it meant to be a woman".
Dedicated music listeners are quitting streaming services trying to grapple with the unethical economics of streaming companies, and feel the effects of engagement-obsessed, habit-forming business models on their own listening and discovery habits - Guardian looks into the change of music hearts. “With streaming, things were starting to become quite throwaway and disposable. If I didn’t gel with an album or an artist’s work at first, I tended not to go back to it” - says Finlay Shakespeare, Bristol-based musician and audio engineer who quit his streaming service account, after he realised that a lot of his all-time favourite albums were ones that grew on him over time. “Streaming was actually contributing to some degree of dismissal of new music.” The G suggests six ways to find new music…
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.
Composer David Bruce connects the physical qualities of instruments and the music that's written for them. His video is essentially about the way the design and layout of instruments affect the music that's played on them. He starts off with samba, but also goes over to west Africa and Spain.
