Radio programming is based on algorithms, which is basically a bias set to numbers. | | | | Selena Gomez at the American Music Awards, Los Angeles, Nov. 24, 2019. "Rare" is out today on Interscope.
(Emma McIntyre/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Radio programming is based on algorithms, which is basically a bias set to numbers.”
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| | rantnrave:// Another booming year for the US music biz, according to hefty year-end data dumps from both NIELSEN MUSIC and BUZZANGLE MUSIC. US music fans streamed more than 1 trillion songs on demand for the first time in 2019, according to both companies. That's somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 billion streams a day, depending on which company's numbers you go with. Or somewhere around nine songs per day per man, woman and child in the US. Which is a hell of a lot of "BABY SHARK," "OLD TOWN ROAD" and POST MALONE. There's music in the air, just about literally. How did we get here? Strangely, while Nielsen's and BuzzAngle's bottom-line numbers are fairly consistent with each other, they differ sharply on some key details. Nielsen reports that video music streaming jumped 40.7 percent from 2018 to 2019, almost double the year-to-year increase in audio streaming. BuzzAngle, on the other hand, says almost all of the streaming increase came from audio, with video music streaming increasing a relatively minor 10.6%. (Or maybe it isn't so strange. BuzzAngle also reminds us that "one of the major streaming services"—a rather understated description of YOUTUBE, the world's most popular source of music listening—changed its reporting methodology in 2019. So.) Should the music biz be cheering a significant jump in music video streams, if that's what it was, as a win for its consumption stats, or worrying that it's a loss for its accounts receivable department? YouTube, you may have heard, is better for the former number than the latter number. (For more on music accounts receivable, ZOË KEATING goes into granular detail on how 2 million streams on SPOTIFY in the first nine months of 2019 netted her an average $759.34 per month while just under 500,000 streams on APPLE netted her $642.16 per month. The story is behind BUSINESS INSIDER's paywall; they, too, want to be paid for their work.) Consumption continues to be up across the board except in physical and digital sales, where the only numbers trending up are vinyl sales. More year- and decade-end trivia: BuzzAngle says Friday is the biggest day of the week for audio streaming but Saturday is the biggest day for video streaming. Maybe not as many of us are watching videos on our phones at work/school as we suspected. The company also says the top 50 albums of 2019 accounted for 11.5% of all of sales and about 2.7% of all streams, while the top 500 albums accounted for 30% and 11%, respectively. (Is that good or bad? Is a superstar recession looming?) ADELE had the two best-selling albums of the decade, according to Nielsen, and TAYLOR SWIFT had three of the top 10. DRAKE was the most streamed artist of the decade, with 36.3 billion streams, and "Old Town Road" was the most streamed song of the decade, at 2.5 billion, despite having only a year to rack up those numbers. Baby shark meet grownup shark. ABBEY ROAD was the decade's top vinyl seller, and the only vinyl album with music from the 2010s among the top 10 vinyl albums of the 2010s was LANA DEL REY's BORN TO DIE. Which raises questions, perhaps, about the great vinyl revival. And lastly and most depressingly, per Nielsen, six of the top 10 artists by radio airplay in the 2010s were country artists—and all of them were men. JENNIFER NETTLES has some thoughts about this, and she's exactly as outraged as you may have guessed based on the outfit she wore to the CMA AWARDS, and she's also exactly as correct. Dear country radio programmers: Play. More. Women. Pretend it's 2020 and people can actually see you... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from GEORGIA, SELENA GOMEZ, MONEYBAGG YO, BEACH SLANG, DEVON GILFILLIAN, QUANDO RONDO, POPPY, BODY STUFF, FIELD MUSIC, LANE 8, MICK JENKINS, the BIG MOON, ECHOSMITH, CIRCA WAVES and APOCALYPTICA... And if you're in New York, the bountifully programmed WINTER JAZZFEST is in full flower this weekend with the two-night Manhattan Marathon and some bonus goodies in Brooklyn... RIP 5TH WARD WEEBIE. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| The boom in copyright lawsuits is rattling the music industry -- to the point where some artists and songwriters are spending tens of thousands of dollars on insurance policies. | | |
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 | Glamour |
| The disparity between male and female country artists on the radio is staggering. | | |
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 | 8Sided Blog |
| A remarkable album cover is an invitation to decode, or as Vaughan Oliver said, "[it] should work as an entrance door that invites you to cross it." | | |
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 | The Indianapolis Star |
| The lyrics to the song by the Indianapolis rapper, prosecutors said, placed the artist at the scene of the gruesome triple murder. The lyrics described the crime scene in terms only a person who had been there would know, they said. | | |
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 | Trapital |
| More rappers will pursue alternatives to the costly, risky, and exhausting business of touring. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| The legendary composer was the most consistent part of the franchise. What happens now that he’s stepped down? | | |
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 | Billboard |
| What set Selena Gomez apart from any other teen idol of the last 50-odd years? Ten years later, with her sixth album 'Rare' due Friday (January 10), it feels like the right time to look back at her unlikely road through adult pop stardom. | | |
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 | The Times of Israel |
| Users on music service can register themselves as Nazi leader, post swastikas or name a playlist 'Auschwitz Train Sing Along'; company says it conforms to German gov't standards. | | |
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 | Complex |
| From Dr. Dre and DJ Quik to Kid Frost and Egyptian Lover, this is the sound of the City of Angels. Westside! | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| In 1959, a group of undergraduates at the University of Detroit sneaked two records into a jukebox on campus: one was silent, and the other played a short beep every fifteen seconds. The legacy of this prank lives on. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Mega 96.3, famed for its annual Calibash concert, was long the only bilingual "Latin urban" station in L.A. But newcomer Cali 93.9 poses a threat to their supremacy. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| They offer a glimpse of where música urbana may be headed in 2020. | | |
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 | Slate |
| Tig Notaro defends Nickelback, Ranky Tanky performs live, and mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton brings social justice to the concert hall. | | |
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 | Louder |
| It's been a long time since Robert Plant fronted the biggest band in the world, and now, at 71, he’s enjoying the fourth decade of a successful solo career. | | |
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| Rolling Stone |
| Six unnamed venues claim Live Nation committed ticketing practice violations, a new court filing shows. | | |
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 | gal-dem |
| In the midst of this return to what grime does best, Rahel Aklilu argues that we should not simply accept MC's jibes about mums, sisters and girlfriends. | | |
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 | Chicago Tribune |
| "Verboten," a new musical written by Evanston-based musician Jason Narducy, tells the story of how his pre-teen punk band went on to change his life and that of his bandmates (as well as transforming a young Dave Grohl, who went on to play with Nirvana and Foo Fighters). | | |
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 | The Creative Independent |
| The late, great Allee Willis on songwriting, throwing the perfect party, and infusing your creative process with joy. | | |
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 | MEL Magazine |
| From the pages of 4chan to the White House, the story behind the meme that's never going to give you up. | | |
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 | Saving Country Music |
| Over 112 artists and counting have been confirmed as victims of a sweeping intellectual property theft by having their recordings directly stolen and repurposed by fake artist accounts operating on all major streaming services, including Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Google Play, YouTube, and others. The theft includes at least 831 songs. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "Seeking Thrills," out today on Domino. |
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