Disco was intergenerational and multicultural. It didn't matter what your socioeconomic status or sexual orientation was... The world puts you in a box, but when you're on the floor dancing, and you grab somebody's hand, it doesn't matter whose hand it is. That's what disco gave to the world. | | | | Chic (from left: Luci Martin, Nile Rodgers, Bernard Edwards, Alfa Anderson) in London, October 1979.
(Gus Stewart/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Disco was intergenerational and multicultural. It didn't matter what your socioeconomic status or sexual orientation was... The world puts you in a box, but when you're on the floor dancing, and you grab somebody's hand, it doesn't matter whose hand it is. That's what disco gave to the world.”
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| | rantnrave:// MAROON 5, TRAVIS SCOTT and BIG BOI performed essentially for free at the SUPER BOWL (but hey, think of the exposure, dudes) (no, not that exposure), but their colleagues who licensed songs to the commercials made no such deal. Those syncs pay in exposure plus oodles of cash. Up to a million bucks for the publishing on a A-list tune and up to another million bucks for the master, even for just a few seconds of the song, BILLBOARD reports. Which means that $10 million-ish PEPSI spot featuring 8 seconds of "I LIKE IT" might have cost more like $12 million-ish, and that's before you've paid CARDI B or anyone else to actually be in the ad. I know what you're thinking: Wow, $00.00331 per SPOTIFY stream looks like a really, really bad payout compared to that. But of course, as digital services love to argue, only one person is listening to that Spotify stream, whereas the Super Bowl had an audience of 98 million. And if 98 million people streamed that song one time each on Spotify, at that per-stream rate, suddenly the payout would be a respectable $324,380. Add in the millions more people who'll see the ad on YOUTUBE or when it plays on TV again and the per-eyeball rates are getting even closer. And there's this: Spotify pays in cultural exposure, too. Remove "I Like It" from a year's worth of Spotify (and APPLE and YOUTUBE and TIDAL) playlists, and maybe Pepsi doesn't want to spend one or two million bucks on it anymore. So that's part of what streaming is worth, too. At least for some artists. Consider this a pro-digital public service announcement. Today I'm here to tell you a third of a penny per stream might not be such a bad payout. Tomorrow I may set out to prove myself wrong... Meanwhile, in the continuing effort to make sure everyone who's owed a third of a penny gets a third of a penny, the NATIONAL MUSIC PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION, which is hoping to run the new Mechanical Licensing Collective created by the MUSIC MODERNIZATION ACT, has launched a website for its proposed collective, appointed board members (including songwriter activists DAVID LOWERY and KAY HANLEY) and revealed endorsements for its pitch from across the label and publishing worlds. At least one other group, spearheaded by the POLICE's STEWART COPELAND and SONGWRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA president (and country songwriter) RICK CARNES, is pitching to administer mechanical licensing under the MMA. The US COPYRIGHT OFFICE has the final say on who gets the gig... Mastering, minus the mastering engineer... Yes, singers are "musicians"... Yes, you have a Constitutionally protected right to fire your drummer, at least according to a California appeals court... Owner of Canada's SUNRISE RECORDS buys, saves HMV... Recent TINY DESK concerts: CAT POWER. BLOOD ORANGE. BUDDY... RIP DON GRIERSON and KIYOSHI KOYAMA. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| A Tribe Called Quest’s pioneering music is one of many filaments that connects Americans of color with each other now and back through time. (Excerpted from "Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest," by Hanif Abdurraqib.) | | |
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| It can often take ages (if at all) for public opinion to hold unsavory public figures accountable for this misdeeds. We can't help but wonder, why? | | |
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| From AI replicating famous voices to digital music therapy, these are the 2019 companies being incubated in Techstars Music Accelerator. | | |
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| Keep me humming, keep me moaning - the fine art of using music to seduce someone comes with some rules you have to follow. | | |
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| Michael Bublé, Bob Dylan, Frank Ocean, Queen, Cardi B and the Who were among those getting a piece of the action in Bowl commercials. | | |
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| “You don’t like sports,” a sideman in my band once told me, “but you have to admire Michael Jordan, because that’s not just sports—that’s perfection.” Point taken. | | |
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| The song, written for the pregnant protagonist of “Waitress,” has been claimed, unexpectedly, by men, children and singers of all sorts. | | |
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| As more concert and venue operators look to reduce the amount of waste they create each year, plastic cups and straws have come under increasing scrutiny for the amount of damage they do to the environment. | | |
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| Filmmaker Jonas Åkerlund’s latest tells the real-life story of Mayhem, a Norwegian black metal band whose demonic members unleashed mayhem and bloody murder. | | |
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| A nonagenarian Holocaust survivor reinvents herself with heavy-metal music. | | |
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| Their eight-song set was defined by who wasn’t there. Also, Adam Levine’s unfortunate lack of shirt. | | |
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| The bare-chested moment Sunday had some feminists and Janet Jackson supporters focused on how male and female nipples are treated differently in life, especially on network TV and by the NFL years after Jackson’s career was derailed by a split-second halftime reveal. | | |
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| Universal, Sony and Warner, as well as indies, support publisher org's application. | | |
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| From death metal to throat singing to alpine yodelling, the experimental group is changing what it means to harmonize. | | |
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| This is the city where Americans go to have big fun doing things that seem absolutely terrible, and on a recent Saturday night, hundreds of them went to see Tiesto. These bacchanalians were no dopes. | | |
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| Long before Anderson .Paak was getting nominated for Grammy Awards, well before his collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg and Q-Tip, before he was releasing solo albums to critical acclaim, he had already walked away from the music business and had to be talked into returning. | | |
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| Matt Brinkworth of Omnian Music Group reflects on the true meaning of 'indie' in 2019. | | |
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| What happens when the context of your creative output changes, but the passion remains? | | |
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| Universal's Bobbie Gentry collection was the hit that caught 2018 unawares. PopMatters talks to four Gentry commentators about what the enigmatic singer/songwriter was really like and asks just why it was she left showbiz behind in 1980. | | |
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| A young woman wears a grey t-shirt that reads "Back the Blue" and shows the Blue Lives Matter version of the American flag. | | |
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| | | | | | | "I can hardly see in front of me." Nile Rodgers says he wrote this, on acid, after seeing New York cops beat up a friend. |
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