Beyond what I am as J Balvin, I'm representing a culture, you know? I want for us Latinos to be seen as we should be, respected for a cool, different aesthetic, for interventions in fashion, in art, in music, in social life, in humanitarian issues, spirituality. | | | | J Balvin at Univision's Premio Lo Nuestro in Miami, Feb. 20, 2020.
(Jason Koerner/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Beyond what I am as J Balvin, I'm representing a culture, you know? I want for us Latinos to be seen as we should be, respected for a cool, different aesthetic, for interventions in fashion, in art, in music, in social life, in humanitarian issues, spirituality.”
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| | rantnrave:// If you're running out of playlists, livestreams, music films and music books to catch up on this quarantine season, can I interest you in a 50-page guide to how exactly—really, really exactly—SPOTIFY calculates royalties? The dizzyingly detailed "Definitive Guide to Spotify Royalties," which has been circulating by word-of-mouth and word-of-TWITTER for the past couple weeks, is by JEFF PRICE, founder of digital royalties collection agency AUDIAM and longtime Spotify gadfly. There's a little editorializing at the beginning (the complexity of the calculations "is, frankly, insane," Price writes) and a little more at the end (artists should get more), but the bulk of Price's PDF file is a straightforwardly long and winding journey through a not so straightforwardly long and winding formula process, the end result of which, he writes on page 48, is that one stream of one song in November 2019 resulted in a payout of $0.005417805576022 to the artist. That's assuming the artist wrote the song, controlled 100 percent of the publishing and the sound recording, and didn't owe a cut to a digital distributor. Or, to put it another way, $0.005417805576022 before expenses. An artist can do worse. Literally, much worse. And if knowledge is power, one of the first steps to doing better might be simply understanding exactly how that half a penny came to be... An online petition, noting the significant money artists stand to lose as the coronavirus crisis continues, is asking Spotify to triple its royalty rates, permanently... BANDCAMP is waiving its revenue share for all sales for one day, today, "to put much needed money directly into artists’ pockets," CEO ETHAN DIAMOND says. Some Bandcamp recommendations from BROOKLYNVEGAN and the QUIETUS... Early online retailer INSOUND is going out of business today... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from J BALVIN, SADA BABY, the WEEKND, KELSEA BALLERINI, IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS, TONY ALLEN & HUGH MASEKELA, HAROLD MABERN (RIP), TOKIMONSTA, ADAM LAMBERT, CONAN GRAY, ELEPHANT HEART, the GLITCH MOB, ROGER ENO & BRIAN ENO, LYRA PRAMUK, CHRISTIAN LÖFFLER, CONSTRICT, MOANING, MORRISSEY, NEGATIVE REACTION, MYRKUR, GORDON LIGHTFOOT, DELTA RAE, FIRESIDE COLLECTIVE, PHANTOM POSSE, CARLA OLSON, HARU NEMURI, PAUL WALL, ISAAC CARREE and the ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD- and ADRIAN YOUNGE-helmed compilation JAZZ IS DEAD 001... RIP MARCELO PERALTA. The Argentine jazz saxophonist died of Covid-19... MusicREDEF is taking a couple days off, though we'll continue, as always, to post stories on our Twitter. We'll be back in your inbox middle of next week. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | | beauty behind the madness |
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 | Jeff Price |
| The complexity of Spotify royalties is, frankly, insane. So insane that it took me over a month and 40 pages (before including diagrams) to explain it all. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| They’ll retain health and instrument insurance, but not their salaries. | | |
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 | Paper |
| "I think that being creative, no matter what, is cathartic." | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| The Couch Tour phenomenon-where fans join together online to experience performances in real time-has become both a business model and community builder over the last decade. | | |
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 | Reasons to Be Cheerful |
| The coronavirus is creating an explosion of online performance that is unscripted, unshowered and surprisingly uplifting. | | |
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 | GQ |
| When coronavirus forced their show to be canceled, Code Orange turned to Twitch. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Bandcamp has relaxed charges in light of Covid-19 but there is growing pressure on streaming services to compensate artists more fairly. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| On “Reply All,” the hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman explore all that’s “delicious and weird” about life in the internet age. | | |
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 | The Outline |
| A fire at one of the world's only lacquer manufacturing plants calls the future of vinyl into question. | | |
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| Pitchfork |
| What it’s like to spend an afternoon with rap’s most prolific and unpredictable new star. | | |
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 | The Verge |
| "I’m just trying to survive, and Twitch has the highest earning potential." | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| riller has been growing sharply in recent months and is starting to break tracks and acts in its own way. For now, the audience skews towards both the US and hip-hop, but the app has global ambitions and wants to go deeper into different styles of music. It is already making inroads into EDM and that cross-genre expansion will only continue this year. | | |
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| GQ |
| Founding Brockhampton member Kevin Abstract and music legend Rick Rubin got together to have an entirely epic conversation. The two have a wide-ranging conversation, covering everything from mental health to Brockhampton's newest album. | | |
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 | Texas Monthly |
| But for decades the town where it was created had no idea. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The classic BBC radio program now seems less about music and creative inspiration than about the possibility of loneliness. How do you find meaning in total isolation? | | |
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 | Quartz |
| The isolation caused by the spread of coronavirus means people are sitting inside all day streaming music, right? Actually, maybe not. At least for the most popular songs, people in some highly affected countries are streaming far fewer songs during the pandemic than before. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Worldwide streams in Spotify's Top 200 have fallen 11%. But that's no reason for labels to worry. | | |
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 | VICE |
| Independent music is hit hard by the COVID-19's spread. Here's how people who work with PUP, Japanese Breakfast, and more are coping. | | |
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 | Music Tectonics |
| With isolation and remote work looming last week, we recorded a podcast conversation about communication and collaboration. Irregular host Tristra Newyear Yeager tells Eleanor Rust, rps marketing director, about essential lessons she’s learned from collaborating with people scattered around the globe, and how to maximize listening while minimizing distraction. | | |
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 | NME |
| It's off until next year, but if there's one thing that's worth the wait, it's Glasto. Worthy farm veteran Leonie Cooper pays tribute. | | |
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 | Middle Class Artist |
| As the COVID-19 epidemic continues to spread across the globe, arts companies at the highest levels are fighting to survive. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | Irreversible Entanglements |
| | From "Who Sent You?," out today on International Anthem. |
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| © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group |
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