We’re in an industry that has no memory. You make the hit of the moment, [then] someone else comes and does another. Artists come and go, and that’s my fear... that’s what keeps me focused. | | | | Cardi B at Rolling Loud, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., May 11, 2019.
(Thaddaeus McAdams/FilmMagic/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “We’re in an industry that has no memory. You make the hit of the moment, [then] someone else comes and does another. Artists come and go, and that’s my fear... that’s what keeps me focused.”
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| | rantnrave:// There's a long-running debate over whether it would be fairer for streaming companies to pay royalties based on which artists each individual user plays, rather than putting all users' money into a single pool to be shared by all artists based on their overall share of plays, as is the current norm. Under a so-called user-centric model, if a given subscriber plays nothing but LIL NAS X music in a given month, all of that subscriber's subscription money—minus the streaming company's cut—would go directly to Lil Nas X and his team. It's an open, unresolved debate, with supporters of the user-centric model arguing it would reward artists with passionate fanbases and benefit middle-class and long-tail artists in particular. Opponents like SPOTIFY's DANIEL EK say there's no reliable data showing that to be the case; many also say the costs of administering such a model would eat away at the royalty pool, leaving a little less for everybody. Outside the subscription world, of course, the user-centric model is how things generally work: If you buy a t-shirt, vinyl record or MP3, you're directly supporting one and only one artist. That's presumably how crowdfunding works, too: Pledge money to AMANDA PALMER and that's exactly where all your money will eventually go: to Amanda Palmer, minus administrative costs for the crowdfunding platform. Which is one of the most puzzling—and heartbreaking—aspects of the collapse of the PLEDGEMUSIC platform. How is it that a lot of the pledge money the company collected not only never got to the artists it was meant for, but seems to have disappeared altogether? Or, as music marketing veteran MICHAEL BRANDVOLD puts it in his MUSIC BIZ WEEKLY podcast: "If all of this money that was being pledged to artists was put into an escrow account that was kept safe, this wouldn't happen. The company could still go out of business because they just weren't making enough money to manage their operations, but the artists would have been able to get the money... that was just sitting there gathering interest." So, make that one more question for PledgeMusic as it heads into administration with millions of dollars of artists' money reportedly at stake. And another question: Is this laddered payout system fair? Is there a reason any other crowdfunding platform should copy it? Is there a reason artists should trust any other platform that does, going forward? And a question for artists: What will those other platforms have to do to secure your trust?... CHRIS STAPLETON and ED SHEERAN are among the musicians who've had small parts in GAME OF THRONES. But ELTON JOHN may have had the best musician cameo of all—inside the head of GOT composer RAMIN DJAWADI. Where do songs come from? Sometimes they comes from the musicians living somewhere in other musicians' heads, whether it's HALL & OATES inspiring LISA LOEB, ICE-T leading the way for MANNIE FRESH and JUVENILE, or, um, BILLIE EILISH's dentist inspiring his pop-star patient while straightening out her teeth. MusicSET: "Behind the Song, Vol. 10"... RIP DORIS DAY and EVA DE LA O. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Billboard |
| In the '80s and '90s, record labels routinely budgeted hundreds of thousands for video production, because an MTV hit meant automatic, lucrative CD sales. The math is different in the YouTube era, when online videos generate revenue via advertising. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The roots musician is inspired by the evolving legacy of the black string band. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| The planet’s biggest hip-hop festival celebrates its fifth year in Miami. | | |
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 | Liam Frost |
| I was first approached by PledgeMusic in 2009, shortly after I left Sony/Columbia with my second solo album. The company (and music-based crowdfunding as a whole) was in it’s infancy at that time and I was a belligerent young man who didn’t see the early potential in the platform. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Doris Day, who died on May 13 at age 97, was a pure talent of screen and song, whose golden-girl image belied her complicated artistry and career. | | |
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 | REDEF |
| Lisa Loeb channels Hall & Oates. "Game of Thrones" composer Ramin Djawadi channels Elton John. Mannie Fresh and Juvenile channel the Showboys and Ice-T. Billie Eilish channels her dentist. These and more stories and connections from the minds behind iconic songs. | | |
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 | Bloomberg |
| Jennifer Rie, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Analyst for Anti-trust Litigation discusses the latest anti-trust news including Spotify’s request for the European Union to investigate Apple for abuse of a dominant position and the Department of Justice’s approval of the CVS-Aetna deal. She speaks to Bloomberg’s June Grasso. | | |
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 | The Quietus |
| 20 years after it was first released we should now regard Moby's "Play" as the first album of the 21st Century, says Ed Gillet. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Brooding bands like Alice in Chains and Soundgarden validated the noisy discontent of teenagers everywhere. For me, they looked a lot like home. | | |
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| Billboard |
| The $2.6 billion-a-year global business of music marketing is booming, with benefits to artists at every level, their fans and consumer companies alike. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Many records -- selling at their highest rate for decades -- are PVC, which is to be banned in the EU. | | |
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 | 12tone |
| Cover songs are hard! You have to take a song that everyone already likes and transform it into something new without losing that thing that everyone liked in the first place. Doing a good cover of someone else's song takes a steady hand and a lot of skill, but doing it right can be hugely rewarding. | | |
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| The New Yorker |
| Holly Herndon’s collaborator for her new album, “PROTO,” is an artificial neural network that she taught to sing. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| The four-part series offers an in-depth look into the life and legacy of Staten Island’s finest. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| If you were a music lover in early 20th-century New York -- and in many other parts of the country, too -- chances are you loved the music of the French composer and pianist Cécile Chaminade. You had her piano miniatures or songs propped up on the piano for impromptu performances with friends. | | |
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 | Variety |
| How could two major music organizations manage to tick off an entire community of music industry people? ASCAP and BMI - the two largest performing-rights societies in the U.S., which represent the vast majority of film and TV composers and songwriters - will both hold their annual film-music awards dinners this Wednesday. | | |
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 | Fast Company |
| But will being part of Spotify put Anchor’s mission of “democratizing audio” in jeopardy? | | |
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 | i-D Magazine |
| Le Ren, Orville Peck, and Babeo Baggins explain what the genre means to them in 2019. | | |
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 | InsideHook |
| Remembering how and why the Piano Man got his hooks into me, on the week of his 70th birthday. | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| NPR changed its flagship news show’s music last week, and gave away something indelible. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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