When you have great artists... what you do is you give 'em the keys and you say 'drive.' | | | | Fresh, man: Ugly God at XXL's 2017 Freshman Class concert, New York, June 28.
(Johnny Nunez/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “When you have great artists... what you do is you give 'em the keys and you say 'drive.'”
| - | Jimmy Iovine, "The Defiant Ones" |
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| | rantnrave:// I'm fascinated by the SPOTIFY fake-artist scandal, which was exposed in August 2016 by MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE's TIM INGHAM (citing "multiple cast-iron sources") and then lay dormant until a week ago, when VULTURE's ADAM K. RAYMOND revived the allegation in the last four paragraphs of a 47-paragraph story about the ways artists and labels try to game the streaming-music system. The charge? Spotify is paying producers to create tracks using fake artist names and seeding popular electronic playlists with them. Raymond's primary source? The nearly year-old MBW story. The scandal—the scandalous nature of which is a tad fuzzy—might have gone back into dormancy if Spotify hadn't responded to Raymond with a blanket denial, which seems to have ticked off Ingham and sent him back into investigation mode. On Sunday, he named 50 artists who each have millions of Spotify plays and who he is reasonably certain don't exist. On Monday, he reported that at least eight of those 50 artists have connections to—or are—the Swedish production duo QUIZ & LAROSSI. Ingham's online research is great. The Swedish streaming company, if he's right, is paying flat fees to two local producers to create chill instrumental tracks under a variety of pseudonyms and giving them favored spots in some of its most popular playlists. But does that save Spotify money? The company doesn't have a per-play rate, and has to pay out 70 percent of its income [big asterisk goes here] in royalties no matter what. But what if the company is stealthily turning itself into a record label, giving its own artists favored treatment and essentially paying royalties to itself? Are other labels and artists shut out of a major avenue of exposure? Do Quiz & Larossi ever recoup? Spotify, I would like to stress, denies all of this. And is this even the concern? Ingham keeps coming back to the word "fake." It matters, he says, that not only are the tracks recorded under pseudonyms, but that we aren't told they're pseudonyms. That we're being duped. But what if we are? Pop (and non-pop) producers, writers and artists have been hiding the modes and processes of production from us for decades, sometimes with a pseudonym, sometimes with a lie, sometimes by hiding, sometimes by being coy. Does Quiz & Larossi's authorship of DEEP WATCH's "ENDLESS FRAGMENTS OF TIME" matter any more than TAYLOR SWIFT's authorship of "THIS IS WHAT YOU CAME FOR" or PRINCE's creation of THE TIME's first album? Does it deceive us? Hurt us? Lessen our enjoyment of an AMBIENT CHILL playlist on a cool summer evening?... Oh, and of course: "What the Potentially Fake Artists on Spotify Actually Sound Like"... How a border adjustment tax could affect the price of STRATOCASTERS... How not to invest in your kids' future... AEG apparently gobbling up another NEW YORK space. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Music x Tech x Future |
| I’ve previously explained how Instagram’s Snapchat-cloned Stories functionality represents a great marketing opportunity for artists. Now I want to signify its broader importance to music, and social media in general. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The idea that any media organization could be effectively bullied into shifting its mission from journalistic to promotional is unnerving. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Thanks to a new crop of talented singers and an embrace of Southern rap, the venerable label has once again become one worth watching. | | |
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 | Forbes |
| Perhaps the Guns N’ Roses Not in This Lifetime tour is a strange place to look for inspiration for a story about tax, but it got me thinking about the controversial border-adjustment tax proposal. Specifically, about the potential impact of the tax on two unique retail products: guitars and flowers. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| In a recently released letter he penned from prison, the hip-hop legend wrote to Madonna explaining that he broke up with her because she was white. But it’s not that simple. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| One production duo in Stockholm is responsible for quite a lot of these songs. | | |
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 | NPR |
| For one of rock's biggest cult bands, sticking together for 27 years has had its challenges, both musical and personal. But frontman Hexum says 311's just grateful to its famously loyal fans. | | |
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 | National Endowment for the Arts |
| Taking Note: The Remarkable Growth in Consumer Spending on Opera Performances | | |
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 | Salon |
| The number-one hit that straddled downtown New York's two most electrifying subcultures. (Excerpted from "Blondie's Parallel Lines" by Kembrew McLeod .) | | |
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 | TIME |
| Will my kids be selling off my prized vinyl collection for $1 apiece one day in the future? Is my $40 semi-limited edition Father John Misty double LP going to someday cost the equivalent of a pack of gum or whatever future kids chew? | | |
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 | 1A |
| Marley lived a life of art, inspiration, and hard and fast adherence to his principles and spirituality. While he only lived to the age of 36, Marley and his music inspired a wave of devotees who fought for freedom, as well as a few enemies who wanted him dead. | | |
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 | GoldFlakePaint |
| As a survivor, who found joy in Kesha’s music when I was also dealing with some difficult things, it makes me emotional to see her succeed and finally be allowed to release music. | | |
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 | Variety |
| There is a powerful law causing quiet yet uneasy waves in the music industry, and it’s something the record companies would rather recording artists not know about. | | |
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 | The New Statesman |
| There’s darkness all around, but music feels like light. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, whose family is close to the Russian president, requested the meeting. | | |
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 | burning ambulance |
| Watching the Borbetomagus documentary "A Pollock of Sound" as a longtime fan, it’s great. It feels like the band is getting its due after 40 years of steady, unrelenting pursuit of a 100% internally defined aesthetic. | | |
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 | The Muse |
| Amid a sea of sensible men's polos and brightly hued khaki shorts, a huge crowd of mostly teenage fans crushed against each other for a glimpse of bright red hair. | | |
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 | Adam Neely |
| What do 200k notes in 6 seconds sound like? No, the result isn’t Black Midi - it’s way cooler than that. if you use the right math, you can create recursive melodies that rely upon the fact that your ears are incredible sophisticated judges of frequency ratios. | | |
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 | Charlie Rose |
| An interview and performance from Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Jason Isbell. | | |
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 | Red Bull Music Academy |
| The author of "Energy Flash" and "Retromania" looks at some of glam’s key artists and releases. | | |
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| © Copyright 2017, The REDEF Group |
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