Young men on the rooftops changed their tune; spit and fiddled with the mouthpiece for a while and when they put it back in and blew out their cheeks it was just like the light of that day, pure and steady and kind of kind. You would have thought everything had been forgiven the way they played. | | | | Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday posing circa 1939.
(JP Jazz Archive/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Young men on the rooftops changed their tune; spit and fiddled with the mouthpiece for a while and when they put it back in and blew out their cheeks it was just like the light of that day, pure and steady and kind of kind. You would have thought everything had been forgiven the way they played.”
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| | rantnrave:// Payola, it still exists. In case you weren't aware. That's the message of this well-reported ROLLING STONE piece in which ELIAS LEIGHT talks to several sources in and around the label/radio ecosystem and comes up with a menu of current options. Between $10,000 and $50,000 to break a record in the rhythmic format, with the latter price netting around 800 radio plays. Up that to $100,000 to $125,000 to make a dent at urban radio, and even more (exact amount unspecified) to go pop. This is all done through indie promoters (meet the new boss, same as the old boss), who pay their way into close relationships with radio programmers and who have figured out the necessary workarounds to payola laws and to agreements the major labels made with New York Attorney General ELIOT SPITZER a decade ago. "Now everything goes to LLCs and cash apps," urban radio vet PAUL PORTER tells Leight. Not everyone does it. Radio giant CUMULUS says it has "a strict 'no independent record promoters' policy" and IHEARTMEDIA says it doesn't "typically" work with indies; Leight's sources back them up. But not a single person Leight talked to even tried to suggest it doesn't happen. Everyone knows. "I don’t think there’s any way somebody could have a hit at radio without [paying several indie promoters]," a label promoter says. This is apparently called "the toll" within radio promo circles. The goal is to goose a record up the charts and try to drive clicks and playlist adds on streaming services. (Not explored here, unfortunately: payola at the streaming services themselves. If you're trying to get a SPOTIFY curator's attention, paying an indie promoter to bribe a radio programmer seems a strangely roundabout route, doesn't it?) There are tells: songs that get most of their spins in overnight hours, and songs that are scoring high on number of spins but low on total audience reached. Small-market stations apparently are attractive—and willing—targets. The only real losers here, as always, are the labels and artists who don't pay up. And, perhaps, all of us with radios. In other words, nothing new to see here... The influential METALSUCKS website says no to pornogrind ("I am sorry: we get it now") and says of more mainstream metal bands who traffic in misogynistic lyrics: "we need to have a discussion about it." Kudos... TONI MORRISON wrote with the rhythms and textures of jazz, sometimes consciously but usually because that's just how she wrote. I love this quote, to the DETROIT FREE PRESS in 2005, when her opera MARGARET GARNER (she wrote the libretto) was premiering: "Nobody remembers this anymore, but people used to sing in the street. The postman used to sing. There would be someone singing in the next yard and someone else would answer them back." This is, obviously, a world worth remembering. Here's a suggested playlist for her Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork, BELOVED, which is worth a re-read for multiple reasons right now... RIP HENRI BELOLO, LIZZIE GREY, DJ KAOS, JOE RIGBY and PATEN LOCKE. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Fifteen years ago, New York's attorney general investigated pay-for-play in the radio industry. Insiders say the practice lives on - in a more sophisticated form. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| ASAP Rocky's assault trial thrust him into Sweden's already-volatile debates around crime and immigration. | | |
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 | SPIN |
| Inside the world of Ty Dolla $ign, the Kanye West and Drake collaborator sitting at the nexus of pop music, whose new album is unlike anything released this year. | | |
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 | Variety |
| When you hear the six-note passage at the center of Katy Perry 's "Dark Horse" played alongside the one from the 2008 song "Joyful Noise" by Christian rapper Flame, it's natural to assume that the melodies are nearly identical. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Being born in the ’90s means the 1969 festival feels like the husk of a dream, the musician Lucy Dacus writes. | | |
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 | No Depression |
| "Red Dead Redemption 2," the hit Western-inspired video game from Rockstar Games, is easily the most beautiful video game I’ve ever played. I stop to look at vast mountain vistas, then ride off to explore them on horseback. I ford storming rivers, worrying that I might lose my horse, or myself, over the rapids. I hunt elk in damp forests as sunbeams ripple through the trees. | | |
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 | Bloomberg Quint |
| Deal will value Universal Music at 30 billion euros ($33.6 billion). | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| As she readies her most ambitious album yet, the relentless pop provocateur is done with trying to please everyone: “I need to just own my own f***ing s*** finally.” | | |
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 | Interview Magazine |
| We spoke with the two surviving members of the Beastie Boys about how the perception of their sophomore album has changed thirty years later. | | |
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 | The Associated Press |
| Federal prosecutors secure convictions more than 90% of the time, whereas their state counterparts’ conviction rate hovers around 65%, court records show. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| The Ohio musician, who died in 1977 at 24, was a member of the influential bands Rocket From the Tombs and Pere Ubu. A new boxed set collects his recordings. | | |
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 | Paper |
| How the rapper's formula for success continues to ignite the internet. | | |
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 | The Music Network |
| Nathan Jolly on whether a different payment structure could benefit musicians. | | |
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 | Esquire |
| We live in a time where all things eventually become bad. Let Tool remain sacred. | | |
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 | Highsnobiety |
| As Motörhead announces a new career-spanning reissue series, we look at their unlikely sonic, visual, and even grammatical interventions into fashion. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| MBW analysis shows that global major label streaming revenue growth slowed by 19.1% YoY in the first six months of this year. | | |
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 | Cosmopolitan |
| The infamous Australian rapper is here to claim her second chance. (Her sophomore full-length studio album, "In My Defense," dropped July 19.) She knows what you’re thinking. And she doesn’t care. It’s called growth. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| The prolific and beloved musician, born Gregory Shorter Jr., died last week at the age of 40 -- but not before helping found a musical movement in his hometown that has since spread worldwide. | | |
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 | MetalSucks |
| Dayton mass shooter Connor Betts was in a pornogrind band and had a violent past while identifying as leftist. As metalheads, what do we do next? | | |
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 | Garden & Gun |
| Now on their farewell tour, Lynyrd Skynyrd band members reflect on Southern rock’s most requested song. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | Kathleen Battle/André Previn/Orchestra of St. Luke's |
| | From "Honey and Rue," a song cycle by André Previn and Toni Morrison. |
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