The randomness of [TikTok] takes a lot of the power away from the labels. | | | | Ozuna getting his kicks on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," Dec. 2, 2019.
(Randy Holmes/Walt Disney Television/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “The randomness of [TikTok] takes a lot of the power away from the labels.”
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| | rantnrave:// Did even one person at any of the A-list music media brands in the new joint venture that pretty much ceases competition in Hollywood journalism raise their hand and suggest that naming the venture PMRC might not be the best idea? Or has everyone who was alive in 1985 already been forced out? Or are they just trolling us? Either way, the letters that once stood for a) music censorship, b) poor lyric comprehension skills and c) hating pop now stand for the combined forces of the PENSKE MEDIA CORPORATION, aka PMC, and MRC, which originally stood for MEDIA RIGHTS CAPITAL. Their properties include Penske's ROLLING STONE, VARIETY and MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE and MRC's BILLBOARD, the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER and VIBE. Penske, which owns several other titles, will run the joint publishing venture, about which details are somewhat thin—thank the WRAP and the LA TIMES, who are still able to report on this alphabet soup from the outside, for what we do know—while MRC will oversee a separate joint venture involving live events and film and TV production based on stories and from all those brands. (MRC owns DICK CLARK PRODUCTIONS and a piece of A24.) It would be a massive understatement to point out that these are not good times for the media, financially speaking, and the pandemic has been particularly hard on entertainment trades, which rely on advertising for the kinds of film and music projects that the pandemic has put on ice. There have been editorial shakeups recently at both companies, and shortly after the ventures were announced the Wrap reported that DEANNA BROWN is stepping down as president of the Billboard–Hollywood Reporter Media Group. The continuing consolidation is as understandable as it is troublesome. Several of these magazines are also, obviously, major sources for this newsletter, and Rolling Stone, Variety and Billboard in particular have all upped their editorial game in the face of these struggles. Their music industry reporting in the past couple years has been invaluable. Here's hoping the joint venture encourages more of that and doesn't in fact kill the built-in competition between them. I'd love for the first half of the first sentence in this rant to turn out wrong, and I'd like to think if the original PMRC tried to remake itself for this era of "WAP," "THE BOX" and "ROCKSTAR," those sites would be doing their best to scoop each other, and keep the rest of us informed, every day... "Imagine a bank lending you money to buy a house and then when you’ve repaid that mortgage, them telling you they still own it." That's KANYE WEST, or perhaps someone in Kanye West's employ, explaining why he's trying to remake the music industry, 30 or 40 tweets at a time, in a Q&A with PMRC's Billboard that was "conducted by text, through an intermediary, but West’s identity was verified by video," whatever that means. Whoever typed that sentence isn't the first to use that analogy, but that doesn't mean it isn't an effective one. Like a pop singer borrowing/repurposing ideas from lesser-known artists and subcultures, West's contribution to this decades-old artists' struggle may not be so much coming up with new ideas as persuasively synthesizing and resurfacing old ones. That's my two Kanye cents for today. I'm a little puzzled, though, that one of his allies in the struggle to make sure "every artist owns their masters" is MERCK MERCURIADIS, whose HIPGNOSIS SONGS FUND is in the business of getting artists to divest of their own IP... TIKTOK will not disappear, even temporarily, without a fight. And if it does disappear, even temporarily, its business could be crippled forever, says the company, which is asking a federal judge to stop the US government from blocking distribution of the app starting this Sunday... STORMZY, DUA LIPA, MOSES BOYD and ANNA MEREDITH are among the finalists for this year's MERCURY PRIZE, which will be awarded tonight on BBC ONE's THE ONE SHOW... RIP JULIETTE GRÉCO and WS "FLUKE" HOLLAND... And pro wrestler JOSEPH "ANIMAL" LAURINAITIS, one half of the ROAD WARRIORS, who used to step into the ring to "the greatest-ever wrestling entrance song." | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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 | The New Yorker |
| We overlook the environmental damage of listening to songs online. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| TikTok has become the single most important platform for generating new pop-music hits. But can it help mint stars, or just one-hit wonders? | | |
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 | dot.LA |
| Super Hi-Fi's AI transports the skills of a trained radio DJ to digital music playlists. Its leaders envision a new audio listening experience, where everyone has a personalized, curated playlist, with artful, AI-generated sequences and layers of music, voice clips, and branded messaging that drives new revenues to the music industry | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| There's no Griselda Records starter pack, no canonical classic to lure you in. That's not how the Buffalo rap crew does business. Instead, there are whole new albums showing up every week or two, offering more ancestrally brutalist head-nod street-rap, more granular talk about drug sales and bullet fragments, more lightly refracted boom-bap beats, more samples of old pro-wrestling promos. | | |
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 | DJ Mag |
| Baile funk is a phenomena of Black Brazilian music. But despite a huge fanbase and cultural influence, funk is often criminalised in Brazil because of its origins in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Raphael Tsavkko Garcia explores the history of the baile funk scene to discover why it’s so celebrated -- and criminalised. | | |
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 | Variety |
| Sylvia Rhone smashed the C-suite ceiling long before such buzz words as diversity and gender parity came into the lexicon. | | |
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 | XXL |
| Twenty years ago, Jonathan Shapiro learned a valuable lesson during his time as a manager for Foxy Brown and Nappy Roots: the music industry is difficult. | | |
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 | Song Exploder |
| When your private life is public, how do you write a song about something as personal as heartbreak? | | |
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| Los Angeles Times |
| Rolling Stone, Variety, the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard will be joined under a new company operated by Penske, while MRC will run another venture to create film and television content. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| “You have to adapt,” he tells Billboard. “You can’t have old rules for new games. No other business in the world would suggest you don’t adapt to a completely new supply chain and income sources.” | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| In 1965, two young fans heard the jazz giant play at a San Francisco club and had a religious epiphany. Their church is an idiosyncratic and joyful blend of devotion to the divine -- and to jazz. | | |
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 | Qobuz |
| Qobuz Live and Rhino present a livestream panel discussion on John Coltrane’s groundbreaking 1960 album "Giant Steps," celebrating the album’s 60th anniversary with a panel of four leading saxophonists, representing successive generations of jazz talent shaped by Coltrane’s influence. | | |
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 | Magnetic Magazine |
| We chat with acid house originator DJ Pierre about discrimination in dance music, the first time twisting the knobs on a 303 and more. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The nation’s largest performing arts organization, shut by the coronavirus pandemic, sends a chilling signal that American cultural life is still far from resuming. | | |
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 | The Philadelphia Inquirer |
| The report detailed accounts of sexual assault from acclaimed violinist Lara St. John as well as separate claims of abuse by about two dozen other Curtis students over decades. | | |
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| Variety |
| On stage, Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford is the self-proclaimed "metal god" but off, he's a mere mortal, and ready to confess to all of his sins in a new autobiography. | | |
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 | Complex |
| Ahead of her sold-out show at POP Montreal, the Polaris-shortlisted trans rapper speaks about how the metal community has embraced her but Quebec won't. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| The lensman behind "Sign o’ the Times" talks about some of his most iconic Prince shots. | | |
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| DJ Mag |
| UK label Champion Records is celebrating their 35th year with a series of remixes of classic releases. The label's best-known hit is Robin S' ‘Show Me Love’, produced by Swedish master mixer Stonebridge. Harold Heath caught up with Stoney, Champion A&R Paul Oakenfold, and Robin herself to learn the story of one of dance music’s most iconic songs. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| What better reprieve could there be during 2020 than a reality competition show with an undeniably cursed aura? | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | Conway the Machine ft. Dej Loaf |
| | From "From King to a God," out now on Griselda. |
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| © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group |
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