You have a hit record when all clocks [click] at the exact same time. It’s a combination of a good video, support from the DSPs, radio helps, and the artist being interactive with their fanbase and so on. It’s all continuing to give the record legs. | | | | When we all wear masks, where do we go? Billie Eilish at the Billboard Music Awards, Los Angeles, October 2020.
(Kevin Winter/Getty Images) | | | | | | “You have a hit record when all clocks [click] at the exact same time. It’s a combination of a good video, support from the DSPs, radio helps, and the artist being interactive with their fanbase and so on. It’s all continuing to give the record legs.”
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| | rantnrave:// The going price for a leaked or stolen hip-hop track, according to a 17-year-old hacker who, if you choose to believe this VICE interview, sometimes steals them, sometimes buys them, sometimes re-leaks them, sometimes keeps them for himself and sometimes fences them: US$100 to $200 for "smaller underground artists" like ROBB BANKS or WARHOL.SS, $300 to $600 for "bigger artists like SWAE LEE, LIL YACHTY, OFFSET, people like that," and up to $2,000 for "really hyped up artists" like LIL UZI VERT and PLAYBOI CARTI. Buyers tend to be groups of fans pooling their cash "because not a lot of people have thousands of dollars to spend on songs." The transactions generally happen via the messaging app DISCORD. This is all, in case it wasn't clear, illegal. And it's unclear what a fact-checker would do with this information. But I'm fascinated by the economics, which sound simultaneously cheap—does Offset have friends and associates hungry enough to pawn leftover or unreleased tracks and all they're asking for is a few hundred bucks?—and crazy expensive—are people really pooling two grand to hear possibly discarded Lil Uzi Vert tracks? Is there a potential legit business in this? Could Warhol.SS do this on purpose and find 20 or 25 buyers for every discard on his laptop? Could Uzi find 100 pods of fans with a couple thousand bucks per track? Are there managers who could monetize this, or who would want to? File under terrible business ideas, probably. I've got tons more if anyone's looking. The highest price reported by the hacker, by the way, is $12,000 collected by a group of fans to buy the JUICE WRLD song "REASON," but then somebody else leaked the song and the sale went out the window... Better, maybe, to license your music to SNAPCHAT or TWITCH, where you can find more than 100 fans in less time than it took you to read this sentence. The per-user pay can't be very good but maybe it adds up... Better still: Get your managers to give you a few hundred thousand shares of stock and then go public. Stock in BIG HIT ENTERTAINMENT nearly doubled in its first day of trading in South Korea, leaving the agency worth US$7.6 billion at the end of the day Thursday and each member of BTS a reported $21 million richer. Dynamite... In the negative column, meanwhile, are the promoters of the CHAINSMOKERS' pandemic-defying charity concert in Southampton, N.Y., in July. GOV. ANDREW CUOMO announced a $20,000 fine for the promoters and took away the Town of Southampton's right to approve public gatherings without state approval... POST MALONE's net worth increased by nine trophies at Wednesday's BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS, which were televised partly live, with no audience, from the DOLBY THEATRE in Los Angeles, with lots of socially distanced and/or masked live performances. Performers alone onstage was a common theme, as were calls to vote. A "dispiriting" night, according to the LA Times' SUZY EXPOSITO. Last month's ACM AWARDS, which mixed live and pre-recorded performances from three empty Nashville venues, is the only awards show, so far, that's figured out how to do this in a pandemic. Host KELLY CLARKSON ended Billboard's night by rolling a cart with all those statuettes, including the Top Artist award, toward Post Malone, "Covid style"... RIP SAINT DOG and HERBERT KRETZMER. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| Propkers22 explains how he gets unreleased tracks and sells them for thousands. | | |
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| Getting behind artists like Lil Uzi Vert and Jack Harlow, Generation Now has already developed a proven track record for grooming global stars. And what the label has managed to accomplish in 2020 alone could be a case study for future labels. | | |
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| A companion to the “Anthology of American Folk Music” had already been pressed when Lance and April Ledbetter realized they couldn’t live with releasing racist songs. | | |
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| Big Hit Entertainment’s shares soared on the first trading day since going public, valuing the South Korean agency at US$10 billion. | | |
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| Eighteen months ago, 24kGoldn was a business major finishing freshman year at USC. Today, he has a No. 1 hit with "Mood" and can afford to lease his own car. | | |
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| Remember the good ol’ days of 2019 when Seattle music lovers were scrambling to save just one cherished club from closing? One industry-crumbling pandemic later, venue operators are warning that without a financial lifeline, a wave of independent music halls won’t make it to the other side. But a new organization hopes to help. | | |
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| The pandemic has impacted all corners of the Boston arts scene. This week, WBUR's arts reporters are examining the effects on institutions, large and small. This is the second story in our series. | | |
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| Change is difficult, but it's necessary for survival. | | |
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| Spotify has a huge catalogue of licensed music, is one of the biggest podcast distribution platforms, and has its own tool (Anchor) for creating podcasts. | | |
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| On the occasion of their first-ever collab, a filmed version of the stage show "American Utopia," we asked the seasoned iconoclasts to tell us how they’re getting by--and how we might, too. | | |
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| Is it time to retire the term? | | |
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| The 39-year-old indie rapper’s therapist told him, “Write your feelings.” So he did, on the new LP “Anime, Trauma and Divorce.” | | |
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| That's the question we're asking, answering, and passing along in Episode 5 of Soundfly's new podcast, "Themes and Variation." | | |
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| During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the UK's 1600-plus nightclubs and live music venues were facing indefinite closure before the government stepped in with a grant to keep them open. The pandemic hit the industry hard, and it may take months-years even-for normality to fully resume. | | |
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| COVID-19 has rapidly impacted the music industry — leaving thousands out of work. The government dumbfounded many when it was suggested that those from an industry that contributed £5.2bn to the economy in 2018 retrain and find different jobs. Is the government's response to the pandemic causing permanent damage to the music industry? | | |
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| The aesthetic consequences of all those rappers moving to Calabasas McMansions. | | |
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| If only all of these hundreds of millions of dollars were flowing back to artists, rather than pension fund-backed owners and other deep-pocketed investors. | | |
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| Austin Mahone, who managed to regain ownership of his recordings with Pitbull's help, shares his advice for aspiring artists with major label offers. | | |
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| Appealing to both casual viewers and obsessive fans, the Netflix documentary brings nuance and care to the K-pop discussion. | | |
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| Flaming Lips’ leader on COVID, community, and promoting pet causes on social media. | | |
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| We've talked a lot about podcasting, so where are we going with the future of audio, more broadly? Can we borrow from the present and future of video (e.g., TikTok) to see what's next in audio; can we borrow from the past of audio (i.e., radio) to see what's next for audio experiences (more blending of music, talk, podcasting)? | | |
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| Bands like Duran Duran, Culture Club, the Eurythmics and the Human League dominated the tube-waves, to much chagrin and gnashing of teeth from true rock & rollers. Dylan Jones’ new oral history, "Sweet Dreams," reconsiders that era and answers the question: Was it really as bad as all that? | | |
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| | | | | BandoKay and Double Lz feat. Abra Cadabra |
| | A UK drill tribute to rapper BandoKay's father, shot and killed by police in Tottenham in 2011, which led to what became known as the London Riots. The sample is Coldplay's "Trouble." |
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