I’ve found myself trying to play in my dreams, but it’s just like real life. | | | | Piano man: Maluma rehearsing for Wednesday's Billboard Latin Music Awards in Sunrise, Fla.
(Alexander Tamargo/Telemundo/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I’ve found myself trying to play in my dreams, but it’s just like real life.”
|
| |
| | rantnrave:// TIKTOK—which hasn't yet been sold, hasn't had its first actual date with ORACLE, hasn't stopped working in the US and hasn't departed in any tangible way from business as usual since it became the world's biggest business and technology story in August, does anyone remember August?—is continuing to pretty much run the music business as if it's no big deal. The #1 song and #1 album in the US, by 24KGOLDN and POP SMOKE? Everything and something, respectively, to do with TikTok, according to this all-TikTok edition of Billboard's weekly pop chart conversation, "Five Burning Questions." Your new favorite indie-pop singer CLAIRO's first appearance on the Billboard Hot 100? TikTok. Seventy-one-year old ex-FLEETWOOD MAC guitarist LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM riding a horse while swigging cranberry juice to a track from a 43-year-old record that's the seventh best selling album in the US? Do you have to ask? Like the best Top 40 radio stations, TikTok doesn't particularly care what genre or gender or generation your song is; it just cares that it's catchy and that its users like—and can use—the hook. That one song from Fleetwood Mac's RUMOURS? Yes, please. Every song on DOJA CAT's HOT PINK? Yup, those too. The artist royalties are notoriously not so great but, as someone might have told you at some point in your journey, and maybe you spilled a bottle of cranberry juice on them when they did, think of the exposure. When a TikTok user went viral recently with a MAC DEMARCO clip with an unauthorized edit, the service offered to take the clip down. "And we said, 'Absolutely not,'" OMNIAN MUSIC GROUP's MATT BRINKWORTH told reporter ELI ENIS. We may be at the exact moment where the Wild West rules of the service are in philosophical sync with the buttoned-up needs of the lawyers and label executives back East. Can that last? An ominous prediction from Billboard's ANDREW UNTERBERGER: "As labels and artists figure out how better to position their singles for proper TikTok consumption, I think we could definitely see albums with four or five singles showing up on the service almost one at a time, like they would have as music videos on MTV 20-30 years earlier." That's just about the worst idea for an app I've ever heard. Please don't let it happen, Oracle, or TikTok, or WALMART, or whoever's in charge next month... But not all apps. Here are record companies dropping DMCA bombs on TWITCH... Your semiannual reminder: SPOTIFY doesn't have per-song royalty rates. Nor do its competitors... Award winners: BAD BUNNY (Artist of the Year) and DADDY YANKEE (Hot Latin Song of the Year) at the BILLBOARD LATIN MUSIC AWARDS, and CARRIE UNDERWOOD (Video of the Year) and GABBY BARRETT (Breakthrough Video) at the CMT MUSIC AWARDS... HENRY THREADGILL, ALBERT "TOOTIE" HEATH, TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON and PHIL SCHAAP are the 2021 NEA JAZZ MASTERS... After months of frustration, TOOL and JUDAS PRIEST fans on Long Island get the pandemic ticket refunds they were owed.. RIP indie-rock bassist/producer CHET "JR" WHITE of GIRLS, experimental jazz trumpeter TOSHINORI KONDO, Philadelphia International Records in-house bassist JIMMIE WILLIAMS and opera singer turned teacher RUTH FALCON. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
|
|
 | Mixmag |
| DeForrest Brown, Jr. surveys the last three decades of the dance music industry to figure out what went wrong for Black artists. | | |
|
 | The New York Times |
| The pathbreaking musician reveals the health issues that make it unlikely he will ever again perform in public. | | |
|
 | The Daily Beast |
| For decades, an alarming number of cold-case disappearances and killings have shared one common link: the victims were Deadheads. The new podcast “Dead and Gone” investigates. | | |
|
 | Trapital |
| This is a recording of our webinar discussion on the latest music strategies from Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, and Tencent. | | |
|
 | Vulture |
| “I kept recording, and I accidentally did another album.” | | |
|
 | Loud And Quiet |
| 40 years on from his last DIY solo album, Paul McCartney is finally releasing McCartney III. In his first interview about the project, he told us about its themes, how it helped him get through lockdown, and why it's arriving now. | | |
|
 | The Concert Promoters Association |
| The impact of the pandemic is felt at every level of the business: in grassroots venues; local communities that lose their regular fundraising events; the suspension of concerts, tours and residencies; organisers forced to cancel their annual festival; arenas and stadia that shutter or pivot to become NHS facilities. Overall, UK live music income will fall 81% in 2020. | | |
|
 | Variety |
| In a world where a song as raunchy as Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's "WAP" is dominating the airwaves, it's hard to believe that 30 years ago, the potty-mouthed Florida rap group 2 Live Crew was fighting obscenity charges in a federal appeals court. | | |
|
 | Song Exploder |
| El-P and Killer Mike break down the song “JU$T,” which features guest vocals from their frequent collaborator, Zack de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine, and guest vocals from Pharrell Williams. | | |
|
 | VICE |
| Synchronization rights? Mechanical royalties?? We got you. | | |
|
 | Esquire |
| The legendary Led Zeppelin guitarist has nothing left to prove. But when he picks up his instrument, the ideas keep on coming. | | |
|
| Variety |
| He has been enormously popular since his career began in the early ‘80s — he’s estimated to have sold more than 75 million albums worldwide — yet he’s actually more cool now than he’s ever been before. | | |
|
 | Kotaku |
| It's finally happening: Twitch is cracking down in a big way on the use of copyrighted music in streams. | | |
|
 | The Guardian |
| New initiatives such as Girl & Repertoire and Swim are helping young people -- particularly women -- overturn the myth of the tortured artist. | | |
|
 | Genius |
| His new album ‘Burden Of Proof’ may be his crowning achievement, but heavy is the head. | | |
|
 | Stereogum |
| "Oh, no! No! Please, God, help me!" That's Ozzy Osbourne howling on Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath," from the album Black Sabbath. "Black Sabbath" is the first song from Sabbath's 1970 debut album, which means it's a big-bang moment for the entire existence of metal. | | |
|
 | The Song Sommelier |
| According to a growing community of audiophiles, we are all being short-changed by the current wave of digital music. Since the first appearance of the MP3 in the late 90s, we have never looked back in terms of music's abundance and availability, yet in the glut, we traded off access to the music with how that music itself sounds. | | |
|
 | Ludwig van Toronto |
| This year marks Ludwig van Beethoven's 250th birthday. Though some of his creations have been overexposed, there are still others waiting to be discovered. | | |
|
| Variety |
| "I no longer have a manager. I cannot be managed." Those were the words of Kanye West on Twitter roughly two and a half years ago, already deep into his continuing run as one of pop music's most contentious and unpredictable figures. Ever since then, Abou "Bu" Thiam has been trying to prove his star client wrong. | | |
|
 | Twenty Thousand Hertz |
| For hundreds of years, composers have been using a specific four-note melody to evoke death. It's appeared in dozens of famous movies, and you probably never even realized it. But once you hear it, you'll start noticing it everywhere. Featuring musicologist Alex Ludwig and Strong Songs Host Kirk Hamilton. | | |
|
 | YouTube |
| | | | Gerardo Ortiz and Gente de Zona |
| | | | |
|
|
| © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group |
|
|
