The streaming age has [generated] all this success, but what you don’t get in that plays and playlists world is: Who is the artist? What’s their story? | | | | Marquis Hill performing with Makaya McCraven at the Barcelona Jazz Festival, Nov. 7, 2019.
(Jordi Vidal/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “The streaming age has [generated] all this success, but what you don’t get in that plays and playlists world is: Who is the artist? What’s their story?”
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| | rantnrave:// Are subscription music services a little too safe, comfortable, boring? "When one company innovates, all of the others [launch a similar] innovation," laments WARNER MUSIC GROUP CEO STEVE COOPER. "What that has done, in certain respects, has been to commoditize the delivery of music." Random case in point: Here's APPLE MUSIC trumpeting REPLAY, a feature that lets subscribers hear their favorite music of 2019 or any year, which reads as a mildly improved copy of something SPOTIFY already does, or, from another angle, a mildly inferior copy of Spotify's ever-growing suite of personalized algorithmic playlists. Not to pick on Apple. Everybody copies the best of everybody else. And it's hard to believe a lot of subscribers, or any subscribers, are going to switch services just for a playlist like that. Cooper told an audience at the PALEY CENTER in New York that streaming consumers need more choice: price structure, sound quality, genres, etc. I'd add that even if they all have more or less the same catalog of tracks—which, as I've repeatedly argued, they probably should—there are tons of options for differentiation in editorial, programming, product, social, etc. And in how those tools are used to create different kinds of communities. What are dance/electronic fans looking for? What do hip-hop fans want? Metal fans? Jazz fans? They shop—or shopped—at different record stores. Why should they subscribe to the same streaming service? I have no idea if BYTEDANCE, the Chinese company behind TIKTOK, will crack the Spotify/Apple/AMAZON/TENCENT stranglehold with the streaming service that the FINANCIAL TIMES says it could launch as soon as December (paywall) in markets including India, Indonesia and Brazil. But give it credit for reportedly designing a service with built-in TIKTOK-like features and a low price point, both of which might suggest a specific (and potentially large) community of users. "The music market," writes analyst MARK MULLIGAN, "needs Bytedance to do something transformational... something that builds on the ethos and use cases of TikTok rather than becoming a cookie-cutter 'all you can eat' service." I'd kind of like to see both: an all-you-can-eat back-end and a highly differentiated front-end. Open to anyone, but made with someone particular in mind... BIG MACHINE, which initially said it didn't have the power to prevent TAYLOR SWIFT from performing on this weekend's AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS, announced on Monday it had "come to terms on a licensing agreement" that will allow her to do exactly that. Read that sentence again. BILLBOARD's STEVE KNOPPER has a good explainer of the complicated rights in play here, while the LA TIMES' RANDY LEWIS zooms out to a deeper and potentially more controversial issue that Swift subtly raised in her latest crusade: the role of private equity in the music business... What happens, and what are the consequences, when a magazine like, say, NME switches to online-only publication? A lot, it turns out... GRAMMY nominations to be announced at 8:20 am today... BILLBOARD's Digital Power Players (shoutout our old friend NICK LEHMAN)... OXFORD AMERICAN's music issue is here; the focus is on the music of South Carolina. This essay (and response) by an artist who refused to license a track to the magazine is an important read... CARDI B answers VOGUE's 73 questions... Songs that shook America: QUEEN LATIFAH's LADIES FIRST... BURNA BOY at the TINY DESK... Philly rapper AR-AB convicted of running a violent drug ring... RIP TONY CALHOUN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| The streaming company's acquisitions may have to change shape. | | |
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 | VICE |
| Acts like The Replacements, Pearl Jam, and now R.E.M. have decided to tinker with the past. But they’re not rewriting history--just presenting it from a new angle. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Bands on the format are facing a crisis between airplay and streaming consumption. | | |
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 | Sean Carroll |
| Grimes (who currently goes by c, the symbol for the speed of light) is an electronic artist who writes, produces, performs, and sings her own songs. We dig into how music is made in the modern world, but also go well beyond that, into artificial intelligence and the nature of digital/virtual/online personae. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The musician and poet released “You Want It Darker” 19 days before his death in 2016. His son, Adam, finished more songs from those sessions for a posthumous album. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Two music industry leaders gave rare and insightful interviews that highlight the evolution of the music business and its future challenges. | | |
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 | Oxford American |
| In defense of independent music’s survival, I’ve set hard limits to defend myself from all volunteer work “opportunities,” including interviews, fund-raisers, benefit shows, educational inquiries, and, you know, writing more music so a streaming-service staff can generate six-digit salaries. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| Surrounded by death and dreading the idea of promoting an album, Mike Posner decided to walk across the United States. The experience ended up changing the way he sees his country and himself. | | |
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 | HotNewHipHop |
| Abe Batshon speaks on helping artists like Tech N9ne, Macklemore, Royce Da 5'9' and more on 'The Plug.' | | |
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 | UVA Today |
| In the summer of 1987, Gate Pratt, an architecture undergraduate at the University of Virginia, was looking for someone to rent a room in the large, brick house he lived in on 14th Street. Friends introduced him to David Berman, a tall, witty poetry student who, like Pratt, was a DJ at WTJU. | | |
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| Billboard |
| With streaming driving an unprecedented 80% of U.S. music revenue, these executives from every sector of the music industry are tapping points of data to propel business upward. | | |
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 | Music Industry Blog |
| Back in September 2018 I suggested that Spotify faced a Tencent risk,with the potential of Tencent launching a competitive offering in markets that Spotify is not yet in. This would effectively divide the world between Spotify in Europe, Americas and some of Asia, and Tencent potentially everywhere else. | | |
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 | Complex |
| The best rappers that defined the 2010-2019 decade, including Drake, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, and more. | | |
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 | Time Magazine |
| From Robyn's 'Dancing On My Own' to Khalid's 'Young Dumb & Broke,' these are TIME's picks for the best songs of the decade. | | |
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| Oxford American |
| So what are you? It’s a question which compels a lie. The kind that primes you for an everyday sort of fraud. A lie that is tied up with this philosophically fraught business of is-ness--the compulsion to thingify, to label, to fix in the mind rather than to deal with a far more chaotic, contingent reality. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Swift's name-check of the Washington, D.C.-based Carlyle Group private equity firm in her social media plea to elicit fan support brought the role of private equity in the sale of Big Machine to Scooter Braun front and center for her audience as well as politicians who have targeted the practice in their campaigns. | | |
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 | Mixmag |
| If DJ fees remain out-of-control, many predict the clubbing bubble will burst. | | |
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 | GQ |
| Being indoors makes Tyler, the Creator, irritable, which is why he loves public parks so much. In most cities he visits on tour, the 28-year-old rapper and youth-culture multi-hyphenate will seek one out and make it his second home. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Where once the biggest acts were outlandish and explosive, now they trade on their relatability. Is ordinary the new normal? | | |
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 | Slate |
| An oft-overlooked instrument becomes a breakout star of a hit musical. | | |
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| VICE |
| The backlash the R&B singer faced when discussing her mental health issues sparked a conversation on the misconceptions of anxiety. We asked a cognitive behavioral therapist what social anxiety looks like in the internet age. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| In the weeks following Johnston's death, filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig worked with Vulture to track down some of the late musician's closest friends and collaborators. Together, they wished to host a digital wake for their dearly departed friend, simultaneously and lovingly described as a genius and a con artist, a brilliant creative and a pain in the ass. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | Megan Thee Stallion x VickeeLo |
| | Fantastic (and a little NSFW). From the "Queen & Slim" soundtrack, out now on Motown. |
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