The question of whether the power of a global superstar can wildly swing the asset value of music is hard to quantify in a spreadsheet. | | | | Goo Hara performing with her group Kara on the South Korean TV show "Show Champion," Sept. 4, 2012.
(Han Myung-Gu/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “The question of whether the power of a global superstar can wildly swing the asset value of music is hard to quantify in a spreadsheet.”
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| | rantnrave:// Reading between the lines of this NEW YORK TIMES story on the tangled lines between TAYLOR SWIFT, SCOOTER BRAUN and the CARLYLE GROUP, it doesn't take much of a stretch to conclude that the main reason the label owner spoke publicly for the first time last week about his long-running war with the pop star is because his private equity partners told him to. And that they did so because Swift—and her fans—had backed them into a corner. And that—I'm no longer reading between the lines, the Times' sources actually say this—the possibility of Swift getting her masters back is now in play. All of this points to the one big question a lot of people might have missed in assessing the wisdom and effectiveness of Swift's social media outburst two weeks ago. Which is this: Have the rules changed? And did Swift change them, or did she simply recognize the change before most other people did? Is she pop's ANTHONY DAVIS (or LEBRON JAMES or KEVIN DURANT or KAWHI LEONARD)? In the past few years, basketball's elite players have figured out they have extraordinary power and leverage in dictating where they play, who they play with and how much money they earn. Swift's two major public protests of Braun's purchase of her old label, BIG MACHINE, came in July, as the NBA's center of gravity was undergoing a seismic shift, and in November, as the basketball league was still settling into its new reality. Is this pop's new reality, too? Can labels no longer shake it off when pop stars talk about their masters? Is boilerplate contractual language now open to public discussion? Can that discussion have an impact? Are the fans on their mobile phones gaining power on the executives in their corner offices? In Braun's emotional open letter to Swift last week, he said some of Swift's fans, responding to her public complaints, had threatened him and his family. That kind of behavior is unwarranted and wrong. Always. What Braun didn't say, and what the Times pointed out, is that other fans had taken Swift's cue to go after the Carlyle Group, and they did so not in the form of personal threats but as political protests. An actual tweet from a Swift fan: "So when you think about it, you either support Taylor Swift or the war in Yemen." Tweets like that apparently got the private equity group's attention. This is not, presumably, what it thought it was buying into. So now here we are, with the owner of Big Machine being told to negotiate with an artist who long ago left the label but remains its most prized asset. "People in private equity look at music copyrights and think, ‘It’s like real estate,’ but it’s not,” SONGS MUSIC PUBLISHING founder MATT PINCUS told the Times. "You’re dealing with living, breathing artists." And, not incidentally, their fans... Swift praised her new label, REPUBLIC, and didn't mention her old one at Sunday's AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS, where she was named both Artist of the Year and Artist of the Decade. Her medley of hits at the show, which she said Big Machine had tried to block her from performing, is what sparked the current chapter of the Taylor/Scooter/Carlyle imbroglio. She began it by wearing a shirt with all her album titles spelled out, SPEAK NOW most prominently. She did speak, but about herself and her fans and her "complicated" year, and only obliquely about her antagonists. The biographical video introducing the Artist of the Decade situation may have been the first such video at any awards show that included the phrase "non-recoupable compensation." Respect... SHANIA TWAIN quoted Swift's "SHAKE IT OFF" (and songs by DRAKE, POST MALONE and others) during her show-closing medley... The rest of the show featured lots of BILLIE EILISH, HALSEY and CAMILA CABELLO, awards you won't remember, performances you well might, and lots of dancing both onstage and off... Halsey's acceptance speech will no doubt have people talking... Half a century ago, jazz pianist ERROLL GARNER went up against COLUMBIA RECORDS, and won... A different kind of tangled triangle: FISCHERSPOONER's CASEY SPOONER, MIRWAIS and MADONNA... One of R. KELLY's "girlfriends" (the quotes are mine, not hers, but, y'know) has turned against him... Nashville musician gets $10,000 tip... RIP K-pop star GOO HARA and longtime A&R exec and publicist RON OBERMAN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The New York Times |
| The Carlyle Group, an investor in her catalog, has stepped in to encourage talks between Ms. Swift and Scooter Braun, who now controls her old label. | | |
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 | Medium |
| My experience with Scooter Braun has always been good. But he shouldn’t participate in a narrative that has tried to make Taylor Swift seem like a petulant or reckless artist for objecting to her art being bought and sold from under her this way. Neither he nor Scott Borchetta are “victims”, they are masters of the system. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Goo Hara died at the age of 28 after years of success and struggles. She was one of numerous high-profile female K-pop stars who have spent years facing intense scrutiny and cyber-bullying for her personal life and artistic pursuits. | | |
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 | Variety |
| A landmark case that has been largely forgotten. | | |
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 | TODAYonline |
| I’ve had vinyl, cassettes, CDs, downloads and, now, streaming. How many times am I meant to pay for the same song? | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| As TikTok continues to grow exponentially past music, should the streaming service be worried? | | |
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 | Slate |
| It was my first summer in New York, and he was my introduction to the messiness of the music business. (Excerpted from the memoir Girl to City.") | | |
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 | Pollstar |
| We have spent the decade chronicling the live industry that has seen the touring titans of the era -- both old and new -- take it to the next level. Rising stars like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift have emerged to join the ranks of U2, The Rolling Stones, Pink, Beyoncé & Jay-Z. | | |
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 | The Overtake |
| Rik and Lee's friendship was based on music. When their taste changed, so did their relationship. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| On Sunday night, Swift was honored as the AMA’s artist of the decade. But many fans tuning in did so to see the latest twist in the heated battle between Swift and the amalgam of music and private equity interests that commandeered her back catalog. | | |
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| Billboard |
| Our picks for the 100 most important songs of the decade, from "Baby" to "Old Town Road." | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Numbers going overseas for music events are soaring. | | |
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 | Jay Gilbert |
| I can remember Jim Caparro, former president of PGD and WEA distribution, making a comment in the early 2000’s that some day all distribution from the majors would most likely be out of the same warehouse. The reason? A cost savings by each, with not having to have their own back room and staff. He was a bit ahead of the game but in April of 2019, this became a reality. | | |
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 | HipHopDX |
| The internet has amplified the voice of media personalities and given them the power to shape the narratives of artists careers, but how much influence does the media have over what we listen to and what we think about on a daily basis? We examine the effect of media personalities such as Charlamagne, Ebro, Joe Budden, DJ Akademiks and more. | | |
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 | Paper |
| Tinashe isn't new to this. The singer, songwriter and producer from Los Angeles grew up performing and creating music in her bedroom, heard on a string of self-released online mixtapes that could be best described as experimental R&B. | | |
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 | InsideHook |
| The legendary singer-songwriter's final recordings were carried across the finish line by his friends and family. | | |
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| Slate |
| Or should Phish be the jam band with that honor? | | |
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 | The Conversation |
| New study finds that musicians, music directors and production staff have nearly double the risk of getting tinnitus compared with people employed in quieter industries. | | |
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 | Tape Op |
| “I've learned the benefit of going, ‘I am working these days. This is what I'm doing. Then thesecouple of days, I am not working.’ If I don't specifically say I'm not working, I'll work all the time. Then I don't have things to bring into the work.” | | |
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 | JazzTimes |
| This list from JazzTimes features universities, libraries, and museums containing the documents that lend jazz its narrative. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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