| My phone has not stopped ringing, it's amazing. | | | | |  | Watch your "Slime Language": Lil Baby and Young Thug in Burbank, Calif., March 2, 2020.
(Getty Images) | | | | | "My phone has not stopped ringing, it's amazing." | | | | Trading Places
Swimming against a tide of publishing companies and investment funds snapping up every songwriting catalog that a few hundred million dollars can buy, DOWNTOWN MUSIC has decided to divest, selling its own catalog of 145,000 copyrights. Including its BEYONCÉ songs, its STEVIE WONDER tunes, esven a certain LADY GAGA and BRADLEY COOPER song. Downtown is literally far from the "SHALLOW" now. The buyer is CONCORD MUSIC GROUP, which has been on a copyright shopping spree in recent years. The price was estimated at somewhere in the $300 million to $400 million range. The reason, says Downtown, is to focus on, and grow, its publishing administration and label service businesses—without owning the underlying IP. Downtown CEO JUSTIN KALIFOWITZ said the company sees "a clear opportunity in the market for a truly neutral provider to meet the changing needs of creators and their partners." Neutral as in no conflict of interest over ownership or over who's profiting from any given service. The company's recent acquisitions haven't been catalogs, but companies like label services provider DASHGO—which will be merged with the old Downtown Music Publishing to create the new DOWNTOWN MUSIC SERVICES—as well as CDBABY and ADREV. The company told reporters Monday it expects to generate an impressive $600 million this year from creator services. Which presumably will *not* be reinvested in the next classic catalog that hits the market.
Stop the Presses
Music journalism twitter was aflame Monday trying to sort out the particulars of a frustratingly incomplete ST. VINCENT story. Or, rather, a frustratingly incomplete story about a St. Vincent story. A British writer, EMMA MADDEN, posted a transcript of a 30-minute Q&A on her personal blog under the headline "St. Vincent Told Me to Kill This Interview" (it's since been taken down but it isn't hard to find an archived copy if you search for it). It's an interesting, neither great nor terrible, mildly awkward, and very mildly combative, interview about St. Vincent's upcoming album, DADDY'S HOME. Madden says St. Vincent's PR company called her editor, said the artist was "terrified" of the piece running and demanded it be pulled. Which it apparently was, though Madden declined to name either the publication or the editor. There's nothing terrifying in the transcript Madden posted. There are some good St. Vincent quotes. This led to an outpouring of tweets about St. Vincent's, let's say, quirky interview habits and her frustration with the practice in general (though if you ask me, this interview with the Guardian's LAURA SNAPES from a month ago, which delves into some deep personal background, is a great, engaging read), along with justifiable anger at both the artist and her team for having the gall to tell a publication what it can and can't publish. There was also some anger at the publication for giving in, and, I thought, a surprising amount of pushback at Madden herself, for her interview skills and for her own chutzpah in posting the interview on her own. It's frustrating knowing only one of the three (at least) sides of a story, which makes me hesitant to say too much more, except that, barring extreme circumstances, artists shouldn't be making such demands of publications and publications shouldn't be agreeing to them. If a piece is unfair or uninteresting or un-anything, a publication is entirely within its rights to kill it or revise it or do whatever needs to be done—not because a piece doesn't serve the artist's needs, but because it doesn't serve the publication's needs. Writers should be thoughtful, honest and fair. If artists really, really don't want to do interviews in the first place, they probably shouldn't do them. Otherwise, they should leave writers alone to write and share the stories that need to be told, and even, sometimes, the stories that don't really need to.
Etc Etc Etc
SPOTIFY raises prices... And launches in-app integration within FACEBOOK... Billboard's International Power Players... "Ok so I lost again," writes DIANE WARREN, who came up short for a Best Original Song Oscar for a 12th time Sunday night. But, she adds: "U know what was the hugest win?? Feeling more love and support than I have ever felt in my life." Hugs!
Rest in Peace
British songwriter BARRY MASON, whose hits with composer Les Reed included "DELILAH" and "LOVE GROWS (WHERE MY ROSEMARY GOES)"... Austin blues guitarist DENNY FREEMAN.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | |  | | VICE |
| | Music Producers are Becoming Meme Machines to Get Rich and Famous Fast | | by Shamani Joshi6 | | "Now, my audience only wants to listen to my meme remixes, and sees me more as a video editor than a music producer." | |  | | Billboard |
| | Inside Primary Wave's $1.5 Billion Hit Factory | | by Tatiana Cirisano | | Primary Wave Music founder/CEO Larry Mestel discusses giving a second life to iconic hits by Kurt Cobain, Whitney Houston and Bob Marley. | |  | | The Tennessean |
| | Concerts are coming back, and Nashville is leading the charge | | by Matthew Leimkuehler and Dave Paulson | | Eric Church, Kane Brown, Thomas Rhett, Brothers Osborne, Chris Stapleton confirmed tour dates for late summer and fall 2021. | |  | | Nieman Journalism Lab |
| | With Trapital, Dan Runcie found a way to cover the business of hip-hop and make it sustainable | | by Hanaa' Tameez | | "It's easy for the media and others to dismiss entertainers as just being famous, and whatever they sold was a benefit of their fame - and not necessarily the business insights that came from that." | |  | | Pollstar |
| | How Maluma Is Leading The Return To Touring: 'Let's Be The First Ones' | | by Francisco Rendon | | "We wanted to activate the industry, that's why we went first," said Henry Cárdenas, CEO of Maluma's promoter, Cárdenas Marketing Network. | |  | | The Guardian |
| | 'Parasitic' ticket touts 'undermining music festivals' Covid tracing' | | by Rob Davies and Laura Snapes | | Industry figures warn exploitation of pent-up appetite for festivals could impede tracing in event of outbreaks. | |  | | The Verge |
| | Here's how the Internet Archive digitizes 78rpm records | | by Kait Sanchez | | Over 250,000 records have been preserved through the Great 78 Project. | |  | | The New York Times |
| | The Sing-Rap Generation Branches Out | | by Jon Caramanica and Alphonse Pierre | | How melody has continued to reshape hip-hop via the work of Polo G, Rod Wave, Lil Tjay and more rising artists. | |  | | Los Angeles Times |
| | How intense psychotherapy and a Bel-Air love nest led to John Lennon's classic debut album | | by Randall Roberts | | A deluxe reissue of the 'John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band' details Lennon's primal scream therapy and the album's surprisingly playful recording sessions. | |  | | them. |
| | Beverly Glenn-Copeland Is Ever New | | by Wren Sanders | | 35 years after the release of his groundbreaking album Keyboard Fantasies, the legendary artist speaks to them. about connection, transition, and rediscovery. | | | | | Billboard |
| | Motown's Ethiopia Habtemariam Is Ready to Fully Execute Her Vision: 'Stay Tuned' | | by Gail Mitchell | | Motown Chairman/CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam discusses the challenges she faced as she became the third woman run a label and her vision for Motown's future. | | | | The Guardian |
| | From Eno to Dua Lipa, why musicians are fascinated by outer space | | by Edward Helmore | | Artists have long been seduced by galactic themes. Now Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes is releasing a celestial epic. | |  | | Bloomberg |
| | Songs by Beyoncé and Aretha Franklin Change Hands in Music Deal | | by Lucas Shaw | | Concord Music Group is acquiring more than 145,000 music copyrights from Downtown Music Holdings, bringing songs by Beyoncé and Aretha Franklin under the same umbrella as Rodgers & Hammerstein and Kidz Bop. | |  | | TechCrunch |
| | Facebook introduces a new miniplayer that streams Spotify within the Facebook app | | by Sarah Perez | | The companies are rolling out an integration via a new "miniplayer" experience that will allow Facebook users to stream from Spotify through the Facebook app on iOS or Android. | |  | | InsideHook |
| | How a Second-Generation Chicago Bluesman Survived a Year Without Gigs | | by Rosalind Cummings-Yeates | | Ronnie Baker Brooks proves that there's at least one good thing happening on Facebook. | |  | | NPR Music |
| | How PJ Harvey's 'Uh Huh Her' Taught Me To Carve My Own Path | | by Laura Snapes | | As a kid discovering music, you assemble a hodgepodge of other people's opinions. But there's a lot of joy to be found when the urge to agree with the critics melts away, writes critic Laura Snapes. | |  | | Jezebel |
| | You Don't Have to Give Interviews, St. Vincent | | by Hazel Cills | | St. Vincent is currently doing press for "Daddy's Home," a swaggering, '70s rock album that is sort of inspired, as she said earlier this year, by her father's conviction and imprisonment for a stock manipulation scheme. But don't ask her too much about that in an interview, in case she tries to kill the piece, which she reportedly did to a UK music journalist. | | | | From "Black to the Future," out May 14 on Impulse! | | | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" | | |  | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator | | |  |
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