Musicians have experienced ownership consolidation in almost every part of their business for the past 25 years. It's very hard for us to find instances where that consolidation has worked out for the benefit for musicians or listeners, and we hope that regulators look at this closely. | | | | Take that! Wolf Alice's Ellie Roswell at Electric Picnic, Dublin, Sept. 4, 2016.
(Kieran Frost/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "Musicians have experienced ownership consolidation in almost every part of their business for the past 25 years. It's very hard for us to find instances where that consolidation has worked out for the benefit for musicians or listeners, and we hope that regulators look at this closely."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// From a business standpoint, SIRIUS XM's agreement to acquire PANDORA seems as sensible as it has been inevitable since the satellite radio co bought a 19 percent stake in the streaming radio co 16 months ago. Sirius wants a piece of the streaming market, aka the future of music, as well as the digital audio ad market, aka the future of paying for the future of music. Pandora wants a bigger corporate footprint to compete against the twin behemoths SPOTIFY and APPLE MUSIC, not to mention the other behemoths AMAZON and ALPHABET. It isn't safe for an independent music service to be walking alone in the dark anymore. Both are innovative music companies whose futures are anything but guaranteed. Both presumably are stronger post-deal than pre-deal. (Full disclosure: REDEF CEO JASON HIRSCHHORN is on the PANDORA board and is a bigger fan of Sirius' HOWARD STERN than you are a fan of anything or anyone.) Musically, the deal comes at a time when it seems the entire music business is engaged in a multiplayer chess game. Spotify tunneling under labels to get to artists. Spotify shaking up its playlist strategy. Apple Music potentially turning into something wider and deeper. Apple completing its purchase of SHAZAM. SONY in the middle of acquiring EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING. Most of the industry, including Pandora but most definitely not Sirius, fighting to push the massive MUSIC MODERNIZATION ACT through Congress. Label negotiations on the horizons for multiple services, Pandora included. The RINGER's VICTOR LUCKERSON sees a music vs. tech war playing out and posits, "For record labels, SiriusXM's acquisition of Pandora is the latest worrying sign that they will eventually be subject to the whims of tech platforms rather than the other way around." The FUTURE OF MUSIC COALITION's KEVIN ERICKSON warns about the general danger of continuing consolidation; but in the same piece, by SLATE's APRIL GLASER, music biz muckraker DAVID LOWERY says a strengthened Pandora could be a crucial alternative to artists "deeply dependent on revenues from Spotify and Apple Music." It could also, Lowery warns one paragraph later, leave artists in the clutches of another sprawling behemoth, with Pandora, Sirius and LIVE NATION sharing the same chairman, GREG MAFFEI. "Or not," he adds. The chess game still has a way to go, and it isn't clear, as of yet, who's playing black and who's playing white... Step aside, JOHN CUSACK. ZOË KRAVITZ will star in a HIGH FIDELITY series for Disney's upcoming streaming service... The murders of JAM MASTER JAY, SAM COOKE and VICTOR JARA, and journalist RIAN MALAN's quest to find the trace the authorship of "THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT," will be among the subjects of the upcoming NETFLIX music doc series REMASTERED. The first episode, dropping Oct. 12, looks into the mysterious, non-fatal, 1976 shooting of BOB MARLEY... Spiders from MARS apparently are a thing, according to science... Fare thee well, CHARLIE ROBISON... RIP MADELEINE YAYODELE NELSON and RONNIE MOIPOLAI. | | | - Matty Karas, curator | | | |  | The Undefeated | | Knight had Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac, and now he will serve up to 28 years in prison for manslaughter. | | | |  | The Outline | | In a lot of very real ways, Eminem's early music helped lay the groundwork for the world we live in today. But was that necessarily a good thing? | | | |  | Slate | | Does a hybrid Sirius-Pandora augur the kind of industry consolidation artists should fear—or could it lead to a healthier market if it is able to rival Apple Music and Spotify? | | | |  | The Ringer | | The satellite radio company's purchase of the online streaming service could further loosen the grip of record labels as music industry gatekeepers. | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | The massive new box set of the Beatles' 1968 masterpiece is full of unheard gems. Here are 15 of the most revelatory moments. | | | |  | Vulture | | On Sunday night (Sep. 23), Atlanta rapper Young Thug released "On the Rvn," about 14 days after he tweeted "Album in 2 days," announcing its title as "On the Run" in the next tweet. | | | |  | Billboard | | Jared Smith tells Billboard the ticket company will tighten its policing of the secondary market following an explosive report. | | | |  | NME | | Columnist and NME survivor Mark Beaumont reckons Wolf Alice's Mercury Prize win is a turning point in the cultural conversation. But he would say that. | | | |  | TechCrunch | | Dust off your old Bose 501 speakers. | | | |  | Polyphonic | |  | The New Yorker | | Preparing to perform his new album, "The Crossing," the singer-songwriter and son of Texas takes a sentimental journey backward through time, from Dallas down to old Mexico. | | | |  | Popula | | When a Ugandan tells you "I have allowed," it means they have given up and accepted the status quo. In 2016, when Yoweri Museveni was declared the winner of the presidency, again, after thirty years on Uganda's political throne, Ugandans flashed their teeth in a we-have-allowed smirk. | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | Streaming platform's new experiment hints at a very different future for playlisting. | | | |  | Variety | | The Band Perry have gone from dying young to feeling young again. For the sibling trio, it's not so much about "going pop" as going independent -- something they felt they needed to do after buying their way out of their country contract, but also after a brief spell of working with pop labels and big-name producers felt like a creative dead end, too. | | | |  | XXL | | Drake's third studio album, 'Nothing Was the Same' positioned the Toronto star as a king of hip-hop. Here's how he seized the throne. | | | | | Rolling Stone | | Drugs were rampant, food and water were scarce, and several people lost their lives at this 1971 Louisiana gathering. How did what was supposed to be a hippie utopia get so out of hand? | | | |  | The Music Business Journal | | All eyes were on Ke$ha at the 2018 Grammy Awards. Joined on stage by a slew of pop music's female A-listers donned in all-white—the preferred uniform of 20th century suffragettes, Ke$ha delivered an emotional rendition of her piano-centric ballad, "Praying". | | | | | The New Yorker | | The British rap genre's resurgence can be traced to its continued political relevance, as expressed by newer artists such as Stormzy and AJ Tracey. | | | |  | Wax Poetics | | De La Soul's third studio album 'Buhloone Mindstate' was released on 21st September 1993 and provided another step change in the celebrated band's constant evolution. As the group's last album produced by long time production partner Prince Paul, the LP was no less musically ambitious than previous efforts. | | | |  | Commentary Magazine | | Is American opera in terminal condition? | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group | | |
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