Early on in our career as professional musicians, we ditched the concept of deadlines. As soon as we made the record company any money, it was like, first thing that goes is deadlines: 'You're just gonna have to wait.' | | | | Ad for the Victor Victrola, based on Francis Barraud's 1899 painting "His Master's Voice."
(Bettmann/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "Early on in our career as professional musicians, we ditched the concept of deadlines. As soon as we made the record company any money, it was like, first thing that goes is deadlines: 'You're just gonna have to wait.'"
| | | | | | rantnrave:// Apologies for the resend. A technical failure on our end... The MUSIC MODERNIZATION ACT is in the books but doesn't go fully into effect until Jan. 1, 2020. Which gives the music industry and the US COPYRIGHT OFFICE 14 months to put a lot of people, processes and data into place, toward the goal of overhauling the digital royalty system. There will be blood, one presumes. Sweat and tears, too. And, no doubt, scores of guest op-eds in BILLBOARD and VARIETY from interested parties with ideas to share, encouragement to offer and axes to grind. PANOS PANAY, ALEX "SANDY" PENTLAND and THOMAS HARDJONO, speaking for the BERKLEE COLLEGE-based OPEN MUSIC INITIATIVE, make their pitch in Billboard that the rights database at the heart of the system should be open source, and that the Open Music Initiative should be somewhere near the center of it. "Given this database's critical importance to a healthy and vibrant music ecosystem," they write, "our view is that its foundation must be an open protocol for rights ownership identification that can and should serve the entire industry in a secure, shared, interoperable, and trusted manner. This protocol must be based on open standards that are overseen and set by a neutral entity and governed through an industry-wide structure." Which, coincidentally, mirrors what the BERKLEE COLLEGE-based initiative has been working on for a few years, with broad industry support, in its own effort to organize music rights data, as they note. In VARIETY, SOUNDEXCHANGE president MICHAEL HUPPE says it's already time to start thinking beyond the MMA. Next on his wish list (and he is very obviously not alone): reimagining terrestrial radio royalties, revising ASCAP and BMI's consent decrees and attacking internet value gap. "I hope the MMA was just our first verse, with the rest of the song yet to be written," Huppe writes. He also, if I may quibble, calls for music biz interests to act as collaborators rather than combatants, while painting internet and radio companies as something resembling enemy armies. Terrestrial radio has taken advantage of a "free ride on the backs of artists" to "stiff creators" in "one of the most egregious injustices in the music industry," according to a single paragraph of his op-ed. All of which may be true, depending on which side of table you're sitting on. And all of which may simply be what current US law dictates. What if the record companies, publishers, artists, and songwriters envisioned terrestrial radio as another collaborator rather than a combatant? What if the umbrella opened just a little wider? How might the conversation start then?... How's this for constructive collaboration: On Friday, the VERGE called out SOUNDCLOUD for some questionable terms and conditions for its PREMIER program, which allows indie artists to monetize their tracks without label help. SoundCloud lightly defended its legalese but also said, and I'm paraphrasing, "Yeah, you're kinda right." By Monday, the next business day, the company had rewritten the legalese to remove or amend nearly everything the original piece objected to. "SoundCloud is and will always be a creator-first platform," the site wrote in a note to artists, "and we want to avoid any doubt around your rights and how we run the program." I believe you can safely keep SoundCloud in your artist-friendly column as you listen to some YUNG LEAN and CLAMS CASINO. Meanwhile, Verge, can I run some other terms-and-conditions documents by you?... Do we have to start issuing speeding tickets to orchestra conductors?... Is the footage warm enough?... Hearts and hugs to CANDI STATON... RIP YOUNG GREATNESS. | | | - Matty Karas, curator | | | |  | Real Life | | Streaming capitalizes on the utopian hopes attached to the mp3. | | | |  | CNET | | What FLAC is, where to buy music in the format, and how to play it on your phone, computer or hi-fi. | | | |  | The Outline | | How a years-old tweet from Donald Trump's favorite rap-rocker inadvertently explains the entire modern conservative movement. | | | |  | XXL | | It's never been easy to discuss mental health in hip-hop. But, with today's new crop of rappers, the conversation has been brought to the forefront. | | | |  | BBC Radio 6 Music | | Mary Anne Hobbs interviews Thom Yorke about writing the soundtrack to the horror film Suspiria. | | | |  | Stereogum | | Every year, we here at Stereogum make a list of the best new artists of the year, meant as recognition for musicians that have had a great year and as an investment in them for the future. | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | The brilliant, genre-bridging singer has overcome childhood trauma, domestic violence and label woes. Now, 65 years into her career, she's facing her toughest challenge yet. | | | |  | Playboy | | In the short film "Artform," premiering here, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, dissect the use of samples in hip-hop and how the beat machine is an instrument in and of itself. Further, Younge has urged producers to pick up actual instruments and learn the bits of music that they tend to pull from other musicians' works. | | | |  | Five Star Songs | | A story about copyright, Talking Heads' cover of "Take Me to the River," free steak and an uncomfortably long hug. | | | |  | Longreads | | As the band dissolved, they managed to capture their destruction in some dark, powerful music. | | | |  | NME | | After Richard Ashcroft runs amok on BBC Breakfast and Bobby Gillespie sits aghast on This Week, Mark Beaumont hopes musicians might regain some self-respect. | | | |  | Soundfly | | Direct-to-fan social platforms allow rappers to communicate their art immediately and directly, no middlemen and no waiting. Here's how they're doing it. | | | |  | INTO | | With "Bohemian Rhapsody," the film about Queen's eccentric frontman Freddie Mercury, just around the corner, discourse about Mercury's sexuality has rocked the internet. Some folks say that Mercury was gay, some say he was bisexual, some say he was queer and some say that he didn't like being defined by labels so we shouldn't be trying to label him now. | | | |  | CBS News | | Lesley Stahl talks with the Dutch conductor who's bringing new ideas and direction to what many consider to be one of the finest symphony orchestras in the world. | | | |  | Innovating Music | | Gigi interviewed Adam Moseley, a long-time producer/mixer/engineer who is exploring new adventures in spatial audio, mixed reality, and sound technologies. Adam also teaches at UCLA's Music Industry Program at the Herb Alpert School of Music. Adam shares the blockages and doorways from learning saxophone to a wide door into audio engineering at Trident in the UK. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | Starring Johnny Cash, Tanya Tucker, Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, and a host of other hell-raisers. | | | |  | British GQ | | "GQ" meets one of the most astonishing Spotify success stories of 2018, Dermot Kennedy, who has gone from busking in Dublin to sold-out shows across the world, more than 300 millions streams and gaining fans in Travis Scott and Taylor Swift. | | | |  | The Guardian | | The songwriter has been drawn out of semi-retirement, rewriting her song 'One' to try to persuade voters to 'take us away from the terrible direction America is going in.' | | | |  | BuzzFeed News | | The R&B singer, despite his progressive politics, has remained uncontroversial in an increasingly polarized moment. But has it come at an artistic cost? | | | |  | Slate | | Please, stop turning sublime classical works into dance music. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group | | |
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