Even if you made the greatest thing in the world, if you don't have an angle with which to sell it, you're basically sunk. | | | | Check it out now: Fatboy Slim in Sydney, Australia, October 2000.
(Nick Laham/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "Even if you made the greatest thing in the world, if you don't have an angle with which to sell it, you're basically sunk."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// If journalists' primary source of income was a royalty generated every time a reader clicked on an article and spent at least 30 seconds looking at it, they'd be even worse off than they are now. The royalty would be about a thousandth of a penny per view. But also, more often than you'd like to think, the site wouldn't know who to pay, even if the writer's name was in bold type at the top of the article. Because metadata. It's hard. There's no universal, standardized way of communicating, through HTML, who the author of any given story is, or what the story's headline is, or just about anything else a royalty-paying platform might need to know. Or any platform that simply wants to give credit where credit's due. Spend a day putting together a newsletter like, say, this one and you'll learn that quickly. Of course, that isn't how most writers are paid—let's not give publishers any funny ideas—but it is more or less how it works for musicians, songwriters and anyone else who participates in the digital royalty flow of a song. The money's in the metadata. And despite the fact that legal music streaming has been around for nearly 20 years—as long as hip-hop had been around when JAY-Z first showed up—there's still no standardized way to use metadata to communicate who everyone is to everyone who needs to know. Which is not only why credits can be hard for a user to read, it's also how $40,000 in royalties for one musician can go missing, just like that. Each database, DANI DEAHL tells us in a thorough rundown of the current mess for the VERGE, has its own set of rules. "The fields everyone has chosen to write into their software to populate these credits are all different," entertainment lawyer JEFF BECKER tells her. This is something I learned in 2005, when I got my first job in streaming music. The metadata that labels had to sent to ITUNES was different than the metadata they had to send to, say, MUSICNET, even though both platforms needed the same information. This made no sense in 2005. In 2019, or the entire length of RIHANNA's career later, it's certifiably insane. Artists, writers and producers often don't know what info to log or how it's going to be used. Heaven forbid someone makes a mistake. A variety of companies and industry groups have tried to fix this, and things are better now than they were then, but not the entire length of Rihanna's career better. I first heard the word "blockchain" as a magical solution to all of this about an hour and a half after the first MusicREDEF went out into the world four and a half years ago. Read the comments on Deahl's piece. Blockchain is still very much the magical solution. Abracadabra. Poof. I love meeting with companies like SONGTRUST and the Australian startup JAXSTA who are attacking various pieces of the problem and often doing amazing work. I'm also reminded, each time I do, how enormous the problem still is... KLAY THOMPSON is temporarily reducing his DRAKE intake ("soft" songs like "HOTLINE BLING" are out), a drastic step for a longtime Drake fan that can mean only one thing: The NBA finals begin tonight. Drake's TORONTO RAPTORS versus E-40's GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS. Allegedly, people named KAWHI and STEPH are also involved.Toronto's 4KORNERS will DJ tonight's game at SCOTIABANK ARENA... RIP RALPH MURPHY. | | | - Matty Karas, curator | | | |  | The Verge | | It's a crisis that has left, by some estimations, billions on the table unpaid to musicians | | | |  | The Trichordist | | When I was told by reception that the office would not receive anyone, I asked where the toilets were. I then walked past the toilets, hiked up the stairs, opened the office door and plonked myself down on the communal sofa. A PledgeMusic associate approached me and I said I would not leave until I could speak with the director. | | | |  | Medium | | Why listening with intention is important in a culture of newsfeeds. | | | |  | The FADER | | Rosalía is transforming what it means to be a pop star. As she reaches global stardom, she faces the history of her craft and the future she's creating. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | The 21-year-old guitarist and studio savant, who has recorded with Kendrick Lamar, Solange and Vampire Weekend, steps out on his own for his debut solo LP. | | | |  | Supreme Standards | | The UK's small venues need alternative models for survival. | | | |  | Penny Fractions | | The desperation to conceal the price of music streaming shows that even though profits are rising in the music industry, it's built on a flimsy foundation. | | | |  | The New York Times | | If Johnny Hallyday, the "French Elvis," was a United States resident, then his fourth wife stood to inherit his whole fortune. Social media evidence led a French court to rule otherwise. | | | |  | Vulture | | It's an album rollout stunt. But it's also critiquing album rollout stunts. And it's a sitcom pilot. And it's funny! Titus Andronicus front man Patrick Stickles describes why he wrote and starred in "STACKS," ahead of the band's new album release. | | | |  | VICE | | Without "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater," "Grand Theft Auto," and Dave Mirra, my music library would probably be a near empty vessel. | | | |  | Midem | | Did you know Spotify takes 2 weeks to surface new hits, versus 3 months for radio? This and more in our pre-Midem roundup of essential music news, in figures. | | | |  | The Muse | | It's hot to be a professional songwriter these days. Big pop songwriters and producers get features and interviews in magazines, anyone can casually pull up the credits to a song on Genius, and Ariana Grande even cast her songwriters for "thank u, next" in her music video. | | | |  | Refinery29 | | Fear not: Elton John did get his happy ending after all. Here's the love story "Rocketman" didn't get around to showing. | | | | | Los Angeles Times | | "Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop," at the Annenberg Space for Photography, is the most comprehensive pictorial survey of rap culture ever mounted. | | | | | VICE | | Meek Mill was recently turned away from a hotel in Vegas, and plans to sue. We asked a lawyer whether he has a case. | | | | | The New York Times | | "Originals," a collection of 15 demos for songs recorded by the Bangles, Kenny Rogers and Sinead O'Connor, is a rough draft of pop genius. | | | |  | NME | | Where should we draw the line with holograms, posthumous releases and biopics of beloved late artists? | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | The venerable Brazilian style, which enjoyed international popularity in the 1960s, has appeared in songs by Juice WRLD, Cuco, Kota the Friend and Hope Tala in the space of a few months. | | | |  | NPR | | Gangsta rap had been known as aggressive, rebellious and political, but the Geto Boys' 1991 hit made it something new: vulnerable. Hip-hop's relationship with mental health has never been the same. | | | |  | Ebony | | "Being famous, but you still have to go live in your shack in your segregated township...it started to affect me in ways I didn't realize." | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2019, The REDEF Group | | |
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