A medium-size hit gives you two or three years of getting phone calls to work on other records. A monster hit gives you five or six. | | | | Lisa-Kaindé Diaz of Ibeyi at Bonnaroo, June 14, 2019.
(FilmMagic/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "A medium-size hit gives you two or three years of getting phone calls to work on other records. A monster hit gives you five or six."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// If I were an artist whose master tapes, or any other physical assets, were in the possession of UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP, and if I read that the company was "working closely" with "every artist who's reached out to us with concerns" about a devastating 2008 fire at a Universal vault, I'd have one question, in two parts: Why didn't you do this 11 years ago, and why did you wait till they reached out to you? The music conglomerate remains in damage-control mode a week after the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE reported that the losses from the fire were far greater than the company has ever let on, that the company actively misled the public about those losses and that it's "probable that musicians whose masters were destroyed have no idea that a vault holding UMG masters had burned down." UMG, which is facing multiple potential lawsuits, said the Times story had "numerous inaccuracies," and in a BILLBOARD interview published Monday, PATRICK KRAUS, the record company's senior VP of recording studios and archive management, set out to enumerate some of those inaccuracies. Sort of. The only actual enumerating is an anecdotal account of a handful of artists and labels whose materials the Times said were destroyed in the fire but that Kraus says still exist, including JOHN COLTRANE, MUDDY WATERS and CHESS RECORDS. The Times: "Most of JOHN COLTRANE's IMPULSE masters were lost." Kraus: "We actually have in our archives... the Impulse/Coltrane stuff." Whether the latter directly contradicts the former I'll leave to your own close reading of the interview. Kraus says he knows this because "in the last two days, we've found those examples in the archives." Two days is how much time he says he and his team had had to search the vaults since the article was published. One wonders if this is the first time anyone at UMG has checked on John Coltrane's and Muddy Waters' masters since the fire was put out 11 years ago; I'm not sure, actually, how else to interpret that. Kraus also tells Billboard that not everything in the vault was a master tape, and that the master is not always "the best source to work from" anyway. He says the Times story, by JODY ROSEN, is "surprisingly overstated." He does not address whether UMG itself overstated the damage in an internal document, uncovered by Rosen, that said, "The West Coast Vault perished, in its entirety. Lost in the fire was, undoubtedly, a huge musical heritage." Kraus goes on to say the company is now storing masters in multiple secure locations around the world ("We're pretty deliberate about geographic separation") and that, as noted above, it's working closely with artists who reached out in the wake of the story. Many notable artists had reason to do so. It's unclear if the label has contacted any artists who haven't complained yet. Asked what UMG learned from the fire, he says, and I am quoting in full: "We know we have to put these assets into secure facilities that have fire protection and we have to work quickly to preserve some of this stuff digitally to make sure it's around for the ages. Beyond that, I don't know that I could say we learned anything specifically from this particular event." Not a pullquote I'd want to leave an interviewer with, but that's just me... I'll leave this INSTAGRAM post about UMG masters right here... KICKSTARTER has scotched plans for the subscription crowdfunding platform it planned to launch after acquiring DRIP, saying, "We couldn't find a way to make the business viable"... Yes to this assessment, by VULTURE's CRAIG JENKINS, of TAYLOR SWIFT's "freight train"-like entry into LGBTQ politics with her "YOU NEED TO CALM DOWN" single and video. He notes the multiple reasons the LGBTQ community has to be skeptical of her intentions, but concludes: 'If she's as serious about using her wattage to spotlight LGBTQ talent and lobby for more extensive rights for communities in need as this latest music video suggests, let's hear her out for a while"... DEBBIE HARRY does not like interviews... Best wishes to DAVE MUSTAINE. | | | - Matty Karas, curator | | | |  | Billboard | | "Many of the masters that were highlighted [in the report] as destroyed, we actually have in our archives," says UMG archivist Patrick Kraus. | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | Songs – distinct from any single recording – have regained a cultural prominence on a scale not seen since the early 1960s. Yet despite this "song renaissance," the indispensable contributions of songwriters continue to be obscured and largely undervalued | | | |  | CNBC | | Mike Patton had never stepped foot in a recording studio before he joined Faith No More three decades ago. Yet there he was, barely in his 20s, fronting the California band as it released what would be its breakthrough album, "The Real Thing." | | | |  | The New Yorker | | On August 7, 2013, the Australian vlogger Troye Sivan fixed his bright-blue eyes on his camera and pressed Record. | | | |  | The Bitter Southerner | | If you combine 2,500 people on a boat with little access to the internet, maybe music actually can be the Great Equalizer. | | | |  | The Tennessean | | The debate over a hotel/motel tax underscores a tenuous relationship between one of the nation's premiere music festivals and the local government in a rural community that, for four days every June, becomes more populous than all but a handful of Tennessee's cities | | | |  | The Guardian | | When Radiohead were held to ransom by hackers, they shrugged and put 18 hours of unheard material online for free. But for other artists, having music leaked can be devastating. | | | |  | The Washington Post | | With new albums out, two of pop music's immortals sing weird songs to their faithful. | | | |  | British GQ | | Ask any Glastonbury headliner, breaking into the industry is tough, not least for the underprivileged. For this week's All City column, Ciaran Thapar highlights the importance of music programmes that offer Britain's future stars a chance to chase their dreams. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | Director Joe Talbot discusses sampling the past while working on the music for his acclaimed directorial debut. | | | | | Billboard | | These 80 leaders within the independent music community -- U.S. record companies, distributors and associations -- are helping to drive nearly 40% of the world's music sales. | | | |  | Complex | | We asked independent labels and musicians what it's like to navigate the music industry in 2019. This is their advice. | | | |  | VICE | | It's never too late to finish what you've started, even if AI does the job for you. | | | |  | Topic | | Mary Hallock Greenewalt received 11 patents for her "color organ," an early form of synthesizer. She would spend the rest of her life defending them. | | | | | Pitchfork | | Throbbing Gristle, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy: These bands brought the heat. | | | |  | GQ | | The R&B singer tells GQ about her debut album, "Shea Butter Baby," and why she really wishes people would stop comparing her to Erykah Badu. | | | |  | And The Writer Is... | | In addition to his band, Old Dominion, Matthew Ramsey has written hit songs for artists such as Kenny Chesney ("Save It for a Rainy Day"), Sam Hunt ("Make You Miss Me"), Dierks Bentley ("Say You Do"), Luke Bryan ("Goodbye Girl") and Tim McGraw ("Kiss A Girl"). | | | |  | Slate | | A double interview about a double flute. | | | |  | Vulture | | Thirty years after the band's debut album, we look back at their entire catalogue. | | | |  | CityFM | | In a city that hosts internationally renowned, ground-breaking sounds all year long, the very idea of a music festival is quite different than it is in other parts of the country. But that's why festival programming in New York often redefines the concept, or revolutionizes the form. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | "I just need a boat and a tan / And a black girl with a five-year plan / Who's in school with a kid tryin' to be the best she can." From "Diaspora," out now on Squaaash Club/RCA. | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2019, The REDEF Group | | |
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