Certain '60s records, I would just crank the end as loud as possible, so I could hear what is going on in the fadeout: What are they saying? The fadeout leaves the impression that the song goes on forever and that you were lucky enough to witness a piece of it. Maybe when you die you'll find out the rest. | | | | Not even wishing for snow: Mariah Carey at Madison Square Garden, New York, Dec. 15, 2019.
(Kevin Mazur/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "Certain '60s records, I would just crank the end as loud as possible, so I could hear what is going on in the fadeout: What are they saying? The fadeout leaves the impression that the song goes on forever and that you were lucky enough to witness a piece of it. Maybe when you die you'll find out the rest."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// MARIAH CAREY's "ALL I WANT I FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU" was released 25 years, three presidencies, the lifespan of HARRY STYLES and basically the entire careers of JAY-Z and NAS ago. If "All I Want..." were an artist, it would be eligible for the ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME. If it were a person, it could run for Congress. The one thing it shouldn't be able to do under normal pop music circumstances is hit #1 on the BILLBOARD HOT 100 for the first time this week. But these aren't normal times, and this miraculously conceived pop gem is no ordinary holiday song. (It was conceived and produced, for whatever it's worth, by Carey and WALTER AFANASIEFF, though the actual nature of the collaboration has long been in dispute and the two haven't spoken in more than 20 years; the gloriously joyful lead vocal, obviously, is all her.) There are a lot of reasons why no Christmas song has topped the Hot 100 in 60 years, some of them having to do with Billboard chart rules, which among other things made them ineligible for several years. There are a lot of other reasons why it's possible, given a perfect storm of circumstances, for it to happen now, even with a 25-year-old song. But as the NEW YORK TIMES' JOE COSCARELLI makes clear in this well reported account of how it happened, it took a very long and relentless marketing campaign by SONY MUSIC (starting 25 years ago when Sony's COLUMBIA RECORDS convinced Carey to make a Christmas album against her own instincts), and years of incredibly hard work by Carey. Like so many great things, it took a little bit of magic and a hell of a lot of sweat. And that unforgettable vocal performance. And the existence of streaming music. And the joy of the season... According to a 2017 story in the ECONOMIST that's been widely cited by other sites in the past couple years, "All I Want for Christmas for You" had earned an astonishing $60 million in royalties up to that point, or more than $2 million a year—for a single song with an annual lifespan of about six weeks. The figure, unfortunately, was both unsourced and unexplored, so it's impossible to know if it's right. But even if it was off by 100 percent and the song had only earned $30 million up to that point—wow. I should have listened to my dad all those years when he begged me to write Christmas songs. (The Economist also shared the perhaps not surprising news that Christmas songs get more play in regions with the coldest weather and the least amount of daylight. Alaska loves you, Mariah)... But the real money is in touring, right? U2 grossed just over $1 billion (yes, that's a B) from 255 shows in 141 cities over the past 10 years, making it the decade's highest grossing touring artist, according to POLLSTAR. Coming up behind were the ROLLING STONES, ED SHEERAN and TAYLOR SWIFT, whose grosses were all in the $900 million range. And you're not imagining the steady rise of ticket prices. The average seat for the decade's top 100 tours cost 36.7 percent more than it did in the previous decade, $96.17 vs. $70.33, and the average gross per show nearly doubled. PINK was the highest-grossing artist in the year from November 2018 to November 2019, grossing $215.2 million from 68 shows worldwide... And where does money *not* come from? A) trees. B) streaming royalties if your job title is songwriter. "It's something I deal with every day," songwriter manager JAIME ZELUCK HINDLIN tells MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE. "My writer wrote on this, it's only going to probably get a couple of million streams, how are they going to make money?" Only.A.Couple.Million.Streams. Hindlin thinks songwriters should get a share of a song's master rights: "It's not standard and I think it should be"... RIP POPA WU. | | | - Matty Karas, curator | | | | | | | i don't care about the presents | |  | The New York Times | | The modern holiday classic from 1994 completes the longest ever trip to the top of the Billboard singles chart, thanks to a dedicated marketing plan and a surge on streaming services. | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | Spoken-word content on Spotify is growing - and eating into the bread and butter of record labels. | | | |  | Billboard | | "In general, the narrative about Cuba is not as sexy or optimistic," Cuba Educational Travel's Collin Laferty concedes. "[But] when you look at a crowd that size, dancing, smiling, crying for five hours that's pretty unique. You don't get that too many places in the world. Artists understand that." | | | |  | The Atlantic | | The musician who co-created some of the year's standout records, from Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey, is always asking, "How do you cut all the bulls*** out?" | | | |  | Trapital | | Stem CEO and co-founder Milana Lewis came on the Trapital Podcast to talk about Stem's role as a music distributor, how it worked with Frank Ocean and Childish Gambino, business decisions that impacted the artist community, diversity in the music industry, and why some record labels deals actually make sense. | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | Nonstop Management founder Jaime Zeluck Hindlin discusses her first year in business and the biggest challenges faced by songwriters today. | | | |  | The FADER | | Watch The FADER Interview with Roddy Ricch about his new album "Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial," Nipsey Hussle, and more. | | | |  | InsideHook | | "Fire On The Mountain" director Chris Benchetler fills us in on his new documentary. | | | |  | Pollstar | | It was just this past September that "Pollstar" was putting together its third quarter business analysis and attributing a $75 million dcline in year-over-year gross revenues to a phenomenon we termed "The Ed Sheerhan Factor." This was shorthand for the lasting impact of the lodestar that was Sheerhan's record-setting "Divide Tour" and the effect it has had on the concert industry. | | | |  | The Outline | | It's never been easier to find music you love -- or, now that all the end of decade lists have been released, to learn that the superstars were better than everyone else. | | | | | | | i don't need to hang my stocking | |  | Paper | | At the turn of the 21st century, Britney Spears was everywhere. One of the most exposed figures of the time, her every move was dissected and discussed ad nauseam by a ravenous media. Yet somehow, Spears remained an enigma. (Adapted from "Switched On Pop: How Popular Music Works, and Why It Matters," by Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding.) | | | |  | i-D Magazine | | Korea's star-studded new supergroup features members of NCT 127, EXO, SHINee and WayV. | | | |  | CBS News | | More than 6 million people, most of them Jews, died in the Holocaust. The music they wrote as a temporary escape, however, did not, thanks in part to the efforts of an Italian composer and pianist. | | | |  | Level | | The best emcees never fall off, but that doesn't mean they stay hot forever. | | | |  | Twenty Thousand Hertz | | There's a reason we call tourists "sightseers". As a society, we're totally obsessed with the way things look. But our world is full of beautiful, fascinating and bizarre sounds. Join us on a sonic adventure around the world, as we climb up sand dunes, plunge into the Arctic Ocean, and even travel back in time. | | | |  | Afropunk | | Sonic alerts about the struggle and the spirit of the Ancestors, communicating via the drum over digital frequencies, featuring Ras G, Pursuit Grooves, Teebs, Waajeed, rRoxymore and more. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | Featuring Holly Herndon, Kali Malone, Fire-Toolz, and other voices from the fringe. | | | | | Billboard | | In nine years, Choir! Choir! Choir! has gone from playing weekly gatherings at downtown Toronto tavern Clinton's to some of the biggest stages in the country with hundreds of choir participants -- and some famous faces. | | | | | Rolling Stone | | The latest TikTok icon is a green-haired, highly cynical, sexually fluid ghoul. | | | |  | The New Yorker | | How Andrew Lloyd Webber and a team of collaborators turned a strange book by T. S. Eliot into a baffling cultural phenomenon. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2019, The REDEF Group | | |
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