New words started to enter my life that had never been there before, like 'handsome.' Boy, you sure do get better looking when you get a hit record. | | | | Tiny porch concert: Jodi Beder at her house in Mount Rainier, Md., March 30, 2020. She plays every day for neighbors and passersby.
(Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "New words started to enter my life that had never been there before, like 'handsome.' Boy, you sure do get better looking when you get a hit record."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// While hip-hop and R&B stars battle coronavirus anxiety and/or boredom by battling each other head-to-head on INSTAGRAM LIVE—coming up: BABYFACE vs. TEDDY RILEY—a swarm of experimental musicians, opera singers and performance artists will test the limits of both musical collaboration and conferencing software with a massive performance tonight on ZOOM. More than 250 performers will spend six hours re-creating PAULINE OLIVEROS' improvisational piece THE LUNAR OPERA, which invites participants to create their own characters and parts and respond to cues known only to them. The piece was originally performed outdoors 19 years ago in New York; tonight it's being performed on the night of a supermoon, on a virtual stage where moons basically don't exist. This is what we call making do with what you have—and hopefully discovering something new, even radically new, in the process. And it's emblematic of a cultural world that has almost completely remade itself in the space of two or three weeks. Here's a video, by Oakland's THAO & THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN, shot entirely within Zoom, in a nine-hour session four days after bandleader THAO NGUYEN's manager came up with the idea. Here's CHARLI XCX announcing her next album, HOW I'M FEELING NOW, which she plans to write and record in isolation and release a month from now. Here's the CITY WINERY Passover seder, seemingly assembled in real time (glitches included, like bonus plagues) that I watched Monday on YOUTUBE. The live music industry is genuinely hurting. Artists are hurting. But they're also quickly adapting/reinventing/rethinking what they do for a new world where, from hip-hop to opera to rock and pop to religious ritual, everything's on the table and there's only one rule: You can't leave your house or your apartment. It's an astonishing, worldwide burst of creativity in the middle of an astonishing, worldwide trauma. Like the provocatively short score for Oliveros' opera, it springs from a single provocative idea: Here's an environment to play in; figure out how to respond to it... Bonus: Here's the coronavirus itself turned into music... CMJ's new owner is the British online radio brand AMAZING RADIO, which is touting a "virtual CMJ Music Marathon" this summer, possibly a non-virtual one in the fall, and various other plans that sound a little vague at this point... ASCAP, citing late payments from licensees, has pushed back its first-quarter 2020 payouts to writers by three weeks, to April 28. BMI, which operates on a different calendar, isn't expected to hit the same speed bump until later this year... A federal judge has dismissed the suit brought by five artists/estates for recordings they believed to have been lost in the 2008 UNIVERSAL MUSIC warehouse fire. Four of the plaintiffs had dropped out of the suit; the judge said the fifth, TOM PETTY's first wife, JANE, didn't have standing on one of her key claims because the label, and not Petty's estate, owned the recordings in question. The NEW YORK TIMES, whose reporting on the fire prompted the suit, said the ruling "does not refute or question the veracity of what we reported." UMG called the Times' two major pieces "stunning in their overstatement and inaccuracy"... Another sign, perhaps, that music plagiarism claims are losing their luster with courts?... RIP BLACK THE RIPPER and ORLANDO PUERTA. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | Texas Monthly | | The scrappy blog is one of the few remaining websites of its kind. | | | |  | The Philadelphia Inquirer | | "Frankly, it's sort of the Wild Wild West right now when it comes to the licensing landscape." | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | As artists postpone releases amid a market slowdown, one major record label is finding success sticking to its original plans. "Music is very of the moment — it captures a time," says Warner Records COO Tom Corson. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | Our brains reward us for seeking out what we already know. So why should we reach to listen to something we don't? | | | |  | Pollstar | | Pollstar's quarterly numbers are in and the preliminary gross revenue for the Q1 Top 100 Tours chart was up 10.9% over 2019's record-setting year to $840 million for 2020 while ticket sales rose 4.5% to 9.4 million. Based on that growth, Pollstar can project the year's box office would have reached $12.2 billion had Q1's percentage growth remained constant. | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | CEO of UK's Music Venues Trust says: "We need companies and high net worth individuals to step up now." | | | |  | Middle Class Artist | | A month ago, the plague that ravaged 14th-century Italy was far from most Americans' minds. But on March 8 at St. Mark's on Washington's Capitol Hill, the Folger Consort and Modern Medieval Voices transported its audience to 1348 and a world unmoored by disease. | | | |  | The Quietus | | Two decades on from Metallica's infamous decision to sue Napster, Eamonn Forde looks back and explores how the rock troupe's co-belligerent Dr Dre ended up outsmarting Ulrich & co, changing tack, and laughing all the way to the bank. | | | |  | Highsnobiety | | While numerous brands have been woven into the fabric of hip-hop history, Burberry occupies an extremely niche position. We dig into it here. | | | |  | Stereogum | | Ten songs - some global smash hits, some underrated album tracks - that merely hint at the breadth of Withers' sampled legacy. | | | |  | Chicago Magazine | | More than 250 performers will participate in "Full Pink Moon," a streamed version of an opera by composer Pauline Oliveros. | | | | | Rolling Stone | | Over the past year, TikTok has been responsible for the rise of several chart-topping hits. Now, artists like Drake are going to the platform to give their singles a very early boost. | | | |  | SPIN | | The crisis has brought everything to a halt, leaving artists, tour managers, bookers and the industry as a whole wondering when, if ever, will things go back to normal. | | | |  | Okayplayer | | Erykah Badu recently had her 'Apocalypse Two' show on Sunday, April 5. The set is the latest in her Quarantine concert series. | | | |  | Variety | | With self-isolation being employed universally to combat the spread of the coronavirus, Instagram Live has become the go-to for musicians of all stripes but especially stars of rap and R&B. Thanks to live battles, hundreds of thousands of viewers are able to witness a hitmaker's skills in going up against a peer song-for-song while also judging a catalog of work. | | | |  | The Independent | | The disorder has long been misrepresented in pop culture but now artists from George Ezra to rapper NF are opening up about their struggles. It gives sufferers hope, says James McMahon. | | | |  | Hollywood Reporter | | With the coronavirus keeping Davis in Palm Springs with three friends, the executive opens up about the hardest adjustments he's had to make, his favorite newscaster and catching up with Taylor Swift's 'Miss Americana.' | | | |  | Bloomberg | | Tencent Holdings Ltd. is looking to bring its paid music app Joox to some of Africa's most populous countries after the streaming service proved a hit in Southeast Asia. | | | |  | The Seattle Times | | It took five years and two U.S. Supreme Court cases, but last week, the band Thunderpussy finally scored a federal trademark. The hard-rock, all-women group had applied for a trademark in 2015, in what they thought was a routine matter of business for a rising band that wanted to protect its intellectual property. | | | |  | NPR Music | | Since self-isolating, writer Ruth Saxelby is noticing sounds sticking out where they used to blend and music doing some surprising work amidst the hush. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
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