I think the best art comes from being in a new environment, being somewhere where you're a bit lost and need to find your feet. | | | | SuperM in Vancouver, Feb. 6, 2020. The K-pop supergroup's debut album, "Super One," is out today on SM Entertainment/Capitol.
(Andrew Chin/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "I think the best art comes from being in a new environment, being somewhere where you're a bit lost and need to find your feet."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// BossREDEF, aka JASON, wonders why the same issues that prevented some classic TV content from being available circa the turn of the century (spoiler: music clearances are high on the list) are still keeping plenty of classic TV content out of reach in the age of streaming. "One would think 20 years was enough to fix," he tweeted the other day. There are so many things that one would think. In music, one would think a major label in 2020 wouldn't have to take 24% off the top of an artist's royalties for distribution services including trucking physical product. And yet, even at a time when most music distribution involves neither trucks nor physical product, that remains a standard deal point, major-label-turned-indie A&R exec CHRIS ANOKUTE tells Variety. Anokute went indie, he says, because "you're either part of the solution or the problem, and... I was part of the problem." You can plug those 24 percentage points into this fun little Record Deal Simulator, designed to show how various deal points, splits and upfront costs affect an artist's ability to profit. If, for example, you have a 20/80 royalty deal (20% to you, 80% to the label) with a not unreasonable $1 million budget ($400,000 advance, $200,000 in recording costs and $400,000 for marketing), you'll need to generate 1 billion streams before you make your first dollar in royalties. The label will have made a $3 million in profits at that point. The simulator, made by the startup CREATE/OS, is an oversimplification, presumably designed as a conversation-starter as much as a business tool. And it did start some conversations on Thursday, around the same time KANYE WEST's manager, ABOU THIAM, was beginning to make the rounds of the music media to argue that it's time for change. His and West's next step will be to move from Twitter to a manifesto that will be shared with labels. "We're no longer in the times that labels have to actually drive to a plant and physically make the records," Thiam tells Rolling Stone. "In 2020, you can put up a record on ITUNES by yourself for free. So, why are you charging me a fee for that when I can do that myself?" Put *that* in your record deal simulator, label execs. Everybody else, the previous 400 words were basically my way of saying you should play around with the tool, too. It's fun. And a little shocking... KCRW has released season three of its longform music storytelling series LOST NOTES. Each season of the podcast has a different host and a different tilt; this one is a series of half-hour-ish essays by poet and cultural critic HANIF ABDURRAQIB about artists and moments in the pivotal year 1980, including the SUGARHILL GANG's attempt to followup "RAPPER'S DELIGHT," HUGH MASEKELA and MIRIAM MAKEBA's return to South Africa and the deaths of JOHN LENNON and DARBY CRASH in the span of 24 hours... MICHAEL KIWANUKA wins the MERCURY PRIZE... This may be the best cease-and-desist letter ever written. The challenge to its recipient won't be about ceasing, desisting or paying up for his use of the DOOBIE BROTHERS' "LISTEN TO THE MUSIC" in an ad for a WILLIAM MURRAY GOLF shirt, but responding in kind to the Doobies and their lawyer, PETER PATERNO. One would like to think the golfing fashion entrepreneur better known as BILL MURRAY is up to that task... Rule #3 (of 5) for How to Enjoy a Virtual Festival, per Afropop Worldwide's BANNING EYRE: "Cook and eat food you love. You could always order out, but cooking fills the air with atmospheric aromas such as might waft your way from the various food stalls on the festival grounds." Hard agree... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND, MOOR MOTHER, LYDIA LOVELESS, SPILLAGE VILLAGE, MACHINE GUN KELLY, SUPERM, DEFTONES, IDLES, SAD13 (aka SPEEDY ORTIZ's SADIE DUPUIS), A$AP FERG, PUBLIC ENEMY (album title of the week), ELZHI, NAPPY ROOTS, MARIE DAVIDSON & L'ŒIL NU, SYLVAN ESSO, CARRIE UNDERWOOD (Christmas album), SUFJAN STEVENS, ANNA VON HAUSSWOLFF, SVALBARD, KATAKLYSM, BOB MOULD, THURSTON MOORE, CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE BIG BAND, DIANA KRALL, CHARLES MCPHERSON, MICHAEL WOLLNY, ADAM KOLKER, A CERTAIN RATIO, HEN OGLEDD, ACTION BRONSON, STALLEY, JOJI, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, the WAR AND TREATY, WILL BUTLER, BLUE HAWAII, DROPDEAD, YVES JARVIS, the MENZINGERS, RITUALS OF MINE, BAND OF HEATHENS, FILMORE, the late EARL THOMAS CONLEY, GRANGER SMITH, TIM HEIDECKER, the JIMMY CHAMBERLIN COMPLEX, the NEIGHBOURHOOD... SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS...Plus also too BLUE NOTE RE:IMAGINED, featuring SHABAKA HUTCHINGS, NUBYA GARCIA, EZRA COLLECTIVE and others paying homage to Blue Note jazz classics, a TRAVIS SCOTT/YOUNG THUG/M.I.A. single, and, last but not least, quite the opposite in fact, a voluminously expanded version of the greatest album ever made... Wait, it turns out we also have the worst concept for a surprise album ever, a 17-track album by the ONLY ARTIST WHO COULD HAVE WRITTEN the soon-to-be-immortal line "How the f*** you get shot in your foot, don't hit no bones or tendons?," which doesn't mean he should have written it, never mind released it... RIP STERLING "MR. SATAN" MAGEE, IRA SULLIVAN, S.P. BALASUBRAHMANYAM and MAX MERRITT. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | Shaken by the death of his friend Nipsey Hussle, run-ins with the police and the Black Lives Matter protests, YG returns with his darkest album yet. | | | |  | Variety | | A classic album created amid dramatic personal and professional turmoil. | | | |  | The New York Times | | As a teenage girl paralyzed with fear, one of the darkest albums of the 1990s, "The Downward Spiral," gave me the guts to rebel against my tormentors. | | | |  | Dazed Digital | | A music industry lawyer explains what artists like Kanye West and Taylor Swift mean when they talk about the owning their master recordings. | | | |  | The Forty-Five | | South Korea are really upping the livestream game with artists using innovative technology to provide paid-for events fans can't get enough of. | | | |  | Pitchfork | | It begins one night in November of 1997, backstage at NEC Arena in Birmingham, England. In Radiohead lore, it is known as the Night of Thom Yorke's Fateful Mental Breakdown. But in actual fact, there are two mental breakdowns. (Excerpted from "This Isn't Happening: Radiohead's 'Kid A' and the Beginning of the 21st Century," by Steven Hyden.) | | | |  | Level | | Turning 40 doesn't mean you retire - it means you've got nothing left to prove. | | | |  | Vogue | | In our new world, where travel is no longer advisable and social distancing mandatory, it has been a bit hard to connect with Lizzo. She has been on vocal rest in her home in Los Angeles, while I'm mostly isolated in my house on the East Coast. | | | |  | New Republic | | After 50 years of living in rural obscurity, the now-legendary electronic musician has a message for the young. | | | |  | Tidal | | Reflecting on the justice's deeply informed love for the art form, with testimony from some of current opera's renowned singers of color. | | | |  | KCRW | | Sometimes, legacy is not about the spark itself, but about the flame the spark causes. | | | |  | The Ringer | | Before 'The Social Network,' 'Fight Club,' or 'Se7en,' the director made his bones directing videos for the likes of Madonna, Billy Idol, and George Michael. What can we learn from the auteur's MTV hits? | | | | | Los Angeles Times | | Acclaimed California heavy band Deftones' new album, 'Ohms,' was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic and will be released without a supporting tour. | | | |  | Billboard | | CISAC has centralized the assignment and administration of ISWC, in an upgrade that will improve the accuracy, speed and efficiency of creators' works. | | | | | The New York Times | | We zero in on one moment in New York City's cultural calendar that's been wiped clean - what it means, what it looks like, what it cost and what's ahead. | | | |  | The Washington Post | | A silenced season at Lincoln Center sounds an uncertain note for the opera world at large. | | | |  | MusicAlly | | Are the big music streaming services too similar to one another? And if so, how can they break out of that box to innovate and differentiate themselves? | | | |  | NME | | Michael Kiwanuka was tonight crowned the winner of the Hyundai Mercury Prize 2020 for his third studio album, 'KIWANUKA.' | | | |  | The Bitter Southerner | | Bobbie Gentry was a little-known 23-year-old singer-songwriter from Woodland, Mississippi, when her song "Ode to Billie Joe" rose to the top of the charts in 1967. When novelist Mesha Maren started singing along to Gentry's lyrics as a child in the early '90s, she heard a story of the rural South that helped her to find her own voice as a writer. | | | | | Variety | | The mantra "Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" is no longer the rule in the Los Angeles and Orange County indie music scene after several high-profile musicians have been accused of sexual misconduct and assault. The female and non-binary accusers have included both underaged fans and members of other well-known bands, bringing to light a long-standing power dynamic that exists even in the underground. | | | |  | Lefsetz Letter | | Founder of Elektra Records, Jac Holzman signed acts from Theodore Bikel to Love, the Doors, Queen, Bread, Judy Collins and more and released classical music for the masses on the discount Nonesuch label. Listen to hear how this innovator with an ear built one of the greatest record companies of all time. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | From "Transmissions: The Music of Beverly Glenn-Copeland," out today on Transgressive Records. | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
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