| I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists. | |  |  | | Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov at the Jewish Museum Berlin, March 2009. | | (Kai Bienert/ullstein bild/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | "I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists." | | - Valentin Silvestrov | |
| | rantnrave:// | SoundOn and Vision
With upwards of 60,000 tracks being added every day to services like SPOTIFY, it's long been understood that users can easily get lost without someone, or something, to guide them, whether it be playlists, algorithms, curated landing pages, emails or any other kind of active outreach. But artists can get lost, too, in that ocean of endless tracks and invisible users. Services have come up with a variety of data-based tools and dashboards for those lost artist souls, but I've never seen the problem explained in terms as tactile and human as TIKTOK did when beta-launching its SOUNDON service in September. "We've heard from many artists," TikTok global head of music OLE OBERMANN said, "that when they upload music to TikTok, they feel like they're walking into a venue but they can't find their way to the stage—to define their audience—because the platform's just so vast." A perfect metaphor, if you ask me, for what it feels like to upload one (or 10) of those 60,000 tracks on any given day. "SoundOn," Obermann said, "is like a well-lit entryway to that stage."
SoundOn, which came out of beta Wednesday, is aimed at emerging, indie artists. It offers a number of features within TikTok and one notable feature that extends beyond the platform. It provides a clean, easy way for artists to upload music directly to TikTok and, as Billboard explains, "access to a team of dozens of employees... who can help identify marketing and promotion opportunities within the app, recommend best practices and key in on what's working and not, and pair creators with others to cross-promote or collaborate on music." And then TikTok is offering to be their digital distributor, using SoundOn to service their music to Spotify and other subscription sites. That service will be free for the first year, meaning TikTok won't take a cut of royalties, with a 10 percent fee kicking in in the second year. It sounds almost label-like, except artists aren't going to get as good a deal from an actual label. Considering TikTok's outsize current role in the pop ecosystem, SoundOn is potentially going to be providing the equivalent of A&R, marketing *and* distribution for a lot of artists.
Oh and one more thing, which may be the main reason TikTok is getting into this line of work. Obermann told Music Business Worldwide in September the company wants to grow the business of brands making TikTok videos with TikTok music by 5x in the coming years. One of the things standing in the way is "some very ingrained obstacles that have always existed in the industry in terms of how you insert music [into digital ads] and make it available for commercial use." But if artists are uploading songs directly to TikTok and the platform can pre-clear the sync rights for those songs, those obstacles disappear, or at least get a lot smaller. "If we can unlock this," Obermann said, "if we can get that music flowing in the way that it should, so that brands that want to use music in the TikToks they are making—which effectively serve as their advertisements—we could multiply the size of the entire [sync] industry in a very short period of time." And that may be where everybody, TikTok included, sees the biggest dollar signs.
Dot Dot Dot
In raw dollars and cents, the US recorded music industry had its biggest year ever in 2021, with revenues of $15 billion, according to the RIAA. The vast majority of that, of course, is coming from streaming, but vinyl sales remained healthy and CD sales showed signs of actual life (sort of; their sales growth in 2021 was largely attributable to the fact that they were recovering from a disastrous 2020, the first year of the pandemic). Adjusted for inflation, the industry is still 37 percent short of its 1999 peak, which is either a sobering reminder or an opportunity, depending how you look at it. "We still have plenty of room to grow," RIAA chairman and CEO MITCH GLAZIER wrote... There's no crying in baseball and there's no chanting, singing, screaming or even standing up at BTS concerts in South Korea, which is currently fighting an Omicron wave... Why bother releasing a greatest-hits album in the age of streaming playlists? Because "they're our songs; we know which ones are the best ones!," says singer/guitarist ALEX KAPRANOS of FRANZ FERDINAND, which releases HITS TO THE HEAD on Friday... SPOTIFY has suspended its roughly 1.5 million premium accounts in Russia.
Rest in Peace
Jazz cornetist and composer RON MILES... Country songwriter MIKE DEKLE.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
| | | |  | | Water & Music |
| | The state of music DAOs | | By Cherie Hu, Yung Spielburg, Brodie Conley... | | More than 30 online music and creator communities now self-identify as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Over the last two months, we interviewed more than 15 leaders from a wide range of music DAOs to gain perspective on possibilities for their respective organizations in this emerging framework, using Web3 tools and strategies unavailable to the traditional music industry. | | | | |  | | The New York Times |
| | The Linda Lindas and Their Ferocious, Joyful Power | | By Melena Ryzik | | Fueled by punk conviction (and snacks), this all-girl, school-age band is ready to release its debut album, "Growing Up," nearly a year after its song "Racist, Sexist Boy" went viral. | | |  | | RIAA |
| | Year-End 2021 RIAA Revenue Statistics [PDF] | | By Joshua P. Friedlander and Matthew Bass | | In 2021, recorded music revenues in the United States grew 23% to $15.0 billion at estimated retail value. All major formats of music grew versus the prior year with the exception of digital downloads. Paid subscriptions continued to be the biggest growth driver. | | | | | | | |  | | Billboard |
| | Risks & 'Real S***': How Young Thug & Gunna Pushed 'P' -- And Hip-Hop Forward | | By Carl Lamarre | | With three No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 in the past 12 months — last year's YSL label group release "Slime Language 2," then Thug's rock-tinged opus "Punk" and Gunna's early-2022 smash "DS4Ever" — Gunna and Thug are making a compelling case for themselves as the best duo in the genre. | | | |  | | Complex |
| | How DJ Drama Went From Mixtape King to Mogul | | By DJ Drama and Johnny Sweet | | After the feds tried to shut down DJ Drama's mixtape operation, he re-emerged with a second life as a music mogul whose Generation Now record label continues his legacy of uncovering emerging talent, including Lil Uzi Vert and Jack Harlow. | | | |  | | iHeartRadio |
| | Questlove Supreme: Bonnie Raitt | | By Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and Bonnie Raitt | | Bonnie Raitt joins Team Supreme to discuss carrying on Blues traditions and making sure pioneers got paid. Bonnie also explains why she cannot perform a show without playing one of her most impactful hits. | | | |  | | Seismograf |
| | Three artists. One Hope | | By Julie Hugsted | | Three snapshots from three different lives: Kateryna Zavoloka, Katarina Gryvul and Boris Filanovsky. All work with music, their countries are at war, and they condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine. | | |  | | Chicago Reader |
| | 'I don't need fans, I need comrades' | | By Annie Howard | | Patrick Haggerty of Lavender Country went nearly 50 years between albums, but he's never abandoned his fight for social progress. | | |  | | Spotify |
| | The Big Hit Show: Alright | | By Alex Pappademas | | The real story behind the defining protest song of our age, and how Kendrick Lamar grappled with the post-Ferguson moment. | | | | what we're into |  | | Music of the day | | "Winter Journey" | | Alexei Martinov & Alexei Lubimov | | Baritone Alexei Martinov and pianist Alexei Lubimov performing a piece from Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov 1970s song cycle "Silent Songs." The text is from a poem by Alexander Pushkin. | | |
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| | Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" |
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